SGU Episode 328

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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 October 26^th 2011, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

B: Hey everybody

S: Rebecca Watson

R: Hello everyone

S: Jay Novella

J: Jet-lagged

S: And Evan Bernstein

E: Heeeey, happy Halloween coming up for everyone!

J: Isn’t it too early?

S: Yeah, that’s true, and this show comes out with two days to Halloween.

R: Yes, Steve and I are on our way to CSICON, for a Halloween in New Orleans.

E: That should be a lot of fun.

J: Are you guys gonna wear costumes?

S: Apparently

R: Yeah, there’s a costume contest

J: (excitedly) Come on! Spill it, guys! What’s the costumes?

R: This will actually go out the day we’re at CSICON, so…

S: I was gonna go as Dr. Horrible, so I’m gonna need a mad scientist’s lab coat, and I found one online, and it’s out of stock.

R: What? Steve?

J: YOU’RE A DOCTOR!

R: How do you not have access to-

J: Do you need a stethoscope too?

S: No, the mad scientist lab coat that he wears is very different to the medical lab coats that I own

B: That’s true

J: It’s actually more like a fencing jacket

B: Yeah, that’s true, it’s different. I would totally win that costume contest.

(laughter)

R: I know, I don’t know if my costumes gonna get here in time, but if it does, I’m going to be Max from ‘Where the wild things are

S: That’s cool

B: Oh, awesome

R: I think the movie’s been out long enough that not everyone will be dressed as Max anymore, so-

B: That’s awesome, that’s really cool

R: -that’s my plan. Yeah, it’s like a spot-on costume too.

E: With the hood and the right feeties

B: Oh, great

R: Yeah, we were talking about what happens if it gets here after CSICON, and I’m just like, ‘I – don’t – care’

S: ‘I’ll wear it’

(laughter)

R: I’ll wear it, yeah, everywhere I go. So it’s fine.

B: Ok

R: I’m gonna try and find a stuffed-toy version of one of the monsters-

S: One of the wild things?

R: Yeah, and then I’ll, yeah, I’ll cut it open and turn it into a purse.

E: Oh my god

B: Awesome

This Day in Skepticism (2:09)

S: Evan, tell us about witch hunting

E: Because it has to do with this day in scepticism, what with witches and costumes, and Halloween coming up and all.

S: (with British accent) “What with Halloween coming up an’ all”

E: October 29^th, 1390, the first trial of witchcraft in Paris takes place, leading to the death of three people. Now, I pulled that single sentence from our friends at Wikipedia, and it turns out, on doing a little digging into this Wikipedia fact, it turns out that the trial that had begun on that date was the second trial for witchcraft in Paris, not the first one. And, in addition, there were only two people killed as a result-

S: Damn Wikipedia

J: Otherwise it was accurate

E: -not three. Otherwise, hey, that sentence was totally accurate. So, real quick, the first trial actually took place, or began, on July 30^th of 1390, with two women, Margot de la Barre was a woman of ill-repute, with the added repute of possessing magical powers, and another woman Marion la “Dreygorere” (Droiturière), and that’s they closest I can pronounce this-

S: (laughing) Yeah

E: -14^th century last name. Marion’s husband had left her for another woman, so Marion hired Margot to cast a charm first, and then a curse. So, the charm was a love charm, hoping that would save the marriage, but it didn’t. So after the charm failed, to try to keep the husband around, Margot cast a curse that would make Marion’s husband impotent with other women.

S: ah-ha

E: So, upon torture, both of these women confessed to their dealings, Margot admitted calling upon demonic forces, and the two of them were burned at the stake in late August 1390.

S: Well, they deserved it.

E: Yeah.

B: Even though they confessed?

