SGU Episode 92

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SGU Episode 92
April 25th 2007
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 91                      SGU 93
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
'Death is an engineering problem.'
Bart Kosko (Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic, 1994
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

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, April 25^th, 2007, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Rebecca Watson...

R: Hello.

S: Perry DeAngelis...

P: Yello.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hello governor.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello and happy DNA Day to everyone.

P: The double helix thing?

J: Douglas Adams?

E: Celebrates the completion of the Human Genome Project and the discovery of the double helix.

S: Wait, but Evan, isn't today Secretary's Day or something?

J: Yeah, it's Admin Day, I think.

P: Wait a minute, wait a minute, Perry got it right, double helix, thank you.

S: The Skeptic's Guide has tipped over a completely arbitrary and random milestone that we are now going to commemorate. We have surpassed one million downloads of our podcast.

J: One million downloads.

R: Did anybody bring champagne?

E: I started an hour ago.

J: So Steve, our listeners want to know what does this mean?

P: It means that our bloviating has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human mind. That's what it means.

S: Actually, we've been anticipating this because we could see the tickers going up on the site that hosts the files, our media server. And I was actually surprised that in the last week, we're getting about 16,000 to 17,000 downloads per episode. We had about 30,000 downloads total last week, which means for everyone who's downloading the latest episode, they're also downloading an older episode.

E: That's good.

J: Yeah, people go back to the library. That's why we put it up there.

S: So just thanks again to all of our listeners for making our podcast a success. And it's nice a million downloads has a sort of a psychological ring to it.

News Items

Dr. Novella on The Debate Hour (2:05)

• Dr. Novella appeared on The Debate Hour hosted by Reginald Finley - The Infidel Guy. He debated author Dr. Fred Baughman on the topic: Is Psychiatry Legitimate Science
  infidelguy.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=206165
  
  Dr. Novella's blog discussion of the topic: www.theness.com/neurologicablog/default.asp?Display=87
  

S: Another little follow up from last week, at the end of the last episode, I mentioned that I was going to be on the Infidel Guys, the debate hour, and that was recorded on Friday. It's now available as a podcast, and I'll have the link so you can download that. I debated Dr. Fred Bowman, who is also a neurologist, and he has written books and many articles and has a website basically saying that all of modern psychiatry is a fraud, that mental illnesses like ADHD do not exist, they're not real, and that it's all a big conspiracy of the pharmaceutical industry. So actually, I think the debate went pretty well.

B: It did. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

S: Yeah, it was good. You know, it is hard to engage these people in debate. It's a lot easier always to do the other side. For example, he said some things that were just factually incorrect. So if you make stuff up, it's kind of really easy to score points in a debate. One of the biggest factual disagreements between us is he kept on saying that there was no evidence for biological abnormalities in the brains of people with like, say, schizophrenia or ADHD. And there is. There was copious amounts of published studies, and he just kept insisting that there wasn't. I'm like, Fred, I'm looking at it right now. It's right in front of me. I told people how to go to PubMed, look up ADHD and medication, and you'll be looking at the same 23 articles I'm looking at. But in an audible debate, it's hard to come across with those kind of facts like that. So this week on my blog, I actually digested and reanalyzed the debate and wrote a four-part blog about mental illness denial and covering all the topics that he brought up, including links to the published studies that I was referring to during the debate. So if you listen to the debate and if you're interested in that topic, you'll get into a lot deeper by reading my blog entries from this week.

P: Well, he may be prejudiced, you know. I think you crushed him in the debate.

S: I did get him good with the migraine comment. That was a good point.

P: He was stumbling and mumbling.

S: That was my best and his worst moment because essentially a migraine headache syndrome is a perfect analog of ADHD or schizophrenia in that it's a disorder. It occurs in the brain. Its symptoms are completely subjective. There's no diagnostic test for it. It's diagnosed clinically. So all of the things that Dr. Bowman and others like him use to say that mental illnesses aren't real are true about migraines. So if you think that ADHD isn't real, you should also think that migraines are not real, basically. And when I asked him if he ever diagnosed anybody with a migraine, he did fumble. He knew exactly what I was getting at when I said that question. I had him and he knew I had him and he was grasping. And what he grasped for was totally bogus. He said that patients with migraine have a scotoma, which means they have like a dark spot, a loss of vision in their visual field, and that that's an objective finding and that's why it's different. And I think, well, only a subset of patients with migraine have that. Many migraine patients don't have that. And having a scotoma, in fact having any abnormalities on the neurological exam, are not required for the diagnosis. They're not even on the list. If you look at the list of symptoms that you need to have to have a migraine, this is the International Headache Classification Criteria for Migraine, don't include scotoma as a component at all, let alone being necessary. So I guess Dr. Bowman has his own personal criteria for diagnosing migraine that differ from the rest of the world of neurology. But he threw that out there to rescue himself as if it made his point. And that was totally intellectually dishonest to do that because he knows that that was total BS. He's got to know, being a neurologist, that that was completely BS.

B: And Steve, at one point he reminded me of evolution deniers in that he kept repeating over and over, what's the one study? Give me the one study that shows that there's some sort of pathology there. And it's not that clear cut. You have to take the whole gestalt. You can't take apart evolution, or you can't prove evolution with one definitive study. But when you take it all together, damn, it's there. There's no denying it.

S: Yeah, it is a denial syndrome. It is like denying evolution or denying HIV causes AIDS or denying the Holocaust. They use the same intellectual strategies. It's very, very similar.

B: Would you call it a disorder?

S: I would call it a—it's like it's a subset of pseudoscience, you know. Denying a legitimate body of science is in and of itself a pseudoscience, and they use similar strategies. And you can—in fact, I wrote an article about it, just sort of comparing evolution denial to mental illness denial and Holocaust denial, looked at the sort of the common threads among them.

Astronomers Discover Most Earth-Like Planet So Far (6:52)

• planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/news/superEarth.cfm
  

S: Let's go on to the next topic. There was a pretty interesting discovery made very recently.

B: This is great.

S: The most Earth-like planet to date has been discovered around a fairly close star. The newly discovered planet circles the star Gliese 581c, which is 20.5 light years away from the Earth.

E: It's close.

S: In the constellation Libra. It's very close. It's one of the closest stars to us. The planet was discovered using the techniques that they've been using, where they look at the wobble in the star to say that there's got to be another object gravitationally affecting it revolving around it, namely a planet. Now because you need planets that are fairly big and also fairly close to the star in order to cause it to wobble visibly, most of the planets that we've seen are actually fairly big. They're like bigger than Jupiter. They're gas giants. We've discovered 211 planets so far. This one, however, is the smallest planet. It's only about 1.5 times larger in diameter than the Earth, although it has about five times the mass of the Earth. And I think that works out, the article I'm reading on NASA says that works out to about twice, at the surface it would have about twice the gravity of the Earth. And they're not sure yet if it's a rocky planet or if it's made mostly of ice. The more ice it is, then the bigger it would have to be in order to have that amount of mass.

B: And if it was ice at one time, it probably would have melted now to be a planet-wide ocean. I mean, I don't think it would be an ice ball at this point if the temperature range is what they suspect.

S: And right, you bring up the other very interesting and exciting point about this world is that it's in the so-called habitable zone.

B: The Goldilocks zone.

S: The Goldilocks zone, just right, where you could theoretically have liquid water. You know, a lot of the news articles about it speculated about whether or not the planet would be habitable and ask about what the effects would be of living on a planet with twice the gravity. Long term, you would have accelerated degenerative arthritis in your joints and your spine just from the extra wear and tear.

R: Yeah, long term, it probably wouldn't be pretty.

B: It would also be a good workout.

