SGU Episode 57

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SGU Episode 57
August 23rd 2006
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SGU 56                      SGU 58
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
Larry Sarner, mathematician and inventor
Quote of the Week
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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 Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 23^rd, 2006. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me here tonight are Bob Novella...

B: Hey everybody!

S: Rebecca Watson...

R: Hello.

S: Perry DeAngelis...

P: Right.

S: ...and Jay Novella.

J: Hey guys.

S: Good evening everyone.

R: Hey.

J: What's up Steve? How you doing?

S: We've got some follow up from last week.

News Items

Water Tree mystery solved (0:44)

• [www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060817-022000-8116r _article_title_] 

S: The first follow up is the story of the water-spouting tree. If you recall in San Antonio, Texas, there was a red oak that had a continual little stream of water coming out of a hole in the side of the tree. The property owners and a lot of the locals were moved to believe that this water was a miracle water and they were drinking it, hoping it was going to possess healing powers. Well, the mystery is a mystery no longer.

P: Solved!

S: The city officials did a couple of tests. First they tested the water and they found that a contained chlorine residue that is identical to the chlorine in the city water.

R: Surprise.

P: Just wait a minute here. They also found by the way that it was loaded with bacteria and probably not terribly safe miracle water to be drinking. They also discovered they did a little experiment. They shut the valve on a pipe that was feeding a sink and a shed in the back of the yard and the tree stopped spouting water.

R: Wow. A water pipe. Whoever would have guessed that. I mean, surely not me on last week's podcast. No way could I have solved that mystery.

S: So apparently the tree, one of the roots of the tree penetrated the water pipe and the water being under pressure as it is in pipes, worked its way up through the tree and out the side.

J: So this nasty ass water that's pouring out of the tree that pictures of the people who live there like to show one lady like drinking out of it like a water fountain and then they showed the other guy like bottling it. Pretty much everyone who drank that kind got dysentery?

P: Rubbing it into their wounds to heal them, sure.

R: Actually, it's not nearly as bad as what happened recently in India where it turns out that a creek that was salty water suddenly turned fresh and people took it as a miracle and started saying that the water was healing water so they flocked to it by the thousands, drank it and it turns out that it's one of the most polluted creeks in the world. They dump thousands of tons of raw sewage into the thing every day.

P: Beutiful.

R: And possibly through an increase in pollution or it could have been due to recent rain flooding the creek it temporary loss of salinity and the salinity is back now but thousands of people have bottled the water and taken it home to their families.

P: Good, good, good.

R: Police officials are still trying to get people to stop drinking it.

J: Rebecca Snake Oil is alive and well in this world.

P: Thank god my skepticism has saved me from miracles.

B: So this family that with the tree, they, nobody noticed that the sink and the shack stopped working or it was greatly diminished?

S: I guess it's little used.

J: The real miracle here is that nobody died from drinking that crap.

R: Yeah.

S: Well one more mystery solved by science.

J: Pesky science.

Mystery animal in Maine (4:00)

• [www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,208683,00.html _article_title_] 

S: And yet we solved one mystery and another one crops up this time in Turner, Maine. A curious beast while chasing a cat was struck by a car and killed and found along the side of the road. Now this creature many locals believed has been menacing local pets for a couple of years. It is charged with killing a rottweiler and a doberman pinscher in the last couple of years. Some of the locals that saw it said in I quote, "It was evil, evil looking. And it had a horrible stench I will never forget."

R: Jay, did you go to Maine?

S: Yes, the local resident says, I've lived in Maine my whole life and I've never seen anything like it. Well, there's a couple of pictures of this, obviously we'll link to it on the notes page. And the creature looks a little odd, especially its head is a little oddly shaped. But you look at the whole thing and it's basically a dog.

B: It's bizarre.

S: But it's basically a dog.

B: Yeah, it is. But the head is definitely striking. It's really...

R: It's kind of creepy looking.

B: Yeah, it's creepy. The snout is definitely really short. But it's no mutated, freakish-oid animal that is unexplainable. It's, I explained it.

P: It's a canine.

S: It's definitely a canine. It might not have been you a half-breed with a coyote or something.

J: You're clearly missing what's going on here. What's happening here is that the mystery creature in Maine obviously was drinking from the water coming out of the tree. It mutated it. It went back up to Maine and started killing everybody's pets.

R: Good theory. You should write a book about that.

S: Now they were doing DNA analysis. At least had that's what Bob?

B: Yeah, it says right here. DNA analysis showed the animal was a rare wolf dog hybrid. Case closed.

R: Who would have possibly guessed?

S: Go figure.

P: I believe that that test was paid for by a newspaper. The Maine State, the Wardens, they wouldn't even come down and look at it.

S: They were not interested.

P: They wouldn't even bother.

S: Another hybrid who cares. Well, that's two mysteries down.

P: I'm sure the photo will be on our webpage. Take a look at it. It's a dog.

S: It's right. It's a dog.

P: I mean, please.

S: It might be a funky dog, but it's a dog.

P: It's a funky dog. It's a canine end of story.

Creationism Update (6:21)

• Creationists Attempt to Link Darwin to Hitler
  www.rawstory.com/news/2006/New_TV_special_featuring_Coulter_ties_0819.html
  
  Evolution Strangely Missing from Government Science Grants
  chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=v6pywllczrz22q3ybkb4b94qrx35ckr7
  

• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_] 

S: There were two creationism stories in the news this week. The first one is nothing new, really, but there is a TV special featuring that noted scientician Ann Coulter that is attempting to make a direct link between Darwin and Hitler. This is the new Christian broadcasting TV special.

P: Oh, I bet they didn't even know each other.

S: It blamed Darwin for Hitler. Now, this is nothing new. Creationists have been doing this for a while, and this goes back to eugenics. The Nazis did have this notion about something about a superior race and killing off the inferior races and through that selection evolving, the purebred Aryan race or a superior race. But that had nothing to do with evolution or Darwinism. They were just borrowing the science of the time in order to give a patina of science to their ideology, but their ideology did not have its roots in evolution.

R: I think, didn't Sadam Hussein used chemistry to kill a bunch of people. So should we really be teaching that in schools? I don't think so.

J: Well, plumbing is obviously evil now, too, since that tree was spouting evil water, you know.

B: Steve, the show is, I've discovered two fallacies, two logical fallacies. There's appeal to consequences.

S: The argument from final consequences.

