SGU Episode 165

page in progress --Teleuteskitty (talk) 14:50, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

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 September 17^th 2008, and this is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Joining me this evening are Bob Novella,

B: Hey everybody

S: Rebecca Watson

R: Hello, everyone

S: Jay Novella

J: Hey guys

S: And Evan Bernstein

E: Hi everyone, how's everyone doin' tonight?

J: Good

S: Good

R: Great

B: What's goin' on

E: Good!

This Day in Skepticism (0:36)

R: What's the day, Evan?

E: 1976, the first space shuttle, Enterprise, unveiled by NASA.

B: Ah, that's awesome

E: Not launched, just unveiled

S: Just unveiled?

J: I remember being a kid, watching the TV, seeing a bunch of people standing on the tarmac, watching it be unveiled, then playing the theme to the Enterprise, you know, Star Trek.

S: Yeah

E: (laughs)

J: Remember that?

S: But I was devastated when I learned the Enterprise was never going to go into orbit.

B: No

J: What a gip!

E: That's right

B: Just a mock-up

S: They should've saved the name for the first one to launch, not just the training module.

R: I know a better day that's coming up, and that would be Friday, the 19^th. You guys know what Friday is?

J: Friday, um…

S: September 19^th?

R: Uh-huh, you give up?

B: Sorry

S: The start of fall

R: (complete with accent) Aaar, it's talk-like-a-pirate day! Ye land-lubbers!

B: Yes! How could I forget?

(laughter)

S: Didn't we just have that?

J: That's a great day!

E: Last year we mentioned that.

(laughter)

R: Aaaar

B: It's an awesome day

S: Has it been a year already?

R: It has

E: Aaaar, matey, it has.

(laughter)

S: Good thing we're not doing the podcast on Friday.

R: Oh, can't we pretend?

B: Oh, the whole- the whole days as pirates?

E: Today is talk like a ninja day

S: Knock yourself out

R: You can't talk like a ninja!

S: Actually, today-

E: Sure you can,

R: They just sneak up and stab you

S: Today is international talk like a skeptic day

B: Ha!

R: (laughing) You made that up

E: (with accent) I doubt that, har-har-har

(laughter)

S: Well, we have an interview that we recorded at TAM 6 with Ben Goldacre coming up later in the show.

B: Ben!

R: That's aaaaar-some, Steve. I can't wait

S: Ben is a cool guy. Our first new item is about Ben

News Items

Ben Goldacre Defends Libel Case (2:17)

Neurologica: An Important Victory Against HIV Quackery

S: Ben Goldacre, who writes for the Guardian, and is one of the guys in the UK who's writing about science and medicine. He had written a piece about Matthias Rath, you guys familiar with this guy?

R: Only in that I know he's a douche

B: Er, no

S: Right, he is a giant douche, he really is. So he has an organisation-

R: (in the background) Am I gonna get sued for that?

S: -that sells all kinds of snake oil, and what Ben wrote about was Rath selling vitamins in South Africa to AIDS victims, telling them not to take their anti-HIV medications, but instead, to take his vitamins. You know, there's an actual death count that you can attach to that kinda behaviour.

R: Yeah

S: So, Ben called him out on that. Now, Rath has a history of suing anyone who criticizes him, he has many, many lawsuits in many countries. You know, anyone who says that what he's doing is not legitimate, his response is to sue them.

R: Including in South Africa where he's causing the most damage.

S: Yes, South Africa, Germany, and again against the Guardian and Ben Goldacre. And he's won some of those suits, unfortunately. But this, recently he had to withdraw his suit against the Guardian and Ben Goldacre and he's going to have to pay about half a million pounds in legal fees as a result as well. So that was a very good outcome. Of course, we all congratulate Ben on seeing that through, you know, it's obviously something that cuts very close to home. We spend a lot of our time dishing out very harsh criticism to a lot of people. Some of whom are heartless charlatans who will kill people if it lines their pockets, and who have a history of defending themselves by intimidating others with lawsuits and-

R: Yeah, and you know, it's very different in England, where the laws aren't quite as much on the side of people who are making the statements, it's not quite on the side of free-speech as it is in the US.

