SGU Episode 156

page in progress --Teleuteskitty (talk) 17:06, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Introduction

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

S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, today is Wednesday July 16^th, 2008, and this is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical society. Joining me this evening are Bob Novella,

B: Hey everybody

S: Rebecca Watson

R: Hello everyone

S: Jay Novella

J: Hey guys

S: and Evan Bernstein

E: Hi everyone,

This Day in Skepticism (0:30)

E: On this day in 1994, Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 collided with Jupiter

J, B, R: Ooooh

B: Cool

E: Impact continued for several days until July 22^nd

S: That was a cool event

B: Yeah, it was awesome

E: It was remarkable, remarkable stuff

S: What was the impact that hit Jupiter with was it thousands of times like the Hiroshima bomb. Pretty nasty.

B: I'm sure it was something like that

E: Yeah

S: Something like that. But Jupiter's good that way, Jupiter sucks up all those comets so they don't hit us

E: Left that black scar on Jupiter, which, I don't think anybody expected that to happen, so they were- it was incredible

J: Did you guys know that the eye of Jupiter is about the size of the Earth?

E: Yes

S: I did know that

B: Everybody knows that

R: Oh, come on guys, at least act a little impressed

B: No

S: Did you know that the picture that you see of Jupiter is-

J: upside-down? Yeah, we know that, get with it.

(laughter)

R: Alright, we're about to have a nerd-off

(laughter)

E: Did you know your eye turns things upside-down and re- well, you know

S: Your brain swaps it back up?

R: Yes.

E: That's right, yes

B: Yes

R: Do you know I'm naked?

E: So therefore, is Jupiter really right-side-up, and we're just seeing it upside-down, oh

B: Ha- next

S: We have an interview coming up, another TAM interview, this one with Neil deGrasse Tyson

E&R: Oooh

R: Big fan

S: Yes, excellent

J: He's a cool guy, his talk at TAM was excellent

S: It was stellar

J: It was called 'brain droppings'

R: Ha-ha! Stellar

E: Yeah, that was good

(laughter)

R: It was out of this world, ha-haa

(laughter)

B: It was…cool

S: But first, some news items-

R: It was astronomical! haa

(laughter)

E: Oh, god

News Items

Black Hole Hubbub (2:10)

DallasNews.com: Dallas County officials spar over ‘black hole’ comment

S: The first news item has a bit of an astronomy theme to it as well, Dallas County officials spar over the ‘black hole’ comment.

J: Oh god

S: This is just a bit of ridiculous funniness: Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections “has become a black hole” because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office. Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud “Excuse me!” He then corrected his colleague, saying that his office had become a “white hole”. So apparently, commissioner Price took the black hole comment as a racial slur, apparently not knowing what a black hole is

E: Wow

R&J: (inaudible)

B: or, not even that, you don't have to know what a black hole is, you just know what the expression, the colloquial expression means

S: Yeah, it's pretty-

B: And he obviously didn't know that either

J: Wait, wait, wait, you can't assume that he didn't know either of those things, because some people are that uptight. Like, the term black hole is no longer acceptable to this person,

R: (skeptically) mmmm-

J: that's how I read it

B: I think we assume ignorance because there's just- you can't have a problem with the expression black hole, because that means you then really should then have expression with black-list, blackmail and all the other expressions with black in it. So, I'm just assuming that he's just stupid.

E: (laughs) When in doubt, assume stupidity.

S: Well, scientifically illiterate, at least. And that also said, a white hole would eject paperwork from it, producing more paperwork, not something that would cause it to disappear.

E: If it would've been so much cooler if he'd called him a white dwarf, that would have shown that he knew what was going on.

(laughter)

E: That, and also given him a cosmic slam.

S: I wonder if the American Indians are upset at the term red giant.

(pained laughter)

S: I mean you can take this to an absurd extreme.

B: Yeah, that's my point

R: It's already to the absurd and extreme

S: That's right, it is! You can't even satire it. But the interesting thing is, also present at the meeting, Judge Thomas Jones, who is also black, demanded an apology from Mayfield.

E: (in despair) Oh!

S: So he also didn't get the scientific reference of a black hole.

E: Now, isn't that incredible, three lawyers in a room, and two of the three of them have no clue what a black hole is! It's pathetic!

