SGU Episode 82

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SGU Episode 82
February 15th 2007
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 81                      SGU 83
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
'I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.'
Issac Asimov, his reply to the question 'Don't you believe in anything?'
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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 Thursday, February 15^th, 2007. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Rebecca Watson...

R: Hello, everyone.

S: Evan Bernstein...

E: Hi, all.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey, guys.

S: ...and Perry DeAngelis.

P: Steve, is it true that while we're locked away in icy New England, you are in fact sunning yourself in Florida?

S: That is correct. The weather's been just okay, but it's still a lot better than getting blanketed with ice and snow.

P: A little better than an ice storm.

S: It's been quite fun.

P: I bleed for you.

E: It's no us, we go New York. Let's just put it that way.

J: Steve, I heard from a little bird that you went to Kennedy Space Center.

S: Yeah, I blogged about that today. First time I went to the Kennedy Space Center. It's pretty close to where we're vacationing.

P: Do they have a diaper exhibit?

R: No.

S: No, they keep that under wraps.

R: Inappropriate.

P: Rebecca, I have to say that for the scientific women movement, that was an embarrassing episode.

R: Oh, whatever. The men have had plenty.

S: You're talking about the female astronaut who went psychotic?

P: Yes.

R: It's got nothing to do with whether or not she's an astronaut, though. She just happens to be a freak who wears diapers.

J: She just got a little case of space madness. She's fine. She'll be all right.

P: You know, it's a love triangle. She was in love with an astronaut, some other one, and the point is she drove from Houston to Florida, and she felt like she had to get there quickly, so she put on space diapers that they were in outer space so she wouldn't have to pull over to pee.

R: Wait, they were space diapers?

P: Well, whatever the stuff they wear on the ships.

R: I don't think they were space diapers. I thought they were just regular Depends or something.

P: That's what they wear on the shuttle.

R: Really?

J: I'm sure that there's something a little bit more tricked out about them than just Depends.

P: Rebecca, you can't have free-floating faeces on the space shuttle.

R: That's disgusting.

P: Very dangerous.

R: Thank you.

P: I'm just saying, you know. Now, Stephen, do we interrupt you?

S: Not at all. But if you've never been to the Kennedy Space Center, it is a great tourist attraction. It's a good trip. The best part, hands down, was the Saturn V rocket.

J: That is jaw-dropping.

S: It is enormous. You just can't imagine how big it is until you're standing underneath it and you see the whole thing.

E: That's the second biggest rocket I've ever seen.

B: I had a similar reaction seeing that in Florida as seeing David in Florence. I mean, it was incredible. The jaw just dropped.

S: The other thing I observed in my blog was the fact that the tourist attraction is all about people in space. We talked about that on this podcast before, about the debate between how much money and effort should NASA be putting into sending people into space versus sending robotic or unmanned missions. There's reasonable points we made on both sides. Certainly it's more cost-effective and efficient to send robots than people, but there are certain both romantic and cultural and other reasons to send people into space. From NASA's point of view, at least what they are showcasing to the public, it is all about people in space. It was about the Apollo program, the International Space Station is all about having a permanent human presence in space, and now all the buzz is about going back to the moon and going to Mars.

P: Yes, absolutely, because that's where the glory is. It really is. There's no greater success than that Apollo program. When Kennedy made that challenge and we did it by 1969, it was awesome.

S: They still talk about that as the greatest human adventure, going to the moon.

J: I think culturally, space exploration is not only an absolute requirement, but it's really good. I remember thinking of the space program when I was a kid and I was fascinated by it. It shaped part of my youth, like Star Wars did. It had the same kind of effect, except it was real.

S: That's right.

P: Maybe it's our age, but the shuttle program just never, maybe it was because of the accident, I don't know. But the shuttle program just never did it the way going to the moon did.

S: It never met the expectations, I mean, it was supposed to, the flights are supposed to be much more frequent and routine, and it never really lived up to those expectations. And then, much less expensive and more efficient, and now it's actually lived longer than its life expectancy. They're definitely going to be shutting it down by 2010, they just have to finish the space station. I think there's going to be one Hubble repair trip, and then 2010, the space shuttle program will shut down, the next shuttle is going to be coming online in 2014, so it's going to be a four-year gap. And interestingly, what I learned is that there's a lot of things they have to do that they can't do until they actually end the shuttle program, they have to retool a lot of the buildings, but they need to keep them up and running for the shuttle. So they really can't do a lot of stuff until they actually totally shut down the shuttle program, which is interesting.

B: Also Steve, do you remember driving by the shuttle complex where they wheel the shuttle in to do repairs? That thing was gargantuan.

S: That structure was sized for the Saturn V, 36 stories tall. The shuttle was in that building, the vehicle assembly building, the VAB, when we were down on the tour. It's only about half the height of the Saturn V, so it looks small in that building. Of course, the shuttle itself is huge in and of itself, but it is dwarfed by the Saturn V.

P: There's been a lot about NASA in the news lately because of that thing with the woman, but it was very interesting. I saw Homer Hickam be interviewed, the kid that October Sky was about, if you've ever saw that movie, and he used to train astronauts. And one thing he said that really caught my attention was that the simple fact is there's too many astronauts. They put too many people into the program with not enough flights. So he said the competition is so fierce that it's literally unhealthy.

S: Really?

P: He said there's simply too many astronauts and not enough seats.

J: That's got to really bite if you were selected, you're already an accomplished pilot, probably. You go through the training, you do the whole thing, and you're just warming a bench somewhere, just waiting, waiting, waiting.

P: And you can't get a flight.

J: That's a nightmare.

P: And you know that at the very least you've got this four-year hiatus coming up.

S: Although I think they're going to keep people in the space station during this period of time. I guess they're just going to be using Russian rockets to get up there.

B: Nice.

P: I guess.

R: You can still go to the bar and tell chicks that you're an astronaut, and that's something right.

S: Does that work?

R: It works for me.

S: The astronauts, again, the culture of NASA is that the astronauts are the rock stars. They're the show.

P: Yeah, that's exactly right.

B: Rebecca, you shouldn't have said that. Now you're going to get tons of emails. Hey, I'm an astronaut.

E: Steve, did they mention the space truck at all?

S: You're talking about the Orion, the one that would shuttle from the Earth to the moon?

E: Right, exactly.

S: They just mentioned it in passing. They don't have a lot, I guess, to show about that yet.

J: Steve, did they talk much about the movie Space Balls?

S: I must have missed that part of the tour.

P: Going to Mars would be so cool. I mean, that would be majestic.

E: It's inevitable.

B: It doesn't look good for near-term, though. Did you read that article in Scientific American saying that pretty much the radiation to deflect or deal with the radiation that they would encounter on that trip is almost insurmountable with near-term technology? That was really a depressing article to read.

S: It's a major technological hurdle, but it's not impassable. Let's go on. We have actually a lot of news this week. Let's go on to the first news item.

News Items

Parents Trust 'Psychic Healer' (8:03)

• Parents Trust 'Psychic Healer' over Doctors for Daughter with Brain Tumour
  www.dailytidings.com/2007/0210/stories/0210_cancer.php

S: This one is about these parents in Oregon, the United States, whose 13-year-old daughter probably has a brain tumor. The full story on this is that she was born with a very severe form of brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme. She had four surgeries to remove this tumor. This is a type of brain cancer. It grew back each time. The fourth time she had a prolonged remission where it did not grow back, and now over years and now she's 13 years old, unfortunately a CAT scan shows that she has a mass in her brain, which is almost certainly a recurrence of brain cancer. The doctors are recommending that it's immediately removed again. Her parents, I wasn't quite sure by the way the article was written, but just after the surgery they took her to a psychic healer, a self-proclaimed psychic healer, Nikolai Levishov. He, "treated" her around the time of her fourth surgery. He claims he could sort of psychically breach in there and alter the cells so that they become non-cancerous. Of course, even though she had multiple surgeries, the parents credit the psychic with her prolonged remission.

J: That guy's good, huh?