S: Right

R: I think that, you know, we have a certain amount of protection going for us, but in the UK, it's fairly easy for someone to sue for libel slander, because once they do, the burden is on the defendant, as opposed to in the US, where the burden of proof is on the plaintive, and I am not a lawyer.

S: No, that's correct. Although, in England, the one advantage in the UK, is that it's pretty standard, if you lose such a lawsuit, it's almost automatic that you pay the other side's legal fees. So that's the disincentive for frivolous lawsuits.

R: Right, and so sure enough, he's had to cough up, yeah.

S: These are critical victories for free-speech for sceptics everywhere who are trying to, you know, point out, especially this kind of really destructive behaviour. So, this is, I think, a very important victory. So, congratulations Ben!

E: Good job, Ben

R: Yay Ben!

Hubble Finds Mystery Object (5:20)

Sky & Telescope article

S: The next news item, the Hubble finds a mystery object that genuinely has astronomers baffled

R: Astronomers are baffled!

S: They are

J: They're baffled!

S: They're generally baffled.

E: are they flummoxed?

S: And flummoxed.

J: So what is it, Steve?

S: Now, this is pretty interesting

B: That's the question, Jay, it's- really nobody knows, according to a paper that's about to appear in the Astrophysical journal. Something extraordinary, never been seen before by astronomers appeared in 2006, so I was a little disappointed that it was two years ago, like, 'what? We're just hearing about this now?'. But to this day, it is not known what the hell it was, or if it will ever appear again. It started with the Supernova Cosmology Project in February 2006 using Hubble, looking for Supernovae in February. A previously unknown object started getting brighter and brighter, and brighter, and it just did not stop. And this continued for about 100 days, at that point, it pretty much stopped getting brighter and bigger, and then just started to symmetrically dim for the next 100 days. So it was really, perfectly symmetrical light curve where the dimming is perfectly matched by the brightening in the beginning. The spectrum of light was also an enigma, the spectrum basically just shows the rainbow of colors from a light source, but also, of course, includes the non-visible light, like UV or radio. And typically, these certain pieces of the spectrum are missing from a spectrum. And the lines that are missing shows you what elements must have been near the light source, or in the intervening space that absorbed it. So you've got these emission lines, but these emission lines made no sense.

S: Don't you mean 'absorption lines'? Just to be clear, emission lines are different from absorption lines. Emission lines are when- are from the body itself that's glowing, absorption lines are from something intervening that's absorbing the light that was emitted.

B: That's right, you were right. So this is a key deficit in our knowledge about this object, because if you can't determine what the elements are, what the arrangement of elements are in the spectrum, then you don't know how red-shifted the object is. That's one of the reasons why quasars were such a puzzle to astronomers early on, because quasars are so red-shifted, they're billions of light years distant, therefore, their red-shift is gargantuan, and it took a while for astronomers to realize 'wait a second, hydrogen's way over here, if it's way over here, it's gotta be immensely distant'. And that's gotta be one of the key insights that made them realize that these objects were so far away. So if we don't have this information, if we can't kinda get a picture of what's going on with the spectrum of this object, then you have no idea how far away this is. Is it in our galaxy?

S: Right

B: Is it in another galaxy? We don't know!

J: Is that like a ball of hydrogen, or some hot-pocket of air, or expanding space somewhere?

(laughter)

B: All we know is what we saw. It was some sort of stellar object that got brighter and brighter, like a Supernova, and then dimmed. But it was not typical of any other object that they've ever seen before.

S: Yeah, they said it's specifically not a supernova.

R: And if you were a pirate, would you call it a quasaaaaarrr?

(laughter)

B: Quasaaaarr! Yes! Good one.

E: No!