(laughter)

J: You know, we're moving backwards, guys, we're not moving forwards

B: The cool thing is, though, he refused to apologise.

S: Good

J: He shouldn't

R: Maybe we are moving backwards, if the universe is expanding

S: Actually, the news items get worse and worse from there.

It's Just a Cracker (4:34)

Pharyngula: IT'S A FRACKIN’ CRACKER!
NetworkWorld.com: Woman fired over death threat sent from work e-mail

S: The next one I wanted to talk about- it's been kind of a slow science news story week.

B: It was, it was.

S: We got some, I don't know if it's the summer slow-down, I don't know, no-one's in the lab publishing research, I don't know what it is.

(laughter)

S: But, these are a few funny items. The next one has to do with PZ Myers, the blogger who blogs for Pharyngula. PZ Myers, in addition to doing a science blog, Pharyngula also is an atheist blog, and also he does not shy away from expressing his political opinions on that blog. So it's really his personal blog where he talks about a bunch of different issues, including his atheiim.

R: What happened was, it started when this kid in Florida went into a Catholic church and he took communion, and he didn't swallow the wafer like supposedly the Catholic priest turns this cracker into the flesh of Jesus, and you actually eat the flesh of Jesus. Like, they actually believe that the waver turns into flesh, which is really gross. But set that aside for a second. So the kid takes the cracker outside of the church to go show his friend, and the Catholics freak out over it. First, they try to keep him from leaving, and he runs away, and then it turns into this big uproar, where people are sending him nasty letters, and Catholics are up in arms. Not all Catholics, you know, I think that most Catholics understand that it's not really that big of a deal, but there's a certain subset of the hardcore Catholics who were not having any of this, including Bill Donahue of, I believe it's called the 'Catholic League'? He kind of freaked out about the whole thing. So PZ steps in and reports on the story, and happens to say that he thinks it's all a bunch of crap, thhat people are coming down too hard on this kid, supposedly there were death threats against the kid-

S: They called it a hate crime, you know, he objected to the characterizing this as a hate crime.

J: Hate crime?

R: Right. And PZ said "you know what? It's a frackin' cracker"

(laughter)

R: as he's- I would never say the word 'frackin', but I'm using his words, 'It's a frackin' cracker'

S: Well, fracking is perfectly cromulent, I mean it's right out of Battlestar Galactica.

(laughter)

J: Friggin'

R: Fraggin'

E: No

S: No, it's Battlestar Galactica lingo, I love that.

R: Ok, nerd

(laughter)

R: So- I prefer 'smegging', ok? It's a smegging cracker

S: Smegging?

R: That's Red Dwarf, by the way.

S: (laughing) Ok

R: I just out-nerded you, just in case you didn't know. So, PZ says, yeah, it's just a cracker, let it go. In fact, PZ says: if anybody out there wants to get another eucharist host, cracker thing and send it to him, he will personally desecrate it in the manner of his choosing.

(laughter)

R: So, you know, and that's-

S: And for some strange reason, the Catholics took offence at that

R: (cheekily) Yeah! I don't know why! (normally) But Bill Donahue sent his minions to, not only pepper PZ with emails, but to also write to PZ's employer – he is a professor for a university – and try to get him fired. So people when on, and they flooded the university with these angry emails, and then also sent actual death threats to PZ! Over a cracker! It was… it was pure insanity. So wait, cos it gets better, PZ took a few of the worst death threats and in order to discourage other death threats from coming in, he posted them to the blog, copy-paste, complete with email address and full headers-

J: Woah

R: -ok? So, one of the death threats came from an email address that was 'so-and-so'@1-800-Flowers.com. So immediately people are commenting on this post, 'could it really be somebody who works for 1-800-Flowers who's using their work email to send a death threat? They check the IP numbers, and yes! It actually came from the computer of a 1-800-Flowers employee, people start sending that person emails-

B: Oooh

R: -and also notifying the IT department at 1-800-Flowers. Well, that person was found, it was a female employee, which surprised a lot of people because of the language, including the C-word, and others. And that employee was fired, shortly thereafter, that employee's husband stepped forward to say that it was actually him, using his wife's computer to send PZ a death threat.

B: Too late

R: And you know what? It's PZ's fault that the wife got fired!

(sounds of weariness)

R: And that's where we are right now.

B: Perfect

R: All over a cracker!