B: In that part of it, Steve, I did spot one logical fallacy where it stayed-

S: Just one?

B:' Well, no, in that one section I'm talking about. It said that it wasn't until being treated by an alternative healer that her cancer went to remission, which is pretty much a classic post-hoc ergo propterhoc, which is basically he proceeds B, therefore A caused B.

S: Actually, the story also says that earlier on, after the first surgery, they treated her with a band alternative treatment called chondriana, which is actually a concoction of cells. The mother thinks that it worked because the tumor grew back slower than they thought it would have.

B: At least initially. Then it reached its full size again after that.

S: Right. No matter what happens, they'll think it works. Her cancer came back now, but they still think that the psychic magically cured her. But now, get this, so now Leveshov tells the parents, actually what I was going to say before, as he treated her for a period of time, then he completed his treatment over the telephone. So this guy was literally phoning it in.

J: I wonder what they were paying him, by the way.

S: Now he's telling the parents that this growth on the CAT scan is not cancer, it's new brain tissue, new, like, normal, healthy brain tissue. And this is now just part of the miracle of his treatment, that her brain is regenerating. So they're not going to have it removed.

P: So the parents are not going to have this new healthy tissue removed.

S: Right.

P: They're going to leave it in there.

S: That's right. Based upon the opinions of this psychic, alleged psychic.

P: When this girl dies, do you think that the parents should be prosecuted?

S: So this is, well, first of all, I hope that this girl survives whatever is going on. I mean, obviously I don't wish anything bad on this 13-year-old lady.

P: Not if her parents don't let her have the surgery.

S: She's totally innocent in this whole situation. She, of course, is the ultimate victim of all of this.

P: Of course.

S: Now, I'm more interested in whether or not the state has the right to force the parents to allow the treatment than what to do criminally, if a negative outcome occurs. But they're basically both part of the same question. And this is a very interesting question. I've been investigating this in preparation for this piece. Now, of course, the basic laws in the United States, I think, in most civilized countries is that parents have a duty to care for their children. And if you fail to give them the basic necessities of life, like basic medical care, that's considered neglect. If you actively do anything to harm your kids, that's abuse, right? So parents can be, children can be taken away from parents for neglect and abuse. And parents can be criminally charged for neglect and abuse. However, in the United States, 41 of the 50 states have religious exemption laws, which basically protect parents from any kind of prosecution for neglect or abuse if their behavior was part of their religious belief. Their religion.

P: That's a shame.

S: Right. Now, a lot of those laws are motivated by the anti-vaccination crowd. So a lot of times these laws are put on the books because people don't want to vaccinate their kids and they don't want to be sued or prosecuted for neglect or negligence because they're not having their kids vaccinated. And some states, it's like, the wording is a little different in every state. Some states will have the religious exemption, but then they have some wiggle room in there so that if the child's life or health is immediately threatened, they still, the parents still have to do something. You know, they can't.

E: Who judges that?

S: Well, it's up to the state to decide if they want to prosecute, if they want to do anything about it. And most of the time they don't.

P: Yeah. The local DA.

S: A few high profile cases where they have, and it's really their discretion. But this is this is really a total scandal. It's one of those issues that I think if you asked 100 people in the street, most people would not really know what the situation is. Most people would not think that parents can basically allow their kids to die from lack of medical care and are protected from any kind of action because of a law that specifically protects them as long as they claim that this is part of their religion. So I mean, this is very anti-child in my opinion. This is absolutely scandalous. It's one of the things, and it's sort of got through these local legislatures under the radar in most cases, and I don't think that there's been a really appropriate public debate about this. And the bottom line is parents can abuse and neglect their kids as long as they have some wacky belief to justify it. Now, in this case, there's the, there's a, the wrinkle is should we consider the trusting this Russian psychic as a religious belief? How is this the parent's religion?

B: That's a big question. Yep.

S: So even if we accept the line, Oregon actually has one of the strongest religious exemption laws. So this is like the worst state for this to happen in from the perspective of doing what's right from the child's life. Even in Oregon, you have to ask the question, trusting in a psychic, how is that fall under the religious exemption? A spokesperson for Department of Human Services in Oregon, Patricia Feeney, is quoted as saying in this article, "Ultimately, the care of a child is up to the parents. It's the same laws that apply to immunization. If people have religious reasons for not doing it, they don't have to." So that is the approach that they're taking to this case. And the bottom line is this poor 13 year old girl who could have a significant benefit from standard medical intervention in this case is going to be deprived of that because her parents are wackos.

P: It's criminal.

J: In my opinion, you have to be, you have to be really wacky to put the wellbeing of your kid like in the hands of a psychic. There has to be a real malfunction. What's wrong with these? The question really to me is what's wrong with these people?

S: Well, to some extent, I mean, I don't give the parents a pass. This is their duty. This is their job to make them to make a reasonable decision for their child. And this decision is grossly wrong in my opinion. But they are partially victims as well. They are obviously I'm a parent, as I've spoken about before on this show, I completely understand how totally devastating it would be to have a child who was seriously ill. So I do sort of sympathize with the parents on that score. And you would definitely want to cling for any hope. Now your average person who is not medically trained or scientifically trained, not skeptically inclined, has a child with a very severe, serious medical illness the mother talks about in the article that they basically had given up hope, sure they're going to grasp for anything, any hope, no matter how flimsy it is.

J: Yeah, but they're turning away real medicine.

S: Yeah.I mean, so initially, at least they were doing what the doctors told her and they were doing extra stuff. It's one thing to get the surgery and then also have the psychic wave their hands over you. I mean, I don't think that that's necessary, but at least it's not harmful. But now it's totally different. Now they are ignoring the direct advice of their physicians and they're believing this really incredibly ludicrous claim that's being made by the psychic. But Leveshov, he's the villain in this story. This guy is lining his pockets by giving advice to these parents that is likely going to result in either the severe morbidity or the death of this 13 year old girl.

B: Steve, it's not just him. I think it's also the state legislature that's also villainous in this case.

S: I agree. I agree. They are totally failing this child. They are utterly failing this child.

J: Well, if let's say a doctor makes a bad prognosis, right, the doctor screws up somehow, the doctor can get legally charged for this, can get could ultimately lose their license to practice.

B: Malpractice.

J: I think that if this guy, this psychic wants to enter that arena, then he should be held accountable if this kid dies.

S: Now Jay, 20 years ago, what you're saying is right and that's what would have happened. This guy could get criminally charged with practising medicine without a license and he could be held liable for a negative outcome here. But the culture, at least in this country, in the last 20 years has changed to such a degree that you could do this and totally get a free pass, completely get away with it. Now the parents aren't going to sue this guy. If the parents say something bad happens to the girl and the parents turned around and sued this guy, they would have a case. But that just never happens because then the parents would have to accept their own responsibility and the fact that they were totally fooled and that just never happens in my experience.

J: They'd be more likely to sue the doctors, the medical doctors.

P: There's never a case where a parent then looks at the corpse of their child and says, gee, maybe what I did was utterly wrong and now I'm angry at this guy even though I followed him like a boob.

B: They will think, I think, that medicine failed us and because of this nice psychic, we got more years out of her than we would have otherwise.

S: Yeah, Perry, as I said, in my experience, I've never seen it happen.

P: Yeah, I know.

S: You can't prove a negative. I don't know that it's never happened anywhere, but being involved actively in this arena, you just, in fact, trying to go after specific charlatans where you have lawyers and prosecutors trying to find somebody, some victim who's willing to sue them, it's almost impossible to do. That's what I'm saying.

J: It would be really, really cool if Randy went after this guy.

S: Well, I think that, I agree, I think that we should all go after this guy, Levishov, and I also think that the public needs to be aware that this is the legal state of affairs and that children are really not being protected. I would find out what the laws are in your state, in your country, and if they don't make any sense, write a letter to your representative. This needs to be, we need to have a public debate on this issue because right now the laws are completely broken, in my opinion.

