SGU Episode 59

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SGU Episode 59
September 5th 2006
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 58                      SGU 60
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
E: Evan Bernstein
P: Perry DeAngelis
Guest
KM: Kimball Atwood, American medical doctor
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, September 5^th, 2006. This is your host, Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society. And with me this evening are Rebecca Watson...

R: Hello, everybody.

S: Perry DeAngelis...

P: Monkeys can beat up birds.

S: ... and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, my friends of planet Earth.

R: What kind of greeting is that, Perry? Get over it.

P: Well, I was just floating here in the aether and I couldn't think of anything witty to say, so I said that.

R: You're obsessed.

P: (chuckling) Yes.

R: I think you need to get help.

S: Your bird denial is starting to become disturbing, Perry.

P: I'm obsessed with the aether, birds, and monkeys.

R: See, I'm a huge monkey fan, and yet, I have to say you're sounding very birdist. And it's disturbing.

P: It's possible. It's possible. I-I-I won't deny it.

S: So, Jay wanted me to inform everyone that he is on a special skeptical assignment in Mexico this week.

P: Really? What's the nature of the assignment?

S: He will give us a complete report when he gets back.

E: Good.

P: I'll look forward to that.

S: Actually, while he's down there, he also got engaged today. So, congratulations, Jay.

P: Oh, congratulations.

R/E: Congratulations.

E: It's very good news. Very good.

R: I guess that's paranormal right there.

S: Absolutely!

E: Sorry, ladies. He's off the block. You know, keep listening; keep listening. Don't go anywhere.

S: He got engaged to the woman who does the voice-over introducing our show.

P: That's right; that's right.

R: How sweet.

P: That English lass.

S: It's true.

E: We've had some comments about her, I believe.

R: Yeah.

P: Yeah, we have. Not nearly as many, though, as we have had about Rebecca.

S: No.

E: Oh, goodness no.

P: I understand you got a few more marriage proposals this week; is that accurate, Rebecca?

R: (chuckles) I don't know; they don't all go to me. Is it accurate, Steve?

S: I don't know why they're sending them to me, you know?

R: (chuckles) They're sending them to you?

P: If you're gonna propose to Rebecca and you can't even route your e-mails correctly, you're not even in the running! That's ridiculous!

E: Get it straight, people: Steve is not Rebecca's father, OK? You don't have to ask his permission.

S: But I thought, I am going to give you away, though. Right, Rebecca?

R: Oh, yeah, sure.

P: Very good. Very good.

News Items

Famous Ghost Hunter, Ed Warren, Dies (2:33)

• www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ctwarrenobit0824.artaug24,0,879837.story?coll=hc-headlines-local
  
  NESS article on the Warrens - www.theness.com/articles.asp?id=39

S: Well in sadder news, famous ghost hunter Ed Warren has passed away. Ed Warren is really an icon of the ghost hunting community. He and his wife Lorraine had been ghost hunting for decades.

P: Oh well it's over 50 years. Over 50 years. Long, long time.

S: In New England, there are probably hundreds of ghost hunting societies. Usually made up of a handful of people who go around to houses with their-

P: They're transitory. They come. They go. You know.

S: Almost all of them. In fact, I don't think I ever encountered one that didn't have an ex Warren member in it.

P: It's sad to say that. The Warrens I left a trail of burned and bitter parapsychologists behind them.

S: That's true. Typically the story was, they got hooked by a lecture that Ed and Lorraine Warren were giving at a college or some place. They went to some of their classes that they would hold. They went on some investigations. Then they got disillusioned with the way the Warrens did things and decided to strike out on their own as entrepreneurial ghost hunters. And yet another ghost hunting society was born.

P: What I have to say about Ed Warren and Lorraine Warren is this. In the very earliest days when Steve and I and his brother Bob were getting involved in skepticism just after we started, what was then the Connecticut Skeptical Society? We were talking about the ways to go about doing things. And one of the things we talked about doing was investigating Ed and Lorraine Warren. And I remember very distinctly at the time. Now gosh, what did it, Steve? Twelve years ago?

S: Ten.

E: Ten.

P: Ten years ago when we were talking about it and we were, I remember how nervous we were because Ed and Lorraine Warren were big fish and we thought we'd screw it up and who were we and they wouldn't even talk to us. And I'll tell you, that's a lesson I have never forgotten because once we did contact them and we did do the investigation we found out that they were so much less than their reputation allowed.

S: Yeah, I mean, they were just, they were just a cookie old couple.