S: It'd be a good workout, you'd get pretty muscular. But you know, if you're, jet fighters routinely undergo 3, 4, 5 Gs, so it's...

E: Yeah, you'd have evolved, no, you'd have evolved to be a creature suitable to that.

R: I think he's thinking if we blast it off and made a home there.

S: Colonize the world.

B: I read a 150 pound person, which is to say roughly my weight, would be 240 pounds. That's, I mean, I could walk around if I weighed 240. I wouldn't be completely debilitated.

R: It would probably put extra stress on everything and you'd probably have a shorter lifespan.

S: Yeah, now it's worth pointing out that we can't see the planet directly. Even being as close as it is, it's too close to its sun for us to separate the two out visually. So, we've only detected it by its effect on its star that 20.5 light years away is still far away. So, we don't even have, know how we could potentially even get there. You know, it's certainly not going to happen anytime soon. This may be something that happens in hundreds or more years. We don't have to worry about contaminating that planet for a while. But it does bring up the speculation that, hey, this is a planet that has liquid water. Maybe it could be inhabited by life. But that is that is certainly very interesting and a lot of the news reports took that angle. But that's totally speculative and it's far too early to even think about there being life on that planet.

B: You know, what I'm excited about is when we eventually get some of the next generation, Hubble's out there where we can actually discern some really interesting information about the planet rather than just wobbling wavelengths. There were a couple of other really interesting things about this. The fact that, first off, this was very close to the time where we could, this is like the first time we could really make out Earth-sized planets. And very soon after we had that capability, bam, we find one. So, that bodes well for other Earth-like planets out there. Secondly, up until recently, we never really thought that red dwarfs could have planets around them for whatever reason. And now we found one. We found a red dwarf with a planet around it like Earth. And I think, at least near Earth, 80% of the stars are red dwarfs. Many of them are red dwarfs. So, that bodes very well for dwarfs.

E: Is that because a red dwarf was going to absorb those planets? Is that why you don't find the small planets close to the red dwarfs?

S: They're bigger, dimmer stars. So, they didn't think that they would be good candidate stars to have Earth-like planets around them. But this expands the number of stars that we think are good candidate stars to look at. And you're right, Bob. You know, we're basically finding planets wherever we look, and very, very quickly. So, that does make it seem as if most stars are going to have planets around them. It's one piece of that Drake equation, right? The Drake equation basically calculating the probability of space-faring or radio-transmitting technological civilizations in our galaxy and outside the galaxy. And you know, one of the pieces, one of the assumptions in that calculation is how many star systems have planets around them. And on average, how many planets do they have how many of those planets can have life? So, we didn't know the answer to that. And some people say, well, maybe our configuration is very, very, very rare. Maybe most stars do not have rocky, habitable planets around them. And that would throw the Drake equation off. I mean, that would drastically reduce the number of civilizations that statistically should be out there. So, this is, yeah, this addresses that one component. There seems to be a lot of planets and probably a lot of Earth-like planets out there.

E: This means we're going to start taking a look at closer stars and closer systems as well. Again, to look for these planets.

S: I don't know how they're choosing which stars to look at right now, so I don't know the answer to that. It makes you wonder what that red dwarf sun would look like from the surface of that planet.

B: Well, it would be red of course. But more importantly, it would be, I think it's like 15 times the apparent size of the moon. So, the view would be amazing on that planet, imagine how that would look. Now, something occurred to me. This planet apparently is 7 million miles away from its star. The Earth is 93 million miles away, so I kind of did a back-of-the-envelope calculation. What would the tidal forces be on this planet? Now, tidal forces, it's related to gravity, but it mainly refers to the difference in gravity from the near side of an object to the far side. The near side of the Earth has more of a gravitational pull, or the moon has more of a gravitational pull than the far side. So, that disparity causes a tide. So, I wanted to see, I wanted to figure out, all right, what would the tides be like on a planet that close to a star? So, let me just quickly go through my calculations, and we've got a lot of bright people listening. Maybe I'm making some sort of egregious error, but I don't think so. Let's see. Tidal forces drop with a cube of the distance. So, if the planet is 13.3 times closer to its sun, then the tidal forces would be 13 times 13 times 13, which would be 2,200 times that of the sun on the Earth. But, since the planet has, since the star, Gliese 5, was it 561, the star has one-third the mass of the sun, that's 2,200 times 0.3, so it's 726 times the tidal effect on the planet that the sun has on the Earth. But there's one other thing to account for. The sun accounts for only 33% of the total tidal force acting on the Earth. The sun, the moon, of course, accounting for the other 66%, so that would be 726 times 0.3. 240. I came out with the star, the star Gliese 561, 581, has 240 times the tidal force acting on it that the sun-moon has on the Earth. So 240, imagine tides on the Earth being 240 times as intense as they are. That's pretty gargantuan, and the effect might even be magnified a little bit because the diameter of the planet is bigger than the Earth.

S: Yeah, that's right.

B: So I'm not sure what the actual mass of the planet might also have an effect, either way. But still, I don't think I'm off by anything like an order of magnitude. So over 240 times, that could increase volcanism so much that that might totally prevent any life from being on there. It might just be volcanoes erupting 24 hours a day all over the place. It's a possibility.

R: Well, it could be entirely covered by an ocean for all we know. And actually, Phil Plait on his Bad Astronomy blog talks about this. He postulates about the fact that the planet may be tidally locked, saying that one side is always facing the sun, and how that would affect it. So I mean, there's a lot of stuff we don't know.

B: Like the moon is tidally locked to the Earth, and eventually, in many millions of years, the Earth will be tidally locked to the moon, so that eventually only one side of the Earth will forever face the moon. But I'm not sure tidal locking will have that much effect on life. It wouldn't prevent, I don't think, life developing on it. But I think these tidal forces could. And even if it was a planet-wide ocean, if you've got tremendous tidal forces, that increased heat could potentially just boil away the ocean. I mean, look at some of the moons of Jupiter. The tidal forces are so gargantuan, because they're orbiting such a massive planet, that some of the moons of Jupiter are just volcanoes all going off.

S: Well, Io. Io is basically constantly turning itself inside out with volcanism.

B: And it's all because, I mean, there's no real radioactive decay going on in the center of that moon. It's just all the tidal forces is what's causing the friction and the heat, and just turning itself inside out. So it's just an interesting aside.

P: Do you think that this planet is also in the vicious grip of global warming, like we are?

B: If it is, it's not human-caused, that's for sure.

P: It's good to know.

S: Well, but it is very neat to now be able to speculate about what these extrasolar planets are like. We actually have some facts where we can start to think about what an actual planet outside of our solar system could be like, given what we know about it. And we're just going to learn more and more. So it's pretty cool.

P: The universe is pretty big, you know? It's pretty big. There's probably a lot of Class M planets out there. I think so.

B: I'm sure. This shows it. Christ, we got one 20 light years away.

E: That planet with the Nazis running around, that's a Class M planet.

P: It's a bad place.

