SGU Episode 7

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SGU Episode 7
20th July 2005
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 6                      SGU 8
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
P: Perry DeAngelis
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Introduction

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday July 20th, 2005. With me today are Evan Bernstein...

E: Hello.

S: Perry DeAngelis...

P: Good evening.

S: and Bob Novella.

B: Hello everyone.

News Items

Joint Government Agency Announcement: No Link Between Vaccines and Autism (0:28)

S: Couple, quick item in the news before we start. Yesterday officials from the CDC, that's the Centers for Disease Control, the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health, NIH, held a joint news conference where they announced that there is in fact no link between vaccines and autism. There are parent groups and some scientists and some commentators like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. he's not a scientist he's an environmental lawyer who are claiming that there's a link between mercury preservatives in some vaccines and, which are actually no longer present in childhood vaccines, and autism, although the scientific evidence shows that there is, in fact, no link. We will probably be dealing with this issue in more depth in a future podcast and I have an article coming out within the next week or two in the New Haven Advocate covering this issue in depth, but I thought I would mention this joint press conference essentially announcing that the scientific evidence does not support a link and that vaccines are, in fact, a safe public health measure.

E: Well, hopefully people will listen.

S: Hopefully. I mean it's interesting that in the U.S. we still have a very very high compliance rate. Higher than in many other countries, but, this is-t's a very interesting issue and one-one we'll go into in more depth. An author, a report for the New York Times, David Kirby, wrote a book that came out in early April covering this issue from a somewhat, ya know, neutral...

P: Called Evidence of Harm.

S: Evidence of Harm, right. Which I thought was, he says was from a neutral point of view, but was, tended to uncritically present the point of view of the believers in a link, but perhaps we will have him as a guest on our show when we discuss this issue.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Released (2:28)

S: Other things that have been in the news recently, the new Harry Potter book is out.

B: Whoopee. (unenthusiastic)

S: Bob what's the title of that?

B: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

S: Breaking all book sales.

E: I read that.

S: I think Rowling may...

P: How'd you like it Evan, was it a good book?

(laughter)

E: No, I mean I... (laugh) thank you. I mean I read that it was breaking book sale records. Thank you.

B: Absolutely. They printed like over 10 million copies which is the most books printed for a hard cover first publishing of a book.

E: And they've printed another, there are, another 3 million I think are in print now. Beyond the 10.

B: Doesn't surprise me.

S: R. K. Rowling has quite a following. Both adults and children. I think she made $26 million in a day when that book it the stands. Quite and accomplishment, but the Harry Potter books do have their critics. Among them our new pope. Pope, former Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.

B: Yeah he came out, one of his quotes came out from a couple years ago, and it was actually revealed in a book written by Gabriele Kuby. She wrote a book, Harry Potter: Good or Evil, and she, Gabriele attacks J. K. Rowling's series, and in her book she published two extracts from Cardinal Ratzingburg-Ratzinger, Cardinal Ratzinger in 2003, who is now, of course, our Pope and in-here's this quote, writing to Gabriele the then cardinal says, "It's good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter because these are subtle seductions which act unnoticed and, by this, deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly."

P: So easy.

(laughter)

P: Good or evil and apparently he's evil.

B: Welly, Kuby herself also didn't have some very nice things to say about the Potter series either. She said the series corrupts the hearts of the young preventing them developing a properly ordered sense of good and evil, thus helping their relationship with God while that relationship is still in its infancy. So I guess they're going to start banning, ya know, Snow White and these other fantasies stories from our youth that we loved. Just because this is such an immense cultural phenomenon, it's such a huge target, for these weirdos that just think that it's corrupting and defiling people and it's bringing them into the paranormal fold and into the occult.

S: Right. Well, this has to do with the age old conflict between mainstream religions, especially Christian religions, including the Catholics and new age mysticism or anything fantasy oriented. Oriented around, ya know, witchcraft or elves.

P: Or role-playing games.

S: Role-playing games...

B: Right.

S: They feel that belief in anything or mystical or new age contradicts Christian faith. It's not about the character Harry Potter or what happens in the book, in fact, he's a good kid who has good moral and ethical values. He's a hero. Wouldn't you agree?

