SGU Episode 390

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SGU Episode 390
5th January 2013
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 389                      SGU 391
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
M: Massimo Pigliucci
Quote of the Week
Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend things which are there.
Richard Feynman
Links
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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 Wednesday, January 2, 2013, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

B: Hey, everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson,

R: Hello, everyone.

S: Jay Novella,

J: Hey, guys.

S: And Evan Bernstein.

E: I have come to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubble gum.

J: Evan, can you say that again, but do it twice as corny.

(laughter)

R: Yeah, no.

B: Impossible!

R: You're no Rowdy Roddy Piper.

E: Right? They Live. That movie. Gosh. Is that one of the worst movies ever?

B and R: Worst?

R: It's one of the best movies ever, are you kidding?

B: Oh, god, I love it.

J: It's a cult classic. I mean, yeah, it didn't hold up as good as I would have liked, but it's still

B: Oh, what doesn't hold up?

J: Whatever. It's still great. It's still good.

R: It's awesome.

B: The best bare-knuckled brawl I think in any movie.

E: I'm sorry. Look, I get campy and I get, you know, yes, I get the brawl scene. It was rated like one of the best brawl scenes in movie history and so forth. Rowdy Roddy Piper, John Carpenter directed it and all that. I'm sorry. That movie had so many flaws to it. I mean if we were ever to do a review of that movie, oh man, we could do a whole episode on that.

S: Maybe we should.

E: Maybe we should.

R: Yeah. I will defend that movie with my life.

(laughter)

E: All right. I'm gonna be your Gene Siskel to your Roger Ebert or vice versa, or whatever.

R: Oh, boy.

J: Steve, I'm getting a feeling like in the back of my head. I feel like I'm predicting that we're gonna do a show on predictions.

S: I know, I think you're right, Jay.

B: Damn, you're good.

E: One of these days.

S: It's a high probability hit.

This Day in Skepticism (1:43)

• January 5, 1940: FM radio first commercial broadcast

S: But first, Rebecca's gonna tell us about January 5th.

R: Happy birthday, FM radio!

J: Awesome!

E: To all the kids out there.

J: What does the "F" in FM stand for?

R: Frequency.

B: Frequency modulation.

J: Thank you.

R: Yes, sort of. You could probably pick any number of dates for the birthdate of FM radio, but on January 5, 1940, the first network program was broadcast on FM radio. It was called "Colonel Harrison Featherbottom and the Fart Man's Morning Zoo Hour."

(laughter)

E: What? No, it wasn't.

B: No way. I don't believe it.

J: I love it!

E: . . . skeptic.

R: Okay, that's not what it was called. But it was a 60-minute show that was, it was designed to showcase several different types of audio and vocals and stuff that would eventually be broadcast. The show traveled from a station in Yonkers, New York that was operated by one C.R. Runyon, to a transmitter in Alpine, New Jersey operated by Major Edwin Armstrong of Columbia University, who was heading up the effort; and then onto Meriden, Connecticut; Paxton, Massachusetts; and then finally Mount Washington, where it was transmitted by telelphone wire to Boston and then back to Yonkers. By all reports the FM broadcasts were found to have no apparent loss of quality. So, it was given the thumbs up. The first FM stations that had regular scheduling, programming, appeared later that year. FM.

J: That's cool.

S: Yeah. So, Jay, frequency modulation, that's how the information is encoded in the carrier wave, by modulating the frequency of a signal. As opposed to AM, which is amplitude modulation, they modify the amplitude of the signal.

E: Thank you, Dr. Marconi.

S: Right. And the FM band simply refers to, the FM has nothing to do with any frequency range itself, any band, but that's just the band that's assigned in various countries to transmit FM signals over. So in the U.S. and most places it's 87.5 to 108.0 megahertz.