S: The whole affair is officially a 'kerfuffle'

(general mumblings of 'kerfuffle')

R: It's a cracker kerfuffle

S: A cracker kerfuffle, it absolutely is. It was a to-do, but it's beyond that now

R: It's upgraded-

S: Upgraded to a kerfuffle

R: -to a kerfuffle, mm-hmm

B: It's not a, like a holy hubbub or-

S: A hubbub?

R: Hubbub? No, but we are quickly approaching mêlée

(laughter)

S: So, a couple of things I wanted to note about this, when Donahue was on the campaign to get PZ fired, his argument was that PZ's blog is accessible from his work computer.

B,J&E: Oooh

S: Hello! It's on the internet!

R: I think he means that it was linked from the university's website? You mean?

S: No, his statement says 'accessible from', if he was referring to the fact that there was a link from somewhere, he wasn't even that specific. Maybe he was referring to that, but-

R: I think that's what he meant, because part of the angry letters were to encourage the university to stop linking to PZ's blog from the university website.

S: That may be true, but his argument was that he should be fired, because he was using, somehow, official university computer to access the web- his blogs. His blog is on scienceblogs, it's not on the university website, it's not hosted by the university, I mean, you know, firing somebody because it links to another site? It's ridiculous.

R: Yeah.

S: And of course, this all becomes a question of freedom of speech. I have no preoblem with anyone criticizing PZ for what he's doing, PZ has a right to say whatever he wants to say, it's his blog, he could use it to express whatever opinions he wishes, people have a right to criticize him for that on their own venues. But they tried to essentially make the point that PZ doesn't have the right to do what he did, or to criticize Catholic beliefs. And this comes up occasionally, essentially the premise is, that some religionists use, and the recent cartoon incident with the Muslims came up as well, like cartoons depicting Mohammed, is that other people, in fact all other people must respect the things that they deem to be sacred. That's the false premise I think they're coming from, so you think that's sacred, so you can revere it, you could, you know, do whatever you think is appropriate, but you can't demand that other people behave as if it's sacred, out of this notion that that's necessary in order for you to have your religious freedom. So I think that's the logical fallacy, false premise, that they're proceeding from. You know, this is- that's free speech.

E; How about the first amendment?

S: You know, burning a flag, if it's part of political speech, that's protected free speech. You know, desecrating a wafer? If that's part of your political free speech, you have the right to do that, you know?

R: Yeah, the thin is, they gave him a cracker, and he didn't sign anything saying 'I will eat the cracker on the premises, and not hold it hostage'.

(laughter)

R: I mean, it's all, the whole thing! It's just-

E: Its ridiculous

R: -soo ridiculous, it blows my mind that people could actually threaten the life, or even just the livelihood, of another person over a cracker.

S: Yeah, and the most absurd thing, is that it draws the most ridiculous negative attention to them, and it gives PZ and other critics the opportunity to say 'you're upset over what happens to a cracker, and not over your priests buggering little boys, you know, let's put things in perspective!'

R: Yeah, the same day all of that was blowing up, I read in the newspaper, it was a headline that was literally like 'Pope considering apology' (laughs) 'for Catholic priests'

B: Yeah!

R: Like, seriously?

E: Whatever happened to the old adage 'turn the other cheek', and all these other-

J: Rebecca, what's the pope doing? Is he sitting there like 'should I apologise? Was it bad enough?'

R: Exactly! 'Well, once we deal with this cracker kerfuffle'

(laughter)

R: 'Maybe then I'll give some thought to that'. Yeah, and one of the funny things that strikes me in the 'turn the other cheek' category, is that a lot of the people emailing PZ were saying things like 'you just say something like that about the Muslims and see what happens to you, and then we'll all be laughing'. And it's basically 'I'm not going to kill you, but I'll laugh when someone else does the dirty work for me', and it's like, you know, not much better

S: Right, yeah, in fairness, I think this is a rabid minority, it's not your rank and file-

R: Yeah, it definitely is.

S: But, talk about negative press, it's incredible.

J: To add a little detail on the death-threat that PZ received, the email gave him until the first of the month to resign his position at the university, or, the email said, you have two choices, you can quit your job for the good of the children, or you can get your brains beat in. That's a Christian.