B: Absolutely. I mean he's brave. He deals with forms of evil in the series of books and book after book he faces evil and defeats it and he's trustworthy and he's loyal...

P: Yeah. I'm not familiar...

B: and he's all these great things and it's like what do you have against this kid who is such a great role model?

S: But he casts spells.

(laughter)

B: Right. Right?

P: I'm not familiar with the series. Is there mention, is God mentioned?

S: No.

P: It's just, there's no divinity in the books?

B: No. There's no real, yeah, deity is not stressed at all, and also, importantly though, it's also not invoked in the spells themselves. Usually modern day witchcraft, as it exists today, there is some sort of invocation of some sort of deity, usually, but these, but in the series there is none. There is absolutely no...

S: It's completely secular.

B: it's completely, right, it is. And all the magical phrases and words are really pseudo-latin.

S: Yeah.

B: Ya know, Libre corpus...

(laughter)

B: ...to raise a body in the one I'm reading now. I mean it's, ya know, Occulo repairo to finish your glasses.

S: Right. Pseudo-latin.

B: Come on. I mean...

E: E pluribus (unintelligible)

S: E pluribus unum.

(laughter)

S: Habeas corpus.

(laughter)

B: Right.

E: If it's good enough for our money it's good enough for Harry Potter.

B: And some of these quotes, I've got a couple quotes here. When I wrote my, I wrote an article on this. Actually, with you, Perry. That article we wrote a few years ago for one of the other books. Some of the quotes I dug up, they're really great here. One guy, Daniel Zanoza was saying, "Tampering with the occult is potentially far more dangerous for children, often leading to spiritual confusion, psychological problems, and in all too many cases suicide. The Potter books, under a cloak of innocence, are infecting the minds of millions."

E: Where is the evidence for that?

P: Yeah. How many suicides have been tied to the Potter books?

E: None.

(laughter)

E: Well, I don't have the data. I'm going to guess it's none. So...

(laughter)

E: I'll just go out on a limb, I guess, and say that.

B: Here's one more guys. John Watkins a Baptist activist, he warns, "Satan is up to his old tricks again and the main focus is the children of the world. The whole purpose of these Potter books is to desensitize readers and introduce them to the occult."

P: Desensitize them to what?

S: To make them, witches are good people, I guess.

B: Desensitize them to, maybe, harming people or...

P: To the occult?

B: No, no, desensitizing, well it says, the quote just says the whole purpose is to desensitize the readers. I don't now you could read into that but...

S: Well the underlying assumption here is that the, for those are Christian who criticize this is that the occult is real. The reason why they're afraid of this is cause they think witches are real.

B: Right.

S: If you think that this is all fantasy and they're not real you would have nothing to fear from these stories.

B: Right. And I dug up quotes of people who actually were saying hey mom and dad what are you gonna do when you son puts a spell on you or puts a curse on you and I'm like wait, you actually believe in this stuff?

P: (laugh)

B: Some people think that it's an actual guide, a teaching tool, to carry out these spells...

S: It's not, of course. I mean, I've tried to cast these spells.

(laughter)

S: They don't work.

B: I mean, and where are you gonna get a unicorn hair to put in your wand? Cause all their wands have these magical ingredients in them.

P: Well, I mean now you're talking about unicorns, Bob. You're getting ridiculous.

(laughter)

S: Bob, Bob, you could substitute a bigfoot hair for that, though.

B: Ohhhh... well, damn.

P: I didn't know that. Now that I didn't know. I'm going to have to back and re-read some...

S: Well, it's interesting. I think we need to follow the, with interest, the stances that this new Pope is going to take. Another, other than the occult, another area where the Catholic church's position has been of interest is that with evolution. Now the prior Pope, Pope John Paul II, had made statements to the effect that there is no conflict between Catholic faith and scientific theories like the theory of evolution.

P: That is currently still the dogma of the church.

S: That's correct. There hasn't been any, sort of, formal pronouncements. However, there have been some statements by cardinals and other individuals that suggest that this, that that doctrine of no conflict between faith and evolution within the Catholic church may not be held by all, for example, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, who is reported to be an influential theologian within the church noted that the modern theory of evolution may be incompatible with Catholic faith. Some scientists have, in fact, asked for clarification of the churches position given statements that have been made at the level of cardinals.

