SGU Episode 66

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SGU Episode 66
October 25th 2006
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 65                      SGU 67
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
E: Evan Bernstein
P: Perry DeAngelis
Guest
MS: Michael Stebbins
Quote of the Week
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

Voice-over: 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, October 25^th, 2006, and this is your host, Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society. With me this evening are Rebecca Watson...

R: Ahoy, ahoy!

S: Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody.

S: Perry DeAngelis...

P: Right, finally back.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hi, everyone.

R: I'm so glad our bright ray of sunshine, Perry, is back. Welcome back, Perry.

P: Sure, audiences. We've suffered drastically on iTunes without my presence here.

R: We missed your shining light of skepticism.

S: Perry was a bit under the weather, but you're feeling back to normal.

P: I'm feeling well enough.

S: Well enough.

R: For new listeners, this is what he sounds like when he's feeling healthy.

P: Do my duty. So I'm here to do my duty.

S: So Halloween is just around the corner.

B: Woohoo!

S: Bob's favorite holiday. Bob, you have one more weekend left on your haunted corn maze, right, Bob?

B: Yes, one more. Probably Friday would be our last day because Saturday looks like it's going to be crappy out.

S: Oh, we'll do a rain dance or something.

E: That's too bad.

B: Anti-rain dance.

S: Anti-rain dance.

R: Doesn't rain make it spookier?

B: Not when there's no customers coming.

P: That's true. Not brave enough.

News Items

Steven Novella will appear on the History Channel (1:32)

• Exorcism: Driving Out the Devil
  Tuesday, October 31 08:00 PM
  Wednesday, November 01 12:00 AM
  Saturday, November 04 05:00 PM
  
  (This is according to the History Channel website - check your local listings)
  
  There are two different exorcism documentaries on the History Channel this week. During the show the wrong one was mentioned. This information is the correct show.

S: Halloween always brings on the haunting related news items, the spooky news items. A couple of things this week. One is, the most importantly, that your humble host is going to be on the History Channel.

R: Scary! Oh.

S: October 28th. That's set this coming Saturday, which is right after we upload the podcast. At 3 p.m., the series is decoding the past and the episode is exorcising the devil.

P: Steve will be playing the devil.

R: That's exciting.

S: They interviewed me for that like in March, a long time ago, and they were holding it back to air right before Halloween.

R: Cool.

E: Hope the information's not outdated.

Professors debunk ghosts, vampires, and zombies (2:16)

• www.arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0608/0608059.pdf

S: Also in the news is an article published, again, the timing of which has got to be deliberate. A physics professor published a very scholarly article where he debunks in great scientific detail the mythology of ghosts, vampires, and zombies.

R: Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. How do you debunk a zombie? Zombies are real. Everybody knows that.

P: Well.

R: Right?

E: Of course.

R: I love zombies. I don't think I could live in a world without zombies.

B: Zombies do rule.

S: This is Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi wrote this article. In their abstract they say, "We examine certain features of popular myths regarding ghosts, vampires, and zombies as they appear in films and folklore. We use physics to illuminate inconsistencies associated with these myths and to give practical explanation to certain aspects." So first he deals with ghosts, and they tackle two issues with ghosts. One is the existence of sudden cold spots, which is actually quite a staple with the ghost hunting, the gullible ghost hunting crowd.

P: That's what we call ghost cold.

E: That's an Ed Warren quote. May he rest in peace.

S: See that cold? That's what we call ghost cold. (laughter)

P: It's a quote. That's what we call ghost cold.

S: See that light? That's a ghost light.

R: See that pair of rollerblades? That's what we call ghost rollerblades.

P: Those are the deep scientific principles we were dealing with when dealing with the Warrens.

S: So in the article, they use it as an excuse to go into a good basic description of what heat actually is, the transfer of heat energy from one body to another by either conduction, convection, or radiation, and goes over the fact that ghosts have to actually exist materially in order to transfer heat from you to them. Cold isn't this thing that you can create, it actually just is the transfer of heat between two physical objects. There's a sort of logical inconsistency there. The second one was something I think we mentioned on this show actually before, that ghosts couldn't walk across the floor and then walk through a door or a wall. Either they pass through solid objects or they don't. Either they're responding to physical objects in gravity or they aren't. And those two things happening at the same time are impossible or inconsistent.

E: Happened in a movie once.

R: Yeah, I saw a movie with Patrick Swayze where he did that.

S: They actually specifically mentioned that movie as a blatant example of that particular thing. The vampire section was very interesting. They did these elaborate calculations where they said, okay, let's assume that a vampire has to eat one human a month and that every human drained by a vampire in turn becomes a vampire. Those are the assumptions, the premises.

R: This sounds like the beginning of one of those word problems in eighth grade math. Okay, go ahead. I'm ready.

S: If we started on February 1st, 1600 with one vampire, that within a few hundred years the world would have been overrun with vampires.

R: Okay, see, no, that's not true. Because according to Buffy, you can kill a person without turning them, like a vampire can suck someone's blood without turning them into a vampire.

S: Right.

E: Good. Freedom of choice. I like that.

R: I've debunked the debunking article. I'm sorry to have done that.

S: You are correct. You did make a couple of assumptions. I mean, just to illustrate the point that the human population probably could not support a vampiric population feeding off of it. But you're right. This assumes that you're turning every victim into a vampire. It also assumes that no one's running around, there's no Buffy the Vampire Slayer running around slaying the vampires and keeping their populations in check.

R: Exactly. And what kind of theory doesn't account for the Buffy phenomenon?

S: The Buffy effect.

E: A bad theory.

R: Exactly.

P: Flawed, flawed.

S: There could be a small population of vampires living in imbalance with the human population.

R: Thank you. You heard it here first.

S: Good job, Buffy.

R: Thank you. Next, what else you got? Give me the zombie one.

S: He talks about the folklore of zombification occurring mainly in the voodoo cultures and that these probably were examples of certain drug overdoses. For example, the pufferfish and tetrodotoxin. If you get a sublethal dose of that, it could paralyse you and make you look like you're dead. And that it's probably true that historically some people were poisoned with a sublethal dose of tetrodotoxin, were laid out, assumed that they were dead, and then they sort of recovered and stumbled around in a confused, dazed state. And it was assumed that they were raised from the dead by some evil wizard or something and returned to zombie.

R: But then why would they eat someone's brains, though, Steve?

S: Yeah, that the brain eating is more of a modern, a different thing. The brain eating is more of a modern addition to the mythology.

P: Well, that's just Hollywood. Don't be stupid.

E: Yeah, that's America.

P: Don't be stupid.

R: Don't tell me that Hollywood is not reality, okay, because I know better.

P: I thought there were zombies because there was no more room in hell. I thought that was the theory.

S: That's the religious explanation for it.

P: Well, it's also the explanation in Dawn of the Dead, thank you very much.

R: Oh, is that it?

P: Yes, no more room in hell, so here they are, wandering around.

R: See, that makes more sense than Steve's explanation.

P: Of course it does.

R: I'm sorry, Steve, but this article is thoroughly debunked.

E: Myth buster busters.

R: That's right. Next.

P: We did sort of shred it. Let's just leave it on the ash heap of history and move on.

S: Well, it's kind of like using physics to debunk Santa Claus, calculating the velocity and the friction of this sled and all that kind of stuff. It's just...