E: I have no, (inaudible)

B: That’s not fair

(laughter)

E: Yeah, to confess and then- well it’s the only way to clear your soul, Bob

B: I see

E: If you confess, you get a more merciful death. If you don’t confess-

R: Yeah, that’ what I was going to say, like, at that point, death is the… good sentence. That’s what you want, you don’t wanna keep getting tortured

E: Right, now the second trial, this one actually began on October 29^th of 1390, Wikipedia take note, and again, this one involved two women: Jehane de Brigue and Macete de Ruilly. Jehane had a reputation as a diviner, and she had once even been hired by the authorities of a local church to help recover some stolen artefacts from the church. And, because she was deemed to have been successful, for her efforts she earned a year in jail for the crime of practicing magic. She was only spared death because she made a promise to never practice magic again. But once she got out of jail, she sort of fell right back into the magic business, as it was. Now, the story gets a little bit sketchy because I found two different stories about what happened next. So, I’ll give them to you real quick. In version one, Macete conspired with Jehane to cast a love charm on Macete’s husband, Hennequin, which resulted in Hennequin asking for Macete’s hand in marriage and the two were wed, however, Hennequin turned out to be not such a great catch after all, and Macete didn’t like the arrangement, so she and Jehane got together again and performed more mumbo-jumbo on Hennequin that would render him fatally ill. The second version of the story is that Jehane was summoned to treat the already ill Hennequin, upon suspicion that he was suffering from a curse due to, of course, his infidelities. Now it turns out that Macete had admitted casting the curse on her own, but in both cases it was reported that all of this was confessed upon …(expectantly)

S: Torture

E: You got it, torture of the two women, and on August 19^th of 1391 they were both burned.

S: See, women are such trouble-makers, that’s the lesson here.

(laughter)

R: The only way to handle a mouthy woman is to burn her at the stake.

S: Yeah, they need to be singled out, tortured and then burned.

R: It worked for them for quite a while.

E: And deemed hysterical in the process, just for added salt in the wound.

R: Well, that’s what the uterus is for.

S: Now, in 1398, in reaction partly to these trials, academics from the university of Paris pronounced that magic is real and dangerous, and this contradicted the current doctrine of the church, that magic was imaginary. So we have a case of the church being the voice of reason in this particular case, and the academics from the university of Paris saying ‘yup, magic is real, and dangerous.

R: mmm, brilliant

E: What a world that was.

(laughter)

S: It’s like a crazy world!

E: It’s a mad house!

(laughter)

R: Cats and dogs living together…

S: Total chaos.

E: I mean, really, the medieval times were… a brutal, brutal time to be alive.

R: But a fun restaurant to visit.

S: Right?

(laughter)

E: You’re right, as long as you can go home at the end of it all, I guess it’s ok

R: The jousting is just amazing!

(laughter)

B: I like the chicken

(laughter)

News Items

Seeing Through Walls (7:15)

Science Daily: Seeing through walls
MIT news: Seeing through walls (inc. video)

S: Alright, well, Bob, tell us about seeing through walls

E: It’s called a window

(laughter)

B: Well, I wouldn’t call it a wall, but-

E: Excuse me? I’m looking at a window on the wall right there! I’m lookin’ at one right now

B: Ok

E: Alright, well we’ll leave it to the pros to tell us how it happens.

S: To do it the hard way

J: (laughing) Right.

B: MIT has come out with yet another cool piece of tech, a radar system that can see behind walls, but no windows involved. Now it’s not yet like making a wall completely transparent, but it is still pretty cool and useful, especially for a first-gen device. And the science behind it, of course, is pretty awesome. Even when you look at people through walls, you can’t really get around the basics, and the basics are, essentially, you get light to bounce off of something, get that light back to the detectors, then you have to interpret what you’re looking at. Now, like I said, the team at MIT uses radar instead of photons to see the people, the antennae consists of two rows, there’s a top row of eight receivers lines up next to each other. And the bottom row has got thirteen units that are used, not to receive the radiation, but to transmit the radar. And of course, there’s also the associated computer technology and all the other parts to actually, to control it and interpret it, and do everything. Now, the test performed at MIT didn’t go through wood or wall-board, they did a demo using 10 feet of Krell metal

S: (laughs)

J: Oh yeah, no, you wish

E: Huh?

B: No, sorry, Steve, I knew you were gonna laugh at the one. Sorry, it was four inches and eight inches of concrete walls, and I guess that’s pretty good too.