B: Wow

S: Right

R: That was just one of them

S: 'For the good of the children'. It's always about the children. Let's go on to the next news item

Eponymous (14:47)

EvolutionNews.org: Tiktaalik roseae: Where's the Wrist?

S: Now you guys know I love the Discovery Institute's blog: Evolution, news and views

J: You should write for them

R: Yeah, we're going to have an intervention one of these days

S: Yeah, I know. But this one was soooo stupid, I couldn't stay away, couldn't stay away. So, Casey Luskin Who's one of the more mindless bloggers over there, this is the Discovery Institute propaganda blog-

R: It's like being the skinniest kid at fat camp, oh wait, mind-less? Oh, nevermind, that's even kinda impressive.

(laughter)

J: So she's the fat kid at fat camp

R: You mean the fattest kid at fat camp

(laughter)

S: You guys remember tiktaalik? Tiktaalik was a fossil that was discovered that is a link between fish and tetrapods, so it's a missing link, it's an actual missing link. Of course, you know, you have a beautiful transitional fossil like this, it's a slam-dunk for evolution, and I think we mentioned before that, not only is this a beautiful transitionary fossil, it was found by paleontologists who went looking for it in a specific strata because they hypothesized that this kind of fossil had to exist at this time, at this time period. It had to exist during a time when fish were evolving into tetrapods, and they found it! Yeah, we talk about the predictive power of evolution, right?- <!—internal link for tiktaalik -->

B: What did they say specifically? What needs to exist in this time frame? What was it that-

S: It was a fish basically, with fins evolving into feet, right?

B: Yeah

S: And so they found exactly what they were looking for. The propagandists over at the Discovery institute have to do whatever they can just to throw doubt on to the specimen, right? So they're in a tough position, they have to make arguments that are more ridiculous than they usually have to make, because this is such a nice example of a transitional fossil. So here's Casey quoting Schubin from the article:

The intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik have homologues to eponymous wrist bones of tetrapods with which they share similar positions and articular relations.

S: Now, Casey Luskin says, writes in his blog:

Translation: OK, then exactly which "wrist bones of tetrapods" are Tiktaalik's bones homologous to? Shubin doesn't say. This is a technical scientific paper, so a few corresponding "wrist bone"-names from tetrapods would seem appropriate. But Shubin never gives any.

S: So, this was Luskin really just flaunting his ignorance for the world to see. Now, I wouldn't expect everyone to know what the word 'eponymous' means, the only reason why I know it, is because I encounter it every now and again in the technical literature, it's not a word I think I've ever used in conversation.

E: It's the title of an REM album

S: Is that right?

E: Yes

R: Oh, right

J. It's also part of the word hippoponymous

S: But eponymous means-

(laughter)

S: - it means 'by the same name', right? So when Schubin is saying that the ulnare has a homologue to eponymous wrist bones of a tetrapod, he means it's analogous to the ulnare of a tetrapod! He's giving the names in a very efficient way, by just saying it's evolutionarily derived from bones that have the same name in the tetrapod wrist, right? So the wrist bones in the fish have the same names in the tetrapod, and the tetrapod bones actually evolved from the bones of the same name in the tiktaalik, in the fish. There you go, Luskin didn't even bother to look the word up.

B: So he's translating a technical sentence, and he messes up on the only word that really wasn’t technical, just a little obscure.

S: Yeah!

B: Wow

S: Yeah, he blew it on language. he blew it on language, I mean, forget about understanding the actual evolution or scientific arguments. But it just shows you how intellectual sloppy they are. They're not really trying to understand what's going on, they're just trying to cast as much doubt on this, they're just trying to say 'oh look, Schubin is being vague and not describing technically what he's talking about', as if there's some sort of deception going on, when the reality is that Luskin is just a stupid idiot.

E: Luskin's a white hole

(laughter)

S: Seriously, I mean, the guy should be flipping pancakes at ihop. I tell you, he's writing-

E: I agree

S: -writing for a-

(laughter)

J: Hey, Steve, you know what? Maybe he is

(laughter)

S: Maybe he is

R: That takes actual skill

J: 'On my break at lunch time, I'm gonna write my news entry to the Discovery institute. You know what, get back, get some extra freakin' syrup over there, ok table five.'

(laughter)

E: Oh, what a week! This is a helluva week!