B: So if you accept Darwin, then you're going to end up like Hitler. And then there's also guilt by association. Obviously, that's another good one. Ann Coulter is actually going to be a guest on this show. And one of her quotes regarding this was, she said: "Hitler was applying Darwinism. He thought the Aryans were the fittest, and he was just hurrying natural selection along." Actually, Hitler's racism was based on the view that races were created distinct by god. Just because somebody's misusing a scientific theory doesn't invalidate the theory. And there's also the point that Hitler, there's no record as far as I can tell that Hitler ever mentioned Darwin. And of course, he never evidenced any understanding of evolutionary theory. And it's just pure baloney.

S: The historical record is pretty clear that racism existed before Darwin. And the fact that you read the justifications for slavery, etc. It all invokes the fact that god created the races separate and it can create the white race superior to the black race. It was an ideological view. People used whatever was accepted at the time to justify these beliefs. And it says nothing about the underlying belief itself. And if the creationists really want to go that way, and they, of course, that means they're adding another logical fallacy, which is inconsistency, because they're not applying it to the religious arguments for racism that were made before Darwin. So they actually are a trifecta of logical fallacies in there.

P: Who would've funk it?

S: But they've been saying this for 50 years. That's nothing new.The other creation is a item that I caught my attention this week has to do with federal funding, of course, in the United States, for science grants. These are grants that are called smart grants. And they are given in the area of technology, mathematics, and science. And there's a list of eligible studies. These are grants worth of-

B: It's created by Congress.

S: It was created by Congress.

B: This year also. And as you said, it's called the smart grants for the, I have here for the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Program.

S: So they had a list of subjects that were eligible. And curiously, in the most recent classification scheme, evolution is missing. And not only is it conspicuously absent from the list of sciences eligible for the grant, there's a gap in the numeric sequence where evolution should be, as if it were there and specifically removed. And in other words, it's not an oversight. It was a specific decision to remove it from the list. The suspicion is that for political reasons, whatever congressmen were in charge of this decided that evolution was too controversial, or they just did not decide that it was worthy of government support.

R: So we should know that that hasn't been proven and they're still not sure. They haven't got any solid answers from the-

B: Well, yeah, they couldn't get anyone to comment from the Department of Education. But a spokeswoman did say that she suspected that the absence of evolutionary biology was a clerical consolidation of some kind and that evolution might fall under other topics. So that's what we have right now.

P: Really?

S: That's BS.

B: Sure. Yep.

S: Which is interesting because this is a program specifically designed to retain talent by funding talented science and technology researchers. In fact, the United States has been losing in the natural sciences and evolutionary biology to Europe and other countries, specifically because we don't support the evolutionary sciences as much as we do other ones. This is a very concrete example of that. So it's a self-reinforcing cultural phenomenon. We don't support it. The public doesn't believe it. We don't teach it. We don't grow as many scientists who are interested in it. And this is how science is wither. They wither through this specific kind of neglect.

J: This whole thing is mind-blowing to me. First off, is this issue coming from what the people want or is this issue prompted by politicians?

S: I mean, it's both.

J: Yeah, it seems to me to be both. It seems to me that the politicians are just reacting to what they think is going to be the latest and greatest.

P: I mean, is creationism really that powerful of a movement?

J: Well, Perry right now, the president of the United States, his official statement is the jury is still out. He doesn't confirm or deny whether or not he believes in evolution. But we know he doesn't because he's born again.

P: Yeah, I agree.

R: At last year's amazing meeting in Las Vegas, Murray Gellman gave a great speech about, he's been through countless presidents and served on so many science advisory boards. And he gave a really amazing speech about how things have changed from the 60s until now and how the president administration just has absolutely no respect for science at all. You do have to kind of worry about what Steve was talking about where they're not going to fund it and it's only going to make matters worse.

P: The problem is though, there's no bright stars on the horizon at least not in the foreseeable future. There's no champions of science out there running in either party.

R: Yeah.

S: Yeah, it's true.

P: There really aren't granted Republicans are generally quite a bit more religious and therefore even more anti science. I will grant that.

R: Perry, I think you should run for president. I think we could set up a good campaign.

J: Rebecca, I'm going to tell you right now. No.

P: To many skeletons in my closet.

R: I think our listeners might rally around this.

S: Well, we'll see. There'll be a grassroots movement. I do have to say that we do come off often on this podcast as being a bit doom and gloom and that's because we're strongly dedicated to science. It's very frustrating to confront popular attacks against science. Motivated for whatever reason. But I remain optimistic. I think that despite all of this, the institution of science has weathered it quite well and there remains a strong and consistent public support for science. I think even among religious types or new age types except the fringe with a really, really wacky and unrealistic philosophy. But the vast majority of Americans realize and of people, I think in general realize that science works. It delivers the goods. And even if they might have some bizarre philosophy, nobody really in their heart of hearts wants it to go away. And they still are, everyone still hopes that science will be there chugging away in the background and churning out all of the sexy technologies and solving our healthcare problems and our energy problems and making our life better. So for that reason, I don't think that science as an institution really is at risk. But having said that, short-term damage to specific sciences can certainly be done and they can have long-term consequences. Eventually, it'll recover but it's a matter of the wasted resources, wasted effort losing the cutting edge. Those issues definitely are very real.

B: Not only that my attitude is like screw eventually. I mean, we're, chances are we are going to know people that are going to die that if we had a robust stem cell research program is going, maybe they wouldn't have died.

S: That's right.

J: Yeah, Bob, eight years, eight years, poof, gone. Thanks to George Bush.

B: Imagine what we could have contributed.

J: Eight years is a very long time in science. Steve, do you, earlier, you just said that people say we have a gloom and doom perspective on the show. And I don't really see it that way. I mean, I think we're bringing out a lot of negative things, a lot of things that are controversial because that's the point to this show. But we don't, this isn't a feel good show. So in the idea that we're talking about, about hot topics, things that trouble us, things that we find compelling for good and bad reasons. This isn't like a show where we talk about all the cool latest technology and all our favorite sciences.

S: It's true. We tend to talk about the bizarre claims, the controversial claims and because we are cast in the role of skeptics, we, our role tends to be that of the naysayer. But in reality, where we're all coming from is that we, is a very positive outlook. We love science. And we're very positive and optimistic about, about how science works, about the power of science intellectually as an idea and practically as a technology. And we do have to always keep in mind that we need to spend as much time talking about how wonderful science is and capturing as Carl Sagan, I think, is better than anyone else, the awe of science and not just talking about how silly and ridiculous all of these controversial claims are.