Pill for Genetic Diseases (17:54)

• www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1690544.ece
  

S: One more news item. This is also a very, very cool science news item from this week. This one dealing with medicine. The title of this article is Daily Pill to Beat Genetic Diseases. Now, when I first saw this, this is like the kind of claim that immediately made me skeptical, for lack of a better word. If you said, hey, you could take a pharmaceutical, a drug that would basically cure hundreds of different genetic diseases, when I first saw that, I could not think of what the mechanism would be. Nothing really occurred to me. How could that possibly work? How could you cure so many different genetic diseases with a drug? I just didn't get it. This is legitimate. This is cool. This is the drug known as PTC-124. This is designed to treat a specific kind of genetic disease caused by a specific type of mutation called a nonsense mutation, which means that, again, very quickly, a gene is a sequence of base pairs on the DNA, and every three letters equals one specific amino acid. A mutation that changes one of those three-letter codes to a combination that doesn't code for any amino acid usually codes for what's called a stop codon, which basically tells the ribosome, which is the little factory inside each cell that makes proteins from the RNA, it tells the ribosome to stop there. If you have a mutation in a gene that turns that three-letter code into a nonsense code, a stop code, that cuts off the production of the protein, so the entire protein doesn't get made, only a small piece of the protein gets made. Those are bad mutations because the whole protein is defunct. Instead of having a protein with just one amino acid out of order, you get just a small fraction of the protein that's completely non-functional. For example, in Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, there's a protein. The protein's called dystrophin, named after the disease, actually. It's a very important structural protein in muscles, and in Duchenne's, there's a nonsense mutation so that the muscle cells do not make dystrophin at all, and therefore muscle tissue breaks down over time. This is very clever. What the drug is designed to do is it binds to the ribosome, again, the factory that makes the proteins from the RNA, and it tells it to ignore the stop instructions. It will make the entire gene, and it will bypass these mutated stop codons, which is very clever. It realized that that was possible, actually. Because that addresses a basic mechanism of that type of mutation, it doesn't matter what the disease is or what the mutation is. It will bypass that entire class of mutations, which means that there's about, I think they said there's 1,200 identified diseases where that is the type of mutation. That's a lot of different diseases.

B: How many? Oh, 1,800?

S: More than 1,800 genetic diseases.

B: Yeah, but Steve, when I read that, 1,800, I was like, wow, that's a lot of genetic diseases. But then a few paragraphs down, I got a little bummed when it said, in most genetic conditions, between 5% and 15% of cases are caused by the nonsense mutations, and that seems pretty low. First off, I didn't know there were quite that many genetic illnesses, 1,800 times whatever, but 5% to 15% doesn't sound like much. Well, it says here that it should also work against more than 1,800 other genetic diseases. To me, that means there's 1,800 of these nonsense mutations, which are only 5% to 15% of all genetic defects. But still, that's a lot. 1,800, it's gargantuan. Too bad it just wasn't able to address more than 400%.

S: Coming up with a drug that would cure just one of those diseases is huge. Even just Duchenne's or cystic fibrosis, which are both target diseases. Now, before we get too excited, we have to say that this is in phase two trials right now. So in clinical trials, there's preclinical trials, which are in the test tube and in animals, and then there's phase one human trials, which are just looking at safety and healthy individuals, and then phase two trials, which are looking at more safety data, some pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics, and starting to get some early indication if there's a beneficial effect. And then phase three are definitive, usually placebo-controlled trials, where you want to definitively answer, does it work or not? And then phase four trials are post-marketing, after-marketing trials. So phase two is preliminary, and then based upon the results of the phase two trials that are ongoing right now, we'll decide if we go on to the phase three trials, if it's safe and has an indication of efficacy. So it's going to be years still to figure out if these work. And they may not sometimes, I've seen lots and lots of drugs crap out between phase two and phase three trials. So too early to celebrate now, but it's looking very hopeful.

B: I mean, how many diseases are they testing it against currently? And I mean, say it's safe.

S: The two that I've seen are cystic fibrosis and Duchenne's muscular dystrophy.

B: Well, say it's safe, but just not efficacious. But does that mean that, oh, well, we could try 1,798 other diseases to see if it works? I mean, of course, at some point you'd say, screw it. It doesn't work against any of these. But still, just because it failed on some, does that mean that it would necessarily fail on hundreds of others?

S: Based upon the basic science how it's supposed to work, you would think it either works or it doesn't. You know, I'm not sure why it would work for one and not for another. The animal data is very encouraging. In the mouse model of Duchenne's, in the animal studies, apparently when they treated mice with Duchenne's, basically they started making dystrophin and repairing their muscle fibers and developed normal muscle. So if that doesn't happen in humans for some reason, then there's just something different, about the human ribosome or whatever that's keeping it from working. They probably would still want to try it in a few more, just to be sure. But I'm sure after a certain number of negative trials, it'll be hard to continue to press forward. Then they'd probably go back to the drawing board, tweak the chemical, do some more basic research before going back to human trials.

E: Steve, does that mean the people or the patients who would conceivably be taking these, if and when it reaches that point, they're going to have to be on these for the rest of their life to keep up with that, right?

S: Yes, exactly. That's exactly right.

B: Oh, screw that.

S: That's right. You have to take it every day.

E: Small price to pay.

S: Oh, yeah. For those diseases. A lot of these diseases are bad. You know, when there's a critical protein you're not making at all, that's usually a bad thing. So taking a pill a day is not a big deal. So this is the most surprising science news item I have heard in a long time especially within the field of medicine. This is really, it's very good news and it's very surprising and I hope it works out. I've been at this point before with a lot of other things and that just did not work out. So you'd still have to be, you have to have cautious optimism at this point.

B: That's right. It's been quite a week. The Earth-like planet found and this wonder drug.

S: Yeah.

EU Criminalizes Holocaust Denial -sort of (25:30)

• www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/19/news/eu.php
  

Questions and E-mails ()

S: One quick follow-up from last week. Last week we talked about the European Union considering passing laws to criminalize Holocaust denial. And just the quick follow-up is that they've actually made their decision and they did pass a law essentially criminalizing Holocaust denial, but in the process, the political process of passing the law, it got watered down to the point that it doesn't really have any teeth. So it's kind of a good news, bad news. They did pass the law, but it's basically toothless.

E: So it's what, ceremonial or symbolic more than anything?

S: Symbolic. So it's more symbolic than anything else. I still think the whole thing is a bad idea to try to regulate. It's awful. But that's a sort of good outcome. The only thing is that it could set a precedent for more stringent laws to come down the road. So it's just a bad-

R: I mean, look at some of the symbolic laws that we have like well, until recently how anal sex has been outlawed.

S: The sodomy laws. Yeah.

R: You know, the sodomy laws. So just get rid of them. It's kind of absurd.

S: I agree.

R: But anyway, we talked about it last week.

S: Yes. Yeah, that was just a quick follow-up.

This is Adam Savage. This is Tori Bellecci. We're the MythBusters, and you're listening to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

Bacterial Flagella Follow up (26:56)

Steve,

Just listened to your podcast of 4/18 while working in my office. Great work, but I have a little nit to pick. The bacterial flagellum paper that you cited is apparently not so good and does not really show what it purports to show, thanks to problems using the BLAST algorithm. You may want to take a look at:

www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/04/flagellum_evolu_1.html
www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/04/update_on_pnas.html
www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/04/flagellum_evolu_3.html

Dave (AKA Orac)