E: Steve, I'm reading through the current comments related to this article. There are quite a few of them. I'd say at least half of them are applauding the parents in their decision to have the courage to do what they're doing.

S: That's right. It's very polarized. Half are, the parents are wonderful, spiritual. This is great. And don't listen to the naysayers. The other half are, oh my God, you're killing your kid. So there's really, there's no real room for moderation in this issue. You think that they're either saviors and are courageous or that they are negligent parents who are listening to a charlatan and are putting their kid, this innocent 13-year-old girl, at a totally unnecessary risk. There's really no middle ground between those two extremes. And the comments reflect that.

B: Steve, I've got one more quick comment. Doesn't the fact that this mass, this new mass in her brain, doesn't the fact that it was identified as a mass, doesn't that preclude the fact that it could be normal brain tissue?

S: Yeah, I am not privy to the details of this case. But speaking generally, Bob, you're absolutely correct. If the surgeons or the neurosurgeons who are taking care of her, after having looked at the image saying, this is almost definitely cancer, we need to take it out, then it's likely that it has characteristics on the CAT scan which make it clear that it's a tumor.

B: And or at the very least, not brain tissue.

S: So if it were a tumor, then it would look very different from normal healthy brain tissue on imaging. It would not be a tough call to make. So you're probably correct.

P: The parents have obviously bought in to whatever the psychic is telling them. They're done. They're done.

S: It's unfortunate. Sad case.

P: They sold their souls.

E: Yep, their faith is trumping everything else.

J: Got to keep an eye on this one and see what happens.

Kansas Science Guidelines (21:32)

• Kansas repeals science guidelines questioning evolution
  http://www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/02/14/evolution.debate.ap/index.html

S: Well the next news item is a bit of good news. We've been following the plight of the teaching of evolution in Kansas, that lovely state.

E: They're actually getting around the teaching of evolution in Kansas. They're in perpetual discussion and controversy over this.

B: Well it's the fifth set of science standards in eight years.

S: That's right. So the State Board of Education approved new evolution-friendly science standards with a 6-4 vote. So it's close.

P: 6-4? Sweet pie.

E: Overwhelming 60%.

P: There's certainly proof of devolution.

S: The previous standards brought into question evolution. So they got rid of those and they put in more appropriate science standards. So this is a little victory in Kansas and again the eyes of the world have been on Kansas over this issue because there's been so much back and forth. I think it's a little more than little though because this is the first time that I'm aware that they kind of morphed into their new subtle attack on evolution to teach the controversy which is important. Some scientists think that this is somewhat significant because this is a more subtle attack and science prevailed.

R: Well it's their wedge. It's the thin edge of the wedge.

B: Right and this was the thinnest part yet and we still won.

S: Which was not trying to promote anything positive, just introduce criticism of evolution and that got shut down. That's right. So it's a milestone. It's worth mentioning. It's not a Supreme Court case. One school board, one state could be turned over again in two years which seems to be the pattern in Kansas.

P: It's also not 10-0.

S: It was a slim margin. It was 6-4.

J: The first thing I thought about was who were these other four people?

P: Larry, Moe, Curly and Schaemp.

E: But all these Kansas votes have all been 5-4, 6-4, you know close. They've all been close.

B: Here's a quote that jumped out at me. John Calvert, a retired attorney, accused the board of promoting atheism and Greg Lassie, a retired Wichita area biology teacher, said the new standards undermine families by discrediting parents who reject materialism and the ethics and morals it fosters.

S: Right. That's what it's all about. It's about evolution is evil, it promotes bad morals.

P: Of course.

S: That's what the preachers are teaching.

J: The atheists. There's that dirty word again.

E: Michael Shermer said by all rights, by the description of the procreationist people, scientists should be out causing havoc and mayhem in the streets.

B: Absolutely.

E: Raping altar boys and these sorts of things.

P: Other assorted crimes.

J: Imagine being in the room where these discussions are happening. There's a ton of people from the town there.

S: That'd be fun.

J: It would be interesting to go take a look at it, but just imagine what's going on. I mean, basically the room is divided and you have the believers and the non-believers and they're just going at it tooth and nail.

R: In my head it will always look like Inherit the Wind.

S: That's true.

E: That's a Broadway show now. Did you guys know that?

R: It's just stuck in the air.

P: Oh yeah, it's been for many, many years now.

S: The movie now play about the Scopes Monkey Trial in the 1920s.

P: If I was in there, do you realize this is the Board of Education, not the Board of Theology? Get out.

R: Take that.

S: Actually, a related story. I don't have the full details on this, but I did read a quick press release about a scientist who is holding a course to basically teach scientists how to get onto school boards, which is a really good idea to try to basically pack the school boards with scientists who could actually promote a scientific agenda in education.

P: Might have something to say about the science curriculum?

S: Yeah, because that's how else are we going to get a good science curriculum, unless we have scientists who are unwilling to do their part to promote the public understanding of science and education.

P: We often talk about whether or not we should or should not discuss religion. This is a clear example of when religion crosses the line, because all this anti-evolution stuff is pure religiosity. That's where it comes from.

S: But this is the poster child for religion stomping on science, as you say. This is the issue. We always say this represents what we will go after.

P: Right.

S: Absolutely.

PEAR Closes (26:04)

• Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory (PEAR) Closes
  www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_new/PAW06-07/04-1108/notebook.html

S: There's another bit of good news, which what I think is of as good news. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, which goes by the acronym of P.E.A.R., is closing its doors. And Bob, you did some background research on this. Why don't you tell us about it?

B: Yes. As Steve said, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, shouldn't that be P.E.A.R.L. instead of P.E.A.R.? But that's closing after...

S: That's the P.E.A.R. Laboratory.

E: P.E.A.R.s before the swines.

B: I'll refer to it as P.E.A.R.L. So P.E.A.R.L. is closing after 27 years. This month, I believe, one website said next spring, another one said this February, so one or the other, Robert John founded the laboratories, a former dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and an expert in rocket propulsion, so he's a rocket scientist. He launched...

P: Wow.

E: He's no brain surgeon.

B: He launched P.E.A.R. to test for and characterize unexplained phenomena generated by the interaction of humans and machines. He said, John said that the lab with its aging equipment and dwindling finances has done what it needed to do. If people don't need us after all the results we've produced, then they never will. He was able over the years to raise more than $10 million in private donations over the and at one time employed as many as seven full-time researchers and generated mountains of data, including millions of trials from random number generators. A typical experiment at P.E.A.R. had a subject sitting in front of an electric box flashing numbers just above or below 100. Someone from the staff would yell to the person to either think high or think low and they watched the display. So John's conclusion after all these years is that the anomalous phenomena are real, can be studied scientifically in large data sets and could be used in applications. According to an AP article I read, P.E.A.R. researchers concluded that the people could alter the results in such machines about, now get this, two or three times out of 100,000. John claimed if the human mind could slightly alter a machine, it might be able to be used in other areas of human life such as healing disease. Now two or three times out of 100,000, that is so underwhelming, it just blew me away.

J: How can you even gauge that?

B: Well I've got another take on that though and just as a conclusion to this part, of course this is drawn ridicule from Princeton's mainstream scientific community and professional skeptics like James Randi. At the Skeptic Dictionary though, there's another take on that assessment. Dean Raden and Roger Nelson assessed the data collected by John and his colleagues and they looked at over 14 million trials, that's a lot of trials, by 33 subjects over a seven year period and they found that their subjects performed at the 50.02% level with of course 50.00 being expected by chance. Now according to Dean Raden who wrote The Conscious Universe, The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena, he said that the odds against this happening by accident were beyond a trillion to one. Now that might sound a little bit more impressive than two or three out of 100,000. But the other point to conclude from this though is that, okay, just say he plugged it in the equations properly and he did everything right and the odds are beyond a trillion to one.

S: Bob, just quickly, that's because they're doing millions of trials, that's how you get to those kind of statistics.