P: Making a lot of money giving lectures about ghosts. Ed was not an intellectual. He was an entertainer. He was good at what he did. They had a nice presentation with their slides and everything.

S: A little museum in the basement.

P: A little museum in the basement complete with Dungeons and Dragons books, a haunted raggedy doll.

R: Dungeons and Dragons books? You guys must have gotten along really well.

P: Yeah, it was wonderful.

E: Oh, sure.

P: Ed warned us he said, be careful, if you touch anything, let me know so I can, what was it to a cleansing ritual on you?

E: He'll bathe us in the Christ's light.

P: Christ's light.

R: That guy.

P: Oh, Lorraine fancied herself and it was it? An empath?

S: Clairvoyant.

P: Thank you, Clairvoyant. So she could go in somewhere and just sort of have an innate sense that it was haunted.

E: Funny almost everywhere she went it was haunted.

S: That's right. Almost. Most famous case was the Amityville Horror case, which they heartily endorsed.

P: And you see them portrayed in that film? Forget about it. They are nothing like their portrayed in movies.

S: I know, it's so funny to watch.

P: Nothing. Their portrayal, their Hollywood portrayal. When you've met them person.

R: And wasn't, was it Amityville turn, it wasn't that proven to be a hoax?

S: Yeah, yeah. I mean, they sat around and cooked it up over dinner. Ed was very eager to get scientific validation for his claims. And he thought he was going to get that through us.

P: He did.

S: He was very disappointed when we didn't buy his claims. He was.

P: He wanted us to go on an investigation with him, but some of the younger, more savvy people around him really did block that from ever actually happening. Actually going.

E: He shared with us a few tidbits of evidence. Well, the so-called evidence.

S: The biggest one was the, the white lady of Eastern Cemetery.

P: Of Union Cemetery.

S: Union Cemetery. Is that in Eastern?

E: Yes, Eastern Connecticut.

S: Union Cemetery in Eastern. So this was, the white lady is a, a local ghost story about a woman. Does the tale include that she died on her wedding day or something? She's often pictured in a white dress.

P: Typical ghostly, floating, aetherial.

R: No matter when she died, it was definitely before Labor Day.

S: That's right.

E: Yeah, it must have been.

S: Ed, in Union Cemetery by himself with a video camera captured this compelling video of the white lady of Union Cemetery and he showed us the tape.

P: He did.

S: The tape was of a, of a white humanoid figure moving among the gravestones, but it was at the perfect distance so that it was provocative, but you couldn't really tell what it was.

P: Like every piece of paranormal footage. Just far enough away it was in distinct. It was blurry.

R: Well, come on. Let's be fair, Perry. Have you ever called a ghost on camera?

P: I will admit I have not.

S: That's not true about, Perry. It's not true. We did.

P: That's not true we did.

S: Perry and I got a nice ghost right next to the two of us in the carousel, which was an alleged haunted restaurant where the Warrens held their meetings for quite sometime.

P: Yes. Yes we did.

S: It was a great camera court ghost sitting right next to the two of us.

P: Yep. We were able to manufacture ghost pictures just as compelling as the ones you see.

R: Can you, do you have this, this photos? Can you post it on the notes page?

S: Yeah, we'll post it. We'll post it.

P: And it also, Steve, do you recall on that white lady footage, weren't there demons?

S: Well, there was shadows and I think that that was, he interpreted the shadows as demons maybe clawing at her or something.

P: Trying to pull her down. Is that what it was?

S: I also recall that he would not give us a copy of that tape to investigate firsthand. He was very clutchy with that.

E: That's right.

P: He said it would be, he couldn't be sure if someone would exploit it and make money off it without him getting money, basically.

R: So did you guys figure out what it was? Was it a ghost? I'm curious.

S: Okay, we were not, we were not given the actual evidence to examine. And what we were allowed a viewing and our viewing was as I described. It was, could have easily been a person in a sheet. I mean, for the detail that was on the videotape.

P: We were, however, given another videotape of a young man dematerializing.

S: Although, yeah, this was not filmed by Ed, but by one member of his group.

P: Right. We did investigate that and we exposed that as a hoax, which you can read about on our website.

S: The Warrens did give us that tape physically. So we had a physical copy of the tape to examine and Evan, who does this for a living, had some experts examine the tape and Evan, do you remember what you guys found?

E: Yeah, basically what had happened was there was someone standing within the frame of the picture. Someone hit the pause button on the camcorder. The person stepped out of frame. They hit the pause button again and resumed recording. So it effectively looked like somebody as Ed Warren, if I can quote him, that guy disappeared.

