SGU Episode 57

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SGU Episode 57
August 23rd 2006
Add an appropriate caption here for the episode icon
SGU 56                      SGU 58
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
Larry Sarner, mathematician and inventor
Quote of the Week
QUOTE
AUTHOR, _short_description_
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 23^rd, 2006. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me here tonight are Bob Novella...

B: Hey everybody!

S: Rebecca Watson...

R: Hello.

S: Perry DeAngelis...

P: Right.

S: ...and Jay Novella.

J: Hey guys.

S: Good evening everyone.

R: Hey.

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

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

News Items

Water Tree mystery solved (0:44)

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

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

P: Solved!

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

R: Surprise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

P: Beutiful.

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

P: Good, good, good.

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

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

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

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

S: I guess it's little used.

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

R: Yeah.

S: Well one more mystery solved by science.

J: Pesky science.

Mystery animal in Maine (4:00)

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

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

R: Jay, did you go to Maine?

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

B: It's bizarre.

S: But it's basically a dog.

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

R: It's kind of creepy looking.

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

P: It's a canine.

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

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

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

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

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

R: Who would have possibly guessed?

S: Go figure.

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

S: They were not interested.

P: They wouldn't even bother.

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

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

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

P: I mean, please.

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

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

Creationism Update (6:21)

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

• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_] 

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

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

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

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

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

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

S: The argument from final consequences.

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

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

P: Who would've funk it?

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

B: It's created by Congress.

S: It was created by Congress.

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

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

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

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

P: Really?

S: That's BS.

B: Sure. Yep.

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

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

S: I mean, it's both.

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

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

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

P: Yeah, I agree.

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

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

R: Yeah.

S: Yeah, it's true.

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

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

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

P: To many skeletons in my closet.

R: I think our listeners might rally around this.

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

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

S: That's right.

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

B: Imagine what we could have contributed.

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

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

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

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

• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_] 

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

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

S: Yeah. In the 1800s until-

B: I wasn't aware of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

R: Eight. You're a skeptic.

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

J: How about you, Bob?

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

S: It makes sense.

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

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

B: Planetoids is popular.

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

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

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

P: That sounds like another-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions and E-mails ()

Follow up on Acupuncture ()

Hello,
First I wanted to thank you guys for such an excellent job with the podcast. I discovered it a few month ago and I'm in love (I think my husband is getting jealous - I'm spending a lot more time listening to my MP3 player catching up on the episodes I've missed) Your podcast is such a breath of fresh air.

I am an MD/PhD student, and as medical students we are taught not to challenge patients ideas about their heath, but to work with them and incorporate their believes into the 'standard' medical care. The idea is to make sure they do not abandon you as their doctor all together for an alternative practitioner. As much as it hurts my skeptical sensibilities, I can't entirely disagree with this approach, nor can I come up with a better alternative. So, health professionals are left to perpetuate all kinds of unscientific nonsense or to loose your patient, thus jeopardizing their health. Today I run across an article about acupuncture: www.infopoems.com/infopoems/dailyInfoPOEM.cfm?view=93825 (this is the InfoPOEMs summary with a link to an actual article)

I have a number of concerns about the subject. Most of all I am worried about health professionals (rather than patients or acupuncturist who don't give science much credit anyway) walking away form reading such articles with 'acupuncture works' message and going on to tell their patients about it. On a different note, it is not wise to ignore the evidence if it is there. Assuming the study design is valid (at least I could not see anything glaringly wrong with it), I am trying to think of why it would show the results it did show. Fibromyalgia is an unusual disease, and as far as I know one of the theories about its etiology is diminished blood flow the areas of pain (which is somehow psychologically mediated). The supporting evidence for that would be the fact that both antidepressants and exercise help. Do you think it is possible that putting a needle in would increase the blood flo

Interview with Larry Sarner ()

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

Science or Fiction (h:mm:ss)

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

Answer	Item
Fiction
Science

Host	Result
Steve

Rogue	Guess

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

Skeptical Puzzle ()

New Puzzle:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Who was he and what was his discovery?

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

Today I Learned

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

References

Vocabulary