Pluto Blues IAU votes on definition of Planet (17:53)

• www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.org/NEWS.55.0.html
  www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9818-astronomers-lean-towards-eight-planets.html

• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_] 

S: Speaking of the awe of science, let's turn a bit to astronomy, one of my, one of my favorite disciplines. Last week, we spoke about the hubbub in Prague, with all of the bickering among the scientists at the International Astronomical Union, trying to decide how to define a planet. This was one of the science or fiction topics. Well, they've been fighting all week. Now, by this is we're recording this on Wednesday. By the time you were listening to this podcast, what we're saying will probably already be decided. They're probably going to announce some kind of decision on Thursday. So the two options for how to classify a planet seem to come down to this. Either a planet is defined as an object that is at least a certain size has enough gravity to pull itself into a sphere and revolves about the sun. With that classification, then Pluto would remain a planet. But also, three other objects in our solar system would be promoted to that of a planet. Ceres, and the other objects that have been tentatively designated, Xena and Sedna. That would bring the number of planets up to 12. And Ceres is actually now an asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. So actually a new planet between Mars and Jupiter and then the other two planets will be beyond Pluto.

B: Did you know that I wasn't aware of this. Ceres was actually classified as a planet for a while.

S: Yeah. In the 1800s until-

B: I wasn't aware of that.

S: -it got demoted. So that's one, under one proposal, it would be promoted to a planet again. And Pluto would remain a planet. It'd be two others. We'd have 12 planets. The alternate proposal is adds another criteria that not only doesn't have to be big enough to be a sphere, but it also has to gravitationally dominate its local neighborhood. And the reason why some astronomers are passionate about that criteria is because that derives from our understanding of how solar systems evolve and how planets form. True planets form by the gravitational accretion of objects in their local neighborhood. Pseudo-planets never accrete or they're just big chunks of rock or whatever that are left over from the early solar system. And they don't want just large objects that didn't really form as planets to have the same designation as "true planets". Under that system, Pluto would get demoted and we would be reduced to eight planets in the solar system. Those are the two options.

J: So Steve, let's say that Pluto collected more mass for some reason. And let's say that Pluto started to have a molten core and things like that.

S: Yeah, that kind of thing is really just a matter of size. But the reason why Pluto would get demoted is because it has a moon, a "moon", Charon, C-H-A-R-O-N, that is almost as big as it is. And it is not really dominating the gravity of its local region. It's just one of many similar sized objects out there in the Kuiper belt. That's primary, and same thing with Ceres. Ceres is just one asteroid in a belt of asteroids. It's not really dominating that orbit. It's sharing that orbit with lots of other chunks of rock. It just happens to be the biggest one. So that's why those things would not be planets.

J: Which way you think they're going to go?

S: I don't know. I really, really don't know. But it seems like we're either going to go to either to eight planets or twelve, but under neither proposal will we be sticking with nine planets.

P: Which way would you go if you had a vote, Steve?

S: I don't know. I think my head says eight, my heart says twelve, because I hate to demote Pluto.

R: Eight. You're a skeptic.

S: I understand the purity of the definition. So probably I'd probably end vote for the eight planets.

J: How about you, Bob?

B: I think going down eight, I think I like the inclusion of that new criteria where you've got to dominate your area.

S: It makes sense.

B: And Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit and all that stuff. And it does make sense. It'd be tough to see Pluto go. But I wanted them to use the term for objects like Pluto. I liked Pluton. I liked it. But apparently from this article, from an informal show of hands, it was not popular along with Plutoid and Plutooid and Plutid. So Plutoid looks like it's out the window. And I kind of like that one. It's an homage to the name Pluto.

S: If they demote Pluto, then Pluto and the other three worlds will probably be referred to as dwarf planets. They may also be called planetoids.

B: Planetoids is popular.

S: They'll have some designation of their own that has the word planet in it, but they're not full or true planets.

B: It might be the way to go. And it is really, it's really possible if we decided to get rid of that last criteria and include our number up to 12. I mean, we could have conceivably in the next 10, 20 years. We could have, it could have gone up to 20 or 30.

R: I'm in favor of expanding the definition to just call everything a planet. Why not? It's just a word. It's such a silly thing.

P: That sounds like another-

J: Rebecca, just stop right there. Yeah, come on.

S: I have to disagree. The point of that the scientists who want to demote Pluto is that it's not just a word. It actually reflects our understanding of the origin and nature of planets. So it's not totally arbitrary.

J: Rebecca, you obviously don't understand men when you say things like that.

R: Oh, is that where you're going with that?

J: Very important to us that we nitpick about things like that.

B: Planets and tools. Don't mess with them.

R: Okay, I had no idea that that planets had suddenly become a man thing.

S: Well, let's move on to email. We do have a guest coming up shortly. In a few minutes, we'll be interviewing Larry Sarner about therapeutic touch and attachment therapy. But before that, we're going to do a couple of emails.

Questions and E-mails

Follow up on Acupuncture (24:12)

Hello,
First I wanted to thank you guys for such an excellent job with the podcast. I discovered it a few month ago and I'm in love (I think my husband is getting jealous - I'm spending a lot more time listening to my MP3 player catching up on the episodes I've missed) Your podcast is such a breath of fresh air.
I am an MD/PhD student, and as medical students we are taught not to challenge patients ideas about their heath, but to work with them and incorporate their believes into the 'standard' medical care. The idea is to make sure they do not abandon you as their doctor all together for an alternative practitioner. As much as it hurts my skeptical sensibilities, I can't entirely disagree with this approach, nor can I come up with a better alternative. So, health professionals are left to perpetuate all kinds of unscientific nonsense or to loose your patient, thus jeopardizing their health. Today I run across an article about acupuncture: www.infopoems.com/infopoems/dailyInfoPOEM.cfm?view=93825 (this is the InfoPOEMs summary with a link to an actual article)
I have a number of concerns about the subject. Most of all I am worried about health professionals (rather than patients or acupuncturist who don't give science much credit anyway) walking away form reading such articles with 'acupuncture works' message and going on to tell their patients about it. On a different note, it is not wise to ignore the evidence if it is there. Assuming the study design is valid (at least I could not see anything glaringly wrong with it), I am trying to think of why it would show the results it did show. Fibromyalgia is an unusual disease, and as far as I know one of the theories about its etiology is diminished blood flow the areas of pain (which is somehow psychologically mediated). The supporting evidence for that would be the fact that both antidepressants and exercise help. Do you think it is possible that putting a needle in would increase the blood flo
–Alex, New Jersey, USA

S: There were two emails that were a follow up on the discussion of acupuncture from last week. So I'm going to, to just talk about those two emails. The first one comes from Alex in New Jersey, USA. And they write: "Hello, first I want to thank you guys for such an excellent job with the podcast. I discovered it a few months ago and I'm in love. I think my husband is getting jealous. Your podcast is such a breath of fresh air."