News Items

Psychic Predictions for 2012 (3:51)

• The Rogues review prediction for last year and make some new ones for 2013

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Cosmic Rays and Dementia (32:27)

• Houston, we have another problem: Study shows space travel is harmful to the brain

Who's That Noisy? (38:07)

• Whale Makes Human Sounds
• Answer to last week: Glass Harp playing Fur Elise

Interview with Massimo Pigliucci (42:33)

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• Author, Answers for Aristotle

Science or Fiction (1:01:19)

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Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction

S: Each week I come up with three science or news items or facts, two genuine and one fictitious. Then I challenge my panel of sceptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. Now before we get started this week, because this is the first Science or Fiction of 2013, I do have the stats, the full Science or Fiction stats, from last year.

E: Eurgh

S: These were sent to us by Cat, from sgutranscripts.org, so thanks Cat. So, here they are for 2012: Bob had played 47 games, lost 19, won 28 for a total of 59.6%.

B: Eurgh, damn.

S: Evan played 50, 25 and 25, exactly 50%.

E: Wow, I think wow, that's pretty good.

S: Jay also played 50, lost 26, won 24 so just shy of Even at 48%. I played 7, lost 3 and won 4 so am at 57.1%, just behind Bob and Rebecca played 44, lost 17, won 27 for a total of 61.4%.

E: Wow.

S: Just edged out Bob.

B: Nice.

S: Congratulations Rebecca.

R: Thank you.

B: Congratulations.

R: Thank you.

J: Overall we're way above average.

E: That was...

S: All doing better than random guessing.

B: Yeah but...

R: Hooray.

B: Rebecca and I did worse than last year though.

R: Yeah. I felt dumber this year.

E: Jay and I picked up the slack though.

B: How could I start off so well and then totally tank it?

S: Regression to the mean. Randomness.

J: Evan, our goal for this year, better than 50%.

E: You bet...

S: OK.

E: You bet buddy.

S: It's a brand new year though, guys. Are you all ready?

E: Clean slate.

S: We do have a theme for this week.

(laughter)

R: God damn it.

S: This theme... (laughter) this theme is dedicated to Jay. It's all about little babies.

(overlapping comments)

J: OK

S: Prepare Jay for his...

R: Because Jay's a giant baby?

S: Yeah, for his upcoming...

E: Oh, is that what you mean?

S: ... child to be born in a few weeks.

R: Oh my...

(overlapping comments)

S: Hope all goes well. OK...

E: So excited.

S: Here we are - item number one - a study finds that maternal use of anti-depressants during pregnancy is associated with a greater risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Item number two - a new study concludes that babies start learning language in the womb. And item number three - new research finds that for most babies it is better to leave them alone when they cry at night rather than comforting them. Jay, 'cos this is a theme in your honour, you get to go first.

J: The first one, about the study that says that mothers that took anti-depressants while they were pregnant - that's interesting that it increases SIDS. Now I do know that SIDS... SIDS is when the baby stops breathing and I thought that that had to do with temperature. OK, the second one about the babies learning language in the womb, I believe that one is correct. I think that they can hear their mothers' voices before they're born and they can identify their mother's voice and actually start to pick up language. So I think that one is science and the third one, the last one about... it's better to leave most babies and let them cry at night instead of comforting them - I'm not sure about that. Now this one, of course Steve's not going to answer questions but, a new born baby absolutely needs to be fed on a regular basis and one of those reasons why a baby cries is because it wants to be fed. It could be just hungry, which, you should feed a hungry baby. The whole crying baby thing, to me, you gotta go in, you gotta check on the baby and feed them. But for some reason I'm thinking here Steve that because you're gonna be leaving the baby alone in a room that this could be later maybe not a new born. I'm gonna say that because of how vague that third one is, I'm gonna say that the first one, the one about SIDS is the fake.

S: OK, Bob?