S: Well, let's move on to some actual science news-

J: Thank you

S: To try to recover from the funniness

Zapping Cancer Cells (19:34)

MIT Technology Review: Zapping Individual Cancer Cells

S: So, Bob, tell us about the new laser surgery technique

B: Yeah, this is pretty cool, engineers at the University of Texas at Austin, have created surgical lasers so accurate, that they can destroy single cells, leaving their neighbour cells unaffected. Mechanical engineering assistant professor Adela Ben-Yakar says that with the system they've developed, you can remove a cell with high precision in 3D, without damaging the cells above and below it, and you can see with the same precision, what you're doing to guide your microsurgery. Now, what they used to do this, is- there's two parts that they used, they used a femtosecond laser, and a powerful type of three-dimensional microscopy. Both of them are very-

J: Bob, a femtosecond, how small is that?

B: (cheerily) A femtosecond is basically a quadrillionth of a second

J: Ok, that doesn't help most of the listeners

R: A quadrillionth?

B: Alright, well I'll try to put it into some perspective, take a billionth of a second, now divide that into a million pieces.

J: Oh my god

S: How far would a light beam go in a femtosecond?

B: Ah-ha, that's a good one, Steve-

E: four foot one

B: -in one second, in a little more than one second, light can travel to the moon. In 50 femtoseconds, it travels about the width of a human hair

E: Wow

B: So, it's super, super, tiny, so you're talking about a laser with these super short pulses

J: Yeah, but Bob, that- so what if you, like, turn that laser on and put it on somebody? That thing could

B: It would completely take out one of your cells, gone!

(laughter)

E: Ooh

B: Obliterated

J: I'm thinking like a lightsaber, you know?

B: Now the-

S: On the femto scale, it's like a lightsaber

B: Yeah, turn it on for a few quadrillion femtoseconds, and now you're talking

J: What, you think there's like a bacteria that's like (lightsaber noise)

(laughter)

S: Obi-bacteria?

B: One of the reasons, now they've used lasers in surgeries before, but the problem is that the laser gets so hot that there's, you know, there's damage all over the place. It's on a small scale, but still, you're destroying all these cells that are around the sick cells. Basically, the femtosecond laser, the pulse is so brief, that the transfer of heat is completely minimised. And actually, it's so hot, it gets so much hotter than boiling, that it just turns the cell into like an ionised plasma that just dissipates away. So that's one side of the coin, the other side of this breakthrough is this 3D imaging tool that these people are using, it's called 'two-photon fluorescence microscopy'. Now this is- I went to a bunch of websites trying to get a good definition of this, and it was actually difficult, some of them are so technical, that it's hard for me to follow. But if I followed it, what I think, is they're using two photons, they shoot two photons into molecules that absorb the photons, and then the way that this energy is released after the molecule get- the electrons in the orbits get excited, and they go back down and release the energy, they can kind of figure out where exactly where these cells, these molecules are, and that way, they've built up this beautiful three-dimensional map of all the cells around them so that there's nothing, there's no extraneous information from these cells that are really far away, kind of confusing the targeting. You know what I mean? Basically, it's a detailed, three-dimensional map of the cells.

J: So, Bob, how can they get that laser into a particular part of your body, say three or four inches down, or brain cells, or, what do they do?

B: Well, what they're doing is, their ultimate goal is to- well, they think they'll achieve this in two years, they'll get this into an endoscope, into one, nicely flexible endoscope that they can use for surgery. Right now, it's a little bit too big, it's about three times too big, but they think they could shrink it enough-

S: Although, it's only too big if- it's not too big to use as an endoscope, meaning you put a little camera where you wanna go, and you have – for the imaging, and the laser is attached to the imaging, so you could basically zap what you see. The problem is that it's not compatible with existing endoscopic equipment.

B: Right.

S: So it's really just an issue of compatibility that they need to- and smaller

B: Yeah, but if you're gonna make a new endoscope, you've got to make it compatible with what's out there, so they're not gonna- it's really not gonna come into its own until it reaches that size. And you know how electronics and miniturization is working, in a few years, they should be able to pull this off, and then you've really got something there. And if you don't know what endoscopy is, it's this new trend in surgery, instead of one big nasty scar, where like they're taking out your kidney or whatever, it's these three little scars. And our father recently had this surgery, and it's amazing. He's got these three little incisions, and recovery is really fast, and scarring, of course, is minimised, cos you've got these three little scars instead of one big one-

S: Yeah, they put the instruments through one hole, the camera through another hole, things like that.