P: You should probably just stop right there.

S: Yeah, we could stop right there.

P: Move on to the next email.

S: But I'll continue nonetheless. She writes: "I am an MD PhD student and as medical students, we are taught not to challenge patients ideas about their health, but to work with them and incorporate their beliefs into the standard medical care. The idea is to make sure they do not abandon you as their doctor altogether for an alternative practitioner. As much as it hurts my skeptical sensibilities, I can't entirely disagree with this approach nor can I come up with a better alternative. So healthcare professionals are left to perpetuate all kinds of unscientific nonsense or to lose your patient thus jeopardizing their health. Today I ran across an article about acupuncture" I'll give a link. And she basically wants to know what I think about the article. This was published recently looking at acupuncture in the treatment of fibromyalgia. Well Alex, let me do the first question first. This is actually something that I deal directly with because I teach medical students, residents, fellows. And I also lecture to my fellow physicians on this very topic. So at all levels of medical education. This is a very difficult issue, but I think that there are better options out there. And I'll tell you my personal approach and what I recommend when I discuss it. I don't think that as physicians, we have to give tacit approval or validation to pseudoscientific methodologies because we're afraid to "confront the patient".

P: Or lose them.

S: Or lose them. In fact I don't think that those are the only two options. What I do is I tell patients flat out what the evidence shows. If they ask me about acupuncture, of course I never will challenge or ridicule their personal beliefs. Certainly it's not our place to in any way attack their faith. I don't bring up what my faith is and I don't discuss what their faith is. They express it fine. I smile and go on with the conversation. And I certainly would never seem judgmental. The physician-patient relationship requires that the physician is a non-judgmental individual in that relationship. But what I do do, if they bring up an alternative modality, we don't have to just accept it or say I don't know about that or whatever you think helps. I could say listen, I've investigated acupuncture or whatever or homeopathy or whatever it is that you're interested in. I've looked at the scientific evidence and the studies published do not support it for this indication. In fact, the evidence shows that it does not work. And if there's other problems too, I'll say that as well. There really isn't scientists have looked and no one's been able to demonstrate a plausible mechanism. My experience to that is that patients respond very positively to that. As long as you're talking about logic and evidence, which is basically what they expect you as a physician to do. You have given the topic enough consideration that you actually looked at the published evidence. You're not dismissing it out of hand, you're not ridiculing, you're not rolling your eyes. You're saying, that's a good question. I looked at the evidence and this is what I found. I'm a scientific practitioner and as a physician, this is what I would record. This would be my professional recommendation to you. You don't tell them browbeath them and tell them is what they have to do. You just give your professional recommendation. That way you do not have to, to any degree, compromise your professionalism or your dedication to science or evidence and you still can fulfill that physician-patient relationship. In terms of the second part of the question regarding that specific study, a lot of the acupuncture studies that this study had some methodological problems, not the least of which is the subject matter. Fibromyalgia is a very controversial disease that is difficult to diagnose. It is controversial to the point that there are those who reasonably believe it is not a real diagnosis. There may be a real diagnosis at the core, but if there is, it is hugely over and misdiagnosed. For example, I think a lot of people who are diagnosed with fibromyalgia simply have sleep deprivation and that manifests with physical symptoms. So that's a huge problem for this study. Yeah, it's also one study and you cannot look at something like acupuncture and draw any conclusions from a single study. You have to look at the hundreds of studies that have been published and you have to see can they establish an effect with replication in the same model to a sufficient degree to establish that there is a real effect there and that has not been done. Well we see our single studies that are positive and follow studies that are negative or you get contradicting data, the meta-analyses have all been negative so far. So you have to put this in the context of the broader acupuncture research. So far there is not compelling evidence that there is a reliably measurable effect from acupuncture and this study, especially because of the problems that it has does not add significantly to the full body of the literature.

We got another email on acupuncture from last week. This one comes from Tom Barbalay and he included a description of how to pronounce his last name, which I appreciate, that Tom writes: "Long time listener, first time emailer. I heard in podcast 56 Dr. Novella State that in quotes, Asians have a higher, a much higher pain threshold. Can you please provide a reference for that? Many thanks." And I actually went back and forth with Tom a few emails discussing this issue and it illustrated to me that I needed to clarify what I was actually talking about because that was a fairly offhand comment on my part. These chats are very unscripted. This is not like writing an article where you can choose every word very carefully. And my words were not chosen well in that statement. What I was referring to was the fact that the way medicine is practiced in those parts of the world where acupuncture originated and originally thrived has some significant differences from the way it is practiced in the West. Specifically, there are many procedures which are done in Korea for example or in other Southeast Asian countries where in the United States we would use sedation and anesthesia and in those countries they do not. The patients tolerate those procedures with less or with no sedation, which I think is relevant to the whole issue of the alleged cases of acupuncture anesthesia in these cultures. Part of it is due to what is a fairly well documented cultural phenomenon in these societies, there is a much greater acquiescence to authority than there is in some Western cultures.

J: So Steve, do you think there is a genetic component to it as well?

S: That's very interesting. In part of this discussion with Tom I did look at to see what just familiarize myself more with what is actually published. There is a research program looking at genetic differences in the experience of pain. And in fact there are differences. If anything however, Asians have a lower pain threshold genetically. They seem to report and experience more pain than Caucasians.

P: Tong, tong, tong, very painful.

S: It is interesting but doesn't affect the impact of that anecdote of a patient essentially under acupuncture anesthesia complaining that he is in pain over and over again. And the surgeon yelling at him to shut up and the patient shutting up and just nail biting it through the surgery. I just can't imagine that happening in this country. Alright, well let's go on to our interview.

Interview with Larry Sarner (32:48)

• Larry Sarner, mathematician and inventor, known for fighting anti-scientific medical practices

S: Joining us now is Larry Sarner, Larry, welcome to the Skeptic's Guide.

LS: Thank you for having me.

S: Larry is a mathematician by training but works as a skeptical consultant and has written articles and been active on issues such as therapeutic touch, attachment therapy, naturopathy and the anti-flouradation movement. He is the author of the book Attachment Therapy on Trial, the Torture and Death of Candace Newmaker, a member of the National Council against Health Fraud and an official with advocates for children in therapy. And also you have Larry, a couple of relatives who are very active including Emily Rosa who famously at 11, I believe she was 11 at the time was involved with a fairly, what is now famous and in some people's opinions definitive study of therapeutic touch. You were involved with that trial with her, is that correct?