B: The babies start learning language in the womb, yeah that just makes sense. I would expect that the unborn baby can hear it's mother's voice. I remember reading a while back about how babies can recognise their mothers' voices soon after birth. It just makes sense that they would become accustomed to the language and be primed and ready to go right out of the gate so to speak so that makes sense to me. Leaving crying babies alone, yeah that was the conventional wisdom twelve, fourteen years ago when I had an infant in the house. After Ashley was born it was pretty much - a lot of people were saying that and it makes a lot of sense, you know the baby wakes up, there's some separation anxiety and if the parents come rushing in then the baby will get used to that and expect it all the time and if they can get used to waking up, being alone then going back to sleep, bam, perfect, that's what the baby will do. So that makes a lot of sense too so considering that two and three make so much sense to me, I just think that you could say that mothers who have had babies who died of SIDS, I just don't think you'd have a decent percentage of them that would be on anti-depressants. Yeah, I'm going to say the SIDS is fiction.

S: OK, Rebecca?

R: Ah, yeah. I don't know but the one about leaving babies alone when they cry at night - there's like a huge can of worms in the parenting blogs and forums - I feel like that's one of those things that...

E: You read those?

R: I have friends who are parents who get involved in the mommy blogs and stuff - yeah that's for the past thirty years or so that's been a huge thing - there's even a title for it like it's a parenting style that's specifically based on remaining fairly detached from your children in the hopes that they will learn to fend for themselves and everything that I've read, which admittedly is not a ton because I don't have a kid and I'm not planning to have one any time soon, but everything that I've read suggests that it's BS, that like Jay said, when the baby cries it's crying for a reason go pick it up. So I'm going to say that's the fiction.

S: And Evan?

E: Oh, everyone made very good cases for all of these. Bob, you, I think you hit on the SIDS one, anti-depressants during pregnancy associated with a greater risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Anti-depressants being more prescribed these days than they were way back when but there was still SIDS occurring way back when so I'm thinking that that one's the fiction. But Rebecca, you brought up a good point, good points about the crying. Rebecca I hate to leave you alone out there I'm going to go with what my first instinct way I'm going to say that the SIDS is the fiction.

S: OK so... I'm a little surprised that you guys all believe that a new study concludes that babies start learning language in the womb is science.

E: Spanish or French?

B: Why?

S: You guys all believe that one - I don't know, that one struck me as being a little out there but that one is science.

B: Why did you think that one was out there?

R: That was the most obvious one to me.

J: Steve I read that one and I was talking to my wife Courtney about it and she goes ah I don't know that sounds like BS to me.

S: Yeah.

J: Which I thought was funny 'cos now it's on our game here.

S: It just struck me as like really, really? Alright, but this is true a study does conclude this, I'm not sure how much I totally buy the conclusion and this is the first time a study has shown that newborns are not naive to the language of their mother. What the researcher did, this is Christine Moon, professor of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University, they studied infants that were just hours old and the research paradigm's interesting. They had them suck on a pacifier that was attached to a computer and when they sucked on the pacifier (laughter) - hang on - they sucked on the pacifier it would...

E: Ten thousand volts.

S: It would play a recording of vowels from either their mothers' native language or a foreign language.

B: Interesting.

S: And it would play for as long as they sucked and then when they stopped sucking it would stop and then when they started sucking again it would play a different vowel.

B: They sucked more.

S: So the question was would they listen more to the vowels...

B: Parent language.

S: From their parent language or their mothers' language specifically or from a foreign language and with the idea, and this was a paradigm used in other research, that they would listen longer to vowels that they were not familiar with.

B: Oh, interesting.

S: Because they were novel, the brain's like hey, this is new, I've got to pay attention to this, not oh this is something I've been hearing for months, you know? And in fact they found that the infants did listen longer, you know based upon their sucking on this pacifier, to vowel sounds from foreign languages than to their mothers' language.

R: But what if they found the mothers' language more soothing so wanted to listen to it longer?

B: Yeah.

S: As I said, this is, you've got to buy every link in this chain...

R: Yeah, dumb, it's dumb.

S: You know, to buy this. But the thing is any difference, any difference you can take that they're not naive and it was not that they're listening to sounds of their mother, just vowels from their mothers' language or a foreign language. So any difference would... means that they're getting something, you know, if you believe the difference itself, if the data itself is compelling. Definitely the kind of study that I'd like to see replicated and looked at from different angles but that was what this study concluded.