R: I suspect that they call it quasaarrr

S: That's not a (inaudible)

B: We do have a range though, this thing must be within a certain range by other measurements, and one of them is parallax. Parallax is the movement of one object due to movement of a foreground object, so if an object is close enough away, say less than 130 light years, you would see obvious parallax. We're not seeing that, so that means that this object is more than 130 light years away. So that's the bottom limit right there. So, what's the upper limit? Well, the only upper limit I came across for this thing has to do with hydrogen absorption. Because it's lacking hydrogen absorption in the spectrum, that means that it has to be less than 11 billion light years away. So our range is greater than 120 light years, less than 11 billion light years.

S: Right

B: Nice range

E: Oh, narrowed it down, that's great

B: That's the best they've come up with in two years. So, it could be anywhere in the intervening space.

S: But interestingly, given that it could be- there's such a huge range for how far away it could be, they said that it's not in any known galaxy. So there's no galaxy, I guess, on that-

B: I have a problem with that. I have a problem with that because there's been mention of this Boötes constellation they referred to, which is just a constellation of stars within our galaxy. But they refer to it as a void where there's really nothing around it for many light years, apparently. Now, there is a (Boötes super-void, it's a void, one of the biggest voids in the known universe, it's 250 million light years wide. Now I think they are possibly referring to this, they're saying that it's within this specific void. If it could be 130 light years away or 11 billion light years away, why do they think it's in a void 250 million light years across?

S: I don't think it's just that, my reading was that it's not in any known galaxy, if it were in a galaxy, they're not seeing the galaxy that it's in.

B: Yeah, but why even mention this specific Boötes void or concept? Cos that, to me, just seems like a red herring.

J: Bob, do we know if it's heading in a direction? Like, what direction it was moving in?

B: No, there was no- you know, 200 days is not gonna be any- there wasn't really any discernable movement. Now, could it be a new type of Supernova? Scientists don't think so, there's a problem with that, because it doesn't match any of the known Supernova types and the brightening took much longer than normal, typically, Supernovas will brighten for 20 days, this one lasted for 100 days, and the spectrum didn't make any sense. The light curve should be asymmetrical for a Supernova, they fade more slowly than they brighten, it didn't make any sense.

S: They also said it was not microlensing

B: Right, the light curve doesn't match a microlensing event. Microlensing occurs when light is distorted as it travels over a gravitational source. They've ruled that out as well. It doesn't look like a quasar, I mean nothing that-

R&E: Aaaarrr

B: They put this spectrum through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database, which has just a vast number of objects, and it didn't match anything in there. This is really quite a mystery and I-

S: Yeah, so this thing is probably a whole new class of object – which is cool!

B: Yeah, some people have speculated that it's some sort of- because it's so symmetrical and blah, blah, blah that it could be-

R: Aliens

B: -some sort of sign from an intelligence, but obviously there's nothing that would really give you any confidence in that sort of conclusion. Not yet, anyway. But that would be interesting, if evidence pointed that way, but, man, I'm not counting on that at all.

S: You don't think it's like a Death Star blowing up or something?

B: They were talking about it in the comments.

J: We would need so much more freakin evidence, you can't jump to that, that's incredible

B: No, that's ridiculous

S: Well they thought that about pulsars when they first saw them, they were called LGM

B: LGM, little green men, it was so regular

E: Cos it was too regular, right? It could only have been created or something

S: But sometimes, nature is really regular and symmetrical

E: Aah, when nature is regular

S: Yeah, you can't jump to an artificial hypothesis just because it's so symmetrical

J: I'm pretty regular

E: And symmetrical

R: That's not what I heard

Creationism in the UK (13:00)

Neurologica: Teaching Creationism in Schools
TimesOnline article (login required)
BBC article: Who are the British creationists?