S: Yeah

B: You may think the walls would block all the light hitting it, it’s kinda like why they call a wall.

S: Were they opaque?

(laughter)

B: Yeah, opacity. Walls block most of the light, meaning that some does actually get through, surprisingly. And in this case, walls like these concrete walls block 99% of the radar light that hits it, which actually sounds like, you’d think it’d be more than that, but still, 99%. So then of course, light gets through it bounces off of something, reflects off of something, and then it’s gotta come back, and it’s gotta come through the wall again. So again, 99% of that 1% is blocked, so what you have left is pretty much a signal that’s weak, and it’s really only point-oh, let’s see, 0.0025% of it’s original strength, so it’s pretty attenuated. But, so there’s not much to work there, but of course amplifiers these days are cheap, and powerful, and surprisingly, that wasn’t even the hard part, according to the researchers. The real challenge was developing a system that could provide three key things. They had to have speed, resolution and range, without them, they wouldn’t be useful for real-time applications, which is the key application they had in mind for this. It was military, of course, but it had to be real-time, otherwise these things wouldn’t be as key. Now, Gregory Charvat of the technical staff of Lincoln lab, and he’s a leader of the project, he said “If you’re in a high-risk combat situation, you don’t want one image every 20 minutes, and you don’t want to have to stand right next to a potentially dangerous building”. So, in terms of range, this thing can operate 60 feet from a wall, which is pretty good, I did some googling around for other devices that can see through walls, and the ones that I came across were these devices that you actually had to hold up to the wall. So, I’m not sure if they were real-time, but having to hold this up to a dangerous wall obviously wouldn’t be good for these urban combat situations.

R: Bob, as I understand it, those only return one frame every, like 20 minutes or something, so it’s not like a real-time thing.

B: Yeah, the ones I saw were actually kinda small too, so it doesn’t surprise me that there wasn’t much processing power. Now, for the speed, it’s real-time, which, as I said, is pretty key for lots of these applications, and for resolution, it’s claimed to be good as well because of the state-of-the-art digital processing that they do, and they’ve got all these sophisticated algorithms. So they’re saying that the resolution’s good, and I’ll mention size as well, the size is manageable, they had to kind of balance the size a bit, because if you go with a longer wave-length of radar, then your penetration would be a lot better, but the device you would need would be way too unwieldy. So, the one they ended up with is still kind of big, someone’s not going to carry it around. But they could mount it on a truck, and that’s ok, that’s pretty good for that application. So one of the websites described it as big as a grocery cart. So now for the drawbacks of course, the imaging processing uses what’s called a subtraction method, so each image is compared to the previous to see what the difference is, to see what’s changed. Now that means that static objects are essentially invisible. And that’s kind of ok too, because, even if someone’s trying to stand perfectly still, they can still be detected because of all the small involuntary movements that can’t really be controlled. Oh yeah, the frame rate, it was like 10.9 fames per second, which is decent, it’s not the standard 24 frames a second, but it’s still decent enough. But the real disappointment for me was the image that it creates, I mean they’re actually described as blobs, I mean they just use the word ‘blobs’. Now, I guess just knowing a blob is a person is valuable intel’, but I mean, come on, Star Trek wouldn’t have a device that sees through walls and only shows a stupid blob, I was kind of disappointed when they described it, and Charvat said that- he said something else that was kinda disappointing too, he said “To understand the blob requires a lot of extra training,”. Now, what does that even mean?

(laughter)

B: A blob is a person, how much training does that require?

R: Ok, well, you know, but have you ever seen a sonogram? That’s a blob that you see professionals say ‘here’s the head, and there’s the feet’, and I couldn’t pick out anything, it just looks like… mush

B: I know, so, yeah, apparently there’s lots of training-

J: I don’t know, it’s still-

R: The training is mostly ‘you see this part at the top of the blob? That’s the head’ (laughs)

B: Yeah

R: (laughs) ‘this part at the bottom of the blob, that’s the feet’

J: I bet they’re talking more about, like what direction it’s moving in, and things like that, because it’s probably very blurry

B: Yeah, I guess, Jay, that there’s subtleties to the shape of the blob that could inform you as to what, you know, more precisely what you’re looking at, or maybe what the person might have on them. Or even how it moves could also potentially provide additional important information. So, currently, they’re working on algorithms that can convert this blob into they’re calling a ‘clean’ symbol so it’s more user-friendly, so it’s kind of a, you know, an easy to identify blob. But the things that I wanted to know that I couldn’t find was, what would it really take to get a fairly clear image of a person through something like a concrete wall? What wavelength of light would you need? How big would the device be?