E: Great.

S: Let's go to number 1, a study finds that maternal use of anti-depressants during pregnancy is associated with a greater risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Rebecca thinks this one is science, the rest of you think this one is the fiction and this one is... the fiction.

(overlapping comments)

B: Yeah baby.

R: Not a good start.

B: One hundred, one hundred percent.

S: Ah so yeah, this is interesting. So first of all the news item that I was basing this on showed the opposite - the use of anti-depressants during pregnancy not linked with increased risk of still birth, infant death or other bad outcomes so that's very nice. And I did do a little research on, you know, 'cos I said let me just say the opposite and then I did some research just on SIDS and specifically what the literature shows is that depression in the mother is associated with increased risk of SIDS and in fact this leads to a recommendation that mothers be treated for their depression...

B: Interesting, woah.

S: In the hopes that it would decrease the risk of SIDS if anything because untreated depression is a risk factor that has been identified for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Now SIDS still remains a little mysterious, you know, it's not like we completely understand exactly what, you know, what is happening, we've identified lots of factors, you know, that increase or decrease the risk and it's thought that, you know, it is... that they essentially they stop breathing. And over the years I've read so many different things like, you know, it's good if they're in the room with the parents because maybe the higher CO2 content drives the infant's respiration more. There are some drugs that are associated with an increased risk of SIDS and those are more for breast feeding now, not anti-natal. So for breast feeding mothers, anti-depressants are still fine but you want to avoid anything that would be sedating so Valium-like drugs are not good, lithium was also another one that was identified, so drugs that could pass through to the infant through breast feeding and can cause sedation will increase the risk of SIDS. The bottom line is if you're breast feeding, your OB should know every medication that you're taking and you need to talk to them about is this something that would get passed through the breast milk to the infant and what risk or effects might it have. So don't just take... breast feeding is actually... you're still linked to the infant, you know, biologically. It's actually more metabolically demanding on the mother than being pregnant, breast feeding, you still need to take that very seriously. Alright, which means, new research finds that for most babies it is better to leave them alone when they cry at night rather than comfort them is science. Now, Rebecca, you're right in that this is a controversy and there's two sides, there's two schools of thought here. There's the... if you comfort them they'll feel reassured and more secure and if you leave them alone to cry they'll feel abandoned then the other side is what Bob articulated which is they, kids need to learn, babies need to learn how to sooth themselves, if you run to them every time you hear them cry you're re-enforcing the behaviour, the crying, and they're not going to learn how to sooth themselves and that is essentially what this latest round now in this controversy has shown. Researchers have found that babies need to learn how to sooth themselves back to sleep. This is also based partly on the notion that infants have a sleep cycle just like everyone else, just like adults, and that sleep cycle involves, you know, going into deeper stages of sleep and then coming into lighter sleep, kind of waking up and then drifting off back to sleep again, that's natural. If the child is fussy or is, you know, upset at all when it wakes up it might cry during that stage of its sleep but that's perfectly normal for it to be quote unquote awake, you know, at that time and what the researchers found is that for some babies, again not for everyone but for some, that they were better sleepers later on in life, meaning like eighteen months, you know, two years, if they were allowed to sooth themselves back to sleep and that those babies whose parents picked them up every time they cried, that they had delayed learning of self-soothing and had a worse sleep later on. So, good job guys.

R: Meuhh.

S: Of to an ironic start, given that Rebecca won last year and...

E: Watch, she'll sweep the table the rest of the year.

S: Yeah, it's, hey, it's an endurance test, you know?

R: Yeah, it's a marathon.

S: It's like one basket in basketball, doesn't mean that much.

B: It's a marathon but right now you're in last place.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:16:01)

Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend things which are there.

Richard Feynman

Announcements

The Yellow Cab of the Universe (1:16:34)

• http://www.yellowcabuniverse.com/

References