B: But is 50.02%, is that a significant level? But one key though is that people will say, all right, a trillion to one, but this is kind of like a false dichotomy. Do you then conclude that psi is at work? Can you say, well, it's got to be some paranormal phenomena? But what people don't realize is that you have to, before you can possibly make that conclusion, you have to exclude all the other possibilities and there are numerous ones. There's numerous examples of cheating by subjects. You have to exclude fraud by scientific investigators, sloppy controls, inadequate protocols, poor record keeping, file drawer effects, drawing grand conclusions from single or small studies, misusing statistics. Now, these aren't just things, these aren't just failings of studies by paranormalists. These are found in all sciences. This happens all the time everywhere and you have to exclude those before you can even approach contemplating that at psi.

P: Anyone would get sloppy after the 10 or 12 millionth trial. You start to get a little lazy.

J: Hey, Bob, I've got a question for you.

B: Shoot.

J: Let's say that it's true that they can affect the machine's outcome a few times every 100,000 times, right?

B: Right.

J: What are you going to do with it? Okay. To what end? Great.

B: Well, what you'd have to do is you'd have to see 100,000 patients and there'd be like two or three chances in that group that you might affect their health. So that's what, is that the application that they're talking about?

J: I'm asking you.

R: They're mostly, yeah, they're mostly focused on trying to use this to better the health of humanity.

P: Those two or three would be sent to the secret psionic labs. They're secret. You don't know about them.

J: If they took that 14 million dollars and sent four or five people to medical school, they would have done a lot of much more good.

B: One last take on this. Now, part of this, the apparatus that they're using, it's a random number generator. Generating random numbers is a key, it's a fundamental part of this. Now, I did a little bit of research on random number generators and I remember reading long ago that it's fundamentally impossible to produce truly random numbers on any deterministic device. I got a great quote from John von Neumann. He says that, anyone who considers arithmetic methods of producing random digits is of course in a state of sin. So I just wonder, and I haven't read any other takes on this, I wonder if just because their random number generator is not perfect, which it can't be, maybe that could explain for some of this deviation. So I'm just throwing that out there. If anybody's more knowledgeable about that, please send us an email.

S: The bottom line is we're talking about a .02% variance. When you're doing any kind of research that deals with people and you come up with your treatment group and your control group and it's 50.02 to 49.98, that's negative. They basically documented to a high degree of precision the absolute absence of extra century perception. That's what they showed. But because they did so many trials, they can give that .02% the appearance of statistical significance. It's really all just mathematical ledger domain. It's nonsense. But you're right, Jay, there's no practical application to such a small, minuscule effect. But that's not the point. The point is to say that no matter how small the effect is, it's an effect. Therefore psi exists. And therefore we could use this data set to justify all of the other psi beliefs and claims that we make. And that's how it's used. That's how it's used by Dean Radin. That's how it's used by all the woo-woo people. You go on these shows. There is peer-reviewed published research showing that psi exists. That becomes their starting point. They don't tell you that it's a .02% variance over millions of trials.

J: So Steve, can we take it to the next step and say they're doing it because it pays their check, gives them a paycheck?

S: Because they're believers. Because they're believers.

P: Because they just believe. That's why. They started with their conclusion.

E: It's always good to go into these experiments.

S: They could have given up a long time ago. They could have given up a long time ago having proved the absence of any kind of psi effect.

J: But that's a big thing. That's a big road to go down. Just because you just happen to believe. I believe that psi exists, so therefore I'm going to dedicate X number of years of my millions of dollars of donated money to come up with this stupid little statistic that's meaningless.

R: They don't just believe. They believe fervently. They're true believers. If you really truly believe that there was something that amazing out there and that you could get evidence of it, you would too. I would. I would dedicate my life to that. That's some crazy stuff that I would love to see.

S: You have to think also for a scientist. Most scientists spend their careers doing competent research that gets buried in this enormous stack of published research. They contribute to this overall process, but they don't really make a huge famous name for themselves, make a lot of money, get Nobel Prizes, only the very elite get that kind of recognition. But you have thousands of working scientists that all would like to have that kind of recognition, that would like to make the world-altering breakthrough discovery. People who get involved in this research, even if they may start out being honest, they think that they're going to change the physics textbooks. It's kind of hard to get to the point where you accept that it's come to nothing and you have to accept a mediocre career. In fact, a lot of scientists, when they get into their 50s and they've had maybe a respectable competent but ultimately mediocre career, that's when they're very vulnerable to shifting over into this woo-woo stuff, because then they think that they fool themselves into thinking that they're on to something really paradigm-changing, something really breakthrough, and they become a true believer, and they can't let it go, because now their whole life's work is sort of wrapped up in this being real, and I think that's probably [inaudible].

J: [inaudible] the reason for being thing.

S: Yeah. They start to think about their legacy as a scientist and they go off on the deep end.

P: That's for sure.

LA Zoo Hires Fung Shui Consultant (35:51)

• Los Angeles Zoo Hires Fung Shui Consultant
  http://realtime.com/realtime_news/rt_offbeat/13462326_zoo_pays_feng_shui_expert_to_aid_monkeys_.html?pageid=nandu.category-top&pageregion=A4

S: One more news item. The Los Angeles Zoo has paid $4,500 to a feng shui expert-

E: They overpaid.

S: -in order to help design their monkey cages.

J: I would have done it for free.

S: According to the principles of feng shui.

R: Well, it does make perfect sense, Steve, because humans and monkeys share a common ancestor.

S: That's right. And that's what they say. They say we have to hope Darwin was right, and that monkeys are close enough to people that the feng shui principles for people will hold true for monkeys, too.

B: I love how they pull in some real science and try to get some credibility.

P: Simona Mainini is the woman that got the $4,500 graft out of the LA Zoo. I called them up at Steve's request, actually, and I tried to get some comment from them, but they have not yet returned my call. I'll let you know if they do in the future.

S: Yeah. I'd like to see how the LA Zoo defends this total waste of money. They should be spending, taking care of these animals.

R: I wonder if they would spend that much on the bird cages.

P: She recommended things like moving the door in one of the observation towers, and she said that the energy around the observation tower was very harsh, and so that a water feature should be put in the enclosure to, "soften with moisture the harsh energy".

J: Harsh energies, Perry. I'm telling you, you've got to watch out. Those harsh energies will knock you down.

E: You should buy an over-the-counter harsh energy softener or something.

P: Very serious.

R: I can just imagine her walking in and saying, and you know, you might want to think about spreading the faeces in that corner.

J: You have to sweep the faeces to the circle at the center of the room.

R: Exactly. Build it up into a pyramid which will focus your energies.

S: Fecal energy?

J: There was a quote from the article. Charles Mays said, "We thought it would be more authentic if we went the extra step and made sure it was done with good feng shui." And I just love the idea of good versus bad feng shui.

S: And just for our listeners who may not know, feng shui is a Chinese tradition whereby you arrange pieces of furniture in a room or the way the doors and windows of a house are laid out, et cetera, in order to promote a positive flow of energy.

P: Of qi.

E: Qi, yes.

S: It's not just qi. It's good luck and health and finances, whatever. You want positive luck energy flowing north into your house. It's basically complete and utter magical thinking nonsense. Penn and Teller did a good show on this. They're covering all the good stuff like this. They're showtime show Bullshit. They hired three feng shui consultants to give a consultation on the same room. And they were completely and totally different. I mean, there's no validity in between. So the nonsense doesn't even match up with the other nonsense.

B: One was good feng shui and the other ones were bad feng shui.

P: This is the Los Angeles Zoo. I mean, this is a major metropolitan zoo. You would think that they would have scientific people.

S: It is California, though. This is California. This is pretty close to the epicenter of woo woo-ness in the multiverse.

E: Your feng shui is as good as my feng shui.

J: There's something, I know that my gut is telling me I should really despise this, but there's something just really funny about this to me.

S: Golden monkey feng shui.

