SGU Episode 415

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SGU Episode 415
29th Jun 2013
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 414                      SGU 416
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth.
Robert Royar
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Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality. Hello and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is June 29th 2013 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Rebecca Watson

R: Hello everyone

S: Jay Novella

J: Hey guys

S: and Evan Bernstein

E: Good evening everyone

R: Where the hell is Bob?

S: Bob, once again, is too busy to join us. Bob has a major thing happening at work

E: uh huh

S: that does keep him away.

This Day in Skepticism (0:35)

June 29: Happy birthday to Dr. Roy Wolford, calorie restriction pioneer and Biosphere 2 inhabitant R: Hey, happy birthday to Roy Wolford, Dr. Wolford.

E: Awesome! Is he a listener?

R: Well, uh no, he died in 2004. He was born June, 29 1924 and Dr. Roy Wolford is probably best known for being one of the inhabitants of Biosphere 2.

E: I love that movie

R: He was also though a pioneer of calory restriction as used for longevity. He wrote a book about living to 120. It was not, uh...

E: A life of perpetual hunger, that's what the title of the book was called.

J: Imagine what Perry would have said about that.

R: I think Perry would have said that he would gladly die at 20 than live on a restricted calorie diet.

J: Choking on a hamburger right?

R: Right

E: hahaha

R: Yeah, uh, Wolford lived on something like 1600 calories a day

E: Alright

S: It's not that bad.

R: Which is realy not that bad

J: That's not bad

R: That's slightly more than what I take in when I'm trying to cut back on my fats.

S: That's a weight loss diet, 1600 calories a day is a pretty reasonable weight loss plan

R: He died at the age of 79 uh, from comoplications from ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease.

E: That's not, that's got nothing to do with his lifestyle

R: It's not, yeah it's not a fair, it's not really a fair judgement wether or not his calorie restriction were the... Although he claimed at the end of his life his calorie restriction helped extend his life further by a couple of years after he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's.

J: Unprovable

R: Yeah

E: That's a nice antecdote.

S: Honestly, ya know, again this is all antecdotal I have no idea about the individual case but, that's unlikely to be true.

R: Yeah

S: Calorie restriction actually hastens death in ALS. It often, the ability to get enough calories in and keep your calories up is a huge pragnostic factor in ALS. So if anything, ya know, ya can't, it's very hard to argue that calorie restriction prolonged his life once he developed ALS.

R. But yeah, he also thought that his ALS was possibly caused by his time in the Biosphere due to lack of oxygen and increased nitrous oxide. Exactly what causes ALS is not entirely settled and so he suspected that that might have had something to do with it.

S: That's wild speculation.

E: Nitrous Oxides builds up in these Biodomes? I didn't know that.

J: Well they were having trouble in there right?

R: They had a lot of trouble. Although, they did stay in there for two years. But, one of the problems they had was a severe lack of food and so it was helpful that their resident doctor happened to be this guy who believed in calorie restriction. So he convinced them all to go on this diet. Ya know, to join him in his diet.

S: Yeah since we have no food anyway.

R: Right. And so they did, but even so at some point many months in they finally broke down and opened up a container of food that was grown outside of the Biosphere in order to supplement their diets.

J: That would have made an awesome YouTube video

E: Watching the moment of breaking that chest open

S: So they just didn't...Did something go wrong with their food production or they didn't plan properly?

J: If you couldn't grow enough food in the Biodome, and ya know, it was never done before. They didn't have the data going in to it, it was all just engineered and it failed. Biodome experiments didn't last as long as they hoped

S: It wasn't self sustaining.

J: No

R: Yeah by all their models I guess it seemed like it could be done but one thing after another went wrong.

S: Now imagined if that happened on Mars.

R: Well that's why they do this stuff. Although I'm sad that they're not, they haven't continued trying that sort of thing. I would love to see that project continue.

S: Yeah

R: I don't know the details of why nobody has tried Biosphere 3

J: Ya know what I noticed?

E: Pauly Shore

J: I noticed, looking at pictures of Biodome, first its interesting if you look at it today, a weed infested back yard. I also noticed it looks a lot like Logan's Run, that's 1970s movie of the people that get put into a Biodome like thing because that was like a last ditch effort to sav humanity and people were in there so long that they forgot what happened. That was Biodome man. Ya ever see, like it looks like it.

S: Well, it was a lot bigger

R: There was apparently a Biosphere 3, maybe still is in Syberia and there's a Biosphere J in Japan. But one other thing, despite the potential pseudoscience with origins of disease and wether or not calorie restriction can actually work in humans to extend life, Walford seemed like a really awesome guy. At one point he would like take off for a time as part of his studies and measure the rectal temperatures of holy men in India.

E: uh huh

R: He traveresed the African continent on foot, according to his obituary in the New York Times. So he specifically wanted to go out and just have adventures. He said, " If you spend all your time in the laboratories, as most scientists do, you might spend 35 years in the lab and be very successful and win a Nobel Prize. But those 35 years will be just a blur. So I find it useful to punctuate time with dangerous and eccentric activities." He once broke his leg on a motorcycle.