B: Great. That's a great book, though.

S: It is funny. It's just a whimsical way to discuss certain scientific issues.

P: That guy stretched that into a book?

B: The Physics of Santa Claus, yes.

E: Oh, I thought it was Twasn't the Night Before Christmas.

S: That's the subtitle.

B: They go into lots of details about all aspects of Christmas. A fascinating read, I recommend it.

P: I can only imagine.

What killed the Dinosaurs? (8:39)

• News Item #2 - More than a meteor killed the dinos
  www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061023192530.htm
  
  info on KT boundary and iridium layer:
  experts.about.com/e/c/cr/cretaceous-tertiary_extinction_event.htm
  

S: Another news item this week is about the dinosaurs and how they died away. This is an enduring controversy. The predominant theory in the last 20 or 30 years has been that a large meteor struck the Earth, caused a dust cloud, firestorms that blocked out the sun for a number of years, reduced the amount of plant life on the Earth, and any creature that was too big like dinosaurs didn't have enough food to survive, and they died out, and only the small little mammals survived. But that new evidence is bringing that theory into question.

B: The smoking gun seemed to be the Chicxulub meteor impact found in the Yucatan Peninsula. For years now, that was a smoking gun. Yes, they found the crater under many feet of sediment by the ocean there, and they said, well, that's it. I mean, the size of the crater seemed to indicate that it was just the right size to produce the amount of iridium that's been detected, and it seemed to be about 65 million years old, so that definitely seemed like the smoking gun. But now this theory, which has been accepted now for years, seems to be in disarray. Growing evidence seems to indicate that the Chicxulub meteor was an early and relatively insignificant event as far as dinosaur extinction goes. It seems now that it wasn't a singular event that caused the extinction, but a combination of many meteor impacts and volcanic eruptions over many thousands of years that finally did amend. Now, this is the theory that Princeton University paleontologist Gerda Keller and her collaborators are writing about. They've determined that the famous Chicxulub impact occurred 300,000 years before the final extinction, and it seemed to cause no extinctions by itself at all that they could ascertain, which is really interesting. They believe that the Coup de Grace impact that finally ended it all was caused by yet another unidentified meteor. It seems like we're almost back at square one. But the other side of this extinction coin is not just the meteor impacts, but it's the volcanic eruptions, which are very interesting. Usually, the extinctions are all about the meteors. That's it. I've read some theories about the volcanic eruptions, but they're saying that the thousands of years of volcanic eruptions was really a major player here. And these aren't your average Mount St. Helens or Vesuvius eruptions. These eruptions are called Flood Basalt eruptions that have occurred many times in Earth's history, and they actually produce the largest eruptions of lava that Earth has ever seen.

S: Are these super volcanoes, Bob? Is this the same thing?

B: They are. They actually are. There's two different types of supervolcanoes. One is the one that you see on Discover Channel like every other day. The Yellowstone supervolcano, there's actually a supervolcano under Yellowstone that is gargantuan. The caldera is actually so big that it wasn't even noticed for years and years because it was just like way too huge. That's a supervolcano. The devastation that it produces is utterly incredible. The Flood Basalt eruptions are also supervolcanoes, but they're not explosive like Yellowstone. They produce just tons and so many thousands of cubic miles of lava, and it's very low viscosity, so that's why they call it a Flood Basalt, because it kind of just floods a continent with this low viscosity lava. I mean, you could just fill up a continent with this lava. It's incredible. I mean, look at the Marias on the Moon. Those were caused by Flood Basalt eruptions, gargantuan ones.

P: Were these gargantuan eruptions incident to the meteor, or this is a separate issue?

B: They're separate, but they kind of reinforce each other. Now, let me describe what this Flood Basalt eruption is like. It's like a crack in the Earth's crust. This thing is unbelievable. There was a professor, Vincent Cardelo of the University of Paris, he described it. He wrote a very interesting description. He said, if you could see one of these eruptions, which no human has seen because they haven't occurred in so long, but I probably would have seen a curtain of red glowing fire rising a mile up in the atmosphere and extending from end to end of the horizon over a distance of hundreds of kilometers. I mean, just an unbelievable sight. If you can imagine a gargantuan crack in the crust and lava being spewed a mile in the sky, and wherever you look, horizon to horizon, there's this curtain of fire. And this isn't like something that happens in the course of a day or a week. These eruptions could continue for like a thousand years.

S: Now, Bob, what about the iridium layer at the K-T boundary? Doesn't that still support a meteor impact as the coup de grâce?

B: No, not at all. The iridium layer, the famous iridium layer that was found at the K-T boundary, the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, that was caused by the Chicxulub meteor, but so what?

R: Wait, what's an iridium layer on a K-T boundary?

B: Alright, iridium is a rare element that is primarily found either from volcanic eruptions or primarily meteorites. It's not something that you just find laying around in your backyard. It's a rare element. So when they found this iridium element at a layer, this is the layer in rocks and sediment that delineate the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods of our history. So that's pretty much when the dinosaurs were killed, right there. If you look at one layer, you see no iridium. You look at the next layer, bam, you got this clay that contains huge amounts of iridium. So they think, oh ding, ding, ding, I bet you a meteor caused this.

S: Below it, dinosaurs. Above it, no dinosaurs.

R: Gotcha.

S: Isn't the iridium also an extraterrestrial isotope?

B: I've never come across that, Steve. Tell me about it.

S: There are different isotopes of iridium, one more common to the Earth and one more common to meteors. I think is the one that's more common to meteors that was found that that iridium layer is more compatible with an extraterrestrial source of iridium. So that was one of the other pieces of information that suggested this was a meteor impact.

B: Well, there were other ones. I mean, those that that sounds compelling, but there are also other there were shocked quarts, which signifies huge pressures and temperatures. And there were other reasons to say that it was from that it was extraterrestrial in origin and not, say, from a volcano. But I Steve, I've read a decent amount about this. I never came across the extraterrestrial isotopes. That's interesting.

P: So why don't these eruptions happen today?

S: Oh, they will.

E: Tomorrow.

B: They're very mysterious. We're not sure what causes them, but they do happen. There are, you could find their remnants all over the planet in India, in the United States. There's this you just you just find these huge, huge swaths of lava that's millions of years old that like covered half a continent type of thing.

S: I mean, they were more common in the past because the earth is cooling.

B: Right.

S: Tentonics and volcanism is decreasing over geological time. But I still think that they say like the Yellowstone Supervolcano will erupt sometime in a million years or whatever. You can't predict exactly, but it can potentially erupt at some point in the future.

B: And I think we'll probably have another flood basalt eruption as well. I mean, there's so little known about it. But also the other important thing about these these eruptions is that not only is it spewing out huge amounts of lava, but it also releases huge amounts of gas, which of course can affect the global climate. I mean, you've got so much gas entering the atmosphere and bam, it's not hard to imagine what effect it could have on our climate.

S: Could cause global warming.

R: So in other words, the dinosaurs had a really bad week as opposed to just-

S: A bad day.

R: Is that the current theory then?

B: Yeah. Well, maybe not weak, but multiply that by a few thousand. And yeah, there's a bad time for them.

R: OK.

S: By the way, Bob, did you say coup de gras or coup de gras?

B: That's a coup de grâce. Rewind and listen to it.