S: Let's move on to your emails and questions. The first one comes from Dave, aka Aurak. He's a fellow science blogger, and he writes, just listened to your podcast of 418 while working in my office. Great work, but I have a little nit to pick. The bacterial flagellum paper that you cited is apparently not so good and does not really show what it purports to show, thanks to problems using the BLAST algorithm. You may want to take a look at, and he gives several links. Well, I took a look at them. So just for a little background, last week we were talking about intelligent design in the context of my, this time a written debate with that neurosurgeon, Dr. Egnor, and we brought up the fact that there was this new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that purported to show the evolution of the bacterial flagellum by gene duplication, and was very apropos to the discussion. To put this into perspective, the Proceedings is a very prestigious journal. So this is a, presumably if a paper gets published in the Proceedings, it has passed a significant degree of peer review and editorial review. But in the week since we recorded last episode, the scientific community has had a chance to read the article and to pick over it, which is the post-publication peer review process that occurs, and they're finding quite a few problems with it. So the paper is not as good as you might think. It gets very, very technical. I will have the links to the, the links that Dave provided were for another science blog called The Panda's Thumb by Nick Matske. He wrote a series of entries giving his analysis of the paper, and he found some significant problems with their conclusions. Basically this is what it comes down to. Yes, a number of the genes that make up the bacterial flagella do appear to have occurred, are related to each other. They did evolve through gene duplication, but not, as the paper claims, all of the genes that make up the flagellum. In fact, some of the other genes have traits in common with genes that are not part of the flagellum, and therefore they probably evolved from, from those genes. None of this, of course, has anything to do with whether or not the bacterial flagellum evolved. It has nothing to do with the fact that gene duplication exists and that the flagellum evolved through gene duplication. It's just the specific interpretation of, of the, of how the genes were related to each other and how they evolved over time, and that's in dispute. And this is, again, this is exactly how science works. You know, these details are being picked over and, and will be debated. Now of course this is what the creationists have been doing for, for decades, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the IDers do the same thing, where they, they take a debate about some of the details about how things evolved, and they turn that into disagreement about whether or not they did, did evolve. So unfortunately, this whole incident is probably going to make hay, as Nick said, for the IDers. But it's, it's actually a pretty typical story in science. Now that we have hundreds or thousands of people picking over this paper, the problems will be, will be ferreted out. So that's science working the way it's supposed to work.

P: Now, wait a minute, Steve. I heard a creationist correct himself about actually, I think in the whole 6,000 year history, year history of the earth, I don't think a creationist has ever corrected himself about anything.

S: No, you're probably right. Right. That's, that's exactly right. I mean, it's because creationism and intelligence are not sciences. They do not, are not self-corrected.

R: I beg to differ. I believe that there was one doubting Thomas who changed his mind, and I'm pretty sure he was a creationist. QED, Perry.

P: I stand corrected. See? I'm willing to fight it. I'm willing to admit it. Thank you.

R: It's big of you.

P: And it is.

S: It's also, it's also kind of fun being in the science blog community because the science blog community, I've had a lot of fun being involved with it in the last few months. I'm glad, I'm really glad I started, I decided to write a blog because it's kind of a vibrant sort of sub-community.

R: They're a good group of people.

S: Yeah. It's a good group of people.

B: How do you interface with other science bloggers? What kind of communication?

S: Well, we all email each other. We all read each other's blogs. There's a skeptical carnival where we all sort of contribute to, Rebecca has been doing this even for longer than I have contribute to, every two weeks there's this, the skeptical, the skeptic circle, which is like 20 or so skeptical blog entries that all get linked to from one person's blog who's hosting it.

J: And they all get around and they rub each other's backs and they talk about girls.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

R: I was, I was on, I was at a humanist conference this weekend where I was on a panel for the next generation of humanism and that, a lot of the things we were talking about involved things like this. And that's what I spoke about at the amazing meeting too, because I think it's so important. People don't understand until they really get into it, how important the online community is. And so something like a blog, it's so easy to stay connected with people who have, you have experts in every field you could hope for. And they're right at your fingertips and everybody's interacting. It's a really great place to be. And it's a great place to hone your skeptical skills. So if anybody out there has a blog feel free to email Steve and me and guys through the site let us know your blog address and we can all link because that's, it's a huge part of the community.

S: We'll give some link love.

P: Rebecca and Steve, you both run blogs. What's the difference between a blog community as opposed to the forum community, if any?

R: The forum is basically anybody can sign up to the forum and anybody can start new topics and anybody can then respond to those topics. But on a blog, you've basically got one person in Steve's case or a small group of people in Skepchick's case who are posting regular essays, which tend to be a bit more thought out than a random forum post, usually not always.

S: Yeah. Somewhere between a forum post and a full-fledged article.

R: On tagging on to those blog posts, anybody can come along and then comment on that blog topic. And then there's, there can be a discussion on each blog topic. So I think both forums and blogs are really important for encouraging community. And that's why, of course, we have both for Skeptic's Guide.

S: Absolutely. And you know what? This is one of those tangible examples of how the internet technology has actually accelerated the pace of science. Because here you have this paper gets published. There's an online community. You can read it online even before it comes out in print. And before this thing is even out in print, it's been totally dissected by a lot of people. You can discuss it back and forth. You can argue back and forth. The transmission of information, the community effort.

P: Oh, yeah. The acceleration of information exchanges, it's phenomenal. It's mind-boggling.

S: It's incredible.

P: It really is.

S: Yeah, it's absolutely, it is. And this is a great example of it. The thing is not even in print yet and already it's been dissected by the community.

P: Where does that leave print journals though, Steve? You know, what's the guy who's...

S: They're struggling to figure out what their place is in all of this, seriously. Although luckily people still like to read on the can. Having something tangible in your hand is still, there's still a niche for that.

R: Beautifully put.

S: I couldn't think of any other way to say it. That's what it comes down to.

J: And you're like, you pull out a tube of toothpaste, you read that. Anything other than not reading.

B: Oh my God, it wasn't just me? Holy crap.

R: What is with you guys? I've never read a single thing on the toilet.

B: You are not human. How could you? You're not.

R: No, I'm not a boy. This has got to be a guy thing. And okay, let's throw this out to the audience, please. I have actually wondered about this. I'm pretty sure that this is just a guy thing. Girls, first of all, girls don't poop. But second of all, besides that, aside from that fact, girls just don't spend that much time on the toilet. I think we get in, we get it done, and then we get out. We spend all of our time like in front of the mirror.

E: And why do you go to the toilet in groups?

R: Because we have to talk. It's different. We talk. But we talk while we're doing our makeup.

P: It says you can cheer each other on. Go for that piss, baby. You look like a racehorse.

R: Wait, just so we're clear, you just quoted Andrew Dice Clay?

P: Happens to be a brilliant man. But I wanted to say, I'm all about reading.

R: I hope you just lost a lot of fans.

P: I am on the cutting edge. I have a television in my bathroom.

R: No, you don't.

P: Thank you very much.

R: Shut up. No, you don't.

P: When I sit on the can, I can get absorbed into a program. I can sit there for an hour.

R: You do not have a television in your bathroom.

B: I can't hear. I'm clapping. A TV in the bathroom. Holy shit.

R: Please, telll me you're joking.

J: As far as you as I am, as incredible as that is, it's not good for the O-ring to sit on the can for more than an hour.

P: Oh, I'm sorry. I got to disagree.

R: Perry, you really are my, Perry, you are my exact opposite in every way.

P: Sometimes I lounge in the tub for hours.

R: With the meat eating and the television. I don't even own a television. You have a television in your bathroom.

P: I got five TVs in this house. I got televisions everywhere. You got to monitor what's going on, you know.

S: Perry and Rebecca are like matter and antimatter. Is that what you're saying?

R: We are. We can never be in the same room where the universe will collapse.

P: But you never got a marriage proposal from me.

R: That's true.

P: There you go.

B: Well, it won't really collapse.

R: I'm not complaining.

B: You'll just burst into a bunch of gamma rays, but it's still nasty.

P: I urge everyone to get a TV for their can. Thank you.

E: Or a toilet for your computer.

R: Yeah, why not just install a toilet in your armchair, Perry?

P: You could.

S: Don't give him any ideas. Don't give him any ideas.

J: Every day I take breath, I realize that you are more and more like Cartman.

P: I don't know if he's got a TV in his bathroom.

R: No, but if he grew up and were real, he would.

S: All right. That's it.

Vitrification (37:59)

I am curious about the claims of the alcor life extention foundation being able to preserve bodies in a cold process without freezing called vitrification. This works without actually freezing at the cellular level. This apparently is already being used for their members and they have over 80 members currently in stasis. Is this science or not? There faq can be found at www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq02.html.

