SGU Episode 52

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SGU Episode 52
July 19th 2006
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 51                      SGU 53
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Links
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Show Notes
SGU Forum

Introduction

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, July 19^th, 2006. This is your host, Steven Novella, the president of the New England Skeptical Society. With me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hello!

S: Evan Bernstein...

E: Good evening, everyone.

S: And back from her whirlwind tour of Europe, Rebecca Watson...

R: Hello again, everybody.

S: Rebecca is jet lagged, but still and also lost her luggage on a train to somewhere. But managed to crawl her way back for the podcast tonight.

R: I did. I put forth great amounts of energy and money just to get back here in time to do this podcast.

S: Well, we appreciate it.

E: I know that feeling.

R: As you should.

S: No, no skeptical encounters in Europe you were telling me.

R: Not really. Although we were, I went to a wedding while I was out there with Sid Rodriguez from the Skeptics and the Pub. And we did encounter an interesting couple who we were talking to them about a lot of different pseudoscience claims. And they have a lot of weird beliefs. And we kind of managed to talk them out of a few, I think, without causing too much disruption to the wedding ceremony.

S: Oh, good work.

R: It was pretty well done, I think. And mostly thanks to Sid. He's very good at the, about being very nice while completely destroying people's world views. It's inspiring.

B: That's a good talent.

R: It is.

S: Well, in the news today is Bush's first video of the new stem cell bill. I've talked about stem cell research in the United States in the past and how Bush basically was a executive order essentially banning federal funds for stem cell research except for embryonic stem cell research, except for the lines that were already existing. And it's become increasingly clear over the years that these existing lines are inadequate. The Senate, correctly, I think, although largely in response to public pressure, put together a bill essentially to override that, to approve federal funding for embryonic stem cell research with some common sense and political but meaningless restrictions. And Bush vetoed it. What you said he was going to do. I don't know, and that was just today, so at this point, I don't think there has been time yet to have another vote in the Senate to try to override the veto. I don't know if the vote exists. Any of you have heard anything about that?

E: I heard they do not have the number of votes necessary to override the veto.

B: Did you guys hear that at Bush's post veto shindig, he had a, there was apparently a lot of kids, a lot of babies and kids that they brought there that were adopted as an embryo before they were thrown out in these fertility clinics, just like to just to drive home that sea. I'm doing the right thing here. Look at these.

R: Wait, he had a post veto party?

B: Well, some sort of gathering, whatever it was.

E: A political show certainly it was.

R: Carl Rove last week said that the reason why Bush's vetoing the bill is because recent studies show that researchers have more promise from adult stem cells than from embryonic, which is just utter shit. It makes no sense. It's completely wrong.

S: It's totally wrong. I mean, embryonic stem cells are the most totipotent cells that there are. It is certainly possible that we may be able to derive stem cells from adult sources in the future that do everything we need them to do, but that's not where we are right now. Right now embryonic stem cells are the best. We just don't know where the research is going to go. That's the whole point. That's why it's called research. We don't know the answers yet. The most insane thing about this whole thing is that what we're talking about is using embryos that are going to be thrown out.

B: That's where it was down to Steve. In some quotes he was saying how these are people and their value is matchless and all this stuff. I'm thinking if these are people, why isn't he outraged that these embryos are being thrown out routinely?

E: Exactly.

B: Why isn't that outraged and why isn't he outlawed? Why does he permit it?

S: He would never get away with shutting down fertility clinics. You start telling people that they can't have children. I think that's politically untenable. They just pretend that that issue doesn't exist, basically.

E: Cherry picking.