S: Yeah, it's actually the correct the correct pronunciation as some listener pointed out to me is coup de grâce.

B: But that sounds terrible.

E: It might sound terrible, but it's correct.

R: Otherwise, are you talking about like a like a duck?

S: Gras means fat.

R: Fat, right.

S: So the coup de gras would be the blow of fat. I mean, I made the same mistake and some listener corrected me.

B: Ever think of that's what I meant?

S: Because we used to think like Mardi Gras.

R: He literally meant the blow of fat.

E: Mardi Gras.

B: Oh, that stinks, man.

S: It's coup de gras. And that phenomenon-

B: But it sounds ignorant when you say that.

R: Blame the French.

S: It's called hyper foreignization when you over apply a rule of foreign pronunciation.

E: Soup de jour.

R: Sacrebleu.

B: Steve, I think what you're being is hyper anal.

P: Yeah, that's true. Good point.

S: Hey, some guy corrected me. I'm just passing it along.

P: That's good.

B: Thank you, though.

P: I live for our listeners to correct us on email.

S: Speaking of which, let's move on to emails. And the first one is a couple of corrections.

P: Don't we have more news item?

R: Well, yeah, we do have one more news item.

S: Oh, yes. Go ahead, Rebecca.

R: I just wanted to say that the SkepChick Calendar is still selling very well for pre-orders. And you have like another week or two to get in pre-orders. And then there's a chance that they might sell out. So we have gotten a number of orders of people requesting that I sign them. So thank you, guys. And you will be getting signed calendars. And to anybody else who's just hearing this, if you order your calendar and you want it signed by me, you can just put a note saying as much in the little comments box when you order.

P: Is there going to be naked people?

R: Yeah, sure is.

E: That's how they're born.

P: Yeah, I like it.

R: Plenty of naked SkeptChicks and SkeptDudes.

P: I like it.

R: But it's PG-13-ish, you know.

E: Full frontal Skeptical-ness.

R: Skeptical-ness.

S: Skeptitude-osity. All right, let's move on to emails.

Questions and E-mails

Corrections (19:03)

I am addicted to your podcast. Please keep up the great work. Just a couple of corrections concerning your latest podcast. It is the strong nuclear force, not the weak nuclear force that keeps protons and neutrons bound inside the nucleus. Also, the word 'hieroglyphics' is not a correct word. The word is either 'hieroglyphs' or the phrase
'hieroglyphic writing'.

Thanks again,

Tom Evans
PA

Info on nuclear forces:
230nsc1.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/funfor.html

American Heritage Dictionary -
hi-er-o-glyph-ic (h r- -gl f k, h r -) also hi-er-o-glyph-i-cal (- -k l)
n. - A hieroglyph.
- Hieroglyphic writing, especially that of the ancient Egyptians. Often used in the plural with a singular or plural verb.
- Something, such as illegible or undecipherable writing, that is felt to resemble a hieroglyph.

S: First one is a couple of corrections. This one comes from Tom Evans from Pennsylvania. And Tom writes, "I am addicted to your podcast. Please keep up the great work. Just a couple of corrections concerning your latest podcast. It is the strong nuclear force, not the weak nuclear force, that keeps protons and neutrons bound inside the nucleus. Also, the word hieroglyphics is not correct. The word is either hieroglyphs or the phrase hieroglyphic writing." Let's take the second thing first. I actually looked up hieroglyphic in the American Heterotage Dictionary. And it says the first definition of hieroglyphic is a hieroglyph. So I think that hieroglyphic is perfectly acceptable. But the first thing is about the strong nuclear force is correct. We got a few corrections about that on email and on the website. I did say, I feel terrible about this. I know.

B: As you should.

S: I said weak nuclear force and Bob failed to correct me.

B: I feel terrible about that. I really do.

R: You are all at fault.

S: It is the strong nuclear force.

B: That's pathetic.

S: I have a link to a good physics site that will go over all of this in great detail. But briefly, the strong force is what holds quarks together. That force is often referred to as the color force. And the residue of that force is the strong nuclear force, which holds protons and neutrons together in the nucleus. It's really the same force. But it's called the color force if it's holding the quarks together, and then the strong nuclear force if it's holding protons and neutrons together. The weak nuclear force is the energy that is released in beta decay. And it's actually the residue of the weak nuclear force that is electromagnetism, which is why that's been unified into the electroweak force.

R: Wow, thanks for clearing that up.

S: You're welcome. I'll have a link to a site that will go over that in far more detail.

B: Rebecca, you've got a problem with the fundamental forces of nature?

R: Yeah, I do.

S: What's your problem?

R: You know what? Next week, we're having Murray Gilman on, and he'll talk all about it.

B: That will be cool.

R: And explain everything.

P: Just as long as there's some of them fundamental nature forces on them calendars.

R: What's with you?

P: That's all I care about. Natural forces.

Angel or Panic Attack (21:12)

S: The next e-mail comes from Nathan Daniels in Ohio, and Nathan writes:

Just like everyone else, I must start by saying that I am a big fan of the podcast. So far, I've only listened to 11 of the shows, so if this has already been covered, sorry for the repeat.

Several years ago, my mother had a total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, and had many problems afterward. She was taking Premarin, Synthroid, Glucophage, and possibly one or two other medications. She was seeing an endocrinologist, and they were having trouble getting all of her hormones and everything in balance after the surgery. She had a few instances of panic attacks. One day, while driving, she felt another panic attack starting. She was afraid she would have to pull over for a while to calm down or have a wreck. Then, she suddenly felt a presence next her. She says she saw a person sitting in the passenger seat, who then spoke to her. He reassured her that everything was fine, and that she did not need to stop driving. She felt a great calm go over her, and she was able to drive home without any other feelings of panic.

My mother did not tell us about this incident for a couple years, because she thought no one would believe her. But eventually, she did tell us, and added that it had to be an angel (she is a Christian).

I have a few theories of my own about what she experienced, but could you use your skepticism and neuroscience background to debunk this mystery?

Well, first of all, thanks for the praise, Nathan, we always appreciate it. Yeah, so, panic attacks are an interesting phenomenon. They actually have a lot in common, symptomatically, with seizures. They're not the same phenomenon as seizures in terms of what's happening on the cellular level, but seizures are more of an electrical phenomenon; panic attacks are a biochemical or neurotransmitter phenomenon. But a lot of the effects of a panic attack are very similar in that you can have a sense of unreality, a sense that you are separated from yourself or that you are separated from reality. You can certainly have hallucinations during a panic attack. So the kind of experiences that your mother had would be consistent with that type of an event, and there wouldn't be any need to appeal to any supernatural or external phenomenon in order to explain it. Often, experiences that we have that are either biochemically or electrically induced do take on the details of and the context of our culture and our beliefs. We don't make up entirely new stuff, just fill in the details from what we already think and believe and know. So, it's actually not that mysterious an episode for somebody to have. These things happen all the time; they're actually well understood to neuroscience and are easily explained.

P: Right. So she didn't actually say what the entity was. He does mention she's a Christian; I assume she thinks it was an angel or Jesus or something.

S: Yeah, she believes it was an angel. Didn't I say that? She did tell us that she thought it was an angel.

P: Oh, I'm sorry. So she did say "angel"?

S: Yes.

P: Yeah. Now, it would have been interesting if suddenly she had seen Muhammad sitting next to her or something.