J: I just picture a bunch of people. This is funny. It just cracks me up. Just think of it this way. There's a bunch of people sitting around not thinking scientifically what would be good for the monkeys. We definitely need it to be clean. We need them to have this amount of space because this is what psychologically it would be good for them. But they're thinking more like, okay, there's a doorway that we've got to move, and that tree should be a foot and a half in that direction. And like, they're thinking of things that the monkeys will, it'll never occur to them, any of these things. Never.

R: And we move the window. Bobo will come into good fortune.

J: Yeah. And they're taking it seriously. It just seems like a slapstick comedy to me. I could see Benny Hill doing this.

R: It kind of is.

J: You know what I mean?

S: You almost can't, you can't make fun of it. It's so ridiculous. There's nothing you could do to satirize it or to make fun of it.

R: I don't know. I think mentioning feces.

P: Oh, it's unbelievable.

E: The monkeys are smarter than this feng shui person.

S: Couldn't be dumber.

TAM Interviews Part IV (40:34)

TAM Interviews Part IVThe Amazing Meeting Interviews Part IV
This week:
Christopher Hitchens
and South Park creator Matt Stone

S: Well, there were quite a few news items this week. So, unfortunately, we do not have time to go into any email. And we do want to leave time to continue our series of TAM5 interviews. This week we have interviews with columnist Christopher Hitchens and also creator of South Park, Matt Stone. So let's go to those interviews now.

Interview with Christopher Hitchens (41:07)

S: We're joined now by Christopher Hitchens. Thank you so much for spending some of your time here with us.

CH: It's an honour.

S: I just enjoyed the talk you just gave, which has a lot to do with media integrity. What do you think are the most important things, most important values for someone in your line of work?

CH: Well, I should say what I think is the problem with my profession, as I'll generally call it.

S: That's good.

CH: I mean, the journalistic profession and the media as an industry. Everyone has learned to say the words, celebrity culture, for example, and to be wised up about that. Everyone thinks they've seen through it. But I don't think actually people do quite realize what it entails, as well as a lot of boring stuff about some fairly mediocre people, which takes up a lot of space. What it consists of is in judging people's actions by their reputations, not their reputations by their actions, which is the first job of anyone who wants to be even remotely, I'm using traditional terms for our trade, objective, detached, impartial, scrupulous, even-handed. You don't just take someone at their own face value. You ask a few questions. Well, that's gone now. If someone can be described as a moderate Republican, they're a moderate Republican for life. Saudi Arabia used to be described, still is, as the moderate Arab state. Why was that? Once you've got it called that, half the job is done. Mark Twain used to say, "Get a man a reputation as an early riser. He can sleep till noon." Now, the reason why I mention this, apart from the fact that I think it's important in itself, is that it's very true when it comes to discussions of faith. It is assumed that if someone says, well, I personally am a man or woman of faith, that's a positive remark they've just made.

S: Right.

CH: And entitles them to deferential nods and sincere looks and slight, this expression that I'm making that won't go on the radio, of yes, quite, very good, that's good. We wouldn't have been happy if you hadn't said that. Completely uncritical, unanalytical. And thus you can get utterly bogus reputations, such as the most famous media star of the fundamentalist fanatic group ever, Mother Teresa.

R: And of course you wrote the brilliant Missionary Position, which everyone needs to read.

CH: It's nice of you to say that. I mean, the surprise to me about the book was, certainly only a pamphlet, was that it was the first and only time that anyone had ever tried anything but 100% favourable Niagara publicity for. And the shock that one would even try that, one would do the ABC of the journalist's job, is it all true, what we've heard about this person? The very first thing any reporter should ask themselves. It was as if I had done something absolutely transgressive.

S: It was inconceivable, almost blasphemy.

CH: My admirers even say quite falsely, it was a very brave thing to do, it's an elementary thing to do. When invited on to discuss it, which was very, very seldom, I would always be in the green room sort of quarantined and always on the air, they'd say, well of course that was just a very individual presentation by Mr. Hitchens and so on, as if-

S: They distanced themselves.

CH: -we feel we can't have it said that we never had anyone on ever, once, who had a different opinion, but even when we do, we're going to make it clear it's a very special occasion, a departure from practice. Well then you might as well say you're not in the journalism business.

R: How difficult was it for you to turn over those, the people who could tell you all about exactly what Mother Teresa was all about, because there was at least one nun I know that you talked to who was incredibly damning. How hard was it to find her?

CH: Well a lot of what happens with journalism, on any subject by the way, is that you write something and only then do you hear from the people you should have been interviewing. I mean that's why we call it the first draft. You put something out, then they know who to write to. So I had already heard from people who had gone out idealistically to work for the missionaries of charity so-called in Calcutta and who'd been very shocked by what they'd found. And I put a number of them in my book and also in a documentary that I made. But many more of them came out of the woodwork, sorry for the cliché, when I published it more, including one very serious young woman who'd become a nun and joined the missionaries of charity in their New York office and who knew how much money they had in the bank and she knew why they weren't spending it on the poor, because the money was supposed to go to building convents in honour of Mother Teresa. It wasn't supposed to be for the alleviation of poverty or illness or distress. And who couldn't square this with her conscience. They were going around in rags begging when they were banking huge amounts of money, sometimes in checks or in cash form in the bank every day, that they weren't giving to the needy. That was worth having.

S: It sounds like what you're saying is throughout your career you have noticed that the level of quality of that kind of fact checking and asking questions has gone down, that things are getting worse within the media in general in terms of their level of overall skepticism.

CH: What the media generally do is they reinforce what people already think. They're not going to ask a question that will make the listener, who doesn't understand the question, go to the next channel because they're bored. Maybe there's something more interesting a click away. So the question will be, well, what are we talking about today? I suppose it would be Mrs. Clinton. She will not be asked a question that isn't of the form, well, do you think you're really electable? Way to ask a tough question. Anything more awkward than that, I'm really afraid, apart from anything else, that people wouldn't know what they're talking about. So again, it's a reinforcement. It makes people dumber and then it takes them as being dumb and doesn't ask a challenging question. I think it gets to the point also where those who are hired to ask the questions don't know how to do it.

S: Do you think that the democratization, if you will, of media with the internet and YouTube and podcasts and everything is alleviating that problem because other people will get the information?

CH: I'm fairly sure of it. I mean, I've given up. I only read the Washington Post and the New York Times now to find out what other people think is going on. Not to find out what's going on myself. I'd be a sap if I did that. I'm actually in addiction to quotations online, according to my son, for something I once said, which was that I became a journalist so as I wouldn't have to rely on the press for information. True, true. Those who do are a pity. I read the New York Times to find out what impression its readers are under. When I meet them later in the day in Washington, I'll know what they think they're talking about. I make up my own newspaper every day, usually from things sent to me by intelligent readers or friends, from everything from YouTube to the Times of India or Al-Aqram in Egypt or whatever it might be.

S: That's becoming more the rule and less the exception.

CH: Yeah, but I'm nearly 60 now and I've read a lot of books and I've written more books than some people in the profession have read. And I was lucky, I've had quite a good education and I've been doing journalism for a long time. So when this comes at me, I have a sorting process. I don't just think, hey, a new thing from YouTube, I'll put that on the top of my page. I do worry about people who are new and fresh and coming to it thinking, well, how do they know how to sort out the white noise and the junk from the valuable? What process of a word that's gone out of fashion but I still use of discrimination do they use? That does worry me because if people aren't, so to speak, on the same page in the culture in at least a few ways that we all have a rough agreement what we're talking about, what the common culture is, what the common vocabulary, idiom, vernacular is, then it can be a bit worrying. Everyone's sort of atomized, eccentric, expert on everything and nothing. I don't know. But I do know that this is better than taking the old media at their face value.

S: And why do you think that journalists in general are losing these skills?