S: Well, creationism is creeping into the UK, traditionally, the United States has had a problem with creationists trying to infiltrate public schools and etc. But now, apparently, it's becoming more of a problem in the United Kingdom. And this came to a head recently by comments made by reverend professor Michael Reiss who was, until very recently, the Director of Education at the Royal Society. The Royal Society, I think is the oldest scientific institution and has a very important position in the UK science community. He made some controversial statements, and this is a quote from them

An increasing percentage of children in the UK come from families that do not accept the scientific version of the history of the universe and the evolution of species. What are we to do with those children? My experience after having tried to teach biology for 20 years is if one simply gives the impression that such children are wrong, then they are not likely to learn much about the science that one really wants them to learn. I think a better way forward is to say to them 'look, I simply want to present you with the scientific understanding of the history of the universe and how animals and plants and other organisms evolved'.

S: He made other comments as well that really sparked a controversy over what exactly is this guy advocating? And because he's actually a literalist, not just a reverend, but a literalist, a lot of people sort of had their eye on this guy, and were sort of waiting for this kind of thing to happen, this kind of controversy to crop up. So this, perhaps as much as anything else, is what lead to this incredible controversy, but I still have a hard time knowing really what this guy was advocating.

R: Well, you know what the Society, a spokesman for the Society stepped forward and confirmed that, you know, what he was saying was inline with what they believed, and their exact quote was

Our position is that if young people put forward a creationist perspective in the classroom, it should be discussed.

R: Their whole thing, they're talking about science, so we can assume they're talking about the science classroom, and it's kind of ridiculous just to put it like that. I mean, if you're going to talk about that subject, then let's be specific, how should it be discussed? Should it be discussed in terms of showing them that, for instance, a belief in god can be compatible with evolution? Or should you be telling them that there's no way in hell the Earth was created in six days?

S: (agreeing) mm-hmm

R: It's not very educational, it's not very helpful to just throw that out there like that. It sounds like a big case of covering of asses

S: Yeah, they definitely- the Royal Society put out clarifications, 'quote-unquote', the next day saying 'creationism is not science, it should not be taught as science in the science classroom, and we whole-heartedly defend the teaching of evolution'. But this guy, Reiss, you know, he's just made other statements that were very, very squirly, for example, he said 'I do believe in taking seriously and respectfully the concerns of students who do not believe the theory of evolution, while still introducing them to it'. He also made some comments about treating creationism and ID, intelligent design, and evolution as different world-views. So, you know, he's kinda dancing around this topic, and I think that, given that he's a literalist, and that he's making these squirly comments, it certainly seems like he's trying to squeeze in a little 'teach the controversy' through the back door there, just by saying 'we need to be respectful of the students, and we need to address their concerns and talk about creationism- oh, we believe in evolution, I'm not saying evolution is wrong, but, you know, we really need to take- we can't just teach evolution, we have to address their concerns'

R: Yeah, it almost sounds like he's going for the catching more flies with honey defense, but-

S: Yeah

R: And there's something to be said for exploring different ways of reaching kids who are unfortunately growing up in households where their parents are ignorant of the basic tenants of science. And, you know, it is going to be difficult if they've been raised to believe in something wholly incompatible with what you're teaching them. You know, we do need to look at how we're teaching them. But to make a vague statement that just doesn't jibe at all with anything we're actually aiming for, and then to run away from it-

S: Yeah

R: Is kinda cowardly and suspicious.

E: It's just a case of this person, I think, trying to be somewhat politically correct, not taking a firm stance one way or the other, trying to please the most people possible with his statement to try and quell any controversy, it just did the opposite, apparently.

J: He stepped down from his position too, because of the controversy.

S: Yes

R: He did, and the really cool thing is that he stepped down when British members of parliament stood up and said 'Hey, what the hell are you guys talking about? That's not science' and can you imagine that happening in the US, where an actual congress person steps up and bats somebody in line and defends science?

B: No!

J: No!

R: It seems kind of foreign (laughs) So, I think that the UK kind of scores one on that point.

