SGU Episode 72
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| SGU Episode 72 |
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| December 6th 2006 |
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| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
R: Rebecca Watson |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Guest |
KM: Ken MacLeod |
| Quote of the Week |
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. |
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| Download Podcast |
| Show Notes |
| Forum Discussion |
Introduction
Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, Decemberth, 2006, and this is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...
B: Hey, everybody!
S: Rebecca Watson...
R Hey.
S: Evan Bernstein...
E: Hello, my fellow earthikans.
S: ...And the incomparable Jay Novella.
J: Well, hello.
S: How is everyone tonight?
E: Oh, good.
J: Good, Steve.
R: Superior.
S: Are you guys getting your holiday shopping done?
B: Not at all.
R: No.
E: Which holiday?
S: Your holiday of choice.
r: I've done plenty of shopping for myself. Does that count?
J: I'm 400 clicks away from being done shopping for Christmas.
E: I consider every day a holiday, so I shop for the holidays every day.
S: Excellent.
News Items
Holiday Shopping Scams (1:00)
- Be skeptical when shopping online
S: I was doing some shopping online and the level of scams that I was running into was much higher this year than last year.
R: What kind of fly-by-night sites are you shopping from?
S: Well, that's a good question. You know, the specific item I was shopping for was a Nikon D80, which is a camera, an excellent digital SLR camera. And if you just search on the item that you're looking for, especially if it's a high-end piece of electronic equipment, you will typically get a lot of hits for the shopping sites that basically aggregate prices of a lot of other sites, the specific sites that you would actually be buying it from.
J: Yeah, like Shopzilla.
S: Yeah, or Shopping Cart. There's a lot of sites that do that. Basically, the street price of this camera, just to give you an idea, is $950. There were prices as low as like around $600, which sounds like a pretty good bargain. But I knew from experience that the really low-end ones were probably, that they were probably fraudulent. And because the last time I shopped for a high-end piece of equipment like this on the internet, I ran into fraudulent sites that basically aren't real companies. They just put up a website, quote ridiculously low prices, collect money for a while, and then disappear. They never actually ship the items that you're shopping for. But there were lots of new scams that I hadn't encountered before. One was one of the sites had like 700 reviews, apparently by the reviews were supposed to be by people who bought stuff from that company. They were all fives. They were all glowing five stars out of five. There were no complaints. They were all these short, pithy positive statements that you know a marketing person wrote, not the kind of thing. I had a fabulous shopping experience at the store not the kind of thing that anybody would actually say. So the reviews were completely bogus, and you shouldn't rely upon them. But then it got much worse. For every company that I, before I would even consider buying from, I searched on the name of the company. And then you get, the good thing is you get a lot of reviews either on professional sites like camera fan sites or on consumer protection sites. So these are the scams that some of them were running. They sell you the camera body for like two or three hundred dollars less than the street price. But then they sell you all of the accessories at hugely inflated prices, like a $50 memory card for $150.
B: Well, couldn't you get those accessories somewhere else then?
S: That's an obvious question. And in fact, I'm only shopping for the body at the moment. So you would think, well, I'll just buy the body. I'll get all the accessories somewhere else. So what they do is, even if you order completely online, they always email you back and say, you have to call us to process your order on some pretext. They come up with some pretext.
B: That right there, red flag.
S: Yeah. So then you call. And of course, you get a high-pressured salesperson who tells you all of these other things that you need. You need the longer capacity battery. You need the better lens. You need the lens kit. You need all these things.
J: Plus, they're charging you five bucks a minute for the call.
S: So far, I haven't seen that one.
R: Then they give you a fortune.
J: I predict you'll love all of these products.
S: Obviously, they're planning on making their money on overcharging for these accessories. And if you refuse to buy the accessories, if you do not yield to the high-pressured sales pitch, they don't sell you the camera. They just cancel your order. They never process it.
B: Oh, my God.
S: So they will not just sell you the body at $200 or $300 less than the street price if you're not also going to be buying all the accessories.
J: Steve, do they tell you they're not doing the order?
S: No, they just yell at you and hang up.
J: They yell at you and hang up?
S: Yes.
E: Customer disservice.