P: Was real I Dream of Jeannie stuff.

R: Wow. I was about to say that was a, that's a bewitched trick.

S: The interesting thing though is that they all insisted that there was nobody near the camera when that happened as if that was somehow compelling.

R:' Now, how can you tell when you look at the tape, how can you tell that the tape was paused and then started again?

S: It's a good question. Evan?

R: Thank you.

E: It is a good question. So with our, with our sophisticated tech machines that we have at my place of work, we are able to extract some extra video information that lies just outside the border of your television screen as if you're looking at it. There's more picture information around there. You just don't see it on your typical television set unless you have the right equipment, unless you have the right equipment to reveal that, that additional video footage or area of the screen, which we do.

R: So what is it, what does it show?

E: It shows somebody walked over to the side, was standing by the side of the camera and kind of put their hand up against the camera. You can kind of see their arm there as if they're getting ready to do something to the camera. When the person disappeared, so did the person who was standing there next to the side of the camera. Also there were some other telltale signs. There were some candles flickering in the background and also when the person disappeared off the candle flicker was not in sync with the prior frame.

S: There were discontinuities at the disappearance. There were audible discontinuities in the footfalls and then again, there were visual ones in the candle flickers.

P: And we interviewed the young man who dematerialized allegedly and we said, what do you remember? Who said, I don't remember nothing. I walked in a room, I scratched my head and I walked out.

S: Yeah.

E: Right.

S: He doesn't remember disappearing.

P: And then also there was a ghost light if you remember.

S: Yes.

P: Ghost hunters loved their ghost lights, all kinds of blobs and orbs and rods and all kinds of-

R: Are you mean in still photos?

P: Yes, but this one was in the video. It was a little blob of light behind his head and they said, oh look, it's a ghost light just as he dematerialized. And again, when it was examined closer, you could see in fact it was the glare off headlights coming down the road.

E: That's right. Just reflecting through the window and you could tell from the pace of it and certainly how it got a little brighter and then faded off. It was obviously a car headlight driving by the house and some of the light just spilled into the house and reflected off of a shiny surface that was right there on the picture.

R: Well, isn't it just possible that it could have been a ghost car?

E: Oh, sure, absolutely. I mean, oh, there are ghost cars everywhere.

P: It could have been, could have been. Yeah, and if he had given us that white lady tape, we would have examined it much closer. I'm sure we'd have something to say about it.

S: The bottom line is that is basically the quality of the evidence that's coming out of the "ghost hunting" community. I remember the other story that Ed told us, what we're talking about Ed Warren. This is like the fish that got away story. Remember, they told us that they were at a haunting that there was a cameraman there from one of the local news stations and they recorded, he described all kinds of fantastical things, doors disappearing, large objects moving by themselves, people levitating. And we were like, wow, that's great. You got along the film, what we'd love to see it. It's like, well, you know what? What happened? The reporter who videotaped all of this going on, they needed to use that film for the evening news and they taped over it. Oh, there you go.

P: Damn, darn.

R: It's like, wow I had this solid evidence of a ghost, but then I put it in the VCR and it was like an episode of major dad.

P: Here's a piece of video footage that will make me millions and famous and I recorded over it.

E: We recorded over it.

P: The opening of the new grocery downtown.

S: The real evidence was always just out of reach, just around the corner, never quite in grasp.

P: I mean, these were people that I've been doing this for decades.

E: Decades and making quite a fortune.

P: And their most compelling evidence stunk.

E: It was no evidence at all.

S: Perry and I had to run in with the Warrens on camera.

P: We did.

S: With the local, I can't remember what the station was.

P: Channel 12 I believe. Extremely local.

S: And this was after we had written our critical article of their evidence and they didn't like us anymore. And it was the same thing, where they, Ed could get pretty nasty once you come out as being skeptical of his claims. He also did the typical ploy, which a lot of these gullible researchers do is that they basically present new evidence that has not been vetted or examined in any way on camera. Here's this new photo that was handed to us by some guy. And again, it showed some wispy image that looked like a ghost. And it's like, well, we've never examined that before. And neither has anybody else nor has any scientists. So what can you make of it? We don't even know who took it and what the history was. Can we see the negatives? Can we see the camera? Nothing.

R: So you're saying you can't explain it?

E: Scientists cannot explain this.

S: Scientists don't spring new, unreviewed evidence on other scientists in public and say, ha ha, explain this.