S: Yeah, although again this is in the context of increasing sort of insurgence of creationism into the UK, and increasing concerns. This controversy was all around the science blogosphere for the last week, the last few days, and some of the comments, like P. Z Myers for example wrote a lot about this, and he said that 'you can teach students how we know the Earth isn't 6,000 years old. How we know there is common descent, you know, we know the Earth is 14 billion years old, etc, etc'. you can say historically they used to think this, you know 150 years ago, and this is how we- our thinking of our origins changed over time and developed with evidence. So, you can teach students everything students need to know about how science works, about how specific scientific beliefs came to be. But based upon what evidence, what logic. Without ever talking about a religious belief, or talking about creationism, you don't have to do that. I think that confronting something that is a religious belief in the science classroom is the wrong approach, you're better off saying 'in this classroom, we're talking about science, this is what science is. This is how scientists come to the conclusions that they come to. And you could achieve all of the objectives that Reiss claims he was really talking about, without respecting creationism as a world-view. That has no place in a science classroom. Some other things that have been going on, though, I don't know if this is a coincidence, but the Church of England, the C of E

E: (with English accent) C of E

S: Apologised to Darwin!

R: I think that is-

J: Now that blew my mind

B: Ha!

J: I can't believe that

E: Did he accept?

S: Good for them

E: Did he accept?

R: He couldn't accept, he was roasting in hell for his evil Darwinist ideas!

(laughter)

J?: (with English accent) So sorry, Darwin, sorry about that, old chap

(laughter)

S: So, yeah, they said it was basically the wrong thing to do, to basically oppress Darwin's views at the time. And, it turns out, that whole evolution thing was probably a good idea. Now, in response to that, the pope said 'yeah, evolution is fine, but we're not apologising'.

(laughter)

S: He refused to apologise.

(laughter)

J: He basically said 'Oh, yeah?'

(laughter)

S: 'You pansies in England can apologise to Darwin, the pope's not apologising to nobody'. But, yeah, evolution's fine, you know, they

J: The pope's tired

S: Right, but the UK's got their own creationist museum now.

R: (flatly) Good for them.

J: It was just a matter of time

E: Has the UK largely over the years been, not influenced by creationism, and it's only making some recent advances and strides?

S: Yes, that's exactly correct, and it really has been, at least in the West, a US phenomenon. But now it is spreading to the UK.

E: Do we know how much of it is influenced by Islam? Because the Islam population is on a great rise.

S: That is a factor I know that Richard Dawkins has pointed that out as a factor, that they are creating faith schools, and teaching creationism from their religious perspective. Others have pointed to, you know, specifically political influence from the US have pointed to the Templeton foundation, which is dedicated to-

E: Oh yeah

S: Connecting science and religion, and they have a lot of money behind that, so they give money to anybody who will-

B: A million dollars, a million dollars a year to the person who does the most to join science and religion, right?

R: I've seen rich people die and leave mansions to their cats, and it's a better use of money than that prize.

S: Right

B: Yeah, I agree

J: and is it that general? The criteria is that general?

S: Yes. The goal is for science to validate faith, that is the goal.

E: So, is Michael Egnor in the running for that prize?

(laughter)

S: I wouldn't be surprised.

E: Yeah, right?

S: He definitely wants to intermingle those two

R: You know who pirates' favourite scientist is?

B: Oh boy,

S: I can't wait to hear

R: Daarrrrwin!

(laughter)

J: Daarrrrwin

B: Oh god

J: Rebecca, get back on your medication as soon as possible.

R: I ran out of gin!

(laughter)

E: Keep up some rum, aarrr

B: Keep it up, Rebecca, I'm loving it

(laughter)

Questions and Emails (22:52)

Big Pharma

S: Well, let's go on to your email, do you know what the first email's about?

R: Daaarrrwin?

E: It's about 15 sentences

S: It's about 'big phaaaarrrma'!

R&E: Phaarrrma!