B: They should just use that Adobe, that new Adobe anti-blur technology, that should work.

J: Yeah, that’s great stuff, man, did you see those before and after pictures? Incredible.

R: It’s amazing! They can do anything.

B: I can’t wait to check it out

J: What are you talking about? I don’t know.

R: It’s a new anti-blur thing, like filter, that you can do in Photoshop that literally takes a blurry, out of focus picture and puts it into sharp focus

E: Recreates it

R: There’s an amazing example online showing a crowd scene, and the ‘after’ you can see everything in the crowd, it’s amazing.

B: Anyway, like I said, it’s a pretty slick device, it seems like it could be very useful, especially in urban combat situation. And if it saves some lives, and helps us take out others, then who am I to argue?

E: Well, ok, but if you’re seeing a blob, how do you know whether it’s a friendly or a non-friendly?

B: Yeah, that’s true, I mean, so a lot of times-

R: It’s a different color

B: Yeah

(laughter)

R: Like in video games

E: Yeah, the bad guys are red, the good guys are green

J: No, maybe the way they add those-

B: Don’t be silly

J: -those cheesy 8-bit sound effects too, that’d be awesome

(laughter)

S: You guys familiar with Troy Hurtubise

J: Of course!

(laughter)

S: He’s the guy that won the ignoble award for making the anti-bear armor, remember him?

J: Yeah, he’s awesome

R: Oh yeah

B: That’ wasn’t really worthy of an ignoble, I mean, that was a pretty-

S: Well, he got it for surviving.

R: And ignobels aren’t just given to idiots, you know

E: Or cranks, yeah

R: They’re not just mean awards, they’re for people who do science that makes you laugh, and makes you think.

B: Oh

S: Yeah

E: And idiots

B: I didn’t pick that up so much

S: So Troy has a device that will enable you to see through a wall.

J: It’s called a drill!

B: Or an RPG

S: Yeah, and it’s called an ‘angel light’-

B: Oh god

S: -but he makes it sound like you could see through a wall, invisible light, as if the wall’s not there. Claims you can read, like, look through the wall into his garage and read the license plate number.

B: Heh, MIT wants to talk to him.

E: He has this device? Or a theory about this device?

S: No, he says he has a device, he tested it and did it

E: (laughs)

S: But he also could knock planes out of the sky with it too. It shuts down any electronic device that-

E: Within 35,000 feet

J: Yeah

B: Well yeah, you make the plane invisible, the pilots can’t see which buttons to press, and it crashes.

J: Get back on your medication, pal.

S: and he says he put his hand in the beam, and he could see his tendons and his blood vessels, as if the skin were removed.

B: All from a light, huh?

S: But then-

E: He got whacked around in that bear suit a little too often

S: But then he started to get some symptoms, it had negative side-effects, so he decided he had to dismantle it.

B: Dismantle it. So, forget the idea that the principles he discovered might be helpful in other things, let’s just take it apart, let’s destroy it.

R: He’s like, ‘you know what, guys, I ran out of batteries in my remote, and the only ones left in the house were inside the machine, so, you know, sorry’

E: Maybe he’s a lucid dreamer or something

S: I think he’s just nutty, he’s clearly off the deep end on this one. And he’s talking about it like he’s going to win the nobel prize and change the laws of physics, and, you know, how amazing it is. Compare that to the story about the strengths and weaknesses of this new device that Bob was describing: this is real science, this is fake science.

E: And the real science that Bob just described is the first generation-

B,J&S: Yeah

E: -of whatever’s going to come next. Like the first generation of radar that came along. They couldn’t tell the difference between planes and flocks of birds, right? There were inherent, you know, limitations, and it will only get better from here on out. They’ll keep working on this.