Roy Huff
USA

S: We have time for one more email. This one comes from Roy Huff, and Roy gives his location as the USA. And he writes, I am curious about the claims of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation being able to preserve bodies in a cold process without freezing called vitrification. This works without actually freezing at the cellular level. This apparently is already being used for their members, and they have over 80 members currently in stasis. Is this science or not? Their fact can be found at this link.

R: Here we go.

E: Sounds like the Heaven's Gate people.

B: Here we go.

R: Jay?

P: Jay's a member.

R: Jay, now, yeah, I think we've talked about this. We've broached this subject slightly before. Haven't we?

S: So, Jay, let us have it. Tell us, what's the skinny on vitrification?

J: Okay, first of all, yeah, I am a member of Alcor. I joined on my 30th birthday. You know, before I did it, there was years and years of lead up. I'd have to tell everyone right now, Bob is the reason why I even knew about it, and Bob's the reason why I started reading about it, and Bob's information first came from him. It piqued my curiosity, and the reason why I made the decision originally to do it, and it still stands today, but it struck me when I turned 30, I'm getting older, and I wanted to do something, anything, other than just put myself into the ground. Even though I did a lot of research, and I felt like there was enough going on there that it was worth doing, in my opinion, the science is sound. They are using a lot of current sciences that are used every day. They're using chemicals that are used to suspend organs that are used for organ transplant. Alcor does a lot of its own research, but it also uses world research from all these other organizations all over the place. You know, they obviously can't do it all on their own, but there's a lot of other sciences that are going on that benefit Alcor and their cause. As far as vitrification is concerned, Alcor is using the vitrification process. It is an absolutely integrated part of the whole cryonics process. I mean, it's kind of hard to say that there's a difference between cryonics and vitrification at this point.

P: So they pickle you and then freeze you, Jay?

J: In short, the process is, this is a very abbreviated version of it, and I'm not an expert on this at all, but in short, what they do is, when someone is about to die or has died, and they start the process, the first thing that they do is they inject you with anticoagulants, they continue your respiration, and they lower your body temperature.

R: So you're still alive and they are beginning the freezing process?

J: No, today you have to be, as the laws are today, you have to be declared dead before Alcor can take over.

R: Oh, okay. Because you said about to die, so just to be clear.

J: They want to have the people on the staff ready to go right when the person expires, they want to be there ready to go. Now a big thing that Bob and I talk about all the time what's the definition of death? When a person dies, they stop breathing, their heart stops whatever, they've sustained so much damage that they can't their body won't work anymore for one reason or another. Are they really dead? Is their brain really dead? Is the memories of, their memories and their personality and everything still intact in their brain? That's the most important thing. Because Alcor does just neurals as well, they just freeze people's heads as well. And honestly, that's what I'm signed up for because it's a lot less expensive. And without going into all the rigmarole about how crazy that sounds, I'll just continue to tell you the process. So, let's say a person dies, quote unquote dies to meet what the local hospital says is death. Alcor does those things I described and they immediately transport you to the Alcor facility which is in Phoenix, Arizona. They picked Phoenix, Arizona because it's one of the most stable places as far as, relative temperature. There's not going to be crazy weather happening there. There's not going to be tsunami or anything like that. There's no there's very little earthquake activity there.

B: No natural disasters.

J: Once they get you into the Alcor facility, they do a lot of different things. But in essence, they drain your blood and they fill the body with biological antifreeze. And what that does, what these chemicals do is they-

B: Cryoprotectants.

J: What cryoprotectants do is they make it so when the cells in the body freeze that they don't form ice crystals. Because most of the damage done in the freezing process is the rupturing of all the cells because as you know, water requires more space when it's frozen than when it's not frozen. That's really bad. Really, really bad. And every single cell in the human body explodes pretty much to some degree.

B: It's more likely implodes because the ice is the ice formation around the cells that impinges on the cells and does damage.

P: Implodes, explodes, you're fucked.

R: Yes, freeze or burn.

J: So what they found is with the cryoprotectants-

S: It stings.

J: With vitrification, the vitrification process, they found that they've dramatically minimized the amount of damage that occurs during the freezing process. And there's also how fast do they freeze you and there's different stages to this, of course. And most importantly, what effect does it have on the brain? If you liken the brain to, say, let's say that you have a huge jar of sand with all these different colored sands in there. And if you shake it just a little bit, you can still infer where the colors were supposed to be and where they belong. If you shake it too much, which would represent a lot of damage, you're lost. You can't really put things back together the way that they used to. And in order to successfully resuscitate someone that's been frozen, there's other technologies like nanotechnology that's absolutely crucial. But in order to do it, in essence, what they need to do is at the very least, worst case scenario, they need to infer, they need the ability to infer where the cells need to go in order to be functional, in order to also contain memories and also to have your personality and everything intact. A lot of people believe that the current freezing process is at that point where they can infer this data. A lot of people don't believe that. But the freezing process, Alcor's technique, does evolve. And also, one of my hopes is that they're going to be able to get other types of stasis, warmer temperature stasis, where it doesn't even actually have to be down to, I think they go to negative 192 right now.

P: That's cold.

J: Yeah, that's very cold. Liquid nitrogen.

E: Have they tested this on animals?

J: Yeah, yeah. They've actually done a lot of testing on animals. And I remember reading and seeing a lot of stuff on the web about a dog that they froze. Not down to 192, but they did have it below freezing and bring it back.

B: I did read that they did vitrify a liver and successfully thaw it out.

S: They have done whole organs. However, a couple of the points on the other side is they haven't done the vitrification of a whole mammal or vertebrate.

J: Not vitrification, right.

S: Not vitrification. And also, the vitrification process is not different from what you would do to preserve an organ for organ transplantation, except that the concentrations of the cryoprotectants are much lower in organ transplantation. The concentrations used in the vitrification process at Alcor are at toxic levels, and they don't really know what the toxic effect is. They're just hoping that it's not as bad as freezing and crystallization and crystal formation. So, it's a trade-off, and they don't really know what the—and they're honest about that, at least. So, the guy asked, is this science? Well they're honest about what they're doing. They're doing what they say that they're doing, and they're honest about what we don't know. I'm pretty pessimistic about the possibility of reconstructing meaningful memory connections in the brain after—

B: Why?

S: If the—with the current state of technology for freezing.

B: Why? Why are you pessimistic?

S: Well, if you did it with—if you did, like, just ordinary freezing with crystal formation, I think there's going to be too much destruction to preserve the structures that are necessary. With the vitrification process, that actually is probably the better way to go now, but there's the huge unknown of what is going to be the toxicity of that dose of cryoprotectant on the brain.

B: Yeah, but you're clinically dead. I mean, a little more damage, so what? You're still—at least you're preserved.

J: We're going to need very advanced nanotechnology in order to reconstruct people's cellular structures and to get into that detail.

S: Yes, of course. Yeah, so all of us, anyway, assume that at the future end, right, when 100 years from now, 200 years from now, whatever, when they're thawing you out, that they have super advanced technology, nanotechnology, whatever, that can repair all the damage that's being done. Let's just assume for the sake of argument that that happens, that there'll be some point in the future where we have enough technology that we can basically reconstruct you and fix all the damage at the cellular level. There's still the ultimate problem of is that information in your brain preserved or not?

B: Well, that's the key. That's the key. Without that, this is a waste of time.

S: Yeah, once the information's gone, there's no technology that can bring it back.

B: Correct.

S: If it's truly gone.

B: Correct.

S: If it's truly gone.

b: But I've read of studies of frozen and thawed brains, and under a microscope, they looked at the structures that encode memories, and they said these structures are in good shape. So, I think it's reasonable to assume that you can still infer a prior functioning state, and damn, it's worth a shot.

B: There's nothing impossible about that. That's the huge unknown, though, with all this.