B: Right, and there are probably some people thinking 'well, how effective is this going to be, if you're just zapping one cell at a time?'. But you've got a significant amount of surgery ahead of you, you can't just be zapping one cell at a time, but what the idea is, though, they've got imaging software that will allow surgeons to target one cell at a time, using algorithms that could also use the device to detect diseased cells, and destroy them automatically. Now stop thinking about those cosmetic lasers that run amok in Logan's Run, that's just a movie, and that's not gonna happen.

(laughter)

J: But what about the (inaudible) Bob? They're going to come out with that next, too.

B: Heh, yeah

(inaudible)

S: Yeah, but this is, from one point of view, it's just an ultra-precise endoscopic surgical laser, which, in and of itself, is a great advance. But if you get to the point where you combine it with imaging and computer algorithms, then it could be- you know, look at a tissue, at a microscopic scale, and just zot (?) all the cancer cells, for example, and leave the healthy cells alone, then you're talking.

B: Yeah, especially for a com- like, if you're working in areas like your vocal cords, or brains cells – even more so – where you wanna nail these cancer cells, and you wanna absolutely spare every healthy neuron, then you could see how important this would be.

Questions and Emails: Changing Minds (26:05)

S: So, let's go on to a few emails, the first one comes from Cam Steer in Melbourne, Australia, and he writes:

Hi guys. Love the show.

On the last podcast #154 Dr Edell brought up the point that many people when asked what evidence would change their mind about a particular subject, are unable to answer, or state that no evidence would change their opinion.
I was thinking about this in relation to my own beliefs, and to my dismay I discovered that I might actually be the same as those people.

I'm an atheist - so I was wondering what kind of evidence would convince me that there was a god of some sort.
My first thought were some proof that evolution couldn't happen by natural means, or that life could never have originated unaided. But truthfully, in that situation I would just say that the science until then was wrong, and wait for the next theory.
Even if God himself (or herself) appeared before me, I would just put it down to some mental illness and seek professional help.
So for fear of becoming as close-minded as the true-believers, can you think of what kind of evidence would prove to you guys (and should prove to people like me) that evolution didn't happen, or that there is a creator god, or that homeopathy works, etc.
Any advice is appreciated.

Keep up the good work.

S: Well that's an interesting question

B: Yeah, it is. For me, it's like, what would it take for you to not believe in the theory of gravity. Like, it's been established to such a degree, that it's like disproving two plus two equals four, it's a fact. So then to come up with another fact that you can encounter, to make- to disprove the first one, it's like, well, how do you do that without-

S: Yeah

B: I don't know, you know?

R: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I think it's-

E: Well said, that's what I was going to say.

R: It's easier, I came up with that myself, by the way.

S: Very pithy, very catchy

E: Hah, Carl Sagan did

R: Thank you… yes, Carl Sagan. But, yeah, I think, you know, it depends what claim you're talking about.

S: Yes

R: If you're talking about if there's a god, well that's tricky-

B: Yeah, that's a tough one

R: -because no solid definition, you know

E: There's no god test, no god measuring stick

R: Right, but if you're talking about homeopathy, oh well that's easy enough, just give me a couple of stringently peer-reviewed, successful trials that show it works. They don't have a single thing to show that it works, you know-

E: They can't even tell two glasses of water apart, which one was homeopathic, and which one wasn't. They cannot statistically get past that, let alone whether homeopathy works

B?: Yeah, they can't even tell which glass is which

R: The way it works is a study would come out and say 'we found that we could tell the difference, this treatment worked', even if it goes against all logic, I'm cool with it, that's fine.

S: A good study, there are crappy studies that purport to tell- like Rustum Roy's crappy research

(laughter)

S: But it still doesn't stand up to peer review, which is-

R: That's what I was about to say, you know, you look at the study, and if that study is rigorous, then, great, does that mean I now believe all of homeopathy? No. But it does mean that now we have something to work with.

S: It's a step

R: Now we can perfect it, yeah, it's the first step. So yeah, I can totally see that sort of thing happening and convincing me, because even if, right now, we don't see how there's any way in hell anything as ridiculous as homeopathy could possibly work, if somebody could just show that it does work, that's really all I need.