B: So what’s going through this guys mind? Is he batty? Or is he just knowingly lying for some nefarious purpose? What’s he thinking?

J: No, I think he’s bat-nut!

B: Sounds like he’s a little delusional.

(laughter)

R: Go with bat-nut!

(laughter)

S: (inaudible) fruit bat? Or…

(laughter)

B: Oh my god, I mean, does he really think people are going to go along with him and say ‘aw, that’s so awesome, here’s your nobel prize’

J: Yeah, Bob, because he’s kooked-out! He does.

R: Yeah, sounds like it.

S: Right (laughs)

Malaria Vaccine (18:22)

Reuters: Malaria scientist celebrates success after 24 years

S: Well, let’s go on, let’s talk about the new anti-malaria vaccine.

R: (quietly)Hooray!

S: Did you guys hear about this-

J: By the way, I got vaccinated today.

S: I’m proud of you.

E: Excellent

S: My two daughters got vaccinated today as well.

E: Excellent

R: For what?

J: Flu

S: Flu, it’s flu vaccination season

R: Ok, but you also could have gotten whooping cough, for instance.

E: Yeah

(inaudible, multiple voices)

R: Something like that, that’s a vaccine adults can get on a regular basis

E: Yeah, a little booster

S: So, Joe Cohen from, working for Glaxo-Smith-Klein, that’s GSK, spent 20 years trying to develop a vaccine for malaria, and finally succeeded.

E: Awesome

S: Came up with the vaccine called 'RTS,S' vaccine, ‘’or’’ Mosquirix. Like mosquito, Mosquirix.

R: That’s terrible

S: It’s terrible

E: Yeah, I’d rather RTS…

(laughter)

R: It sounds like a Batman villain.

S: Let’s take on RTS, yeah, right, or an X-man or something

(laughter)

J: What the hell are you talking about?

R: That really got Evan.

(laughter)

S: This reduces the risk of developing Malaria by 50%.

E: Nice

S: In the trials. This is the largest clinical trials ever conducted in Africa, were done on this vaccine. 16,000 children were tested.

R: And previous to this, I mean, the best efforts I think we’ve made are just in terms of reducing the mosquito populations, right?

S: Yeah, so, interestingly, it was recently reported that the malaria rate has dropped by 20% worldwide, but that’s due to just anti-mosquito efforts, netting, you know, basic stuff.

R: Netting, and there was that fairly recent breakthrough with scientists breeding mosquitoes that they could then let out into the wild which would then breed with native mosquitos and render them unable to carry malaria.

S: Right

R: I don’t know if that ever actually came to fruition.

S: Then there were those giant mutant lizards they released in Africa that would eat up the mosquitoes.

E: And half the population

R: And then there were the giant cats to hunt down the giant lizards

S: Yeah, it all got a little out of control

R: It all kinda-

E: That’s the Australia story, right? With the toad-

S: Before you know it there were elephants running all over the place

E: -and dogs

(laughter)

E: Huge ones, huge!

S: So, but seriously, it’s not ready for use yet, they say they can probably roll it out by 2015, but they did finish the first clinical trial and present the data. So this is a tremendous breakthrough, this was a hard problem to solve, it took a lot longer than they thought it was going to when he first started on the project 24 years ago. But they’ve found a way to interrupt the plasmodium life cycle and reduce the exposure turning into an actual infection. They’re actually hoping to ‘’eradicate’’ malaria worldwide, that would be nice. This is one more step, and this is again-

E: Except that the anti-vax crowds of people will still have malaria.

S: Yeah, right, they’ll do their best to hinder our efforts to eradicate malaria, I’m sure. Like with the ‘seeing through the walls’ technology, this is first-gen, but they’re hoping that as they continue to work on it that they’ll get the success rate higher and higher, you know. Still, 50% is a lot, I mean, that’s a ‘’lot’’ of child and infant deaths that they will be able to prevent with this vaccine.

E: Glaxo stock went up a full point the day it was announced

S: Yeah, I’m not surprised.