J: But so what? The question is, if you're an atheist, you don't believe in God, you're questioning the afterlife, and you want to take a chance, right? You want to say, well, what could I do? This is really the only thing that you can do. It is based on science. There's legitimate science being done. Nobody is saying, this is 100% going to work, the technology we have is complete. It isn't. Everybody knows that it isn't. It's just, this is the best thing that's happening out there.

B: And Steve, I don't think it's an unknown. I don't think they're saying, well, the structures that encode memory, they might be totally destroyed, or they might be in good shape. No, I think it's generally agreed that these structures are in good shape.

P: But, Bob, it takes such little changes in chemistry or in some sort of physical damage in your brain to have profound effects on your personality and your thought processes.

B: Yeah, but what's brain science? Brain science, as Steve said in the Infidel Guy interview, the past few decades, brain science has improved tremendously. What's it going to be like in 50 or 100 years? I mean, I think we'll have a pretty darn good understanding of brain and mind and personality and brain chemistry to deal with that stuff.

J: Bob, don't even say we'll have a pretty darn good. I mean, in order for this to work, they're going to have to know the human brain. They're going to have to absolutely know what's going on. You know, it's like this. Imagine explaining to someone 100 years ago that we sent someone to the moon. Like, where do you think science and technology are going?

P: I don't disagree. Look, I don't disagree. This is not a crazy thing to do. Okay? This is a gamble. It's reasonable. If you've got the money, if you have some little money, this is not an unreasonable gamble. It's not crazy talk. And I believe, Steve, when he says that, and you Jay, that Alcor is being upfront and honest about their limitations, current. So, it's not unreasonable. I wouldn't have any faith in the procedure right now. That's just my personal opinion.

S: I would just caution against underestimating the unknowns in all of this. It doesn't mean that it can't work or it's not worthwhile. It's still a personal choice if you think that this is what you want to do and it's worth it to you. And again, there is nothing pseudoscientific or supernatural in all of this. It's just we're speculating about the unknowns, right?

J: If you detect any kind of like I have some value I've put into this, it's in the idea that I want people that I care about, I want people that I love to do this because it is the only way out.

S: It's not the only way out. I'm still hoping for the upload.

E: I actually spoke with another Alcor client recently and he had something very interesting to say.

J: He said, we're all going to die.

E: No, I'll play that for you now. My name's Joe and I'm a defrosty. Hello, Joe. When I was frozen, giant carrots ruled the earth, but now they don't. It takes some getting used to. So that's Joe, the Alcor patient.

B: Where did you find that?

J: That's awesome.

E: I know people in places. I mean, I don't want to divulge all my sources.

B: Steve, it's 30 years in the future. You're on your deathbed. There is no uploading option at that point in time. Somebody comes to you and says that we can sign you up right now so that we will freeze you once you are declared legally dead. Would you refuse it?

J: You can buy it at Walmart, I'm sure, by then.

B: So Steve, do you say screw you? There's too many unknowns?

S: No, why not? I'm not saying not do it. Why not? I'm being cryonic. If it's the grave or cryonics, then it's not much of a choice. I'd be willing to take that chance to wake up in some fantastic far technological future.

E: Wake in some post-apocalyptic hell.

P: That'd be cool. We've thawed out another one for dinner.

R: Let's say it's going to take like 200 years to fix whatever the hell you die of. How do I know this company is going to still be around? How do I know they're going to keep those refrigerators running all this time? I mean, it's so out there. It's so incredibly out there.

J: I mean, they obviously thought of that. They obviously thought of this company has to exist. This company has to make it for a very long time. And part of the money that you give goes into sustaining the company and sustaining...

R: Well, duh, Jay. That's what your money goes to whenever you pay money for anything. The money is going towards sustaining the company. Every company wants to be here 200 years from now. But very few of them are going to make it happen.

P: That's a good point.

S: They can shoot you into space and you can remain frozen by the vacuum of space.

P: That'd be cheaper.

B: That's definitely one of the risks. It's one of the risks.

R: Right. I know. And that's what I'm telling you. So when you consider all of these risks, not just the scientific but the financial... Then you also add in the risk of waking up as a zombie.

E: Yeah. And what happens in a nuclear explosion? Then you're out.

P: Then you're out. With everyone else.

E: You're done. Game over.

J: It's game over when your heart stops.

R: When you're saying that you might as well because why not? You're making the same argument that the con artists make when they tell people, you have cancer. You might as well go try psychic surgery. You've got the thousands of dollars. What would you pay for the chance that it just might work?

B: I wouldn't equate those chances though.

J: You know, the thing is though...

B: One is feasible. The other one is not.

J: This is based on legitimate science. It's not like this thing started off like chiropractic.

R: I'm not saying that there's not a glimmer of hope that it might happen.

P: I don't have a lot of faith in this either. But Rebecca, psychic surgery, that's a pretty low blow.

R: At this point, no, you are talking about buying a lottery ticket. And as we all know, the chances of winning the lottery are only slightly improved by buying the ticket.

B: Gotta be in it to win it. Rebecca, slightly zero chance compared to .00003? That's like what?

E: That's infinitely more.

R: Your chances are only slightly improved by buying the ticket. That's what I'm saying.

J: The point is that nobody, good or bad, nobody really knows how well the current preservation process works, right? So they could be underestimating its usefulness or overestimating its usefulness or how effective it is. So right now you could be making a very good argument saying, well, this, this, and this point to such a low probability. But the fact is, we really don't know.

Name That Logical Fallacy (55:18)

• Logical Fallacies

Hi,

I find your podcasts really interesting and it's interesting to hear the 'rational' minded folks too. However I was disappointed with your podcast #89 where you trash everything that is not right off what the mainstream-media is telling you.

While you bash these 'celebrities' who speak out for 9/11 investigation, you don't notice that obviously you didn't research history really. It's a proven fact that governments have used false-flag operations to get their thing through. Hitler did it with the Reichstags-fire and blamed it on 'communist-terrorists' and then used it as a pretext to implement the enabling-act (which is basically the patriot-act that Bush-Nazi then created with the 9/11 event) and invaded Poland (where Bush then tried to associate 9/11 with Saddam Hussein and Iraq, WMD's).

See parallels?

Only that example already shows how much suspicion one should have when looking at this topic. You might also remember that grandfather Prescott Bush dealt with Hitler-Nazis back then, so how can you not think that these Bush-Nazis are corrupt up to their skull & bones. They already stole at least one election.

Regardless of the physics (steel melting or not, controlled demolition or not, etc.) look at what 9/11 has brought with it and who really benefitted from it: restriction of freedoms, patriot-acts, NSA-spying, Guantanamo Bay, torturing, detention without trial, private contractors in Iraq (Caci, Halliburton, etc.) who were responsible for a lot of the mess that happened at Abu-Ghraib and wasting tax-payers money, military-industrial-complex doing more business than ever, USA turning more and more into a police-state and other scandals over scandals.

How much more do you need it in front of your face? Obviously you don't notice how much business is involved in warfare and that not only Cheney's buddys at Halliburton profited but so many others in that military-industrial-complex.

You should really do your p

S: Well, we have time for one Name Not Logical fallacy. This is an email I got from Mato, M-A-T-O in Switzerland. And he writes, Hi, I find your podcast really interesting and it's interesting to hear the rational and, in quotes, minded folks too. However, I was disappointed with your podcast number 89, where you trash everything that is not right off what the mainstream media is telling you. While you bash these celebrities who speak out for 9-11 investigation, you don't notice that obviously you didn't research history really. It's a proven fact that governments have used false flag operations to get their things through. Hitler did it with the Reichstag fire and blamed it on a communist terrorist and then used it as a pretext to implement the Enabling Act, which is basically the Patriot Act that Bush Nazi then created with the 9-11 event and invaded Poland, where Bush then tried to associate 9-11 with Saddam Hussein and Iraq, WMDs. See parallels?