P: Well, until the Pope makes a formal announcement the stance of the church is that evolution is not contradictory to their belief. They say that evolution occurred and it occurred because God chose to make the world in that way.

E: Do we think the, this current Pope might go back, take a step back?

B: It sounds like it.

S: It remains to be seen.

P: Personally, I'd be very surprised.

S: I'd be surprised and disappointed, but there are some evolutionary scientists are just asking the new Pope to reaffirm Pope John Paul II's prior statements. To date I don't know if that's been done, that there has been a reaffirmation.

P: Well, I think, the guy is alleged to be very conservative and so forth and I think people are, creationists want to take a stab at it. They want to say let's see if we can force his hand.

B: Well, yeah. They got the President in their pocket let's see if they can get the Pope, too.

P: Yeah.

(laughter)

S: Maybe the creationists...

B: Yeah.

S: Certainly unwilling to make any critical statements of that belief system.

Science or Fiction (11:51)

S: Well, I think it's time once again for Science or Fiction.

B: Woohoo.

S: Is everyone ready?

B: Always.

E: I'm looking forward to it.

P: Of course.

B: I'm on a loosing streak.

VO: It's time to play Science or Fiction.

S: Okay. So each week I come up with three scientific facts or scientific news stories. Two are real and one is fake or wrong in some way. The challenge for my panel of skeptics is to sniff out which one is fake. You guys have been doing pretty well. I think that you successfully identified the first two, but the last two you've gotten wrong, but they were challenging.

P: So it's two for two.

S: Two for two. So...

B: Two for two.

E: Batting 500.

S: This will, we'll see if you go above or below 500 this week. So there's a theme this week. The theme is the last 50 years. I'm going to give you three statistics about the last 50 years and you have to tell me which one is incorrect. There's another theme in the answers, too. I'm sure it will become apparent soon.

B: Mm hmm.

S: So item number 1 - Over the last 50 years the average height of Americans has increased by three inches. Item number 2 - Over the last 50 years the average the temperature in Siberia has risen by three degrees. And third, over the last 50 years the average IQ of Americans has risen by three points per decade.

P: I know, the theme is rising.

(laughter)

P: Am I right?

S: Who wants to go first? There's also a three, this is my numerology three that run through there.

P: Alright. So, we've got American height three inches, Siberian temperature three degrees, what's the other?

S: American IQ three points per decade.

P: Well that one's wrong. (inaudible)

E: Okay.

P: Let's see. Okay. So, height that has mostly to do with nutrition, I think. Certainly, from what I know of the Civil War the average height of a soldier was, I believe it was 5'6 or 5'7 or something. They were shorter.I believe the height is connected to nutrition.

S: Mm hmm.

P: Last 50 years...? Ya know, that's a little short. Time frame, I mean.

(laughter)

P: Siberia? That's perfectly plausible.

S: Do you believe in global warming?

E: (laughter)

P: You know I don't.

E?: Sure.

P: And IQ doesn't seem, that doesn't seem right. I would say the IQ is not correct.

S: Okay. Bob?

B: Let's see here. Two of these are correct, and one is wrong. Wow, two seem, well...

E: Two seem incorrect, don't they?

B: Yeah. The height seems somewhat plausible. 50 years three inches, although, seems a little high.

E: That's high.

B: Siberia seems, well, actually the next two seem pretty wrong to me. Three degrees is a lot, for a huge expanse of land, average temperature, that's a lot. Three degrees doesn't sound like a lot but if you're talking an average annual temperature that's actually a huge amount. IQ three points per decade? That's 15 points in the past 100 years?

E: Yeah.

P: Fifty.

S: Fifty.

P: Fifty years.

S: That would be 15 points in the last 50 years.

B: Right. 15 points. So that would have moved average from 100, which, by definition, I think, they make 100 average, so then that would have made the average 15 if calculated the old way.

S: By the way that's 3 degree Celsius. I didn't mention that. Three degrees Celsius is a little more than 3 degrees Fahrenheit.

B?: Wow.

P: That's a big difference. Seriously.