S: You're right, Rebecca, in that it is the question that is key. So, Cam is mixing a few different kinds of questions here, and he actually hits upon why you can't ever have evidence for god, because as usually conceived of it's a being that is outside the realm of the universe, not constrained by the physical laws of the universe, and there's just no way for us to have anything like scientific evidence for or against the existence of such an entity. What I have always said, is if a god-like being appeared before me and said 'Behold, I am the god Jehovah, worship me', how could I know that it wasn't just a super advanced alien pretending to be a god?

B: Right

S: I couldn't, I couldn't know that.

B: You couldn't

E: Star Trek (inaudible)

S: Yeah, so there are some questions that are not answerable by science, those questions, there is no amount of evidence that could prove scientifically that it's true, because it's not a scientific question, by definition.

B: What about evolution, then?

S: So that- that evolution did not happen. So the simple answer is you would need an amount of evidence that was at least equivalent to the amount of evidence that we have that said evolution did happen, that's all.

R: Which is quite a bit

S: Which is quite a bit, which is mountainous

R: It's extraordinary to borrow a-

S: Yeah. Homeopathy, I wanna see not one trial, not two trials, I wanna see the same study show a clear effect, whatever that is, if you can tell the difference between homeopathic and non-homeopathic water, or that there's some specific effect, and have it be replicable by any scientist in the world who follows the protocol, who does it the way they're supposed to do it. That it's absolutely an effect that you can count on, that's reproducible, and that does not go away when a real scientist does it, or somebody who doesn't believe in homeopathy does it.

B: A mechanism would be nice.

S: Well that would be a starting point. Here's an interesting story, I was lecturing about skepticism to the Warrens, you know Ed and Lorraine Warren used to hold their classes-

B: I remember that

S: -where they would teach ghost hunting. Do you guys remember this?

B: Yeah, I remember

J: What?

E: Oh yeah

S: And this was where we were in the phase we were pretending to be friendly with them and investigating their methods and everything. And they invited me to give a lecture to their class, and one of the students in the ghost-hunting class asked me what would convince me, what piece of evidence would convince me that ghosts were real? And it was a hard question to answer in front of a hostile audience, but what I was trying to say was that there is no single piece of evidence that can convince you of such a complicated phenomenon. Like there's no single piece of evidence that proves that evolution happened. I said the starting point would be a genuine anomaly, give me something I can't explain with existing explanatory methods, something that's a true anomaly – that's a starting point, and then we can go from there and find out something about the nature of that anomaly. And that it may have some properties which people think of as, you know, ghost phenomenon. Something. We have to- I takes some research program to slowly build a story to establish a new phenomenon, not just one piece of evidence.

B: Right

S: But for things like that, for homeopathy or ghosts or whatever, the proponents are not even getting up to that. They're not even getting up to that first step that you would use to launch into a research program, let alone establishing the reality of any of these things.

E: Plus, what standards are you going after? Like Joe Nickell says, there's no authentic paranormal activity, there's no authentic ghost photograph or ghost evidence, how do you go about measuring these things?

S: Yeah, there's no gold standard

E: It's nearly an impossible task.

S: Well science discovers new things, you have to establish what the gold standard is, but you have to do it very carefully, very meticulously by ruling everything else out and, you know, you have to triangulate multiple different independent lines of evidence to say 'yeah, this is what's going on'. But they're so far away from that, they're just, you know, we always throw out the term 'well that's ghost cold', that's their science, 'you see that cold? It's ghost cold'. That's what they're doing, jumping from an alleged anomaly to a conclusion, and missing the 20 steps in between that science- where science is.

J: Yeah, most of the time, Steve, they're not even anomalies, you know? They're reflected lights on glass-

S: A draft!

J: There's, you know, a draft somewhere, we're not talking about anomalies, these are just things that they are superimplosing these ideas on top of everyday events.

S: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, this was a- give me- let's start with a real anomaly, and then we'll go from there.

J: So I was thinking about this person's email, I came to some of the same conclusions that you guys did, and I also thought of this, things like gravity and evolution, exactly what you said, Steve, like there would have to be that much evidence undoing all the evidence we have. And then I thought, it would be more likely for me to actually believe in god, than it would to disbelieve, or to stop believing in gravity, or concepts like evolution.