P: No.

S: He goes on, but we'll stop there.

R: Well, first of all, you've got the Godwin fallacy. He totally Godwin-ed this discussion. Yeah mentioning Hitler in the first 30 seconds.

S: Yes. Hitler's got to have his own fallacy at this point.

R: It's Godwin, yeah. It's called the Godwin fallacy.

S: But it's poisoning the well. It's basically you bring up Hitler's name to sort of broad brush this sort of sinister whitewash over whatever topic you're talking about or to associate a person that you wish to trash with like the most hated evil figure in all of human history.

R: So there's also a false analogy there, right?

S: Yeah, you're right. I agree.

R: The comparison of Bush to Hitler and just assuming that we understand the parallels.

S: Getting into the first paragraph, he also—I'm not sure exactly how to—he basically just makes a false statement here where he says he accuses us of trashing everything that is not right off what the mainstream media is telling you. So that's—

R: That's a straw man.

S: Yeah, it's a straw man, a false premise. So, of course we don't do that. I mean, we criticize the mainstream media all the time.

P: It's ridiculous on its face.

S: And what he's basically saying is that the assumption in that statement is that the positions that we were taking, basically that there is no 9-11 conspiracy, that the standard story is accurate, that we are just getting that unaltered from the mainstream media, believing it wholesale without doing any thought or investigation of our own. So there's kind of like a backdoor sort of implication in that statement, which is absurd. I mean, just listen to more than five minutes of our podcast.

J: He brings up th Halliburton connection to Cheney and all that.

S: Yeah.

J: You know, that is legitimate. You know, there are definite connections between Bush and Cheney and some of these big companies that have government contracts. And I'm sure that there's behind-the-scenes influences going on left and right. I mean, look at the whole Enron thing.

S: That fallacy is—that's the where there's smoke, there's fire fallacy. That basically you're saying that because there's been some shady dealing with, the contracts that have been given in Iraq, or because the Bush administration, may have been motivated to attack Iraq and take Saddam Hussein out beforehand—let's just assume these are true for the sake of argument—that therefore they perpetrated 9-11 in order to get those, make those things happen. So that's the argument from Final Consequences. This is true because of the consequences that it had.

J: I'm not saying—all I'm saying in that statement is there is some legitimacy in the idea that, sure, there's some shifty deals going on. I think a lot of people believe that.

P: If you have friends in high places, you'll benefit.

J: Yeah, of course.

P: Sure.

J: Absolutely. But that doesn't mean—

S: But let's put that in context.

J: I'm not going there. I'm not going.

S: I know that. I know that. But let's keep it in the context of what he's saying. He's saying that these things add up to Bush and the Bush administration carried out 9-11 and they're covering it up with a big conspiracy.

J: Yeah. And 20,000 people are keeping their mouths shut. Right.

S: So the other false analogy here is to the Reichstag fire that one guy could have set fire to that building. You know, it could have been Hitler and some other guy. He said hey, Franz, burn the building. You know, whatever. It literally could have been two guys. Maybe it was five guys or ten guys.

E: It caught fire.

S: Whatever. But pulling that off is not analogous to pulling off 9-11 as a conspiracy, which would have required an incredible amount of planning, an incredible amount of coordination between hundreds or thousands of people. There would have been a hundred or a thousand ways in which the conspiracy could have collapsed or people could have ended up with smoking gun evidence of it. The same is not true of the Reichstag fire. There is no historical analogy to any government or any organization pulling off anything even close to 9-11.

B: As far as you know.

S: It's not as if the Bush administration has demonstrated incredible competence and subtlety in pulling off masterful, complicated plans. I mean, what's this guy talking about?

E: And he was only in office nine months.

S: Yeah, he was only in office nine months. He would have had to plan this whole thing in nine months.

P: Don't make me go into the Bush connection with the Saudis. I didn't. Come on. That family's been evil for decades. Please. Thank you.

E: Just waiting to gain the power in order to destroy the U.S. economy.

J: If I was Bush and I masterminded this whole conspiracy, the moment that I was told about the 9-11 crashes, I wouldn't, like, be reading kids a children's book and have that dumb expression on my face when I heard the news. I would have planned that moment. I would have been, like, doing something so cool. When they told me, I would have looked in the camera and looked like James Bond, you know? It certainly wouldn't have been, like, when they told him, he was like, what?

B: The president was lifting weights when he heard the news.

R: He dashed to his Lamborghini and took off for the White House.

E: Went down the pole to the Batcave.

Science or Fiction (1:01:35)

Question #1: China claims it will use weather control to ensure sunny days for its 2008 Olympic Games. Question #2: Researchers have discovered that by compressing water at the nano-scale it will behave as if it were metal. Question #3: Scientists have discovered a giant fossilized rainforest as big as a city in the middle of Illinois.

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

S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine and one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Is everyone ready for this week's challenge?

E: Yes. Challenge accepted.

S: All right. Number one, China claims it will use weather control to ensure sunny days for its 2008 Olympic Games. Item number two, researchers have discovered that by compressing water at the nanoscale, it will behave as if it were metal. Item number three, scientists have discovered a giant fossilized rainforest as big as a city in the middle of Illinois. Rebecca, go first.

R: Oh, man. A fossilized rainforest in Illinois. I like the sound of that. That sounds really cool, actually. What would that look like? Sorry.

J: Hello, Bob. Is this Bob?

R: I know. I'm doing the Bob thing.

B: Get on with it.

E: It's called the Bob thing.

R: Okay. China is – they're nuts, so they would definitely try to create some sort of evil weather-controlling doomsday device. Compressing water in the – that sounds fishy. I'm going to go with that one.

S: Okay, Bob.

B: Two.

S: Compressing water?

B: Tell me how you phrase it again, Steve. Read number two, please.

S: esearchers have discovered that by compressing water at the nanoscale, it will behave as if it were metal.

B: That's a fiction.

S: Okay. Evan.

E: Nano fiction.

S: Jay.

J: Obviously the water.

S: Perry.

R: Everybody follows me.

P: Yes. I believe that China will control the weather. Doesn't cooperate. They'll have it shot. A rainforest as big as the city? Sure. Nothing wrong with that. Number two has the word nano in it, so that's probably fake.

S: So you all agree that China is going to control the weather for the 2008 Olympic Games?

R: Yes.

S: You guys?

E: Well, that's what they claim.

B: I didn't read that. How the hell are they going to make it sunny?

S: And that is, in fact, science. At least it's true that they're claiming.

J: They're seeding the clouds. They're using that.

R: Wait, that's to make it rain.

S: Yes. So what they plan on doing is using the cloud seeding technique in order to make it rain before the Olympic Games so that it will clean out the clouds and the atmosphere so there will be nothing left to rain during the Olympic Games.

P: It's like giving the animals hermetics so that they dump before they're on parade. I get it.

R: It's beautiful.

E: And they'll pray to Buddha.

S: So that's their plan. Now, the technology is controversial. In 2003, the National Academy of Sciences questioned the science behind cloud seeding as too weak. But China claims that they frequently use the artificial rainmaking technique in the drought-plagued north.

P: The high jump was called off today when a sudden rain of seeds pelted the stadium, forcing everyone into the streets. Sorry.

S: So they used little packets of silver iodide in the clouds to force them to provoke them to rain, basically.

R: Little pockets.

S: Well, see how that works out.

R: I wonder if it looks like sweet and low. It's a good picture. Sorry. Go on.

S: You guys also all agree that scientists have discovered a giant fossilized rainforest as big as a city in the middle of Illinois. That is science.