E: I'm going to say the height one the fallacy. Just, that doesn't seem right to me. That seems to much.

S: Alright. Bob?

B: I'm going to go with...

S: If you guess the temperature then you'll have all your bases covered.

(laughter)

S: Perry, Perry's going for IQ, Evan's for height. What's your answer, Bob?

E: Go temperature, Bob.

B: How big is Siberia, guys? I mean that's a...

P: Siberia's huge.

B: huge expanse of land.

E: Alright. Siberia...

S: It's the frozen tundra in the east of Russia.

P: Huge chunk of snow.

E: It's about 1.5 times the size of the United States, I think.

B: I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with that one. I'm going to go with Siberia.

P: There was a war and peace.

S: Okay.

B: Cause I think three degrees, greater than three degrees Fahrenheit is a lot.

S: So, one of you is definitely correct.

E: Yay.

S: The other two are wrong. Let's start with height. Let's not start with height. Let's start with the IQ one that will be more fun.

E: Good.

B: Yes.

S: We'll go backwards. IQ. That is, in fact, correct.

E: Correct.

S: That is correct. American's, American IQ has risen by three points per decade since we've been measuring it, really for the last fifty sixty years.

B: That's interesting.

S: It's very interesting. It is also completely unknown phenomenon. We do not know why that is happening.

P: Well, has the test changed in the last 50 years.

S: Well the test

P: Like the SATs.

S: The test gets re-calibrated.

E: Right. 100.

S: So the, by definition, yeah, by definition an average IQ is 100 but they keep re-calibrating it. And somebody, taking an, today, who takes an IQ test, the actual same IQ test that was given in 1950 would score 115.

E: You know it's interesting because also the demographics were different in 1950.

S: Yeah. So, there are interesting possible explanations. One is it just is it the mix of people who are taking the IQ test, but...

E: Yeah.

S: if you control for those variables it doesn't seem to explain this rise. There is something, some real affect appears to be going on.

E: Nuclear radiation causing genetic mutations.

S: It's an actual, it's a matter for scientific scholarly debate among psychologists and those who are... Here's one article I picked out. Expanding Variance and the Case of Historical Changes in IQ Means: A Critique of Dickens and Flynn. So there's basically, these guys are arguing about what the cause is of the IQ change, but there's, it's clear that it's been increasing by this figure. It could be, some people have speculated that it's technology driven. That as we consume more data, more information, because of televisions and radio and now the internet that this technology is actually making us smarter because we are much more voracious consumers of information.

E: Mm hmm.

S: That's one possibility. It could be due, yeah, you think improved nutrition, just like the height thing that could certainly lead to better overall development but that probably peaked earlier than 50 years ago.

E: Right.

S: That's not offered as a common answer. So, it's one, it's a mystery, is the bottom line, but it is also somewhat counter intuitive. I mean, it certainly doesn't seem that people are getting smarter.

P: Certainly not.

E: Well, not when it comes to pseudo-science. That's for sure.

P: Not from a skeptic's perspective.

S: But perhaps we're skewed. Maybe if we were really around 50 years ago we would have a different perspective.

E: Or a select group of us are becoming so much smarter that we're bringing the rest of the average up with us.

S: Perhaps. Let's go to number two. Over that last 50 years the temperature in Siberia has risen by three degrees.

B: Celsius. That's true, huh?

S: That's true.

E: Wow.

S: That's also true. As reported by German scientists who have been following it.

E: Pope's German.

(laughter)

S: They say that the forests in the region are less effective at soaking up green house gasses than previously. Snow and ice are melting earlier. There are in fact, in, some, Switzerland some conservationists are actually trying to put blankets on the glaciers.

B: What?

S: The ice caps in order to decrease the degree to which they melt every summer. To try to, and it works, it actually in fact works, but they have to lay...

B: What do you mean it works?

S: It works.

B: How big are these blankets?

(laughter)

S: They're big.

B: Come on.

S: They have to lay these huge tarps over the ice caps and it decreases the amount they recede every year.

B: I was on a glacier last year. They are big. They are immense.

S: We're talking about the mountain ice caps in Switzerland.