E: That qualifies as dangerous. R: Yeah he just seems like he was a fun guy.

News Items

Podcasting Patent (06:42)

• http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-05/company-sues-tech-giants-claiming-podcast-patent-breach/4735786

S: Alright well Jay, tell us why we're gonna be shut down. We can't do podcasting anymore.

R: Nooooo

E: We're done? This is it?

J: I'm not convinced that we're gonna get shut down as a podcast, but this story has to do with patent trolling. Patent trolling is the business du jour. And if you haven't heard about it, those of you who haven't, it's a pretty simple and amazingly lucrative idea. Here's how it works: Patent trolls, also known as non-practicing entities, or NPEs, are typically companies that buy defunct businesses or ya know any kind of organization or even individual patents. And they buy these companies for their patents specifically, and then they used those acquired patents to sue other companies for patent infringement. It's pretty basic and it goes a long way and they've made a ton of money. These organizations make all or most of their income through the lawsuits. Most of them, like I said, they don't have anything else going on. They become a patent troll and they don't actually have a product or sell anything or do any other type of commerce. It's not 100% fast and true but a large majority of them are just companies that revolve around these lawsuits. And this scam, or whatever you wanna call it, has worked on some of the worlds' most biggest and lucrative companies. The US patent office is widely known to issue patents for ideas that are already in use and common place. And these are ideas like, say online shopping or shopping cart system or a file sharing system or an in app purchase, as an example. And many of these lawsuits are about things that should never have been patented in the first place. Like I think that a shopping cart system should have never been patented. You really can't say, hey you owe me money because you're using this workflow process to sell products online to online customers; to me that's insane. In 2011, patent trolls cost the United States, or companies inside the Unites States, a total of twenty-nine billion dollars; and, they have increased their activity 400% since 2005. And they are 62% of all patent lawsuits in the United States. It's a phenomenal portion of patent lawsuits and they're really growing leaps and bounds year for year. I guess, instead of these companies finding new uses for their patents and expanding on the technology they already own, they're focusing on these lawsuits. You know these companies are, in my opinion, they're pretty transparent because they use similar procedures to get to the point where they can start hitting up the big companies and one of the things that they do is that they'll find a week company or a financially poor company, with no regard of winning anything other than just the lawsuit from this company to set a legal precedent. And then they take that legal precedent, and they take it to a bigger company, and they'll tell the next court, "Hey, we already won a lawsuit about this." And now ya know instead of them ya know just trying to win a lawsuit and maybe stopping that company, they're gonna ask for fifty million dollars. And they guise it as a licensing fee. Oh we're just sueing for licensing fees here. We want them to pay us for the use of the patent, and we want them to go back to this year, or whatever, and now and we're not gonna sue them in the future because they're actually going to be paying us for this licensing fee. Companies like Rackspace, Microsoft and Ebay, just to name a few, are starting to turn and face these patent trolls and go for it. Really really get down and dirty in court, and let the years go by and spend the millions and millions of dollars to fight them. But they're putting they're um they're putting a flag in the ground and saying, "No, we're not going to pay any of these blackmail fees. We're actually gonna fight you and try to get you to go out of business." Very recently, June 4th of 2013, the White House enacted five executive actions and seven legislative recommendations to restrict the activities of patent trolls. And this is a huge step forward in helping companies protect themselves and make it much much more difficult for patent trolls to actually win against US based companies. A patent troll named Prsonal Audio LLC has sued three podcasters and sent demand letters to a number of others. Now this is the case that Steve was talking about. Recently this company filed suit against CBS and NBC, and has also sent additional demand letters to small podcasting operations. So an organization called EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, is fighting against Personal Audio LLC, which is the company that's sueing these podcasters. And what EFF is trying to do is help to save podcasting. Now the first thing that they did was they asked for donations so they can raise the thirty thousand dollars to begin the lawsuit process. And what they're trying to do, is they're trying to prove that the patent that Personal Audio LLC owns is actually not a legitimate patent at all. And what the, the reason that they're trying to do this is it's the quickest and most direct route to stop the lawsuit. And they way that they're doing it is that they're asking for people to help them find proof that the idea of podcasting, either in part or similar ideas or even the entire idea, if it was ever stated, written down or communicated online. Any way that they can prove before October 2nd of 1996, then they can take that proof to the patent office, go to court and say, "Look it, ya know this idea predates their patent. It was ya know on a public forum and this whole thing is illegitimate." The worst case scenario here is if this company gets a foothold and starts sueing the bigger organizations, ya know some of these organizations that can afford will probably pay; but I'd imagine some of them won't because as most people know podcasting is not really a lucrative venture. For those people that are running a lucrative podcasting venture, like Adam Corrola as an example, he's one of the people being, his company is being sued. Ya know Adam Corrola does a pretty damn good job on his podcast

E: Yeah

J: He's making some decent money over there, I mean this could put him right off the air. Of course, being a podcaster and being just a huge fan of the podcasting world, I stand very firmly against what this company is trying to do. Now, I did read some things that troubled me. That made me think that there might be some legitimacy to this lawsuit because it is possible that the person, the engineer the software engineer, is claiming that he did make these engines and that he does deserve some compensation.