CH: Because it's part of the entertainment industry. Yes, and that in turn means taking focus groups on, not just on what kind of movies people would want to watch, which has long been going on, and pre-screening them for that purpose, but, which now does happen, what kind of news stories do you want to see? They do that now. Well, it's crowd pleasing. Everything is populism. The assumption is that the people are in charge and thus should get what they want. But the parallel assumption, which is partly necessitated by it, is utter contempt for these people on the part of those who are doing it. And how much more easily can we manipulate them today while pretending to flatter them, which is actually what populism is. It's an insult to democracy, not a parody of it. In Martin Amis's novel about Fleet Street, about the newspaper business in England called Yellow Dog, at the editorial conference in the morning they don't refer to our readers, they refer to our wankers. Without trying to be funny, I mean, matter of factly you refer to them. We've got a few wankers letters today. Shall we print them or not? But of course the paper sells itself as the newspaper of the common man and woman, the one we stick up for you. In Washington for a long time, Channel 7 News every night used to have a section of the news program called Channel 7 On Your Side. How do you have a news channel that's on your side?

R: They're openly admitting they're biased.

CH: Yes, but the bias is in favour of you, the average citizen, your lovely family and your gorgeous children.

R: We were just discussing that, who we were talking with, we were talking about?

S: Peter Segal.

R: Peter Segal. We were talking about how easy it is to seek out something that just confirms your own beliefs these days. We have an incredible array of options to choose from and we go for exactly what is going to confirm our own beliefs.

CH: Well, we all do that and don't spend time on stories that bore us or upset us perhaps and we self-select, but most people are willing to be exposed to new ideas and to challenges. In fact, we would rather like the idea. It's just that they're not getting that. They're not going to be offered it.

R: Well, I mean there are opposing viewpoints that you can find. Let's just take the right and left, for instance. You have your right biased newspaper or your left biased newspaper, but people don't want the right biased if they're already on the left. So it seems to me like we do have a choice. People just aren't choosing to find that stuff.

CH: The problem is not that people will say in Washington, not read The Washington Times because it's run by the conservatives, because a lot of liberals do read The Washington Times because one of the things is quite a well-written paper, and its op-ed page is a little more various than The Washington Post, which is very bland and rather centrist. It's not that. It's the pretense that when they're reading The New York Times, they're reading a paper that doesn't have a bias, the affectation of objectivity. People use the word objective as if it meant even-handed or fair-minded or impartial or bipartisan. None of these words mean objective at all. Objective means that in a confrontation with the evidence, you would be willing to change your own mind, and you'll continue to subject yourself to that implied challenge. That's what objectivity means. The New York Times presents itself as a paper that has no opinion that you could detect from its reportage. You'd have to go to the editorial page to find out what its collective view was. Well, that's nonsense. I mean, I don't think anyone reading The New York Times can't tell what its collective view of matters is from its quotidian coverage. It's just that that pretense isn't worth having. Fleet Street journalism is often thought to be better for that reason in that the bias of newspapers in England is undisguised so that there's no hypocrisy, there's no fraud.

Interview with Matt Stone (52:55)

S: Well, we have the pleasure of sitting here with Matt Stone, one of the creators of South Park.

MS: Yes, thank you very much.

S: Thank you for joining us. So I think the burning question all of our listeners have that I need to ask up front is, how is it that you guys are just so totally awesome?

J: Oh, God.

MS: Well, there's a very easy answer to that. I don't know. I don't know. Coming to this skeptics convention, I guess it is, we're always amazed. We came because we're friends of Penn and we're fans of Randi, and that's why we're here. And so to come to a place and have all these people come up to you and say, you mean this much to me, and like you've spoken to, it's kind of an amazing experience.

S: You didn't know you were a skeptic.

MS: I didn't know I was a skeptic. That's kind of what I'm saying. I kind of learned afterwards that I'm kind of a little bit of a skeptic. So that's cool.

S: But you guys need to know that it's obvious from the show that we watch it, we watch it for a long time, and we talk to each other and say, you know what? These guys get it. They seem to get it.

B: The douchebag episode.

S: The douchebag episode.

MS: Classic.

S: It's actually the definitive criticism of cold reading.

MS: Of cold reading.

S: It's textbook.

MS: Well, a lot of that came from wanting to make fun of, for me, just watching somebody like, I mean that whole philosophical question, is there any harm done? If there's any harm done by pretending to be a psychic. And it's just watching people like really think that they're talking to their loved one or that he's talking to their loved one who just died. It's just like, man, you're a douche.

S: It's cruel.

MS: That's it. But then we learned about cold reading after. Like, it's kind of cool doing South Park being me and Trey little geeky naturally curious people. We do research stuff, you know? So I found out about cold reading while doing that show. I didn't know about it before. And so in, for instance, the atheism episode this last run, that was like, I mean, I read, I got into that subject, you know?

S: You're learning on the job.

MS: Yeah, learning on the job. So it's cool like that, you know?

J: Well, after we all discussed basically the brief that you gave on what cold reading is and how it's bullshit. And we all were like, it is absolutely perfectly concise. We couldn't have said it better ourselves. And that's what we do. That's our number one thing that we do.

B: How many times? I mean, I've written an article about it. I've read other skeptics write about it. It's so concise and pithy. Like, wow, that's beautiful.

S: It's also, now, John Edwards is the biggest douche.

MS: Yeah, he's the biggest douche. I love that song at the end. The biggest douche in the universe.

J: Are you going to have Saddam on the show still even after he's gone?

MS: Oh, man, I don't know. We were so mad because we had this idea for a big, like Saddam Hussein execution extravaganza. And we were going to do it last run. And we're like, maybe we'll wait until he gets executed next year. And then it happened. And now I don't know if we can do it.

J: Well, look, he's in hell.

B: Or every now and then his head just kind of flops to the side. He's got to write it.

MS: He's a good character.

E: He's finally a Satan's bitch now.

J: Another thing I have, so many things I want to get to real quick. First off, the World of Warcraft. The absolute funniest 30 minutes of my life. There's so many people like that. You obviously did research.

MS: Oh, yeah, Trey plays World of Warcraft. But we have about 70 people in our office. And they're all pretty animation geeks. And, I mean, 68 of them play World of Warcraft. I mean, it's a crazy popular game.

S: We might have played once or twice.

MS: Yeah, but usually it's really cool, too. But if you walk around our office, you'll see South Park on screens being animated. And if somebody has a break, they're playing World of Warcraft. So it's like we just, the idea almost came about from, just our office. Just walk around our office. So, yeah.

J: So what was the, in your opinion, the definitive we went too far moment that you've ever done?

MS: Oh, in South Park?

J: Yeah.

MS: It's probably that Roman, the Bloody Mary show where we had to poke it blood on the face. I was like, wow, that's, we can say that we wanted to make a statement and this and that. But at the end of the day, we just were like, I don't think we went too far. I don't think we went too far. But that's about as far as we've gone. Well, he's with Catholics a couple of times. I mean, the whole, oh, hey, all the great queen spider episode. Well, I mean, that goes back to a fundamental. I as I said on the stage, I don't consider myself an atheist. And if I am in any bit, I don't, I don't hate religion. I'm just not, I'm just not there. But I do hate parts about the Catholic Church. And I mean, that episode. I mean, there's a when the sex scandal with the little boys it's just like, come on, guys. You're like, that's just, we got to we got to say something about that. And it doesn't even really say a whole lot about the doctrine. It just says about that organization of like, come on, guys. He's a cool guy. He's a cool guy. Yeah, exactly. So in other words, like to do an episode and actually say something, you have to figure out what you want to say and put it without just being a dick. And just like, yeah, look how stupid it is. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like very concise. Like, this is what's wrong about that right there, guys. And it's actually probably, I don't know, like a Christian criticism of the Catholic Church is almost stronger than a secular one at that point. You know what I mean? If that makes sense. Like we wanted the priest to be the one to say this is wrong instead of like somebody outside the church. So we kind of, we do religion in a lot of different ways.

J: So Matt, being that Tom Cruise is my nemesis. What can I do to convince you guys to please continue the decimation of his character on the show?

MS: I don't know. I don't know if we have to do anything.

B: What more can be done?

MS: I mean, but because we do get trapped in that sometimes, but like for us, the fun part about South Park is absolutely, we do something, we get into it, and then we move on.

