SGU Episode 335

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SGU Episode 335
17th December 2011
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 334                      SGU 336
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Forum Discussion

Introduction

You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, December 14th, 2011, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson...

R: Hello, everyone.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey, guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: How we doin'?

S: Good.

B: Pretty good.

R: Super.

J: Yah, fine.

This Day in Skepticism (0:30)

S: So, Evan, December 17th, huh?

E: The year was 1919. Albert Porta, a respected American meteorologist, whose last name means "door" in Italian, I believe...well, he caused a widespread panic back in 1919, and he predicted that a conjunction of six planets, which was to occur on December 17th, would blast the Earth into oblivion. So apparently what was going to happen is that this conjunction of the six planets was going to cause a magnetic current that would pierce the sun and cause a great explosion of flaming gas and engulf the Earth. Bye, bye, Earth. And people took this quite seriously, as, after all, he was a respected American meteorologist, so he had some sway with the public.

S: Mmm-hmm.

E: There's reports of, you know, some mob riots and even a few suicides, reportedly—

B: Wow.

E: —based on this particular prediction he made. And, of course, it didn't happen, and then his reputation crashed and burned right after that, and nobody took him seriously.

J: The suicide thing always boggles my mind because if the world were to end, then why kill yourself before it happens, you know?

B: I'd want to see it happening. What a way to go, huh?

R: In some people's version of the end times, though, it's not something you really want to stick around for. There's locusts and horsemen...

J: But it never occurred to them, he might be wrong, you know? (laughs) You know, the stakes don't get higher.

B: Yeah, but what gets me about this stuff is that people never consider, "Hey, I wonder if this has happened before." And if you kinda look at when these types of groupings have happened, like, say, for four or more planets lining up, it happens like every fifty-seven years, so, hello, I mean, that's kind of pertinent information that seems like a lot of these people never consider. And I know he was going off on magnetism and stuff, which was really silly, but a lot of people focus on the gravitational increase, and, I mean, if you line up five planets and look at what the effect on the gravitational pull...I think it's less than one percent increase. I mean, if I just stepped really close to you, I'm having more of an effect than the five planets would have. It's just so silly.

S: Do you remember the planetary alignment in 1982?

B: I think I do.

E: That was big. Yes.

B: Was that in like May? Was it May 5th?

E: It was the May—

S: March. March 10th.

E: I thought it was the 9th.

B: That's close.

E: Oh, yeah, I think you're right.

S: March 10th. You know what that's called, when the planets line up?

B: Is it, umm...syz...

E: Syzy...syzygy.

S: Syzygy, yeah.

B: Yeah.

S: Syzygy technically is when three bodies line up — like the sun, the earth, and the moon — but it's also sort of loosely used to refer to planets. Although, they were all lined up; they were just all on the same side of the sun at one time.

B: A loose alignment.

S: Yeah, so-called grand syzygy. The next one is coming up May 19th, 2161, when all of the planets will be within sixty-nine degrees of each other.

E: Wow. There was a six-planet cluster just this past May, in fact.

S: But, Evan, no effect on earthquakes?

E: No, no effect...(laughs) Yeah, right.

S: (laughs)

E: No effect on earthquakes.

News Items

Pro-Measles Children's Book (3:34)

• Skepchick.org: Measles are Marvelous!

S: Rebecca, you guys over at Skepchick wrote about a new children's book about the wonderful world of measles.

R: Yeah. Yeah, it's actually...it's a great new children's book, and it's inspired us to put out a whole new series of books based on the same idea, so, for instance, our first title is going to be Syphilis: Awesome!

(laughter)

R: And it's going to—

E: Syphillis: Look what it did for Hitler!

(laughter)

R: Right, it's going to teach kids to have unprotected sex, because syphilis is not as bad as everybody says it is, and then teach them ways that they can get it and basically tell them that it's totally cool and a healthy thing to do, and it's really not that big of a deal.

S: I'm looking forward to the sequel, Playing With Polio.

R: Yep, yep.