LS: Oh yes, very much so.

S: Why don't you talk about that? Tell us about that study that Emily and you did and what the response was within the theraepitic touch community.

LS:OK. And also I don't want to forget Emily's mother, Linda Rosa.

S: Of course.

LS: Who was actually the lead author on the publication of the results. Essentially the reason it is often referred to as the definitive study on therapeutic touch is because unfortunately for therapeutic touch practitioners, there has been almost no studies of any quality. And certainly none on any fundamental level to look into the practice of therapeutic touch. Took us a moment to describe what therapeutic touch is, was or was supposed to be. It essentially was an update of the old notion of laying on a fans. Nurse, nursing professor actually by name of Dolores Krueger came up with the idea that what healing actually consists of with is the old [inaudible] notion that actually health and life and vitality is all the result of in modern terminology energy fields that exist around body of any living animal. And that illness is actually a disruption in those fields in some facto, form or fashion. The idea behind TT was that you could get in and manipulate the field in such a way is to restore whatever balance has been disrupted in these fields and good health follows from that. The problem was that the actual ability to detect this field, not to mention the existence of this field has been quite elusive over the years. So at one point Emily who was looking at the time a fourth grade, her first science fair project. Happened to notice Linda looking at some videos of practitioners of TT and wondered aloud whether or not they could actually do what they claimed. That led to some discussion and eventually an experiment where she took a cardboard barrier, a towel, to prevent as she put it "peaking". Had found some practitioners in this area to just simply put their hands out and let Emily hover her hand over one of them and let them tell her from being able to detect her field which hand she happened to have her hand over. The hypothesis was that the detection of Emily's hand would be on random basis. The field doesn't actually exist and that they can't really detect such a field even if it did exist. So we did some statistical analysis on the results. Did it in a couple of rounds, year apart and as consequence discovered it was really indeed quite random.

R: Larry, I think the question everybody is wondering right now is did she win the science fair?

LS: That comes up from time to time and there were no winners at the science fair. Her school was one of those that said you got recognition for participating but not actually for competing.

R: Too bad.

LS: However later on she did another science fair experiment, not quite as dramatic, where she did compete and won her division all the way up at the state science fair.

R: There you go.

LS: But for this particular one, no she didn't. Fame came from the publication of the results and the journal of the American Medical Association.

R: I guess that's would have to be good enough.

S: Yeah, that's accolade enough being published in JAMA, but I think part of the reason why this study gets so much attention, especially in skeptical circles is because it is an elegant study of the most fundamental premise of therapeutic touch, which is that there is a human energy field and it can be felt and manipulated by practitioners. Something with the which the proponents of therapeutic touch never bothered to test themselves. And in such a simple way, essentially pulled the carpet out from under an entire pseudo-scientific discipline. And it was just iconic that it was done by an 11 year old girl. I mean, as if it weren't plain enough that disproving the premises of therapeutic touch were child's play.

LS: Indeed. And often the thought was that somehow her parents, Linda and I, had put her up to it, that we had actually been responsible for this. And that really, that makes Emily just a little angry from time to time when that comes up because it really was her idea. Not only her idea to test it, but her ideas to what the test would be. Why didn't that occur to these people well before they had made TT growing to such a phenomenon at the time? It has waned as a phenomenon since Emily's publication. But up to that moment, they were all convinced that it could be done. Those who were doing it were convinced they were actually doing something. Even the ones that took Emily's test were convinced that they had actually felt her energy field at the time and that they were capable of feeling it.

R: And did she get an immediate reaction from those practitioners that she tested? Like after the results?

P: Right, that's what I was going to ask. Were any minds changed on their end?

LS: No. In fact, I just saw an ad in the local New Age Healing magazine from one of those practitioners still offering it. Of course, now she's not offering therapeutic touch. She's offering healing touch. They changed nomenclature, but pretty much it's the same thing. They even had a picture of someone supposedly doing it and it resembled the TT of old. The reactions at the time were generally of relief on the part of the practitioners. Most of them were worried that, oh gosh, they might only get one or two out of ten and that would really show they didn't know what they were doing. We had one that expressed a special relief that she got five.

S: She thought that was pretty good?

LS: Well, I thought that was that's a relief. I mean, it wasn't stellar performance and even in her view, but it wasn't really, really bad.

R: She thought that was better than average.

B: Yeah, what are the odds of that?

LS: And that was actually the reaction. All of us there had to cut some, bit our lips. Five was as bad as you could get, really. And of course, the average was 4.4 out of ten that turned out statistically to come out right where one would expect for just guessing.

S: Right. And there was no subset that did better. There was no, if you broke it down by the years of experience of the practitioner, they did no better than the apparent novices. So, no matter how you looked at that data, it was negative.

LS: Yeah, there was no correlation. And since we were producing a negative result, we also needed to look at the power of the test. Power of the test suggested that if there had actually been an effect going on there, it would have been only one chance out of 10,000 that Emily's data would have missed it.

S: Yeah, but and you said they never bothered to test it beforehand, but even more telling since then, there like really hasn't been an effort within the therapeutic touch community to replicate that study or to do a similar study. They still are basically happy with the assumption that the human energy field exists and they can manipulate it.

LS: That's true. And it actually goes one step beyond for most of them, which is to dismiss Emily's study as not looking at what's important about therapeutic touch as a complete package. And that is that it actually heals people. So, what they tried to redefine the problem in terms of we can only believe outcome studies. And there were a number of rather visceral reactions on the part of the inventors of therapeutic touch and those who were really pushing it as a movement at the time that this was more or less a stunt on the part of the medical establishment because it was published in JAMA. And it was not a fair test of any of this. There was a brief attempt when the publication first appeared in 1998 that some wanted to try to do a replication and see if they couldn't get contradictory results. However, it seemed to have fallen through and absolutely nothing came of it at least in terms of publication. They just dropped off the map.

S: Which is a good indication that they weren't able to produce consistent positive results. Because you can be sure we'd have heard about it if they did.

LS: Right. If they'd had, then that would certainly be the case. We've had a suspicion, however, that they never actually conducted the test. Perhaps out of fear that it wouldn't, perhaps out of criticism by others saying you're going to replicate that stunt. And they didn't follow through. Perhaps we never heard why they didn't publish any results. And no one else has since either.

S: Yeah. And the other thing that's very telling also is that they dismissed that study after the results were negative. You can be sure if the study were positive, they would gladly accept it as proof of therapeutic touch. And I find that that is generally the case not only within therapeutic touch, but the so-called alternative medicine culture is that they are hypocritical in that they will accept any apparent supportive evidence of their claims and say, see, it's scientific. But they will dismiss all negative scientific studies by saying, well, that's not a fair test. Or are this modality cannot be subjected to scientific tests of that kind. But they basically do that ad hoc based upon what's positive and what's negative, not based upon any coherent theory about what kinds of studies should be possible.

