SGU Episode 449

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SGU Episode 449
February 15th 2014
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SGU 448                      SGU 450
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
The inclination to sink into the slumber of dogma is so natural to every generation that the most uncompromising critical intellect must without intermission stand upon the watch against it.
Otto Pfleiderer, 1902
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality. S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday February 12th 2014, 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: Ello guvna

S: Happy Darwin Day everyone!

B: Yay!

R: Happy Darwin Day! I’m wearin my little Darwin t-shirt, available at skepticalrobot.com.

B: I’m sitting here all evolved and everything.

E: What exactly is Darwin Day?

R: It’s the day Darwin was born.

S: Otherwise known as his birthday, yeah. Did you guys know, here’s my Darwin Day factoid for the day, a scientist named a new species of beetle after Darwin? The beetle was discovered by Dr. Stylianos Chatzimanolis from the University of Tennessee

B: Wait wait wait, say that again.

S: NO. This is a uh a rove beetle. There are fifty-seven thousand described species, but apparently Darwin collected this specimen when he was on the beetle. And then it sat lost in a drawer at the Natural History Museum in London; and was rediscovered in London in 2008. And then somebody realized hey this was actually collected by Darwin

B: Oh!

S: So it was just described and it was named Darwinilus sedarisi

B: Oh sweet

E: very nice

J: what’s this bug called luv?

B: I would have put that on EBay

E: Imagine if someone would have opened the drawer and said, “Ew there’s a dead bug in here. Let’s dump it out and get rid of it ew!”

R: There are tons of Darwin specimens that are just sitting in drawers underneath the uh London Museum of Natural Science. My friend, Karen James, used to work there and she gave me the behind the scenes tour and it was amazing! There was all of…they have so much incredible stuff. They keep Darwin’s own samples in a basement somewhere. Ya know, not even open to the public.

E: Have you guys seen the show on HBO called Questioning Darwin?

R: Nope

E: HBO’s ran that, I think, starting last week. And I didn’t watch all of it; I watched parts of it. And it had some very parts. Apparently, something I didn’t know about Darwin before, is that during his seminal time in which he was writing the Origin of Species – that he spent twenty years accumulating – all of his notes and everything in doing this… He basically cloistered himself inside of his house and his wife kind of made, ya know brought everything to him. He had his family all around him and the varied species and all the animals and things and plant life and his his green house was immense and everything. But he basically stayed there for twenty years and worked like eighteen hour days like every day for twenty years just in pursuit of this… of of of learning more about the origin of species. And that is dedication

B: How many wives would put up with that crap? Like yeah this is gonna be a revolutionary theory, I need eighteen hours a day for the next two decades.

E: Apparently she was entirely on board

B: Wow

E: and made it possible for him to do the work that was necessary for him to get that book published.

B: Glad she did, but what a hard sale that must have been…

This Day in Skepticism ()

• February 15: Happy Decimal Day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_Day

News Items

Organic Molecules on the Moon ()

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2556947/Could-creatures-one-day-live-MOON-Ice-pockets-lunar-surface-hiding-building-blocks-simple-life.html

Astrology Belief ()

• http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/02/public-opinion-astrology-dumb

New Burgess Shale Find ()

• http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/new-burgess-shale-find/

Boeing Anti-Gravity ()

• http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/01/fringe-science-boeing-admits-anti-gravity-work/

Photo Lineups ()

• http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/01/fringe-science-boeing-admits-anti-gravity-work/

Quickie with Bob - Fusion Beats Unity ()

• http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13008.html

Who's That Noisy ()

• Answer to last week: Alan Shephard

Questions and Emails

Question #1: Net Neutrality ()

Follow up discussion on net neutrality

Question #2: Placebo Medicine ()

This is a question perhaps specifically focused at Steve, but I would be interested in hearing everyone else's opinions as well. I am a fourth year medical student about to graduate and enter an internal medicine primary care program with the goal of becoming a future primary care doctor. As such, I will be many patients' first and/or only contact with the health system. I know that I will encounter a lot of pseudoscience in this role, and I already have seen my fair share during my clinical rotations thus far. I am unsure of how to stay true to my skeptical nature while still supporting my patients therapeutically. For example, I recently had a patient with failed back surgery syndrome – essentially, lower back pain status post surgery, now with worse pain dependent on opioids to treat. It's a bad situation – the pain is keeping him out of work, opioids are causing problems of their own (and are ineffectual and inappropriate for chronic pain), and he has exhausted the limits of our medical knowledge – he is on NSAIDs, has done physical therapy, has has had all the imaging and even the surgery without relief. So he comes in and tells me he recently started acupuncture and 'it's working wonders'. I have seen this similar story frequently – patients with fibromyalgia or arthritis, or itching, finding relief from acupuncture, or herbal medications, or homeopathy. Frankly, these particular cases have minimal 'harm' – even though alt med can have harm on a large scale when patients avoid conventional medical treatment or engage in dangerous practices, in these particular cases the patients have tried everything medicine has to offer and are still following up with their physicians. While I feel strongly that it is unethical to prescribe a placebo and would not thus go out of my way to recommend non-proven alternative medicine, if a patient takes a placebo on their own and finds relief, it would only be harmful to their health (both mental and physical) and the therapeutic doctor-patient relationship to disabuse them of the notion that the alt med is helping them. A few things could happen if I did: they stop the therapy and are in worse pain taking meds with more side effects, or they don't stop the therapy but stop seeing me because they don't trust my opinion anymore since the therapy has worked and I don't believe it. So when a patient comes to me, being helped by alternative medicine, and asks what I think, I nod and smile and say 'some patients do report relief from that'. Is that wrong? Should I be more firm to my skeptical roots? What if they ask for my opinion before starting the alternative medicine? It may legitimately be helpful through a placebo effect (which would only be minimized by my telling them the truth), they would be taking it under physician supervision, and honestly, there are a lot of medications that we DO prescribe with actual serious side effects that, on balance, are likely only minimally superior to placebo (SSRIs being a good example). These patients are taking alt med for pain or depression or other more subjective complaints, not for cancer or heart disease or something that could kill them without proper therapy. As you can see, I'm ethically conflicted, sorry for the rather rambling question. I could really use your advice!PS – all the usual: love the show, been listening for years, huge fan :)JaimePhiladelphia

Science or Fiction ()

Item #1: Scientists report the results of the first mapping of a genome of a Clovis skeleton, finding that 80% of present-day Native American populations are direct descendants. Item #2: A new study finds that crocodiles are able to climb trees, some even vertically. Item #3: Australian astronomers have discovered the oldest known star, which they date to 14.5 billion years old, 800 million years older than the age of universe.

Skeptical Quote of the Week ()

“The inclination to sink into the slumber of dogma is so natural to every generation that the most uncompromising critical intellect must without intermission stand upon the watch against it.” - Otto Pfleiderer, 1902

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at theskepticsguide.org, where you will find the show notes as well as links to our blogs, videos, online forum, and other content. You can send us feedback or questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. Also, please consider supporting the SGU by visiting the store page on our website, where you will find merchandise, premium content, and subscription information. Our listeners are what make SGU possible.

References