(laughter)

R: It's going to be a great series, and I'm sure no one can think of anything that could possibly go wrong with that. Yeah, that's the book that Stephanie Messenger has written. It's called Melanie's Marvelous Measles, and it is written for children to teach them that measles are a wonderful thing to get, that you don't need to get a vaccination—

E: Mmm-hmm.

R: —that you can just contract measles, and it's really not that big of a deal, and it'll make you much healthier, and everybody...it's natural, you know. There's a little girl chasing a butterfly on the cover; I'm pretty sure that's how measles works—

S: (laughs)

E: Hey—

R: —you chase butterflies when you get it.

J: (laughs)

E: —what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

R: It's kind of like those herpes commercials where everybody just looks so goddamn happy, and you think, "Maybe I've been missing out—

(laughter)

R: —you know, by not having herpes."

(laughter)

J: You're right, Rebecca!

E: You're missing out on something.

R: It's the same sort of thing, like she...she just looks really happy to have measles. So Stephanie Messenger is obviously an anti-vaxer. She's friends with Meryl Dorey of AVN—

J: (groans)

E: Oh yeah...

R: We've talked about her before, yeah. Meryl Dorey's the really outrageously awful woman who is anti-vaccine. She's an HIV/AIDS denialist. So they're both in Australia. Messenger has a really sad back story. Her child died very young. She blames it on vaccines. There's truly no way to tell, you know, what exactly happened there. You only have her anecdote to go by, so—

S: Well, I could say, though, that the story of what happened to her child is pretty typical of certain classes of neurodegenerative diseases, like the so-called leukodystrophies. There are some people who think that her child may have had Alexander disease. We can't know that. But, essentially, these children progress normally for one-to-two years, and then their nervous system starts to break down because of a genetic problem, and then they begin to regress, and they, you know, eventually die. The story of what happened to her child fits that very well. So we don't know that, but that's certainly a plausible alternative. We can be reasonably sure it wasn't a vaccine that did it, but that's what she has assumed.

R: Yeah, apparently, she once mentioned that the doctors thought that it might have been Alexander's disease. She uses her other children as examples of...to support her view because her other children do not have...they were never vaccinated, and she says that they are perfectly healthy. A commenter on Respectful Insolence actually mentioned that those children are the children of a different father than the other ones, which supports the idea that this might be a...might have been a genetic disease. So, yeah, there are a lot of maybes, but, you know, there is one thing we do know for sure, and that's that vaccines are safe and effective and we are all much better off when everyone is getting vaccinated. Children—

E: That's not what I read!

R: (laughs) In Melanie's Marvelous Measles?

E: Yeah.

R: Children like Stephanie Messenger's children are benefiting from herd immunity. They're benefiting from the fact that everyone else is getting vaccinated, which is protecting them. Unfortunately, herd immunity is dropping, which is why we're seeing measles coming back. Measles can actually kill and maim in ways that are not mentioned in Melanie's Marvelous Measles, oddly enough.

B: Join the herd!

R: So, yeah, that's what's happening. This book is being self published, so there's no publisher to complain about or to boycott, unfortunately. It looks like, as of right now, she's able to get away with just publishing this absolute dreck focused on children who will read this and not know any better. They'll read this and think that, "Oh, okay, there's nothing harmful about measles. It's perfectly natural and fun to get measles."

E: Well, what good is an insane belief without some propaganda to back it up?

S: Mmm-hmm.

R: Yeah, and—

E: Right?

R: —and, you know, we all know that the best way to spread a belief like that is to get kids when they're young, when they're not—

E: Yup.

R: —necessarily going to question your authority, so...yeah, it's a savvy decision on the part of Messenger.

J: I feel bad for her. I mean, she lost a child. It's got to be such an incredibly horrific life-altering event, and maybe she feels like she's trying to do some good and everything, and it's so sad and common for us to see people like fall into like the single anecdote: "Well, you know this was my only child that got sick. All the other ones are fine." And a lot of people definitely, you know, buy into that. They don't have any perspective on the fact that that single anecdote or personal experience that they have is just completely worthless, like, it doesn't teach you anything. I mean, that only works with things like, "Oh, I touched the fire, and I got burned," you know? But it doesn't work with things like, you know, getting your children immunized.