S: This one comes from Nick Vockrodt, from Arlington, Virgina. And he writes a very long email, I'm going to cut to the question: (see show notes for full email)

My question is regarding "Big Pharma" and specifically fibromyalgia-

R: I'm sorry, Steve, about big what?

S: big phaarrrghma

R: Thank you

S: and specifically fibromyalgia I was discussing the pharmaceutical industry with a friend who claimed that diseases are-

J: What was that, Steve? Fibro- what?

S: Alright, enough!

(laughter)

S: who claimed that diseases are being "made up" by drug companies for the sole purpose of creating a market for their medicines. He mentioned fibromyalgia as a perfect example, claiming it to be a disease that anyone can convince themselves they have. This sounded like what Dr. Novella describes as symptoms of life … I wasn't very familiar with the malady at the time to argue, but I tend to defend the pharmaceutical industry when faced with what sounds like a conspiracy theory. In my subsequent research, I found that there is some debate on it, but that the disease is generally accepted by the medical community as being "real".

S: Well, this is actually a complicated question because there's a few components to it. Let's take the first component of it: 'Does the pharma company make up diseases that they could then market their drugs for?'. I think there, in my opinion, the answer is a pretty unequivocal no. The pharmaceutical industry in this country, regulated by the FDA, when they market a drug, by definition, if you are marketing anything and claiming that it treats or cures or modifies a disease, it's regulated as a drug. Right, so things are regulated based on the kinds of claims that are made for them. But you don't get to make up your own diseases though, you know, to say that your drug is gonna treat something that you yourself get to make up, or that a company makes up. Companies are not in a position to create or will into existence a new disease. Things like fibromyalgia are- that is a diagnosis that emerged from the medical community. Now, I think that fibromyalgia is a very complicated disease entity that I have a lot of doubts about the way it's classified and diagnosed right now. First of all, it's not a disease, really, even though-

B: a syndrome?

S: -it is recog- so what the-

E: It's a 'condition'?

S: Like for regulatory purposes, what the FDA will consider a disease is not necessarily what we would, in medicine, use the term specifically 'disease' for, meaning a pathophysiological entity. Sometimes there are clinical syndromes, or a recognised entity, but we don't understand the pathophysiology, so it may be described purely by the clinical picture that it creates. So like 'chronic fatigue syndrome' is a syndrome, not really a disease. Fibromyalgia, I think, is better understood that way, although there are some thoughts about what might be causing it, it's actually not well understood. In fact, recent evidence suggests that a lot of people who have the symptoms of fibromyalgia may just be the symptoms of an underlying problem, like a sleep disorder. In fact, I think a lot of people who have the symptoms that are used to make the diagnosis fibromyalgia, actually have an underlying sleep disorder. Others may have an underlying anxiety disorder.

J: Really?

S: Yes

J: Interesting

S: And if you treat people for the sleep disorder, the fibromyalgia symptoms go away, so that's a pretty good indication. At least some of them. Other people may have a simmering auto-immune inflammation of the muscles. And that may be really- if there is something that's really fibromyalgia, I think that's what it is. But a lot of people get similar symptoms for other reasons.

J: Would you consider fibromyalgia kind of like a 'catch-all' for a bunch of different types of symptoms then?

S: Yeah, I think it's what we call a 'garbage-pail diagnosis', you know, you just get people who have symptoms in this area, then this is the label you attach to it. But there isn't any way to specifically say 'yes, this is a discrete pathological entity that they have '. I also see the diagnosis made on non-specific symptoms, without the specific symptoms that are supposed to be there. So if you are fatigued and achy, and etc., and you call that fibromyalgia, well that's just attaching a label to non-specific symptoms. You're supposed to have what we call 'trigger points', that are specific places in the muscles that are very tender. And if you have that pattern of 'trigger points' then I think it's meaningful to say 'well that pattern is called fibromyalgia. We still don't know what it is, we have some ideas, but that's the way we use the diagnosis'. If you call everybody who is fatigued and achey fibromylagia, then the diagnosis has no meaning.