R: That would have been something.

P: You know, seriously. That would have been interesting. But just filling in from her own experience, like you said, Steve, is really...

S: Right. Nobody has those experiences and meets some religious figure from a religion they've never heard about. You know?

P: Right.

S: It's always whatever they believe is the form that they take.

P: Exactly.

UFO Cult (24:30)

S: Well, the next e-mail comes from Nikolai Nikola. That's a great name. Nikolai Nikola.

R: That is a good name. I wonder what his middle name is.

S: I don't know.

B: Tesla.

S: (chuckles) He comes from Palestine; I think this is our first one from Palestine.

E: Wow.

S: And he writes:

Unless you've seen it before, this should provide some laughs for you guys.

And he sends a link to a UFO info website. Did you guys have an opportunity to take a look at this beauty?

B: Some of the most out-of-focus pictures I've ever seen in my life.

S: Right.

B: I mean, apparently somebody involved in this website came up with a cool way to take pictures of these de-focused lines of light that looked kinda interesting; like, "how'd they do that?" But every picture is like a variation of these things, these lines of light that are out of focus. And the descriptions are just classic. One of them says that "these are photos taken by the Center. In them, one can see the queen spaceship of the ZXY alien life of the planet [unintelligible].

S: (chuckles)

E: Really?

B: Come on. Who's coming—

E: Are they sure?

S: Interestingly, it is one photograph on the website that actually looks like a metal disc, that's actually reasonably in focus, and the caption under that picture is "this is a terrestrial object." (laughter)

B: Oh, my God.

S: So they threw in a picture of a hoax—you know, somebody throwing a hubcap up in the air or something—and then discredited that. But of course they endorse all these total blobs of blurry light. You know, some are probably—

P: Look, these photos are all available for anyone who wants them; they're all in the Akashic file. You go grab them out and you can put them on any website you want. UFO site, ghost site, Bigfoot site; they're all the same picture. It doesn't matter. It's the same thing over and over and over. Look, a blurry blob. That's my guy. I mean, that's it; it's the same crap!

B: Yeah, but, it is, Perry; I agree, but some of these scientific explanations are really intriguing, like here's one that showed these lines of light and it said that "the light lines create a field of intracoagulation and make it possible to be suspended in space". Now I thought it was extracoagulation that did that. I didn't know it was intracoagulation.

(chuckling)

E: You have to get your gobbledygook straight, Bob. You really do.

B: I was misinformed.

P: You're getting your gluons mixed up with your... (chuckles)

E: With your "gluoffs" or whatevers.

S: This website gets a lot of its information from people—psychics who are basically telepathically communicating with this extraterrestrial alien civilization.

P: And with me, by the way. With the aliens and with me. I hear voices constantly.

R: I'm pretty sure I saw that on an episode of Doctor Who.

S: Yeah. That's a staple. They write on the website, "they simply share bits of the Universal Knowledge"—capitalized—"with Earthlings." Well, thank you; thanks for the Universal Knowledge. How 'bout some useful information?

B: Yeah, how about a cure for cancer, buddy?

P: (laughing) How 'bout your secrets on optics, so we can take clear photographs? (laughter)

S: Throw in cold fusion while you're at it. You know, give us something useful.

B: You think they would offer the solution to some mathematical proof that no one's ever solved. Say, "hey, I want to get your attention here. Look at this solution", and then every mathematician in the world will be like, "holy crap; how'd they do that?"

S: Right.

R: Wasn't it Carl Sagan—

E: That's what Carl Sagan wrote; yeah.

B: He got that idea from me.

P&R: (laughing)

E: Yeah, well, what do you expect?

Interview with Michael Stebbins (28:13)

• Scientists and Engineers for America
  www.sefora.org/index.php
  
  Author of Sex Drugs and DNA
  www.sexdrugsanddna.com/
  

S: Joining us now is Dr. Michael Stebbins. Michael, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.

MS: Thanks for having me.

S: Dr. Stebbins is a member of Scientists and Engineers for America, a new group that advocates for science and politics. He's also the author of the book Sex, Drugs, and DNA. And has a website and a blog by the same name. So Dr. Stebbins, give us the summary, what is this new group Scientists and Engineers for America, what's their purpose?

MS: We're a group of scientists and engineers and concerned citizens who have gotten together try and promote rational and evidence-based science policy in Washington. And to support candidates. Or at least give information about canditates wh support such policies.

S: You brught up one thing, you sound like you're equivocating a little bit, whether you're actually supoprt candidates or give information about them. I noticed in one of the articles I read about the group it said that you're a 527, is that correct? But other articles said that therefore you cannot advocate for specific candidates only for issues, is that correct?

MS: Well, we can't endorse candidates, but we can actually tell you whether candidates are good on a science issue or not. Absolutely. We can inform voters about that. But we won't endorse them necessarily. But that's the only limitation on the group.

S: Some of the content made it seem like you were going to endorse specific candidates but you're not going to be diong that, just providing information?

MS: Correct. I mean, it'll be up to which ones are good on science and which ones aren't.

S: OK. And are you guys gearing up for the midterm elections in a couple weeks?

MS: Yes, we are. We've had events in several states now. We're going to have one in University of Virginia. We've had one at Johns Hopkins. I've spoken up at Harvard and MIT and at Rockefeller University. We've been around for about a month and we've been around for about 6,000 members. And we're going to be around the well-pass midterm. We're aiming much further out until these issues are resolved. We're going to be around.

S: So what are the big science issues that you think are important in the midterm elections and also going forward?

MS: Well, certainly one of the biggest issues is stem cells at this point. Certainly in the last couple days we've seen quite a bit of talk about stem cells because of the attacks on Michael J. Fox doing an ad in Missouri. Global warming is another big one that keeps coming up over and over again. Intelligent design is another one that has been making the pages.

P: What do you think of the Michael J. Fox ad doctor?

MS: Haven't seen it.

S: You haven't seen it.

P: I'm sorry. You said you didn't see it?

MS: I haven't seen the full ad. I live in Washington DC and it hasn't aired here.

P: Yeah, you can see it on YouTube at any point. You can go take a look at it. I'm very brief. It's maybe 30 seconds.

B: What's the gist of it, Perry?

P: Michael J. Fox advocating for Mrs. McCaskill over who is it Trent or Trent get the guy's name in Missouri because she supports stem cells research and he does not. You know, the main criticism I think is that he, you know, it's it's exploitive of his disease and that he specifically didn't take his medication so that he would look worse for the ad. That's the criticism I've heard.

MS: Yeah, I mean, there was a misunderstanding about what the medication does. In fact, the medication actually will enhance the movement. When people have Parkinson's there, the movements will actually tend to slow down. We'll have less movement. So in fact, that is you have your good days and your bad days when you're Parkinson's and you can't really control that for an ad.

S: Right. You actually have your good moments in your bad moments. It can fluctuate very, very rapidly and it's very difficult to be right at that perfect, you know, perfectly modulated zone, you know, where your movements would seem natural. So yeah, it's kind of silly just to make that accusation.

P: Well, I strongly support stem cell research, but people on the other side have pointed out that Michael has said that that's what he does doesn't take his medication so he looks more dramatic.