LS: That's certainly been my experience with the alternate people for some time. And therapeutic touch falls definitely within its realm. They will glam onto anything that indicates support for it, actually regardless of how scientific it may be. As long as it comes out positive, that's all that matters. In TT, there were several outcomes studies. Most of them turned out to be very, not well, they were very questionable in terms of their protocols and methodology, but also a number of them came back with results that were very questionable. As a consequence of that, most of their conclusions would say, there's something here. This suggests that there needs to be more study. And that was the state of affairs when Emily came along with her study and said, let's go back to basics and look at the capability of anyone to do this. And that's something that is missing from ultimate, from thing to thing to thing. There really does need to be a kind of Bayesian look at the possibilities of whether or not this stuff is even reasonable. And that's one of the big concerns we have with the NIH and National Centers for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine. They just take whatever is being suggested at face value and say, this is worthy of study. Without doing a Bayesian or other analysis to say whether this is reasonable enough to collect resources behind looking at.

S: Yeah, basically what they're doing is they're funding studies that could never get funded through normal channels because they're not meeting the normal criteria of scientific rigor and plausibility and usability. So it's basically just a way of a backdoor way to fund bad science and that you happen to slap this totally arbitrary and meaningless label of complimentary and alternative medicine on to. But it doesn't really have a cohesive definition. It's just whatever is not meeting the normal standards for academic or scientific rigor will call this to create this double standard. So we can slip through the backdoor things that otherwise shouldn't make it.

P: Whatever you got the guts to propose.

S: Yeah.

LS: And it's so, and it's so foolish. Because in the end, the probabilities suggest that there's not going to be anything there, which has been the record so far. What we call NICM. What have you really gained except to maybe throw some money at a few people with some wacky ideas? We're talking of things that most any trained scientist will look at and say that is unreasonable to expect that even has any possibility of working.

S: By the way, what's Emily up to now?

LS: Emily has moved on to college. She's a junior now and at the University of Colorado. She just moved change campuses from Boulder to Denver. She's studying psychology.

B: Larry, a quick question. You mentioned that therapeutic touch kind of waned a little bit after Emily's experiment. How would you characterize that?

LS: I would characterize it as quite significant and large. The main therapeutic touch organization, the one that was founded by the Dolores Kreuger, is still around. It's been fairly peripatetic. And therapeutic touch itself is kind of passé at this point. I rarely run across anyone who claims to be a therapeutic touch practitioner where they were all the rage back in 1998.

S: Now, Larry, more recently you have been involved. You and Linda have been very involved in attachment therapy. And of course this culminated, at least to some degree, in your book The Torture and Death of Candace Newmaker. Why don't you give our listeners a quick synopsis of that case?

LS: Candace Newmaker was a young, ten-year-old child who had been diagnosed by fax of all things with a psychological condition as many adopted children have been with something called reactive attachment disorder.

P: Larry, did you say she was diagnosed by fax?

LS: Yes, I did.

P: Can you elaborate on that?

LS: Well, attachment therapy or attachment therapy practitioners are a kind of eclectic lot who have many means of trying to convey their ideas to potential patients or the caretakers for potential patients. They do not have any particular scientific or academic theoretical basis for either what they do or what they believe. And they have a whole set of ideas about what this condition of attachment disorder actually consists of and how it manifests itself or displays itself in terms of signs or symptoms. Very often what is done is you ask the caretaker many times, it's the mother, what does your child do? And you go through a whole series of checklists or questionnaires. And then the evaluation is made not necessarily by ever meeting the child. And that was the case with Candace Newmaker. Her mother had met this one individual who said after listening to verbal description at a conference of her behavior, said, boy, she sounds like a particularly bad case. Here, take this questionnaire, fill it out, send it to me by fax when you get back from the conference. And that's exactly what happened. She was diagnosed as having this problem. It rang through with the mother. One recommendation led to another and she came to attachment therapy central, the epicenter for all of this worldwide, which just happens to be here in Colorado. She was put through what's called a two-week intensive where they spend a lot of time trying to make this child believe certain things about herself, her mother, now adopted mother, her biological parents, and so forth. And a fairly rigorous regimen of exercise, behavioral control, what many people would characterize as brainwashing techniques of various types. She went through about 10 days of this. On the last day or the next the last day, she was beginning to what psychologists identify as de-association. Her mind was getting to the point where she just could not reconcile what was happening to her and with her inability to affect or control the outcome of the events that she was experiencing. So they decided to have a nice easy day with her, the following day. And they came up with a little psychodrama where they would pretend that she was in the womb and she was going to be reborn to her adopted mother. They held this little session. They wrapped her up in some flannel sheets and told her to find her way out, something that a real baby doesn't do. But in her case, she was supposed to struggle and find her way out. Well, she couldn't do it and she kept complaining that she was having difficulty breathing, but none of the five adults in the room believed her for a moment. Eventually, in spite of all other sorts of signs that she was indeed telling the truth, she eventually fell silent. 20 minutes later, they finally dain't to open up final sheet and they found her blue. They were able to briefly get her breathing again, but were not actually able to revive her. She was kept alive, biologically alive. Not until the next day. Then she died. They turned out that attachment therapy was something much broader than had been going on, but none of us around here anyway, including my wife and myself have never heard of such a thing until this case had come about.

S: And the basic concept here was that she had to be born again so that she could then start with a blank slate and form the attachments that she never formed during her biological childhood.

LS: Supposedly. A problem for her, and this was actually a problem for the attachment therapist as well, is that she had perfectly well attached to her biological parents. She was not removed from their home until she was five years old and she was really removed from neglect, not abuse. The re-birthing, which is what it's come to be known in the general public, was actually just a script for that day's attachment therapy. The whole idea behind attachment therapy is to somehow establish a bond between an adoptive parent and an adoptive child.

P: Were there prosecutions in this outrage?

LS: There fortunately very much there was, and it actually set very important precedent. The two lead therapists on this were convicted of date homicide violation. It was reckless child abuse resulting in death, which carried with it a minimum sentence of 16 years in prison. They were convicted almost a year to the day after Candace was killed. We assisted the prosecution, Linda and myself and even Emily in helping them to understand what these people were like and what they were doing, why they were doing it, and attempting to, we help find experts to test file trial for the prosecution. They were sentenced to 16 years, each and was sentenced to the minimum. I believe they're up for parole next year.