R: I'm pretty sure that's how penicillin was discovered. I think it was on Mari Povitch.

P: You remember Steve? You had a phone conversation with Ed nearing the publication of the article, I believe, and he said he was worried that you were going to make him look like a chump.

S: Yeah, he did. He said, you're going to make me look like a chump, aren't you?

E: So he was psychic.

R: Oh, well, now I feel bad for him.

S: Yeah, it was a little pathetic.

P: It was a little pathetic.

S: And I think he was fighting with another member of his group. Because basically, this is when it came down to Ed wanted to take us on an investigation. And we wanted to go on an investigation, but his number two guy wouldn't let him. So I said, well, Ed, I have to go with my article without having gone on an investigation with you, is trying to like sort of egg him on and get him to do it. And he said he just couldn't do it. And I said, well, OK, well, we're going to go with what we have.

P: Apparently, he didn't have much control over his own organization.

S: Well, this was a tough situation for him. But it was a fun time, I have to say. It was sort of good for us early on in our skeptical careers to go up against the likes of Ed and Lorraine Warren. And I actually thought he was a nice guy, in a way. I think we actually did have fun with them. And then he was a bit of an icon. So in a way, he'll be missed.

P: He will be.

S: But his legacy of gullible ghost hunting will live on.

E: Oh, OK.

S: But on the NESS site, we can read the article we wrote right after our investigation of him. That's up there.

E: Yep. Enjoy.

Researcher proves telephone telepathy. (16:35)

• ESP Researcher Rupert Sheldrake claims to have proven telephone telepathy.
  www.skepticalinvestigations.org/currentresearch/calls_video.html
  

S: In other news, shifting gears a little bit to ESP. You guys all know who Rupert Sheldrake is, of course, right? He's a famous ESP researcher. He's a guy who believes that people know when others are staring at them. I think he's done some of the Ganzfeld experiment. Now he's claiming that he has proven that people can psychically know when someone is about to call them.

P: Proven mind you. Proven.

S: Telephone telepathy.

R: I wish they were true because my phone rang just a few minutes ago and it was really loud.

P: Did you know who was going to call you before they called?

R: I didn't even know they were going to call. If I knew, they were going to call, I would have turned off the phone, see?

S: When someone calls me, I know who it is before I pick up. It's called caller ID.

P: I wonder if he factored the caller ID and it was experiment.

R: I think his whole investigation began when friends just started answering the phone. Hey, Sheldrake. And he's like, oh.

E: Sheldrake.

S: So he claims he's done 570 trials involving 63 participants with a 40% hit rate. This is where you have, there's four possible outcomes. So the researchers are given the names and numbers of four acquaintances or friends of the subject. And so any one of those four can call. Then they tell the one person to call and they asked the participant, who's about to call you? And so by chance alone, as you get 25%, he's claiming a 40% hit rate. And he also says, and we videotaped it to say you could know that the procedure works, but they only videotaped four occurrences. So not the 570.

P: That's a lot of tape.

S: They only videotaped four. n=4.

E: I see.

S: It's hard to do statistics on the small numbers.

E: Is Randi trembling that the million dollars is at risk here?

S: Well, as always, these experiments, when replicated by scientists who don't believe at all the Boo-Boo nonsense, that Sheldrake believes in, somehow just don't get the same results that he does.

R: Fascinating.

S: And I believe that when we were interviewing Ray Hyman, you talked about Sheldrake and others that we're doing, I think he was specifically talking about the Ganzfeld experiments. So even when it looks good on paper, when you actually go to the lab and watch them do what they're doing, their technique, their methods are terribly flawed. They're not blinding the way that they say they are. And there's all kinds of ways for sensory leakage to occur and for the results to be falsely positive. It's just more ESP research spinning their wheels. It's not really accomplishing anything because they never can be reliably replicated.

R: But to be fair, I look forward to the additional studies that are going to come from this that will eventually prove that telepathy is real.

E: As long as my tax dollars aren't paying for it, that's fine. Go nuts with private money. Really.

S: How long does the government's not paying for it?

R: I do wonder how in depth we'll be able to look over exactly what their methods were so we can figure out where they went wrong. If they went wrong, I mean, who knows. Maybe they discovered telepathy.

S: Could be the first ones. He also claims that people have email telepathy. People know what email is he going to get.

E: I know when smoke signals are coming from over the hill.

P: Why not?

S: But that would seem that would be a relatively easy one to replicate the whole email thing.

E: Hey, I'm about to get spam.