J: That makes sense.

MS: And it's important because I get that way too. I want to do like five more atheism episodes, but it's really important for us to like, if we do it, clear the plate, move on.

S: Do you have Sylvia Brown in your sights? Is she on your hit list?

MS: No, I just, I just kind of found out about her.

J: Look into her. There's so much there.

S: She's good for you.

MS: Do you know Sylvia Brown? Yeah, we got to figure it out. Yeah, the woman, the kid that was just found out after four years, she told the family that he was dying, that he got killed.

S: And tortured. Turns out he was alive. She should be easy mark for you guys. I like to see that.

MS: Doesn't that suck.

J: What did you think of the Borat movie?

MS: I loved it.

J: Wasn't it great?

MS: Yeah, I loved it. He's a super duper duper genius, that Borat.

S: We're getting the high sign over here, so. Thanks, man.

Science or Fiction (59:25)

Question #1: A new study suggests that chimpanzees have been crafting and using stone tools for thousands of years.

Question #2: Newly published article claims to have resolved Einstein's famous twin paradox.

Question #3: Researchers have begun studying the use of magnets to correct sunken chest deformity.

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 and one is fictitious. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics and you listeners at home to see if you can figure out which one is the fake. Everybody ready?

B: Yep.

J: Absolutely.

R: Bring it on.

S: New studies suggest that chimpanzees have been crafting and using stone tools for thousands of years. Number two, a newly published article claims to have resolved Einstein's famous twin paradox. And item number three, researchers have begun studying the use of magnets to correct sunken chest deformity. Perry, go first.

Perry's Response

P: Now, having tested magnets ourselves, I know they're crap, but this one's got to be true. There's got to be some powerful magnet something in there to pull your chest up. All right. Chimps and tools. Well, psychics use tools, so I suppose chimps could manage it. And now, Stephen, what was the second one?

S: The second one was a newly published article claims to have resolved Einstein's famous twin paradox.

P: So you'd have to actually know what the twin paradox was in order to make a reasonable guess.

B: Perry, I'll talk to you later.

S: It'd help.

P: I know you would, Bob.

S: It would help.

J: Steve you said that they resolved it?

S: Yes.

R: Hold on. Let's hear what Perry has to say.

P: That one is clearly fake. The second one is clearly fake.

R: Because you don't know what it is.

P: I read all the research done on twins during the Nazi era, and it's clearly fake.

R: During the famous double mint study of 1998.

P: So it doesn't matter what research I use. I rely on my own sources. Thank you.

S: All right, Evan, go ahead.

Evan's Response

E: You're going to make me go to the Akashic file for this one, aren't you? Chimps using stone tools. That seems quite plausible. Resolve the twin paradox or magnet repair, sunken chest deformity syndrome. All right. It's quite obvious that we're where's my coin heads, tails, that I'll agree with Perry. I'll go with Perry and say that they have not resolved the twin paradox. It was probably the triple paradox, not the twin paradox.

P: Of course. Of course.

S: Jay, go ahead.

Jay's Response

J: There's a lot of pressure on me because I don't want to disappoint Mike from the boards. This is so frustrating.

R: And for those of you just joining us, there's a running bet on Jay catching up to the rest of us in the science or fiction rankings.

P: The rest of us are way, way ahead of him.

R: It's not looking good.

S: Come on, Jay, we're counting on you.

J: I know, I know. It's just the only one that I don't really have any real memory of reading anything about. The magnet thing, I don't know, that strikes a chord. I thought I read something about that. But the twin paradox thing doesn't sound right to me.

S: All right.

J: So that's the fake.

S: Okay. Rebecca, you go.

Rebecca's Response

R: I'm going to have to side with the peanut gallery. I'm thinking the twin paradox has not.

S: Okay. Hey, Bob.

P: I've been called worse things by better people.

Bob's Response

B: Okay. Chimps crafting tools for thousands of years. Yes. That is true. That is true.

P: Thank you, Dr. Leakey.

J: My left leg is a superconductor.

B: Einstein's twin paradox. I've always liked that paradox. One problem, though, is that I didn't know that it really was a paradox. I thought they pretty much resolved it. And they did have an explanation for it. But apparently somebody came up with another way to deal with it. That is true. Magnets correcting sunken chest deformity. That is false.

Steve Explains Item #1

S: Okay. So you all agree that a new study suggests that chimpanzees have been crafting and using stone tools for thousands of years.

E: God, I hope that's fiction now.

S: That is fiction. You're all wrong.

P: Yes. Have you ever fooled us all before?

S: Yes.

B: What are you talking about?

R: Okay, wait a minute, because I read that.

S: I know.

B: You read that, too.

S: I'm sure you did, but you didn't listen carefully. All right. I made this a little tougher.

R: Apparently not.

S: You have to listen carefully to the details. A new study suggests that chimpanzees have been crafting and using stone tools for thousands of years.

P: That was very crafty, Dr.

S: They've been using stone tools for thousands of years, probably.

J: Oh my God.

S: Not crafting them.

E: They went to the hardware store.

P: So what happened? A snap-on truck drove by.

S: There's no evidence that they've ever modified any stone tools.

R: Steve, some of the researchers did think that they actually made them because they were suggesting that they hadn't had contact with humans, but other researchers were saying that they had had contact with humans in the form of hunters as opposed to farmers.

J: And they wear perfume.

S: Well, you're right, but that was talking about whether or not humans might have taught the chimpanzees how to use the stones. In other words, they were mimicking humans. And the point of that was that the chimpanzees have probably been doing it for so long that they were doing it without having learned from people. In fact, it's possible that the common ape ancestor between humans and chimps used stone tools, and chimps and human ancestors have been doing it since that split about five million years ago.

P: That's true.

S: The evidence is just finding basically bits of crushed nuts and stuff on stones. But the stones are not crafted. They are not modified.

P: There's also that tool that's long and curved and sharp for de-beaking birds. I mean, that's been around since [inaudible].

S: You're right. I admit, guys, I admit that was tough.

B: That was low.

R: That was very tricky.

R: It was tricky.

S: But the crafting, that was big.

Steve Explains Item #2

S: Now, two, newly published article claims to have resolved Einstein's famous twin paradox. Again, this is a tricky one because you have to really listen to how I state things. Newly published article claims, that is true. This one is true. However, a lot of people think that this guy's full of it, that this is bunk, because as Bob said, the paradox really isn't that much of a paradox. This is an LSU professor. So this is the Louisiana State University professor of physics. And he published this in the International Journal of Theoretical Physics, which is a peer-reviewed journal, basically stating that the twin paradox, so here's the twin paradox really quickly. If Einstein's theory of relativity says that if someone's traveling close to the speed of light, that time for them will slow down. And this has been verified. Clocks traveling at different speeds actually can measure a difference. And these atomic clocks are very, very sensitive. The paradox is this. If you have one twin who goes on a spaceship and flies away from the Earth, and the other twin stays behind, the twin that flies away from the Earth comes back after traveling close to the speed of light. Say for them, they've been traveling for five years. When they get back, their twin will be 10 years older. The paradox is if speed is all relative, then why is it that the twin that went on the rocket trip and came back is the one for whom time has slowed and not the twin who stays behind? Because to either twin, the other one is moving away and coming back. All motion is relative. Now, I, too, was under the impression that this really isn't a paradox because the solution is that the twin that is under acceleration is the one that experiences the time dilation effects. The twin that's going on the rocket ship has to accelerate to a certain speed and then slow down, turn around, re-accelerate, and slow down again. And that's that acceleration that causes, that's the asymmetry between the two twins. And that accounts for it. Now, on the Phys.org message board, this is just a lot of physics geeks talking about this. The article is getting ripped to shreds. Most people basically saying that this really isn't a paradox, so what's this guy talking about? And I'm not sure what the ultimate answer is going to be. This guy is saying that his point is that you have to look at the relative motions, not just with respect to each other, but with respect to the distant stars. And yet, I am not sure. I don't know enough theoretical physics to know if that makes sense or not.