News Items

Precious Bodily Fluids (5:00)

• www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/7/18/100645.shtml?s=ic
  

CDC fact sheet on Fluoridation

S: There was in the newsmax.com, which is an online rag in my opinion, they published an article New Warnings About Fluoride. Basically, trying to say that there's new research that shows that the fluoride that we're getting in our drinking water is unsafe. They're quoting an article that was published in Prevention Magazine, which is another dubious publication. There's really nothing new in all this. This goes back to the Precious Bodily Fluids comment in Dr. Strangelove. It's still as crazy as when it was said in the movie. The fluoride that we're getting in the water is well below the safe limit. It's possible that we're getting more fluoride from other sources these days, so maybe we don't need to put as much in the water. You could quibble about little details like that. There is zero evidence that there is any real health risk from the fluoride that we're getting in the water. There's tons of evidence that it is very effective in fighting tooth decay. There's a small minority, but very vocal, relentless minority of people who just, for whatever reason, do not like this very concept of violating our Precious Bodily Fluids with anything foreign.

E: Here's what they have to offer. They say, these few. There are disturbing studies while not offering conclusive proof. They have linked fluoride to serious adverse health effects, including bone cancer and osteoporosis.

S: And they cite as a resource, Dr. Blaylock.

E: Russell Blaylock

S: Who publishes a newsletter by Newsmax, too. That's an internal matter.

E: I noticed that.

S: He's a total quack. This guy is just selling his own cookie ideas. He publishes his "newsletter", the Blaylock Report, which is just his crazy ideas. He is not, this is hardly a respected source of medical information.

E: He warns the fluoride, maybe linked to retardation in children and numerous cancers. Well...

S: All nonsense.

R: So he must have drank a lot of fluoride as a child.

S: That's one of those issues that will always crop up every now and then.

World Jump Day (7:17)

• www.worldjumpday.org/

S: Tomorrow is a big day, you guys ready for tomorrow?

B: Oh, yeah.

E: Oh yes.

B: I got my jumping shoes ready to go.

S: That's right. The World's Jump Day. Did we talk about this before a year ago on our podcast?

E: We did. We brought it up last summer. I recall when we found it just trolling around the internet.

S: It's already world jump day again. I mean, the year went so fast.

E: It did. It did.

S: This is for those of you who may not have heard. Online organization basically trying to convince as many people as possible to all jump at the exact same time. The idea is that it will push the earth into a more favorable orbit and fix global warming, lengthen our days, which makes no sense and whatever cure would ails you. It's just pure internet mythology.

E: Yeah. Well, I mean, it was like a running joke that sort of part of life of its own and got adopted, I guess, by some people who tried to really figure out if there was some sort of possibility of some promise to something positive to be yielded out of everyone jumping at the same time to try to shift the orbit of the earth.

S: Does anyone really believe this?

R: No, I don't think anybody actually believes this.

S: This just a running joke, right?

R: It was started by a performance artist. It's kind of like a flash mob sort of thing. It's just a fun.

S: And the scientist is a made up character. The scientist promoting this.

E: It's just kind of interesting to see how one little thing, I guess, which was really supposed to be just a joke amongst his peers or whatever turned into a worldwide internet phenomenon unto itself.

B: Guys the physics behind it, pretty interesting. I went to MadPhysics.com, interesting website. The guy did just, what's the expression back at the napkin?

S: Back at the envelope.

B: Back at the envelope calculations. It's, some of it's pretty good. He estimated the amount of people that would, that might be jumping. And he was saying that the mass of everyone jumping would be about trillion times smaller than the mass of the earth, which is roughly equivalent to 2% of the energy released from one megaton of TNT, which is like a modern H bomb. Now surprisingly, the earth, the earth's orbit would be displaced by a little bit by all this, assuming that they're all jumping on one side and not completely cancelling each other out being all over the planet. It does actually move the earth. But unfortunately, it would move it a tiny fraction of the radius of a hydrogen atom. So I think that's pretty negligible.

E: The tsunami that hit last year had more of an effect as far as the movement of the earth than everyone on the earth could ever have by just jumping up and down.

S: Right. We're exploding all those hydrogen bombs you've exploded over the years.

B: You think that would have whacked our orbit many, many times over.

S: It's silly.