S: Yeah, I mean there are some scientific truths that will likely never be over-turned, like, you know, DNA is the molecule that carries genetic inheritance from one generation to the next. That's never going to be over-turned.

B: That's a good example, and that's how I see evolution, that something, that mechanisms might change, but the big 'e' of evolution can never be undone. It would take- I was thinking, what would it actually take-

S: Well how about this, it's possible, I mean, it's possible. Let's say we find horse fossils in Cambrian strata. So, 500 million years ago, when there was nothing but tiny, multicellular animals around-

B: Right

S: -and you see in that, clearly embedded naturally in that strata, and not just one example that could be a fluke mixing of layers or something, but we find these all the time, of non-evolutionary fossil sequence, something that's just impossible, then we would have to say 'right, there's something else going on here, either, you know, there was alien interference which caused evolution on the planet, or something else going on that we're not accounting for'. But we cannot account for that within standard evolutionary theory. It's possible, we never have found any of those anomalies or anything that would falsify the straight-forward evolutionary theory, but we could. It's not impossible, if evolution were not true, or if there were something else going on too.

B: I know what it would take. You wake up and your entire life has been this virtual reality game and you actually live in a reality where there is no fossil evidence, and no evidence, just evidence that we appeared. Like 'ok-'

E: We are in Shirley MacLaine territory now

B: -and then I would buy that

J: Yeah, but you would question that new reality

B: Yeah, I would

S: That's the problem, you wake up in the matrix, now you will never know what is real, you can never know what's real

E: Yeah remember when Victoria Principal opened the door and there was Bobby, Dallas… thing… it was all a dream

(laughter)

B: It would take something on that scale, on that level to make me say 'yup, it's not real', it's probably not real'

S: All I would conclude from that, Bob, is 'now I have no idea what's real', because if what we're experiencing right now isn't reality, and suddenly I find myself waking up into some other reality that is just as real as I'm experiencing now? The only thing you could really conclude from that is you don't know, you can't know what's real.

J: Guys, what about believing in god, or believing in the supernatural. What would it take, Paint the scenario, or start talking about that.

S: Well, I mean, yeah, it would be very tempting to leap to a supernatural conclusion if something very compelling happened, but you still have to keep your wits about you and realise that-

B: Right

S: -there could still be something very fantastical going on that still isn't supernatural, you know, again you could generate an infinite number of hypotheses, again, it could be an alien with some kind of mind control device controlling you, or having some kind of fun with you. Maybe somebody invented a true holographic device and attempted doing pranks with it. I mean, as bizarre as any of those things sound-

B: You still have to rule them out

S: You still have to rule them out before you can say 'alright, this is supernatural or paranormal'

J: Would it take bringing someone back from beyond-

B: The beyond?

S: Like if Perry walking through the door right now? That would be extremely compelling, because I saw him dead

E: Yeah, that would

S: Yeah, you know

R: Well, really the first thing you do would be to get yourself to the hospital to get your head examined.

J: Well not if you're not alone, I'm just thinking, if you're among people you trust and you experience the same thing.

R: Then I would check the carbon monoxide filter

B: Right

S: Yeah, first you have to check that it's not, like Cam said, not some sort of mental illness, you'd have to confirm that this is real, that this is confirmable. Then, even still I would try not to prematurely narrow the possible things that could be going on by concluding this is something paranormal. For example, maybe somebody cloned him from some cells of his, whatever, or somebody from the future, some alien, some amazing technology that somebody got access to some how-

J: So what you're saying is anything grounded in the physical world, in physical reality, is more likely that jumping to a supernatural conclusion.

S: Always, always.

B: Right, you owe it to yourself to rule that stuff out first

S: Historically, those explanations are much more fruitful than the paranormal ones, so I would exhaustively pursue that before settling. Cos again, I think settling on the paranormal explanation is just saying 'I give up'. It's ending the process of investigation, because you're saying it's something that is not scientifically knowable, it's supernatural, it's beyond laws that are amenable to science. I always see that as giving up, and I wouldn't want to give up, I would want to know exactly what was going on, and then that would mean considering any possible physical explanation for what you were experiencing.

B: Think how that would consume us though, wow.

J: I think we'd miss a few podcasts, right?

S; And let's go on to our interview

Interview with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (39:35)

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References