R: Wow. This story is eerily similar to what we hear and we talked about this on a podcast recently. What we hear about exorcisms. Do you see that kind of parallel between their blind adherence to this therapy compared to the way others might do so for religion?

LS: In my opinion, I'm seeing a lot of correlations with various cultish aspects of the way that attachment therapy, attachment therapists, and attachment parents organized themselves. Attachment therapy is, forgive the characterization, but I don't know a shorthand way of doing so, other than say it's a rather brutal, child-directed activity, even though attachment itself, they relationship, they don't treat the relationships truly, although sometimes they talk about doing so. They actually treat the child. They put all responsibility for the failure of the relationship to be the child's fault. So they make an effort to change the child, who's the least person in this relationship, this failing relationship, to actually be able to understand what to do to make the relationship work. But nevertheless, that's the way they focus. They place all problems of the child exhibits that those problems are rooted in their malattachment to their caregiver, things that are required of the caregiver to force the child to do what the child is expected to do, becomes a 24/7 job on the part of the caregivers. Not to mention taking them for treatment weekend and week out for years, where the same thing just keeps going on. So that as a result, you've got a family unit that becomes quite insular. It is so withdrawn, trying to deal with these problems with one or more children. Very often, they identify more than one child or even deliberately bring in children they think that this problem into the unit. And they are told by the therapists or leaders of the movement that they need to cut off contact with people who do not accept the things that they're doing. At some point, this is all they know and all they do.

S: It does become a cult. And it's focused on-

P: Right out of the cult handbook.

S: Yeah, the apparent or the self-proclaimed skill and knowledge and intuition or whatever of the practitioner, of the counselor in this case. Basically, what they've done is they've completely made this up. They reject all of the established professionalism and ethics of counseling and psychology and psychotherapy. They engage in directly, physically, as well as emotionally and mentally abusive behavior. And they're fairly arrogant and indignant about it as well. Even to the point where a dramatic case such as this isn't enough to convince the strongest adherents. Even though the two practices in this case, I mean as far as I have read about this case, they were never repentant. They still thought they were doing the right thing.

LS: Which is what helped convict them. It's an attitude, I call the arrogance of ignorance. They are so convinced that they know what's going on. They will not vary from it or accept any kind of evidence, even of their own eyes, that suggests they're own. In the trial, for example, the lead therapist, Kennell Lockins, at some point was asked, this is, well, what do you think killed Candace Newmaker? If you didn't. And she responded, this is, I don't know what killed Candace Newmaker. She would convince she could breathe through that flannel sheet. So she must have been breathing through that flannel sheet.

S: Right. And the dictum that healthcare professionals should hold supreme of first due no harm is cast aside. Partly because they don't really have, they're not professionals. They're really just playing at a very serious game of healthcare when they don't have the credentials of the training or the professionals and what the ethics to really know what they're doing. Which is true of a lot of alternative medicine. Although in this case, in the case of attachment therapy, there is a direct physical harm component to what they're doing. Most of this stuff, like therapeutic touch, say what you will about it. It's at worst, it's worthless, but it's literally doing nothing to the person. They're just waving their hands over the subject. There's no direct physical harm component.

P: Perhaps keeping them from real therapies.

S: Yeah, yes, of course, but that's why I said direct. It's not directly harm.

P: Okay. Yes.

S: So there's a lot of indirect harm from all this nonsense. But it's conceptually and psychologically, no different than attachment therapies. It's more dramatic in these cases because of the direct physical harm component to it.

P: Larry, do you have any plans that appearing at the parole hearing next year?

LS: We are making our initial contacts to find out just what our options are in that regard. I don't want to reveal, principally, what we want to say because it might get back to them and they may do something with the knowledge. But we would like to. We don't know yet what the procedures are should maybe in these proceedings, but we're going to try.

S: Right. Well, Larry, we're out of time, but thanks for joining us. It was a pleasure speaking to you about-

LS: My pleasure too.

S: -those topics. And we certainly appreciate the work that you and Linda and Emily are doing to try to champion at least a little bit of rationality in your corner of the world.

P: I hope you're able to speak at that parole hearing, Larry, and help keep those people behind bars where they belong.

S: Absolutely.

LS: Thank you. We'll give it a try.

S: Okay. Thanks again. Take care.

R: Thanks Larry.

P: Thank you Larry Good night.

LS: Thank you.

S: Well, I think we have time for a science or fiction. So let's go to that now.

Science or Fiction (1:04:23)

Theme: Weird Archaeology Item #1: South American Indians were able to smelt platinum long before the technology was available to reach platinum's melting point of 1768.9 C - a temperature unattainable until the nineteenth century. Item #2: Although corn was cultivated in the Americas, it was developed from a grass known only to exist in Asia. Item #3: The sides of the Giza pyramids deviate from a N-S alignment by 3/60 of a degree (3 minutes of arc).

Answer	Item
Fiction	Corn
Science	Indians smelting platinum
Science	Giza pyramids

Host	Result
Steve	clever

Rogue	Guess
Bob	Indians smelting platinum
Rebecca	Indians smelting platinum
Perry	Giza pyramids
Jay	Corn

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

S: Every week I come up with three science news items or facts. Two are genuine and one is fictitious. And I challenge my esteemed skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. And of course, you all at home can play along. There's a theme for this week. The theme is Weird Archaeology. And these are all items that were provided to me by Kenny Fader whom we interviewed last week. I asked Ken to tell me the weirdest archaeological facts I could think of.

R: Oh man.

J: Let's do it.

S: You guys, ready?

P: Oh yeah.

R: Yep. Number one, South American Indians were able to smelt platinum long before the technology was available to reach platinum's melting point of 1,768.9 degrees Celsius, a temperature unattainable until the 19th century. Item number two, although corn was cultivated in the Americas, it was developed from a grass known only to exist in Asia. Item number three, the sides of the Giza Pyramid deviate from a north south alignment by 3/60 of a degree. Also, you can refer to that as three minutes of arc. Bob, why don't you go first?

Bob's Response

B: This is nasty. Corn Asia. Oh man, this is tough. I'm just going to have to just toss a coin here. Smelting platinum, they could have had some funky way to (Rebecca pretends she's snoring) I'm going to say.

P: Come on.

B: One. All right, you happy? One.

S: Okay, the one is fiction. The American, that South American Indians could smelt platinum. Okay, Rebecca, why don't you go?

Rebecca Response

R: Yeah, that's where I was leaning to. I mean, if there was any technology for smelting platinum, then they didn't do it, right? I mean, it seems like the sentence itself gives away the answer.