R: I don't know who's emailing me, but I'm pretty sure they're Nigerian.

E: Exactly. I have to hold $15.7 million. All I have to do is give them all my information.

S: Yeah, the Nigerian scam is actually if you follow that through all the way to the conclusion they make you fly to Nigeria and then they kidnap you in the airport and then hold you for ransom from your family.

P: Excellent. Is that still ongoing?

S: Oh sure.

R: Oh, yeah.

E: I got one two days ago. I printed it out at work and showed some people.

R: I get them every day. If you ever want to pass some time, look up baiting on the internet and you can find all sorts of hilarious sites about people leading these scam artists on. And there's one in particular where he actually got the scam artist to send him a lump of gold to prove that he had found some sort of gold mine that he was claiming.

P: That is fun. I baited a guy for a dozen emails. I kept asking him more. I didn't give him to send me anything though.

R: You have to be careful I guess the stuff like that. Like setting up a PO box because you don't want them to have your real information.

E: Hey, but with this new email telepathy, you can avoid such scams effectively, more effectively.

Humans evolved to be superstitious (21:23)

• Psychologist claims humans evolved to be superstitious
  www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2342599,00.html

S: Well, from parapsychology to psychology, Professor Bruce Hood of the University of Bristol said-

P: That's in England.

S: That's in England, Bristol. Humans have evolved into accepting superstition, such as witches and other things. So he basically is a evolutionary psychologist of sorts, which is a little bit controversial in terms of what kind of conclusion you should really can come to. But he is saying that superstition evolved as an adaptive strategy. And this is nothing really, really new. The environment in which humans evolved, having sort of down and dirty rules of thumb for figuring out how the world works, also called heuristics, is pretty effective and adaptive. But when you apply these to a complex technological society, they could lead to false beliefs, such as superstitions. And there are also some specific strategies that people evolved, like, imbuing inanimate objects with sentimentality.

R: Yeah one of Hood's examples really struck a chord with me because it wasn't something that I had previously identified as a sort of superstition. But when I was a kid, I had this bunny blanket, and I carried it everywhere, and I loved it to death until it was ratty and disgusting. For Christmas one year, my mom got me a brand new one, exactly the same, to replace the ratty one, and I refused to even touch it. It was like, evil bunny. And I would like jam it into the bottom of my toy box. I didn't even want to look at it. And that was, I never really thought of it before, but you know, what's the point? It was exact in every single way. And he did a similar test where he took a kid's favorite toy, told them that he would put it through, that he would clone it basically, and that he would create one that was exactly the same in every way, and give it back to them, and the kids didn't want it. Even though it was actually the same toy, they didn't want it anymore. So that was kind of cool.

S: And so an adult version of that is asked, when asked, people will not agree to have their wedding ring replaced with an exact replica. Because something about the original has a certain sentimental value to it, and it is akin to superstition. Although it's the same mental process, but I think it's fairly benign manifestation of it.

R: Right, yeah.

P: He says at one point in his, in the article, or the article says about him, it says: "Credulous minds may have evolved for several reasons. It was once less dangerous to accept things that were not true than it was to reject real facts, such as the threat posed by nearby predators." What does that mean? Isn't accepting things that were not true the same as rejecting real facts?

S: Well, for example, if there's something rustling in the bushes and you think that could be a tiger, you're probably better off assuming that it is, rather than being skeptical and checking it out for yourself. So that's what we mean by the simplified heuristics that work well in the down and dirty, quick decision making of the jungle, if you will. But don't necessarily hold up well when you're talking about more complicated pattern-seeking behaviors. I think that's what he's referring to.

P: I see.

S: Which is not the first person to propose this. Again, this is nothing truly new. It's an interesting concept. It's one of those evolutionary stories that there's no real way to falsify it. Which is why some people say it's not really doing science. How do you test the notion of the survival advantage of something that happened in our evolutionary past?

P: Well, I don't see any advantage to being credulous in the modern world. He makes the point of it can give you a false sense of control, which is pleasing, which will lessen stress. Okay. I guess. But I'll tell you, being rational and reasonable and having a grasp of what is actual is very empowering.

S: I agree.

E: Here. Here.

S: Well, let's go on to your emails.

Questions and E-mails (25:45)

Korean Fan Deaths (25:58)

Hey everyone,

I'm a big fan of the show, and I recently encountered a topic that you might be interested in discussing on the show.