R: I'm picturing something out of Lord of the Rings.

S: Yeah.

J: Am I the only one that read the news this week? You guys didn't read about this stuff?

B: I read about it. I read about it. That's why we didn't pick it.

P: I read about it. I just didn't want to sound snooty.

S: This is really cool. It was found in a coal mine. It was found actually in a coal mine. What's cool about this is that it's a whole forest. So they could actually have a peek into an actual ecosystem. Not just one thing.

P: Did you say it was in a coal mine?

J: It was 200 million years old, Steve.

B: They haven't found many animal remains though. It's a 300 million year old forest that bears little resemblance to most wooded areas today.

P: So they're down in a coal mine digging coal and some guy says, hey look, a petrified forest.

J: Yeah, they found a frozen guy down there too.

R: What?

J: He got up and he started singing show tunes. It was amazing.

R: I don't understand your nerd reference.

S: Which means that researchers have discovered that by compressing water at the nanoscale it will behave as if it were metal is fiction.

J: Steve, correct me if I'm wrong, but you can't compress water.

S: Well, in fact, this is based on a real study.

B: Molasses, not metal.

S: It's molasses, not metal. Bob's right. So you can compress it at the nanoscale and when you do that, it flows much more viscously and they're comparing it to molasses. It does not get to the actual physical properties of metal.

J: I didn't think you could compress water.

S: Well, I guess at the nanoscale you can.

P: We're talking nano. Anything is possible.

S: It's more confined than real. I'm not really sure how much it gets compressed.

R: It's like the new quantum mechanics.

P: That's right.

E: Quantum nano.

J: Nano. Nano, nano.

B: Steve, I'm surprised you didn't go with the story, the quantum mechanics story about how certain experiments are now showing that reality isn't as real as we thought it was.

R: Wait, are we all connected to computers?

P: That's it. Throw physics out.

S: You guys are getting harder and harder. This is the second week that you've swept me.

P: You started with Rebecca and Bob.

S: Well, I went in reverse order of...

B: Yeah, I have to agree with Rebecca on this one.

S: I mix it up.

R: We are the ones who actually read the news.

B: Jay's been doing better with that. He's been checking it out.

J: I've been reading the news feverishly.

P: Good.

S: You guys are sending me links to all the stuff I would have used in science or fiction.

B: What?

P: I know, it's true.

B: We are?

S: Sure.

J: Bob, we send Steve all the good news items we read.

S: It's getting harder and harder to find things that are cool but obscure that you guys wouldn't have seen.

P: It is.

S: This is for the audience. This is for the audience, not so much you guys. You guys are getting better. You guys are getting better at science or fiction.

R: We're going to have to start throwing games just to make Steve feel better. Well, I don't know, Steve. I guess kittens have five legs now. I'll go with that one.

Skeptical Puzzle (1:08:23)

This Week's Puzzle

It offers plenty of traction, yet barely moves at all
It offers a rosy view, yet may damage your sight
It offers a contrast in style, but don't let your head swell
You'll find your pockets may empty, in more ways than one

What is it?


Last Week's Puzzle

Audio puzzle

Answer: Dennis Lee
Winner: Ole Ivand

S: Now, Evan, last week's puzzle was an audio puzzle. I don't think we need to play it again. Just give us the gist.

E: I don't think so. It was answered pretty quickly, and they got it right. It was, in fact, a recording by our old friend Dennis Lee of Perpetual Motion fame and free energy machines, and he's been trolling around the United States for the past 20 or 25 years promising all these miraculous machines that do all kinds of things, and he's never produced a single one of them. What he apparently is doing now is if you go to his website and he has a number that you call, and you can get a monthly or bimonthly or whatever update from him, and he records a message. That's where I clipped this particular recording from. It is a 12-and-a-half-minute rambling message that he leaves, and maybe what I'll do is I'll send it to Mike at the SGU fan site so that he could put it up for people to hear in case they have 12 minutes of their life they want to waste to hear this guy drone on about exactly what is he selling. He never even says.

S: He doesn't really sell anything. He's just asking you to invest in the future potential of his amazing technology.

R: I was actually joking about Evan's ability to sell the clip.

P: He didn't hear you, Rebecca.

J: So what is it, though? In a nutshell, what's this guy squawking about?

E: He's talking about his free energy machines that he's just on the cusp of completing.

S: Yeah, he's always been just on the cusp.

E: He just needs a few more people to invest.

S: This is what he does. He gets 20 or 30 people in a room, and then he barks at them for 2, 3, 4 hours, and most people leave throughout the show until he's got like 4 or 5 people left, the real diehards, and then that's when he hits them up for the real hard sell. His show is a combination of American patriotism, of religion, and newfangled technology, and he sort of treats people to this really rapid fire demonstration of 20, 30 different technologies that he's working on so that you're left with the sense, if just one of these things hits, we'll be millionaires. Just one of these things has to hit. But, of course, you have to think that he has the slightest bit of sincerity in any of this. Now, Dennis Lee does have a criminal past, if you will. He was arrested 8 times between 1974 and 1979 in New Jersey on fraud, forgery, and drug-related charges. In 1975, he pled guilty in Bergen County, New Jersey, to 5 counts of passing bad checks and to taking money under false pretenses.

P: I'm shocked.

S: He was given a year's suspended sentence and a 3 years probation. In 1978, he convinced Pat Robertson to give him $150,000. Two months later, Robertson accused Lee of false advertising, operating a pyramid sales scheme and unauthorized sales of securities. And Robertson never got his money back. He was arrested in 1982 for passing bad checks. He was accused by Washington State Attorney General in 1985 of civil action of violating the State Consumer Protection Act, and the list goes on. So the guy has a very dubious history. He's basically convicted of fraud. Of course, that doesn't mean that he's necessarily lying now, but it's a pretty good fact.

P: I and a couple of friends once went and protested him at a local hotel around here. We were standing in the lobby handing out flyers to the poor suckers that were going to his demonstration, delineating some of the things.

E: He had hundreds of people turned out to see this guy.

P: You were there, right, Evan?

E: Yeah, I was there.

P: And then we did it for, what, 20 minutes or so? And then some of his people came up, harassed us a little. They went and got security, and we didn't have a room at the hotel, so we had to leave. We tried to hand some out in the parking lot, but we got quite a few flyers out in that time. No, we did. I'm sure they were circling around the audience.

E: If we save just one person, one person from investing their life in your life savings, that would work.

S: The skeptics have been doggingly. A lot of the local skeptical groups got together over e-mail, and we had a schedule of where he was going, and we basically dogged him all the way around the country trying to inform the public not to buy into his schemes. Evan, did you tell me who the first person was to get that right?

E: Olay Ivand from the Message Boards. So congratulations, Olay.

S: And what's the puzzle for this week?

E: Okay, here we go. It offers plenty of traction, yet barely moves at all. It offers a rosy view, yet may damage your sight. It offers a contrast in style, but don't let your head swell. You'll find your pockets may empty in more ways than one. What is it that I'm describing? Good luck, everyone.

S: Well, thanks, Evan.

E: Thank you.

Quote of the Week (1:13:20)

'Death is an engineering problem.'- Bart Kosko (Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic, 1994

S: Bob, you have a quote to close out the show for us?

B: Yeah, I've got a quote from Bart Kosko, author of Fuzzy Thinking and New Science of Fuzzy Logic. I read this years ago in this quote. I never forgot this quote. He said, "Death is an engineering problem."

J: That's an awesome quote.

S: I guess that's appropriate.

J: Good quote, Bob.

S: Well, everyone, thanks again for joining me. It's always a pleasure.

R: Thank you, Steve.

E: Thank you.

J: Steve, thank you so much.

P: Doctor.

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation. For more information on this and other episodes, 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