Now, I believe that the pharmaceutical industry has targeted fibromyalgia for a couple of drugs because it is such a easy diagnosis to make, because you can attach it to these vague symptoms, so I think if they're guilty of anything, it's choosing a marketable disease. But they didn't make it up, they weren't the ones to make it up. But that's just, you know, when pharmaceutical companies look for an indication for their drug, that's based purely on marketing. They want to decide 'what's the biggest market? What drugs are going to sell the most? Which indication will allow us to speak to which specialty of physicians that we want to be able to market to?'. It's all really a marketing decision, of course the science has to be there as well. But often, with many drugs, there are different indications that you could go for. For example, if a drug treats pain, or treats nerve pain, now nerve pain is not a disease, so you have to pick a disease that causes nerve pain. Now, what diseases cause nerve pain are you gonna pick? Postherpetic neuralgia or diabetic neuropathy? They're gonna make a marketing decision, They're gonna choose the one with the biggest sales, the biggest marketing options for their drug, but again, they don't get to make up the disease. The other disease for which I hear this claim the most frequently is restless leg syndrome (RLS).

E: Oh yeah

S: Jim Carrey made that comment, that pharmaceutical made up restless leg syndrome in order to market a drug for it. Well, first of all, the drugs that have the indication for treating RLS, already have other indications, they were already on the market for legitimate indications, so it wasn't a way of rescuing a failed drug, that's a demonstrable myth. The other thing is, restless leg syndrom has existed in the medical literature for decades. I was able to go onto my bookshelf and find an old neurology text with a 40 year old reference to restless leg syndrome.

E: Wow!

S: 40 years before there was ever a drug marketed for it.

E: Is that what they called it back then?

S: Yes! Yes, and, in fact, if you dig deeper into the literature, the references go back even farther, and I forget what- it was known by other names even before the term restless leg syndrome came into being. So, yeah, it's basically like 100 years we've known that this has existed.

J: (squeaky Irish voice?) 'Let me show you something'. (normal voice) A perfect example of why I don't wanna know what famous people think.

(laughter)

R: Right? At all

E: Well, some

J: It ruined it for me, I loved that guy, now I have to hate him

S: Oh, you do have to hate Jim Carrey, he is totally now on board with the anti-vaccinationist kooks.

R: But he was so good in 'Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind'!

S: He was

B: (laughs)

E: Sorry, so sorry.

J: Oh well

E: Move on

S: Terrible, terrible, terrible.

J: (singing) 'another one bites the dust'

S: So, anyway, this is just unfounded conspiracy theories. Now, again, that doesn't mean that the pharmaceutical industry is not an industry that, they're not companies looking at their bottom line, and that the companies are beyond reproach. I'm not saying that, this notion that they make up diseases is nonsense. That is just made up conspiracy thinking.

Questions and Emails ( )

Big Pharma

Name That Logical Fallacy ( )

I think that u and all those mofos on that show are full of shit. How can u honestly say NO! there is no bigfoot just because I've never seen it, NO! crop circles aren't real because I'm obviously the creator of this world and I know EVERYTHING about.

U pussies or just.......ugh, words can't describe how I feel about u guys. WHO R U to tell some that they didn't see something with their own eyes and what they saw was an illusion. plz reread over WHO R U. U r human, u r not some all knowing god. U cannot get mad at someone for jus reporting what they saw, where u there too?, so how could u possibly say they didn't see that they thought they saw. Their jus reporting it. This world is full of secrets and jus because it seems mundane doesn't mean its fake. Another thing. if hundreds of people AROUND THE WORLD r seeing something (bigfoot, ufos, ghost), then it has to be true. Not every situation was a hoax r the product of an over active mind. all I'm saying is WE R ALL HUMANS u have the same brain as me, u r not the god who created this world, therefore u cannot say confidently that something's not there, when it obviously is.
Melvin Lee

America

Skeptical Quote of the Week ( )

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities

- David Hume

References