MS: This is a guy who has an absolute clean image in the press and he's really never done anything wrong. And he's been a strong advocate for Parkinson's research. I just find it so hard to believe that Michael J. Fox would do anything like that. And it seems that since there's no evidence that he's done that, they're just sort of making this story up. And that's really sad.

S: It's also very nitpicky because who cares? The guy has severe Parkinson's disease. He's advocating for research that could potentially impact this to save others from his fate. It's probably not going to benefit him, but it would benefit potentially others in the future. And that's perfectly legitimate. I think that's perfectly legitimate.

R: Are scientists using stem cell research right now to study Parkinson's because there's an impression that that disease wasn't currently being looked at in terms of stem cell research?

MS: Absolutely. They're using adult and embryonic stem cells to investigate in animal models and in cells. And so yeah, that is a main goal of stem cell research because of the nature of Parkinson's disease, which is neuronal to generation.

S: It is one of the diseases that's on the short list of things that potentially could be treated by stem cell therapy. It was one of the first diseases where surgeons actually transplanted cells into the brains of people to see if they would take up shop, live and grow and produce dopamine, which is what Parkinson's patients are lacking. So absolutely. It's no different than Nancy Reagan advocating for stem cell research because Ronald Reagan died of Alzheimer's disease. It's the same thing.

P: It certainly got it in the news. He got to give him credit for that. It's all over the place.

MS: Yeah. In fact, I think the attacks on Michael J. Fox, this is a character that worked against people who are attacking him simply because he has such a strong character and has been such a wonderful supporter of Parkinson's disease research. And Scientists and Engineers for America certainly support embryonic stem cell research and would like to see the president span on use of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research lifted immediately.

P: So does the NESS, right Mr. President?

S: Absolutely. We've talked about this on our show before. Obviously the goals of the New England Skeptical Society, the group that produces this podcast, and of course all of us personally support strong science, support scientific independence from politics, which is why we were very interested in your group because we seem to have a lot of the same agenda. But just let me ask you kind of a tough question, that cuts the core of what I think might be the difficult aspect of running a group like this.

MS: Fire away.

S: On the one hand, you're advocating for, keeping science unadulterated by politics in essence. Scientists should be free to do what they want to do-

MS: There should not be politicization of science, yes.

S: But at the same time, you're addressing issues which have a very deep political angle to them. And I think the challenging thing for a group like you would be to take positions that are based purely on science and not let your personal politics or the political leaning of the group encroach on those positions. Now certainly like with with stem cell research, there are not there are political and non scientific angles to that issue. So how, as a group, do you keep non-scientific political issues out of your positions?

MS: Well, personal politics of any one of the members are really not a factor in the group. We're a non-partisan group, and we never advocate for conservative or liberal or Democrat or Republican. It really is not the issue. We're pushing solid science policy, and so more than a magazine writer or someone who company wouldn't allow their personal views to get in the way of the goal of their work. We separate out our personal views from the work that we do with Scientists and Engineers for America just as easily. It's really not a very big challenge at all.

P: I noticed, Doctor, that everyone on your hit list is a Republican. Are there any anti-science Democrats out there that you're targeting?

MS: Well, that's my personal website, and it's very different from Scientists and Engineers for America.

P: Okay, then on your personal website.

MS: Yeah, that's very different. And so that list was created a long time ago, and it's been updated slowly, but it really has nothing to do with the group.

P: Are you aware of any anti-science Democrats?

MS: I don't really follow whether there are people who are anti-science or pro-science. I don't think there's such a thing. There's certain scientific issues where I think people have been against it or have been bad, but I don't think there's any one politician who is just absolutely anti-science. I haven't seen that where they would say, I hate science, or I think science is really bad. I just haven't seen anything like that.

R: I know Pat Roberts had been one.

MS: Fair enough, fair enough. But what we're talking about is whether they have the ability to actually run the country properly in terms of science and health policy, and there are many people out there who have shown that they really don't have the ability to do it right.

S: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think there's an unfortunate lack of scientists in government. I mean, I think to some degree, scientists don't make good politicians, or perhaps politicians don't make good scientists. Perhaps politics and science are mutually exclusive to a degree. Do you think that that's an intrinsic problem just with the democratic political system?

MS: I think scientists have failed to really educate the public about what it is that they do, and I think the public has a real misunderstanding, perhaps because the only science they're exposed to is on television and in movies, but they have a real misunderstanding of what scientists do on a day-to-day basis. So that's actually one of the first things in the book that I address, is to really explain what the scientist's life is about. You take that and you transfer it over to the policy arena, and many politicians also don't really have a good sense of how science works, and that's reflected in some of the policies that they have. We would, I mean, certainly scientists and engineers from America would like to see scientists getting far more involved in public policy and engaging Washington in getting science research, sorry, science policy passed, simply because there are complicated issues out there right now that really require some advanced knowledge to really wrap your head around, and that's going to continue to be the case as science moves ahead at a breakneck speed.

S: Right, I agree. Now, actually, one of the things, and I have not thoroughly looked through the scientists for engineers for America website, your own personal website, in the reading that I've done so far, one issue that was conspicuously absent, something that I'm personally very interested in as a physician, was I didn't see any position taken on the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and in my opinion, this is a, are you familiar with that branch of the NIH, by the way?

MS: I'm somewhat familiar with it, but not very much, I'm a geneticist by training.

S: Right, so basically this is first an office and now a national center within the NIH that was essentially created by Congress, but by purely political forces, was rammed down the throats of research scientists, and the scientific community has really balked at this, but their hands are tied, there's nothing they could do. In my opinion, that's a pretty pure example of politicians completely overriding scientists in order to distort the scientific process, in this case, deciding what is worthy of research and what is not worthy of research, and I think that would be an issue that would be very central to your organization's mission.

MS: At the same time, that institute does, in fact, fund important research on we've got a real problem right now, for example, vitamin supplements right now are really unregulated in a lot of ways, the FDA does not really regulate them, and so they actually fund quite a bit of research on that sort of thing, but we don't really, we don't have a position necessarily on that particular institute within the NIH, whether it should or should not exist is certainly not an issue for scientists and egineers for America right now, because it isn't on the table in terms of science policy today, what we think are policies that we think are really important are, certainly our energy situation has to change and has to change fast. And there's great opportunity for economic growth for the United States in alternative energies. It's a wide open field, and having government spark that innovation is going to create a tremendous number of jobs. There's really just an unbelievable opportunity there, and we have to feed on it, absolutely.

S: So then is one of these spheres of your group advocating for certain ways and specific goals that the federal government will fund scientific research, or deciding how research gets funded?

MS: No, because we don't think, well, mostly the way science is funded on a grant level is through peer review, and so at the individual level, certainly we would advocate strong science research funding, but that's not what we're about, we're certainly not trying to lobby Congress for more money for research, but there are certain areas of research where certainly we would recognize that there's not enough money going into it, and most people, including almost all politicians, would agree with this, that we really have not gone aggressively after alternative energy initiatives, and we certainly have not aggressively funded the physical sciences, and that's been acknowledged in many reports now through the National Academies, et cetera, so these sorts of things are just well known and very well accepted, and so the President's Competitiveness Initiative this year even points out that we really need to have more funding in those areas, so that's not really, we're not here to advocate for funding of science as a main purpose for us, our purpose is to get rational science policy, and part of that is funding.