P: If, uh, what is his name? Crisco there, Crisco can wrap an island in cellophane I suppose these guys can wrap these in blankets.

S: It certainly is a massive task but that's one of the things they're doing.

E: Or the guy who painted the iceberg red. Did you ever see that news story?

P: Did he?

E: Yeah. He took an iceberg and painted the whole thing red.

P: Oh? Now that's talent.

(laughter)

E: That is talent. He did it, though. So.

P: (inaudible)

S: It's interesting, I mean, the whole environmentalist global warming thing remains controversial. I do think that the consensus of scientific opinion is that there is definitely some real affect going on. It's still, it's hard to say if the trends that we're seeing over the last 50 years or 100 years are a true long-term trend versus just the normal fluctuation of the climate that we would see...

E: Right.

S: but, that's where the controversy lays. But I think most scientists think, ya, there probably is a real trend here and it's correlating pretty well with the increasing hot green house gasses, like CO₂, primarily, in the atmosphere, and certainly there's some room for skepticism and for doubt but you have to think, when we're absolutely certain that this is a real effect it's probably going to be too late...

E: Right.

S: to do anything about it. So, there's always uncertainty in science. At some point you just have to make-go by the best information that you have. I do think that some of the, sort of, environmentalist skeptics unfair, and, in fact, are...

B: Those darn skeptics.

S: not doing, not being very good skeptics. They're being more like environmentalism deniers and are just sorta marshaling any evidence against the global warming hypothesis and not really looking fairly at all the evidence. But that's why I included that one I thought that would kind of provokes that controversy. The height one is incorrect and some of you had a sense that was little too...

E: Yeah.

S: too much. In fact the correct figure is one inch over the last 50 years. Now the figures that Perry quoted for the Civil War are accurate which would put three inches more at like 150 years. So, we've been increasing in height about an inch every 50 years. And again that's probably due to improved nutrition. And that effect is replicated in developing countries that have improved nutrition especially in the first five ten years of life.

B: Sometimes, and that can be drastic, I remember reading about after we kinda took over Japan for a little while after World War II and their nutrition drastically changed you would have kids going to school that could literally could not fit into the desks of the previous generation or the previous few years just a couple years previously...

S: Yeah.

B: because the nutrition was just so drastically improved.

S: A friend of mine from medical school is Korean. His parents are from Korea, who are your typical image of a short statured Asian. They were very, very short and he's like 6'5. The guy was huge.

B: Woah.

S: So it's hard to imagine that it's genetics when both of his parents were so short and he was so very tall, but he was raised in the United States, they were raised...

B: Right.

S: 60 years ago in Korea.

B: I mean, Steve, what's that concept of regression to the mean.

S: Regression to the mean.

B: When you, typically a child will be somewhere in between his parents, in height.

S: That's not exactly the concept of regression to the mean.

B: How does that work.

S: Well, height is a genetic trait that is determined by multiple genes, so it's poly-genetic. It's not like Mendelian where you get one gene.

B: Right.

S: You get the blue eyed gene you got blue eyes, or you get the brown eyed gene you have brown eyes. It's different. It's multiple genes working together in sorta a complex way. So, it is, in fact, possible for children to be out, either shorter or taller than either of their parents. They don't have to be between their parents.

B: No. But in general, though, aren't they?

S: But there's usually not huge departures from...

B: Right.

S: from their parents. Although the more, the greater the mixing of genes. So if you have people breeding from very different gene pools the interaction between the variable genetics becomes harder to predict. So if you have, ya know, people of different races mixing their children may, the interaction of genes in certain characteristics like height may produce unpredictable affects. Or as if you have like two Japanese people marrying the similarity between the genes is already pretty extreme so you're going to have less of these compounding effects. So, Evan got this one correct. Bob and Perry were wrong, but again I thought you guys were, your comments were insightful, again this was a challenging one. I thought I'd get at least one of you one the IQ thing because it does, it is somewhat counter-intuitive, but that's an interesting scientific dilemma that is still being explored. It's one of those things that's, it's really impossible to every explain definitively. There's no way to do any kind of experiment to see what the effect really is. It's just trying to piece together, it's really an historical question. We can only really infer what might be the cause.

E: Hm.

References