Questions and E-mails ()

Follow up on Neal Adams ()

Here are some representative e-mails and post about the interview with Neal:


Dear Dr. Novella,

I was absolutely floored by the interview of Neal Adams. While I would
not suggest having such a guest on every episode, I do think it was a nice change of pace. I look forward to other such shows. I would almost suggest that a two part approach might be effective. Episode one would be the interview, and episode two would be an analysis of the guests arguments and thoughts.

Keep up the excellent work.

Howard Lewis
Hershey, PA


Normally, I thoroughly enjoy your podcasts and they are usually excellent. The last one though, was a real disappointment. Neal Adams was such a crackpot that he wasn't even interesting. His source of science information must have been people like Velikovsky and Von Daniken. I didn't hear him say a single thing related to science that was correct. I don't mind hearing alternate views or theories but Adams was just silly.

On the other hand, I really liked the podcast with Steve Mirsky and the
one last week with Gerald Posner was great.

Jim Matthews
Australia

Women in Science ()

How does the Bad Astronomer, et. al. intend to colonise space with manned space flight? Does this presume that all the women will be frozen embryos when the colony is founded, awaiting there first breath of life once all the heavy lifting is done? And if the spacemen have to raise the girls to maturity, wouldn't that be kind of incestous - pedophilic when they start trying to increase the colony's population? Yech. And too, if they're willing to go without female companionship for that long, isn't it safe to assume that all the travellers would be gay?

Maybe I'm stupid, after all my brain has probably been fried by all my years of studying first biochemistry and now engineering. It's got to be hard on my female brain, especially since apparently I don't like engineering... (beware the sweeping generalization, my friend. that, more than anything, will feed the arguments of the Believers).

My point here is HOW could you POSSIBLY have SERIOUSLY gone from pondering the lack of women in science faculties (by the way, they're there, they're just not in positions of power) to using the phrase MANNED SPACE FLIGHT? Yes, yes, fine, so everyone knows you can assume that Man, with a capital, refers to the human race, but really, when you close your eyes and say it, does it really conjure images of men _and_ women? How hard do you have to work to shove even the token woman into that picture? be honest. Do you truly think any young women listening to your podcast are going to automatically see _themselves_ as part of a 'manned space flight'? (note that I don't use the capital here, because it isn't actually audible).

And please don't belittle this issue, words have a lot of power, and each one comes with a dictionary definition, and the colloquial connotations that it gathers during use. Using inclusive language makes an enormous difference.

By the way, check your history or cross-cultural studies; there's no way that in 20,30 or 40 years we'll be worrying about getting more men into academia, because once a profession becomes dominated by women, the repect it get from society, along with its pay, perks, and power, plummet. How many 'male nurses' do you know?

Cheers,
Arleigh Jamieson
Vancouver, B.C.

Interview with Bill Bennetta ()

• www.textbookleague.org
  
  Bill and his team at the textbook league are a watch group organization on the textbook industry. They rate and recommend textbooks. Bill joins us to discuss the sorry state of science textbooks.
  

Science or Fiction ()

Question #1: Researchers have discovered a bacteria that can extract gold from dirt. Question #2: Material scientists have developed a nanofilm that can form tubes 100,000 times stronger than carbon nanotubes. Question #3: Researchers have developed a technique to use microbes to make electricity directly from corn husks.

Skeptical Puzzle ()

Last Week's puzzle:

When is a boomerang a type of dinnerware?

Answer: If the dinnerware is a saucer - when Kenneth Arnold reported the first modern UFO's sighting he described them as boomerang shaped but described their movement as skipping like a saucer. The term flying saucer was coined, and from that point forward the saucer shape has become the standard icon for alien spacecraft.


New Puzzle:

If you are floating in a boat on a pond, and you are holding a 20lb cannon ball - if you drop the cannon ball overboard into the pond will the level of the pond rise, fall, or stay the same?

(Contributed by listener John Maddox)

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

References