S: Are you looking into or taking positions the other way, so you talked about how the government or politics may influence science negatively, how about how science influences politics, and I know in some of the articles about your group they mention the fact that a lot of scientific advisory committees or groups have been disbanded over the last four to six years, so what role do you think that professional scientists and scientific organizations should play in advising government?

MS: Well right now, for example, Congress used to have a branch called the Office of Technology Assessment which was disbanded under the resolution in 1995, and it was solely dedicated to giving science policy and science and technology advice to Congress, it was there, that was the sole purpose of the group, and since then Congress in a sense has been flying blinds because they've been relying on outside sources including lobbyists for science policy advice, and very heavily on the National Academy, but the National Academies was never set up to give Congress science policy advice, they provide reports upon request, but it's not the sole purpose of the group, and you really do need a group of people that can give non-partisan information to Congress on making science policy, it would be very beneficial and would certainly steer us in the right direction, and so there has been this sort of degradation of science policy advice in Washington and strengthening that could only be better.

S: Right, so you specifically advocate for the resurrection of that technology committee, or for something like it?

MS: Yeah, absolutely, we would say that Congress needs better science policy advice and that just relying on the National Academies is insufficient so far, they just can't keep up with the amount of information that Congress really requires to make rational policy, they're great, I mean the National Academies does a great job, but they're just not set up to meet the volume that is really needed.

P: There's certainly no scientist in Congress, I mean the last I heard Frist was the only scientist, right, he's an M.D..

MS: [inaudible ] he's a physicist from New Jersey, and he is excellent, and he's actually been leading the charge in the House for the resurrection of an OTA-like body, and he's been fantastic for science.

P: I hope he can, because Frist lost a lot of credibility with the Shivo affair. He really did.

MS: He certainly did, I think most doctors were very surprised that he would try and do any kind of really diagnosis by a videotape.

S: It was terrible, it was absolutely terrible, and it was wrong, and he got it wrong.

MS: As it turns out, he got it very, very wrong.

S: And everyone at the time knew it, who knew what they were talking about. Well, let's turn a little bit to education, I noticed that you have a science bill of rights, which again, we'll have the links to all this on our notes page for this podcast. And some of them are about education, I noticed number seven is the federal government shall not support any science education program that includes instruction and concepts that are derived from ideology and not science, which of course we heartily endorse as well. And that seems to be targeted squarely at intelligent design and creationism, but of course could be applied more broadly. Do you have any more, are there any specific policies that you advocate with science, or is this really an issue by issue thing? As it crops up, you're going to have to just defend the ideology-free science in education.

MS: Yeah, actually, it's purposely worded so that it applies very widely instead of just intelligent design, and certainly it is aimed at intelligent design. That we really have students learning science at a much better level than they do right now. We ranked very low compared to other countries in our ability in science, I think we're number 23 or 24 compared to most industrialized nations. And so certainly that's not good enough, and it's not going to feed future scientists and engineers and innovators in this country. So certainly we need a change in that, and getting intelligent design, every time it's been introduced. It's actually, the voters have turned around and promptly gotten rid of anyone who has introduced it into the curricula or tried to introduce it into the curricula, and that's fantastic. It really shows that the public does pay attention to these issues and is tired of having people trying to get ideology into a science class. There's nothing wrong with teaching intelligent design in a theology class. It is certainly a controversy and is part of the theocracy at this point, but it doesn't belong in science classes because it's simply not science.

R: I'm wondering if that also covers reproductive health and sexual health, because often recently we have a lot of attacks from religious groups who are trying to get rid of safe sex education. Do you guys cover anything like that?

MS: Well, actually Susan Wood, who left the FDA after the politicalization of the decision on emergency contraceptive Plan B, is on the Board of Advisors for Scientists and Engineers for America and is making public appearances in Michigan and Maryland over this, and she has been doing a fantastic job of getting the word out and traveling the country and explaining to people that, look, these sorts of things should not be politicized. Now, that's an FDA issue, but at the same time we are talking about an overall stance on sex education. It is absolutely important for kids who are going to engage in sexual activity to use protection and be safe, and it is certainly not realistic to believe that teaching abstinence only is going to really resolve that issue, and that's been shown again and again that teaching abstinence only may influence some kids not to have sex, but at the same time it doesn't get all of them, and so you must teach these kids how to have safe sex, otherwise they're going to get diseases, and that's really tragic.

R: And do you follow that same line and go, it's even kind of trickier, areas like over-the-counter Plan B medication, issues like that?

MS: Well, certainly that was, the Plan B issue was a pristine example of how an FDA decision was politicized, and the Government Accountability Office actually did looked at that decision versus over the last four or five years of the other prescription to over-the-counter decisions and found that it was different from all of them, and it's a very odd decision, and this is why Susan Wood actually left the FDA, and she's spoken out quite a bit on it, and she's really, I consider her a scientific hero at this point, because she raised for what she believed in, and it's extraordinary to see someone at that level. She was very high up in the FDA to walk away from her career and stand up for her.

S: And not the first person to leave the FDA over a similar issue David Kessler left the FDA over the supplement issue that you brought up before. I mean, he basically lost that battle with Congress in 1994 with Dichet, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act in 1994, which basically took supplements away from the FDA and created the free market that we have now in the United States, which, again, in my opinion, is one of the biggest examples of politics trumping science. So actually, Michael, I am interested in talking about your book a little bit, too, now that I think we've covered the Scientist and Enineers for America issue.

MS: Sure.

S: This is Sex, Drugs, and DNA, and when was that published?

MS: It came out earlier this year, in April of this year.

S: And give us the quick synopsis. What's the book about?

MS: It's an experiment. And what it was is I wanted to know, could you write sort of a polemic about real science and actually just lay out controversial science issues for readers in a fun way? The book is is lighthearted and really draws people in to these science issues and then juxtaposes the facts that we know from science against some of the policies that we're seeing and some of the facts about U.S. science policy and health. So I certainly talk about everything from contraception and the drug industry to stem cells and cloning and genetically modified organisms and you name it, everything in between bioterrorism. I go through and just really lay out the issues for people so that they can wrap their heads around these complicated issues. I don't think these issues are actually that difficult for people to get. And if you strip the jargon out and talk about these things in normal people speak, then people will start to get it.

P: That was Carl Sagan's genius. That's a very laudable goal that you have with that book. Nonetheless, a laudable goal.

S: Yeah, that's basically our goal on this show too, to sort of deal with scientific issues in a lighthearted and entertaining way. I think there's a real gap there. I think there's a bit of an ivory tower syndrome going on with scientists. I sort of see this every day in my specialty. So-called real scientists don't like to get their hands dirty with some of the more controversial issues. They think they're not academic or they sort of taint their academic reputation. They also, there is this really incredible sort of a bad reputation for popularizing science, which is odd. And I don't even, Perry brought up Carl Sagan, even he sort of complained about the fact that his colleagues looked down at him for popularizing science.

MS: They did. But he did more for astrophysics than anyone before him and after. It's absolutely extraordinary how people gained a whole new respect for that field of science based on his work. And other people like Stephen J. Gould and E.L. Wilson have done, and Richard Hawking. And Hawking are absolutely fantastic in what they do for science. So there is a place for people to write to the general public about science. And actually, frankly, scientists read those books too.