B: Yeah, I know. You're right. But that seems like a decent way, just another way to spot the asymmetry in the two.

S: Yes.

B: Using that as a background, you could see that asymmetry would be in your face. But, like you said, I don't think it's necessary.

S: Yeah, it may be true. You're right about it. It may be true, and he found another way of looking at it that works, but it may just be redundant to what's been worked out before. You're right. And that seems to be the reaction to this article. But we'll keep an eye on it and see what the final result is. But this was published in a peer-reviewed journal of theoretical physics, so I thought that was interesting.

Steve Explains Item #3

S: The third one is pretty straightforward.

R: Steve?

S: Yes?

R: Before we go to the third one, can we just go back to the chimps for a mere moment?

J: Let's go back to the chimps.

P: Sure.

R: I have the article from Live Science in front of me.

P: We're still arguing.

R: The very first sentence is, Chimpanzees learn to make and use stone tools on their own rather than copying humans, new evidence suggests.

S: Well, I'm reading the press release from the Max Planck Society, so I think that Live Science article is not accurate to the original actual report.

R: You know, if you're going to do an argument from authority by quoting Max Planck...

S: So I'm saying this is the original... I think you're reading an interpretation of the press release. I'm going to the more original source. Does it mention anything about making, working, crafting, just using them.

R: I am going to officially protest this science fiction.

P: You should.

E: Yes. God forbid you'd be wrong yet this year. You're right. I agree.

B: So Steve, not only do we have to scan these news articles, we have to read and understand them? Is that what you're saying?

P: It is a little outrageous.

E: Twin Peaks and monkey tools.

J: I'm perfectly fine with getting it wrong.

E: This is awful.

S: Well, I will look deeper into that and then happily revise the results if there's actual evidence that they crafted stone tools. The third one is, researchers have begun studying the use of magnets to correct sunken chest deformity. This one is true, of course. So what they're basically doing is attaching a powerful magnet to the chest, the sternum, and then using an external magnet to provide a constant pulling on it in order to force the bones. So basically, the sunken chest deformity is as it sounds. The connection between the ribs and the sternum are malformed so that the chest has a very deep sunken in appearance. So they're trying to basically just pull it out. And the magnets are being used to apply a constant pressure.

P: Like a dented car.

J: Yeah, I know a few girls that could use that treatment.

P: Oh, Jay.

S: There's quicker ways of achieving the results you're interested in, Jay.

R: Hey, Jay, if you want the tits bigger, just blow more air in.

B: Oh, nice.

P: Ba bang! Oh, two points. Blow more air in, she says.

J: That's amazing. That was actually funny. That was pretty good.

P: That was very good.

J: Very good, Rebecca.

S: All right, so I had a clean sweep this week, but with Rebecca contesting the chimpanzees working the stone tools, or crafting the stone tools, but we will get confirmation on that for next week.

Skeptical Puzzle (1:11:34)

This Week's Puzzle

Identify the number sequence:

0.0, 2.6, 23.4, 25.2, 3.1, 26.7, 97.8, 28.3


Last Week's Puzzle

Explain the following sequence:
10, 1, 5, 25, 50

Answer: American coinage from smallest to largest
Winner: Jared Zimmerman

S: Evan.

E: Hi.

S: Please give us the results of last week's puzzle.

E: Last week's puzzle, in fact, was a number sequence. Ten, one, five, twenty-five, fifty. And there were quite a few correct answers on this one. The first one to get it correct, though, was Jared Zimmerman. So congratulations. From the United Kingdom, I might add. And he did realize that that is the ascending size of U.S. coinage between one cent and fifty cents.

B: Oh, very nice.

E: This puzzle wasn't without its—

S: Controversy?

E: Well, I wouldn't say it's so much controversy, but a few people had some interesting things to chime in about it. Most, I think, people were curious as to why I would do a puzzle which is simply based on U.S. coins, and that would put everyone else in the world, other than U.S. citizens, to a disadvantage. And I guess there's something to be said for that. I mean, the real reason I did it—

P: It's probably because you're from the United States.

E: Well, I'm going to have something to do with that.

P: I'm just guessing here.

E: The real reason I threw that puzzle in was just to kind of break up the string of puzzles a bit, just to make something that was more based on logic, obviously.

J: More mathematical.

E: Right. Something instead of just another skeptical-based puzzle. But I wanted to try again this week. I'm going to do another numerical series puzzle.

S: While you're talking about the controversy, didn't a few people point out that there are dollar denomination coinage that's actually smaller than a 50-cent piece? A dollar or a smaller than a 50-cent piece?

E: Yeah, it is. But actually, I purposefully left dollar out of it because—

P: That's why it stopped at 50.

E: Exactly. So I did. I purposefully left the dollar amount out because I felt it would have been too easy at that point, a little too recognizable. So really, it's the series of coins between the values of 1 and 50.

S: Right.

E: Is the actual, I guess, official answer to that puzzle. But I'm going to do another one this week, and then next week I'm going to go back to doing more skeptical-based word puzzles and so forth. But I want to see if people can identify this number sequence. So here's this week's puzzle. 0.0, 2.6, 23.4, 25.2, 3.1, 26.7, 97.8, and 28.3. So that should be a sequence that would be recognized by anybody in the world. It is not country-specific.

J: Evan, that was a good puzzle, man. I'm puzzled.

E: Well, think about it and try to come up with the answer. Enjoy.

'J: 'That's what we try to do. That's the point, isn't it?

S: Evan, you also sent me the quote this week, so why don't you go ahead and read the quotefor us.

Quote of the Week (1:14:25)

'I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.'- Issac Asimov, his reply to the question 'Don't you believe in anything?'

E: So this week's quote is as such. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be." That was said by Isaac Asimov. And he was replying to the question that was asked of him. Don't you believe in anything? And that was his answer.

B: That's a great reply.

P: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

S: Yes, the skeptic's mantra.

J: He's a cool dude. I liked him.

S: Yeah, it's unfortunate. I never got to meet him. That's one of my regrets.

E: I can channel him for you.

S: Well, that is our show for this week. Thanks again, everyone, for joining me.

J: Thank you, Steve. Thanks for doing it from vacation, Steve.

P: Yeah.

S: Always a pleasure.

R: Enjoy Florida.

S: I will. I've got a few more days before I have to return to the arctic chill back in New England.

J: Steve, before you cut it off, I just wanted to let the listeners know I'm going to be in Maui the first week of March. If anybody has any good ideas of something I could research out there while I'm away, I'd be really happy to do it. I'm going to have a lot of free time, so it'd be really cool to come up with something that I can look into.

P: All our Maui listeners, write in.

E: We have some Maui listeners.

P: Of course we do.

S: Jay is going to debunk Maui pseudoscience.

P: There you go.

E: Aloha.

S: Excellent.

B: Jay, I got one for you. When I was there years ago, what's the main volcano on Maui? It's Haleakala.

S: Wanna huck a movie?

B: I remember when I was there in 89, Haleakala, at the top, there's lots of lava everywhere from previous flows. They said, do not take any hardened lava because their whole, what's their lava god, Pele? You're not allowed to take it. They said that they get mailed back, I don't know, pounds and pounds, maybe even tons of lava every year because people take it and then of course they experience bandwidth, which must be because they took it and they mail it back.

E: Braidy bunch episode. That is lame.

S: That was the tiki.

B: Of course I had to take some. Even in 89, I took a chunk.

J: Bob, that's why you went bald. You shouldn't have done it.

B: I still have that and I'm very glad I took it.

R: Wait, is it possible that maybe they tell you that because they really don't want you to take the lava?

J: The island away, right?

R: For some natural reason.

J: They don't want you to take the island away. It's an island. Okay, I'll be there. I'll be eating the...

S: All right, Jay. You report back when that, that's in March you're talking about.

R: Also for all our listeners, I'm not going anywhere warm. I'm here in freezing cold Boston for the rest of my goddamn life. Sorry, I just got a little bitter.

E: It'll build character, believe me.

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