S: Anything reasonably complicated, yeah, 'cause it's just all confirmation bias and quirkiness of small experience, so...but it's very compelling to the individual. To her, it's case closed. You know, what she knows is, "One child is vaccinated; he's dead. The rest of my children are perfectly fine, and they were not vaccinated." And no logic or scientific evidence will convince her that that is not a cause and effect. It's just the way we're hardwired. And now she's so emotionally invested...I agree, Jay; I mean, losing a child must be absolutely devastating, and this is how she's dealing with it. The emotional investment is also huge. It's just unfortunate that other people will be damaged because of this, because she's spreading misinformation that—

B: Damaged or killed.

S: Yeah, or killed.

R: Yeah.

J: But that...and that's the other side of the coin. Okay, so, yes, I do feel bad for her and anybody in that situation. It's terrible, but you know what? She should not be writing books like this. She has no idea what she's talking about. She's spreading misinformation. And, sadly, if this book gets more press, she will be responsible for kids dying or getting permanently damaged by these diseases.

R: And it's not just the book. Unfortunately, much like Meryl Dorey, she is trying to spread her message far and wide, which includes giving vaccination seminars around Australia. And, also like Meryl Dorey, she claims that sudden infant death syndrome isn't really a thing; it's just based on...the problem is with vaccines that are causing it.

S: Yeah.

E: Vaccinations.

R: Meryl Dorey also goes so far as to say that shaken baby syndrome isn't a real thing, that that's always just vaccines.

B: Wow.

R: She's even...she even lobbied for an American man who was imprisoned for apparently beating his child to death. She campaigned for him on the idea that his child was actually killed by vaccines.

B: What about kids that are hurt in car accidents?

S: (laughs) Yeah, I was going to say—

B: Let's, you know, let's make that—

S: —there's no car accidents either. I mean, it's all vaccines.

R: Right. Vaccines are somehow involved, and the government is hiding it all. You know, there's a giant conspiracy.

Higgs Update (12:08)

• Bad Astronomy: Mass effect: Maybe Higgs, maybe not

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Mercury UFO (22:53)

• NeuroLogica Blog: Mercury UFO

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Hallucinating Color (29:39)

• National Geographic: People Can Hallucinate Color at Will

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Who's That Noisy? ()

Answer to last week: Piranha

Questions and Emails ()

Menstrual Syncing ()

I was listening to the latest podcast, reached the "fact or fiction" segment of the program and was disappointed to hear Jay trot out that old newage-lady-togetherness-myth about women's periods syncing up. It's one of those things people like say, "Betty and I are such good friends, we even have periods at the same time!" It's also bullshit. Socially synchronizing periods do not exist, and because of the varying lengths of duration of the period itself along with time between, cycles that start out apparently synced will un-couple over time. There are only so many days in a general 4-6 week cycle, chances are at some point one of my room mates and I will sort-of-sync for a month or three, but not the whole length of the apartment's lease (And while this myth persists, even it has never had the ovarian fortitude to claim syncing room mates have periods the exact same duration). Too, as cycles un-sync, people will start to count the near-misses as evidence. First it will be on the same day, then only 2 days apart, then 4, etc. "Why, we must still be in sync, even though clearly they're slowly getting further and further apart!" No reputable, repeatable study has ever proved syncing-cycles. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-women-who-live-together-menstruate-together http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2429/does-menstrual-synchrony-really-exist Barbara United States

Swindler's List ()

Online Dating

Science or Fiction ()

Item #1: Scientists have successfully developed a vaccine against breast cancer that has been shown to be effective in mice. Item #2: Scientists have developed a plant spray that allows plants to survive freezing conditions unharmed. Item #3: Psychologists discover that adding a small gift to a larger gift decreases the gift evaluation of the recipient.

Skeptical Quote of the Week ()

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.

Jean-Paul Sartre

References