B: A lot of the names that you just mentioned, I mean, these are these are famous, well-regarded people that I don't know anybody that doesn't respect them. Why? I'm just surprised why there aren't more scientists trying to fill those roles. Is it, did they feel like the shoes are too big to fill or that is this really, are they really?

S: Yeah, I think they're not good at it, basically.

MS: The reward for being a scientist is that you get to do science every day. You don't make a lot of money. You're constantly having to justify what you do for a living through peer review and grant system and institutional review. And so it's a very hard job to have. And so when you're completely focused for your whole career on doing science, it doesn't really appeal to them to write popular science at that point, because they're completely engrossed in what they do. There are some notable exceptions, and they're very good, a lot of them. But it's just not what they do for a living.

S: Right. And we definitely need more of it. I think as you say, all of this is an uphill battle because we're dealing with a public that really doesn't understand science.

R: Yeah, I mean, sadly, it's the same reason why we have a legion of journalists who don't know the scientific method from a hole in the ground.

MS: And there are some there are some journalists who are fantastic at that. And but so it's but yeah, but I think a lot of the press doesn't get it. And simply because a lot of newspapers have actually cut out their their science writers. And so now they have more general writers who then also write about science. And they get it wrong a lot of the time. There was a study that showed that about about 30% of all news stories that come out on science have significant factual errors.

S: Well, Michael, thank you very much for joining us again, Dr. Michael Stebbins from the organization scientists and engineers for America. That's www.sefora.org. And we'll get we'll have that link at the link to his personal website on our notes page. Take a look at the website, take a look at the the Bill of Rights. If anyone can sign up for that, right, you don't have to be a scientist.

MS: Correct. And you don't have to be a scientist to join scientists and engineers for America either. It's anyone, any concerned citizen can actually join the group. And we encourage everyone to do that. If they believe that what we're in the goals of the group.

S: Absolutely. Well, thanks again for joining us. Good luck with your group.

R: Thanks so much.

P: God night, Dr.

MS: Thank you so much for having me on.

Randi Speaks (57:09)

• The Uncompromising Observations of a Veteran Skeptic
  
  Each week James Randi gives a skeptical commentary in his own unique style.
  
  This week's topic: People in Space
  

S: And now, Randi Speaks.

JR: Hello. This is James Randi. I was just thinking the other day that my friend Bob Park of the American Physical Society in Washington and I have some differences in our philosophical outlook about space travel and the whole space program. Now this is understandable. Bob is a very experienced physicist. That's what he makes his living doing; writing about the science of physics and, along the way, seriously criticizing the administration for their point of view on science in general. A few times, Bob and I have had the opportunity to discuss with one another whether or not the space program has brought any benefits to mankind. Bob tends to argue "no", and for several good reasons. First, as he rightly points out, we are not really prepared, technologically speaking, to send human beings into space. He points out that not only have we had a number of disasters in this space race, but the equipment that we use barely does the job. Now I can't really argue with that. Certainly the Space Shuttle, which I've seen up close and it is quite an impressive sight, covered in tiles as it is, and subject as we know to those tiles coming loose during the launch and the return of the ship to Earth, is a rather makeshift job. It really barely gets out there and barely gets back. And Bob fears, rightly I believe, that we are in very real danger of having several more disasters before the whole space program comes to an end. My argument is certainly weaker than Bob's, but it's done from the point of view of a romantic, I guess. After all, I am in show business, and I feel about this whole space program as though it's an adventure. It's something that's very important, particularly for young people because it inspires them, I believe, with the glory of science, the joy and excitement of exploration, and the knowledge that there really is something exciting out there to be known. Something to be discovered. After all, when you think about it, the early explorers of the Earth—all the explorers from Spain, from England, from Portugal, from the Netherlands and other parts of Europe, sailed from their home ports with practically the same expectation of success that is enjoyed by the astronauts of today. They certainly didn't know whether or not they would be coming back, and if they did come back, whether they would have anything to show for their efforts.

The space program has taught us a great deal about the rest of the universe. Oh, only a short distance out from Earth, that's true, but what we've learned is enormous. However, I think I'm going to have to go Bob Park's way to a certain extent here. He sees the possibility of continuing exploration of space by means of instruments, not by sending human beings out into this very hostile environment, of course, but sending out what are essentially robots to perform these tasks for us. As very good examples of this, we only have to look at the Mars rovers that are still up there on the Red Planet. They have performed faithfully far beyond their expected life, literally masses of information, photographic detail and other valuable facts about the Martian terrain. And all of this has been done at the loss of a few of the instruments that we sent up there, but with no cost whatsoever in human lives. Now I just heard about another project—I've forgotten the name of it—that NASA is ready to send up. This will be two photo-snapping satellites made to be as identical as possible, which will be sent up at intervals, very carefully timed intervals, so that their cameras can take pictures of the Sun's coronal activity. Since there will be two camera systems up there taking photographs at precisely the same instant, and they'll be spaced sufficiently far apart, the resulting pair of images can be turned into a stereo image. Viewing these images of the Sun's activity by this means we'll get a further beautiful picture of how our solar system works. This is James Randi.

Science or Fiction (1:02:15)

Item #1: Moving and thrashing will make your sink more quickly in quicksand. Item #2: Meteorites tend to be very hot when they hit the ground. Item #3: Chickens can live and walk around after being beheaded.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Meteorites
Science	Chickens
Science	Quicksand

Host	Result
Steve	swept

Rogue	Guess
Bob	Meteorites
Rebecca	Meteorites
Perry	Meteorites
Evan	Meteorites

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

S: Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two are genuine, one fictitious, then I challenge my esteemed skeptical rogues to see if they could tell me which one is fiction. This week I'm doing common myths, science myths, but I'm going to still follow the same format, so two of these are true, and one is fiction, one is an actual myth, but these are all things that many people believe to be true, two of them actually are true, one is fiction. Got it? Okay, number one, moving and thrashing will make you sink more quickly in quicksand. Number two, meteorites tend to be very hot when they hit the ground, and number three, chickens can live and walk around after being beheaded. Bob, go first.

Bob's Response

B: Fine, moving and thrashing will increase the rate at which you sink in quicksand. Meteorites are cold when they hit the earth generally, and beheaded chickens do walk around.

R: Wait, so which one is yours?

S: So you're saying that the meteorites, number two, is fiction?

B: Yes.

S: Okay, Rebecca, why don't you go next?

Rebecca's Response

R: Yeah, I definitely agree with the quicksand thing because I'm pretty sure I read that in one of those survival guides to things that will never actually happen to you.

E: Especially in Boston.

R: You never know, though. I'm paranoid. The chicken with the head cut off, I'm pretty sure I've seen that. I grew up around farms.

B: You're pretty sure you've seen it? I would think if you saw that you would never forget it.

R: Well I've suppressed a lot of my childhood.

B: Okay, enough said.

R: So I'm going to go with number two.

S: Okay.

R: The meteorite.

S: Perry?

Perry's Response

P: I concur. Next.

S: Evan?

Evan's Response

E: Well I'm not going to be the only one to stand out there in the cold, so I'm going to join my colleagues in agreeing that meteorites are cold instead of hot.

P: They're big balls of ice.

E: But I have a question.

B: Big balls of rock.

E: The one you said about the chicken, Steve?

R: They're icy rock, aren't they?

E: It says chickens can live and walk around with their head cut off. Is that what you said?

S: Yes.