S: So what though? What did he invent? RSS, ya know the really simple syndication, they didn't do that, that's open source. What, MP3 files?

J: No, I I I'm not 100% sure, Steve. I tried to find it, I was all over the web searching for facts and I think it's vague and it's deliberately vague. I think it boils down to the idea that you're distributing serialized episodes of something over the web. That's what I read. That's it. I didn't get to more detail than that.

E: So he's um

S: Yeah, that's still simply b.s.

E: patenting the concept, right? Just the concept of podcasts.

J: Yeah. But let me let me give you a

E: Sounds Week

J: It does sound weak. And let me give you an example of something that I saw on Shark Tank as an example. I really like that show for a lot of reasons, it is entertaining. There is a pretty good amount of stuff to learn if you want to watch it and one of the sharks on the show, it... Real quick, what the show is people come in and pitch their business to rich people, business men and women, and they uh they're asking for money like they wanna they want to be funded. So uh Mark Cuban, who is my favorite person on the show is really, first off we've mentioned him on The Skeptics' Guide before, he's he's the only person I think is really a critical thinker on the show. And he he's fought against pseudoscience when it comes on that show. But one guy came on with a, it was like a vest, and he had a patent where if you had like your iPhone in an internal pocket it runs a wire up to like your neck and you have your ear buds there. And the guy patented basically running a wire through clothing; and Mark Cuban went ape shit on him. Just saying this is b.s. Like, you know it's guys like you that are you know destroying innovation and and growth and and you know companies developing new technologies because ya know you're holding this ridiculous patent. It stops other people from using a similar technology. You can't patent a wire going through clothing. It's absurd. And I think when I watched it, at first I didn't understand why he was getting so upset. I did get his idea, but I didn't understand everything that we just discussed. I have learned a lot since I watched that episode; and now I fully understand it. I completely agree with Mark Cuban. This is the type of thing that squelches innovation, puts companies out of business and ya know all that money is just being syphoned out of these companies that are developing technology. These patent trolling companies are not technology developers. All they're doing is, they're in the business just to make money, that's it. They don't. There's no good side to it. Somebody is just getting rich.

S: They're like just, they're parasites.

J: So if you if you are interested ya know take a look online. Uh look up the company, the name of that company again is the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They're fighting a lot of other technology and digital based threats to the future of our technology. And I do believe in what they're trying to do and if you're interested, take a look and maybe even make a donation.

S: Obviously, patents are important. People need to be able to protect their intellectual property and benefit from their innovation. But yeah, but patenting like a really basic idea is is counterproductive, it's absurd. The kind of idea that like anybody can come up with "I'm the first person to submit a patent for it". In fact, you can patent ideas that can't even be implemented yet. In other words, if you see a technology coming on the horizon, you can patent a use of that not yet existing technology. And then when the technology does come online, you can then start sueing anybody that tries to use it in the way that you patented. And all you're doing is patenting an idea, a basic obvious idea. It just becomes a race to see who can patent it first. It is totally broken. That kind of system is completely counterproductive.

J: Yeah, it's, well the government is taking steps to heat and it's moving forward. There doesn't seem to be that much holding these decisions that they're making so. I think things are moving in the right direction.

S: Hopefully

Class System in Mice ()

• http://www.universityherald.com/articles/3575/20130617/mice-big-brother-setup-develop-social-structures.htm

Anti-GMO Pseudoscience ()

• Science-based Medicine: Once More: Bad Science in the Service of Anti-GMO Activism

Skunk Ape ()

• http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/06/14/man-claims-he-spotted-floridas-elusive-skunk-ape/

Questions and Emails ()

Staticman ()

Hey guys! Thanks for the show. I've been listening for years now and it's by far and away my favorite podcast. I was wondering if you heard about Static Man reported in Australia. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4252692.stm Sounds like balderdash to me, but who knows maybe it's a new Scientology superpower. Keep up the excellent work,

Damian Tinkey

Marlboro, NY

Science or Fiction ()

Item #1: Researchers at MIT have developed a transistor that is switched by a single photon. Item #2: Geologists have found evidence for a new subduction zone forming near Portugal which may indicate the beginning of the next phase of continental movements in which Europe will move towards North America. Item #3: A new study of whole body vibration therapy finds that it produced significant weight loss in obese subjects, who lost on average 10% of their body mass in 12 weeks.

Skeptical Quote of the Week ()

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth.

Announcements ()

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at theskepticsguide.org, where you will find the show notes as well as links to our blogs, videos, online forum, and other content. You can send us feedback or questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. Also, please consider supporting the SGU by visiting the store page on our website, where you will find merchandise, premium content, and subscription information. Our listeners are what make SGU possible.

References