SGU Episode 381

This is the transcript for the latest episode and it is not yet complete. Please help us complete it! Add a Transcribing template to the top of this episode before you start so that we don't duplicate your efforts.

This episode needs: transcription, time stamps, formatting, links, 'Today I Learned' list, categories, segment redirects. Please help out by contributing!

How to Contribute

SGU Episode 381
3rd November 2012
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 380                      SGU 382
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.
Paul Kurtz
Links
Download Podcast
SGU Podcast archive
Forum Discussion

Introduction

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

This Day in Skepticism (1:28)

November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

In Memorium

Paul Kurtz (3:45)

• 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an in memoriam. We do like to, on the Skeptic's Guide, pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and Paul Kurtz died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (audience laughter) You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, Secular Humanism. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (audience cooing)

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (laughing) I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel Joe Nickell, isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(applause)

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem)

S: Thank you, Joe.

Leon Jaroff (7:34)

• 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, Leon Jaroff also died. He was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (indignant gasp)

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(audience laughter)

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for Time Magazine. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was Discover Magazine. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, he wrote,

Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in Time Magazine. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(audience applause)

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

News Items

Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)

• Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate

Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)

• Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning

Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)

• Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds'

PANDAS Controversy (26:18)

• A PANDAS Story

Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)

• pnd

Live Q&A (51:06)

• Questions from the CSICon audience

Science or Fiction (55:19)

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11)

Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.

J: Paul Kurtz!

References