E: If you have your head cut off, are you technically alive at that point?

P: Well, if you're running around, there's something going on.

E: Yeah, but is that life? Is that alive? Or is that just some sort of...

R: Well, you can get into a philosophical discussion about it.

P: Which came first, the beheading or the death?

E: It's food for thought, no pun intended, but I'll stick with my choice. I'll stick with my choice.

Steve Explains Item #1

S:' So you all agree that the meteorites hit in the ground cold. Hot is fiction because they hit the ground cold. Let's take them in order. The first one is moving and thrashing will make you sink more quickly in quicksand. That is true. That is science. You guys all got that right. However, by the same token, you will not sink entirely in the quicksand. You will probably only sink to about the waist. And you will not sink below your head, so you won't drown in quicksand. Typically, you'll just reach a sort of equilibrium point after sinking about halfway. The other thing that is very commonly, at least portrayed in movies, is people getting pulled out of quicksand. And that is impossible. The amount of force that would be necessary, even if just your feet were stuck in quicksand, because of the suction that's created, the amount of force that is required would actually probably tear your feet off before you would actually get pulled out of the, the grip of the quicksand on your feet is stronger than your bones and ligaments.

B: Holy crap.

S: You would kill somebody if you actually tied a horse to them and tried to pull them out of the quicksand.

B: Well, how the hell do you get out then?

R: Well, how are you supposed to get out?

S: Yes, slowly. And you have to sort of break the suction around your feet. But you cannot get just pulled out.

Steve Explains Item #3

S: You also, guys, all agree that number three is true, that chickens can live and walk around after being beheaded, and that is also true. This is because frequently when you cut off a chicken's head, it's possible to leave behind the brain stem, the most primitive part of the brain, the part of the brain that is involved with breathing and also walking. It's also possible to walk around with just your brain stem. And chickens, being birds, rely more heavily on the more primitive part of their brain and less on the more developed part of the brain, like, say, humans do.

R: I know plenty of guys like that. Sorry, go on.

Steve Explains Item #2

S: Which means that number two, meteorites tend to be very hot when they hit the ground, is fiction, is a commonly believed myth.

P: Everybody knows that.

R: Hooray!

S: Usually in movies like War of the Worlds and whatnot, that when they hit the ground, there are these glowing red hot rocks as they hit the ground. That's usually not the case. I know we mentioned on a previous podcast, as a fiction item, what causes the heat. Because when meteoroids enter the atmosphere and then start to burn up, they actually do burn up. They do become red hot. But it's not from friction with the atmosphere. It's actually by compressing the air in front of them is what generates the heat. That does heat up the meteorite, does cause bits of it to melt away, so-called ablation, which is the same process, by the way, that we use to, say, slow down the shuttle as it enters the atmosphere. But when the meteor slows down to subsonic speeds, that process basically ends. You no longer get enough compression to heat it. Then you have a rock which is passing through the cold upper atmosphere at subsonic speeds, and it tends to cool off very quickly. Most of the heated parts of the rock are bladed away anyway. The core is probably still cold. So whatever heat is in the outer parts of the rock will rapidly cool off. The meteors, by the time they hit the ground, tend to be rather cool.

R: You still shouldn't try to touch it, though, because often they have alien life forms that can infect you and take over your brain and make you kill your family. Just a little Halloween reminder.

S: In fact, when you touch it, it may be so cold that it will feel hot. It may actually burn you.

E: Oh, yeah, that freeze burn.

S: Yeah, you get that freeze burn. Meteors have been discovered that had frost on them.

P: If you take a bite out of it, you can get a cold headache. Let's not even talk about that incident.

S: So you guys said last week, I fooled everybody this week. Everyone got it correct. Good job.

R: Back with vengeance.

P: I wasn't here last week. Come on.

R: That explains it.

Skeptical Puzzle (1:08:55)

Last Week's puzzle

I have 4 lines
I can supposedly detect witches
I was once described as 'an organ'
I was used by Julius Caesar in his judgments of people
I am said to have regions named for the planets, the moon, and the sun
It is said I can reveal the homosexuality of a person
It is said I help detect illness in children

What am I?

Answer: The Hand

New Puzzle

Let's assume that I am not a skeptical person. I have a symptom, and I want to take a homeopathic remedy to cure it. I go to a homeopathic website, type in my symptom, and they suggest I take an elixir with Aconitum Napellus as the active ingredient.

Based on that information, can you guess what symptom I am trying to cure?

S: Evan, you are here to give us the answer to last week's skeptical puzzle, and you have a new puzzle for us this week.

P: Is that why he's here?

S: That's why he's here. So give us the answer to last week.

E: All right. Should I reread it for our audience?

S: Of course.

E: Okay. Here was last week's puzzle, everyone. I have four lines. I can supposedly detect witches. I was once described as an organ. I was used by Julius Caesar in his judgments of people. I am said to have regions named for the planets, the moon, and the sun. It is said I can reveal the homosexuality of a person. And it is said I help detect illness in children. So what am I? And the answer is the human palm. Of course.

R: Did anybody get that right?

E: The first person to post it correctly on our message board was Cosmic Vagabond.

R: I like him. Good job.

E: So I'll give him the credit for answering the puzzle correctly.

P: What's the gay thing here? I'm looking at my palm. What am I?

R: What's the gay thing. Are you holding a penis?

E: Actually, when I researched it, they were talking about the homosexuality aspect. If two of the lines intersect in a V at some point, it supposedly reveals homosexual tendencies in that person.

S: You're talking about palmistry.

E: Well, yes, of course.

S: All right. Well, good job, Cosmic. Evan, give us the new puzzle.

E: You got it. All right. Let's assume that I am not a skeptical person.

S: Done.

E: And I have a symptom. And I want to take a homeopathic remedy to cure it. So I go to a homeopathic website. I type in my symptom. And they suggest that I take an elixir with the active ingredient aconitum napellus. And I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. So that's the active ingredient in this homeopathic remedy. So based on that information that I just gave you, can you guess what symptom I am trying to cure?

S: And you tell me this is not a Google answer.

E: This is not a Google answer. I mean, people will go out there. They'll look up what this ingredient is. And they'll see lists of various things there. That they say it treats. But it does not appear on those lists. So you can't work backwards in that way. You have to figure out what symptom I typed in there. And that it gave me this remedy to what?

P: Evan, just tell me the truth. Is this a possible cure for my homosexuality? Tell me the truth.

R: Way to ruin the puzzle, Perry.

P: Be straight forward with me. I need to know. I got Vs all over my hands.

S: Evan, if you type homosexuality into the homeopathic remedy, does something come out?

E: I didn't try that. But if anyone does want to try that, it's very easy to do. It's not hard.

S: Report back on it next week.

E: I will do that. And enjoy the puzzle, everyone. I hope you can guess what symptom I am trying to cure.

R: Thanks, Evan.

S: Thank you, Evan.

P: Thank you.

Quote of the Week (1:12:20)

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.-Voltaire

S: Bob, do you have a quote for us to close out the show?

B: Sure, I do. This is a quote from Voltaire that I like. He said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

R: Very nice.

P: Well stated.

S: Well, thank you, everyone, for joining me again. Always a pleasure.

R: Thank you, Steve.

B: Great episode.

E: It was my pleasure. It really was.

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation. For more information on this and other episodes, 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.

References