S: Okay.

R: I'm going to go with number one.

S: All right, Perry?

Perry's Response

P: I guess you're melting a volcano or something, sticking some lava.

R: Can you call that technology?

P: Well, you know, I guess.

R: That's a method.

P: Okay, they all sound reasonable. I'll go with the pyramids.

S: Okay.

P: Go with the pyramids.

S: Jay?

Jay's Response

J: One really smacks me as total crap because this whole smelting process does not seem possible by American Indians back in the day. I want to vote for it, but I think corn is from the Americas. So, I hope I'm right. I want to take number two.

Steve Explains Item #3

S: Okay. Let's, so you all agree. No, I think your guys are all split.

P: All over the board.

S: Parry, you said the Giza pyramids.

P: I did, yeah.

S: That one is true. The Giza pyramids deviate only by three minutes of arc from a true North South alignment. They basically used the points of the setting sun and rising sun to a line.

P: I knew that.

S: That was kind of the easy one on the list.

P: I knew that.

S: Let's go next number two. Corn was indeed cultivated in the Americas exclusively, and it originated from, it started out as a grass called teosinte, which just had a few scraggly corn kernels on it. It took hundreds or maybe even thousands of years of careful cultivation to turn it into what we now recognize as corn. But teosinte came from the Americas. It did not come from Asia. So that one is fiction.

J: Wow. This is like the first one I got right in how long?

S: That's right. No, we said the last time I can't remember. You've got few right.

P: Good job. Good job. And number one?

Steve Explains Item #2

S: The item that-

J: Jay rules!

S: -Ken sent me that I derived that I kind of just use it as a loose starting point for what I made up as that one was that in every major civilization throughout the world, people cultivated one major staple crop to live off of corn in the Americas, wheat in Europe and Africa and rice in some parts of Southeast Asia, all of which lack certain amino acids like lysine. And in every area they also cultivated some other major crop, for example, either beans or barley that have the missing nutrients that their major crop did not have. So every all the peoples of the world basically figured out how to-

P: Stay alive?

S: Yeah, to have a combination of agricultural crops that provided all the things that need nutritional.

J: Like rice and beans?

S: Right. Like rice and beans. Exactly. Which means-

P: And number one.

Steve Explains Item #1

S: Also, number one is science. So this was this was the tricky one. I figured this would get to get some of you. This is a good example of American Indian ingenuity. They figured out how to smelt platinum, even though they could not achieve its melting point and they did it in two primary ways. Well, they to be technical, they only smelted it in one way. They used it in other ways too, which I'll talk about a second, but they were they figured out that they could smelt platinum by mixing it with little silver beads and by mixing it with silver, it would lower the melting point of the platinum so that they were able to smelt it at a lower temperature.

R: So it was a fair to say that whoever smelt it dealt it?

B: Somebody had to say that.

R: Thank you. I'll be here all week.

S: Rebecca, you're trying too hard. Now, they also developed a process known as sintering, which is still used today. Do you know what that is?

P: Of course.

B: Sintering. I've heard of it.

S: I had to look it up. I had no idea what it was. I had to look it up. Sintering is when you start with the powder of a metal, like a gold powder, and then you heat it so that the little flecks of powder melt together, which is not as you don't have to get as hot as you would to turn it into a liquid or to smelt it. You just heat it enough so we could stick it and it all sticks together. That's called sintering. And the American, the South American Indians sintered platinum with gold, and they used platinum and gold in their jewelry, etc. Interestingly, when the Spaniards went to South America, they were primarily interested in an ink and gold. To them, platinum was a contaminant. It was the worthless metal that contaminated and was an impurity in their gold. Get the stuff out of here. But they brought it back to Europe, and then scientists in Europe realized that, hey, this stuff has some really amazing properties. It doesn't corrode. It's a great conductor. It has a lot of interesting properties. And it's actually much rarer than gold that became a much more valuable metal.

J: That's awesome.

S: Well, Jay, congratulations on winning this one.

J: I'll have a beer by myself tonight.

S: And thanks to Ken Fader for providing those, the science affection for this week.

R: Yeah, thanks a lot, Ken. [sarcasm]

Skeptical Puzzle (1:12:01)

New Puzzle:

A man, a chemist, a pastor by trade
In search of a cure he thought he had made

For the prevention and cure of scurvy, he wrote
His newest discovery he had hoped to gloat

The public's belief in this product was fast
Dermatitis and rheumatism would be things of the past.

As time passed on, and the ills still remained
The product itself would garnish new fame

Still the pharmacies sold it, it would become a tradition
People bought it by the hundreds, the thousands, and millions

For that man long ago we must give our thanks,
While he tinkered with elements, currents, and plants

And though he did not rid the world of rickets or piles
To billions of people, we attribute their smiles.


Who was he and what was his discovery?

S: We have a skeptical puzzle this week. This one is written by Evan. Evan, who's not here with us this week, but he sends in this puzzle. It's a little poem.

E: A man, a chemist, a pastor by trade. In search of a cure, he thought he had made. For the prevention and cure of scurvy he wrote, his newest discovery, he had hoped to gloat. The public's belief in this product was fast. Termititis and rheumatism would be things of the past. As time passed on, and the ills still remained. The product itself would garnish new fame. Still, the pharmacies sold it, it would become a tradition. People bought it by the hundreds, the thousands, and millions. For that man long ago, we must give our thanks, while he tinkered with elements, currents, and plants. And though he did not rid the world of rickets or piles, to billions of people, we attribute their smiles. Who was he? And what was his discovery? That's a tip of the hat to Mr. Paul Harvey.

J: Well, first of all, the poem didn't rhyme all the way.

R: I was going to point that out too.

S: The rhyming was a little weak, but you know, blame Evan.

P: He's no rapper.

R: Oh, we will.

J: How about this? Evan has to rap this. He has to pull on with a drum beat, have to rap this on his podcast.

R: Oh, dear lord.

P: You got it.

S: Okay.

P: And I hope you'll all be here next week for that podcast.

S: That's right. Well, that is our show for this week. Thanks again for joining us. It's always a pleasure, guys. Thanks for being on the show.

J: Thank you Steve.

P: Righto.

R: Thanks, Steve.

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society. For information on this and other podcasts, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. Please send us your questions, suggestions, and other feedback; you can use the "Contact Us" page on our website, or you can send us an email to info@theskepticsguide.org. 'Theorem' is produced by Kineto and is used with permission.

Today I Learned

• Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference
• Fact/Description
• Fact/Description

References

Vocabulary