This summer, I roomed with a visiting student from Korea for summer school. Every night before we went to bed, he would shut off the fan in our room. I thought this was a bit odd, but I ignored it until I learned that his behavior was motivated by a widely believed South Korean urban myth called 'fan death' (more details at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death). Many South Koreans apparently believe that a fan left running overnight can suffocate people by sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

I was astonished to discover that this was why he had been turning off the fan, particularly because he is an engineering student. I managed to convince him that it wasn't true, but I began to wonder how so many people could believe something so patently absurd. Why do you think this is and can you think of any analogous examples of widely believed American myths?

Thanks,
Alan
Los Angeles

Homeopathy Double Standard (31:53)

The link below leads to an article from the UK, about homeopathic remedies and a new law that allows the homeopathy industry to claim efficacy for curing real medical conditions. Ridiculous!

www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-2337904,00.html

By the way, the podcast is outstanding! Definitely one of the better skeptical shows out there. Keep up the great work Dr. Novella and company.

Best regards,
Frank Latendresse
Montreal, Canada

Science in America (36:32)

In your August 18th podcast, the panel commented on the recent Michigan State University study of nations' attitudes toward evolution. I think the derogatory comments that you made of Americans were unduly negative, e.g. 'I want to blow this country. It's just disgusting.'

In a 2001 NSF survey, Americans actually scored higher than Europeans in seven out of thirteen science questions:

www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/c7/c7s2.htm

In contradiction to one panel member's conclusion, i.e. that Americans are 'backward baboons,' I would say the NSF quiz shows Americans better understand what matters most to them (genetics, medicine, and technology) instead of what matters most to the MSU investigators (evolution.)

It might be true that Americans' disbelief in evolution is largely a result of the greater role of religion in our society. If that's the case, scientists cannot realistically expect people to reject their faith to accept a theory that has no real consequences -- positive or negative -- on their lives. Unlike Christian Scientists' rejection of modern medicine, the rejection of evolution has no serious ramifications.

While there can be no doubt that scientific literacy in this country is too low, the public would be better served if those who make public education their goal would end their fixation on one polarizing (but relatively unimportant) scientific topic at the expense of other, more important ones. Derogatory comments about the supposed stupidity of an entire nation are equally unhelpful to the cause.

Brent
Urbana, Illinois

Is Recycling Bunk? (43:35)

In a few episodes back, you asked everyone about which fallacy they wish were actually true. Rebecca mentioned that she wished that recycling was. Did I miss something earlier? Is it really bunk, I'm skeptical.

Edward Karoly
Apex, North Carolina

Some articles on recycling:
www.straightdope.com/columns/000804.html

Famous 'Recycling is Garbage' Times article - www.williams.edu/HistSci/curriculum/101/garbage.html

Rebuttal -
www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/611_ACF17F.htm

Name That Logical Fallacy (54:17)

• Logical Fallacies

'Most, if not all, of these adolescents must have acquired HIV from perinatal infection for the following reasons: sexual transmission of HIV depends on an average of 1000 sexual contacts, and only 1 in 250 Americans carries HIV (Table 1). Thus, all positive teenagers would have had to achieve an absurd 1000 contacts with a positive partner, or an even more absurd 250,000 sexual contacts with random Americans to acquire HIV by sexual transmission.'

www.duesberg.com/papers/1992%20HIVAIDS.pdf


Submitted by Chris Noble

Science or Fiction (58:36)

Question #1: A newly published survey of dinosaur fossils indicates that dinosaur species were already largely in decline before they were wiped out by a meteorite collision 65 million years ago. Question #2: Despite the common saying, 'monkey see, monkey do,' imitation has only previously been described in humans and apes. A recent study, however, demonstrates for the first time monkey imitation. Question #3: Ornithologists have discovered that urban members of certain bird species are much more resistant to stress than their rural counterparts.

Skeptical Puzzle (1:06:25)

New Puzzle:

He says that the power of the mind is like an iceberg, 90% of it lies beneath the surface.
He says that this 90% of the mind's power is the subconscious.
He says the subconscious listens and absorbs experiences - much like a sponge soaks up water.
He says we need only talk to our subconscious to make ourselves happy, relaxed, strong, or whatever else we desire.
He says the absorptive qualities of subconsciousness will make these things come true.
He says the subconscious speaks back to us and that we need to listen to it.
He calls this instinct and intuition.
He says instinct and intuition are psychic gifts.
And he says by listening to these psychic gifts, we use more power of our minds than Albert Einstein ever used his.


Who is this deep thinker?

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society. For information on this and other podcasts, 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.

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