S: Their only goal is to oversell you on the accessories. That's not going to happen. They're not going to sell you the camera body at a loss. There's a lot of gray market. Another scam is gray market, which is often it's items that were intended for sale in markets in a different country. Maybe it's intended for the Asian market, and they pick it up and they sell it in America. And the difference is that those typically will not have an American manufacturer's warranty. So you lose the warranty. Sometimes they also strip out all the accessories that come with it from the manufacturer. So they sell those on the side to make up for the difference in price. They'll also lie about what accessories you're getting. So they'll tell you that you're going to get a name brand battery that has twice the capacity. And then they sell you this generic off-brand battery that has less capacity than the one that originally comes with the camera. So they have a bait and switch. Sometimes what they'll do is they'll bait you with a really good price on a name brand piece of equipment. And then you place the order. They charge your credit card. Then they tell you that that is out of stock and back ordered for three to six months. But they'll send you this other equivalent piece of equipment right now.
B: Oh my god.
R: What a deal.
S: And of course, the "equivalent piece of equipment" is, of course, a piece of crap. And then the final one I encountered was I got to this one aggregator site. And then it turns out that the aggregator site is fake. And all of the companies listed by it are all shells for the same corporation. So the aggregator is everyone all the shells are all the same company. It's basically reviewing itself. So it just it completely of fabricated web presence. The funny thing is that you have to realize, I mean, that the Internet is already and is becoming increasingly the favorite haven for con artists and frauds. Because nothing is really real on the Internet on the website. Websites are just these virtual constructs. You could pretend to be anything you want. So it's a bit perfect for for cons.
J: Yeah. Hence chat rooms.
S: Right. Right. So you basically know when you're shopping for presence online, don't be wowed by the deals that look too good to be true. Because if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. There's a host of scams that are evolving all the time. Definitely either stick with known reputable companies that have an existence of presence outside of the Internet, like actual stores you can go to or do a very thorough check. The good thing is that you can find consumer protection information on these companies on the Internet, but you have to look. Don't don't trust the reviews. Don't trust a slick website because you will get you will get scammed.
B: Steve, I got two questions for you.
S: Sure.
B: Did you finally get a camera?
S: Not yet. I was still just doing my reconnaissance.
B: OK. Second question. When you get your new one, could I have your old one?
R: I have a question, too. Have you ever heard of Amazon.com? Because, not a scam.
S: Amazon.com is perfectly legitimate. But all the legitimate sites were selling the camera for nine hundred and fifty dollars.
R: We see, Steve. That's just it. You get what you pay for.
S: That's right.
R: You're paying for the fact that you actually get a camera instead of getting scammed.
S: No, that's right.
J: Steve, you know what? Let's just do this. Wait about a month or so. I'm in negotiations with this guy from Zaire in Africa. He's going to send me twenty million dollars if he uses my bank account.
E: And your social security number.
J: Yeah, I sent them all the information. He hasn't called me in about a week, but I'm waiting for the call and then I'll buy you whatever you want.
S: So when that comes through, then we're all set.
J: I crave your indulgence. That's how these emails start. You ever get those?
S: Yes.
J: My friend, I crave your indulgence.
B: My dear friend who I've never talked to ever before.
E: Dearest compatriots.
B: I've got a friend at work. Real quick, I've got a friend at work. He's got something for this Nigeria scam. It's hilarious. He put up a website. What he does is he totally responds to these scams. And he pretends to be somebody really bizarre and out there. Like some priest of the Holy Shoe. Something weird. And what he does is he strings them along, email after email, and he becomes increasingly outrageous in his email responses. Trying to see if he could reach a point where they would be like, oh my God, this guy can't be real.
J: To who, Bob? Who is he emailing?
S: To the scammer.
B: To the scammer. He's actually convinced people to send him money, a little bit of money, before he would do something. So he's actually gotten money from these guys. And he keeps pushing the envelope. And they never give up. They just never give up. And eventually he just kind of like packs it in.
R: There's a whole subculture called baiting. And if you just do a search for scam baiters, they're all over the place. They're hilarious.
NASA Plans Moon Base (9:54)
- www.space.com/news/050919_nasa_moon.html
Hawking article on people leaving the Earth:
www.infowars.com/articles/science/hawking_man_must_leave_planet_earth.htm
S: So NASA unleashed a couple of surprises.
B: Yeah.
S: NASA announced that they are planning a new moon base, which is actually not that much of a surprise, because they've been talking about that already.
J: What do they call it? Moon base alpha?
B: Oh, Jay. Took that right out of my head.
J: Oh, sorry, Bob.
S: They didn't really add much detail. They said they want to get to the moon by 2020 and to have a functioning moon base by 2024, which is doable. There's nothing technologically out there about that or unfeasible about it. There's no technology to do it right now. It's just a matter of money and political will.
E: A couple of the goals within REACH that we'll see in a couple of years is by 2010, they want to send a new surveyor to the moon to get some samples of things that they need to know. And by 2014, they are going to do the test flights of the new module that will transport the people back and forth, which they're describing kind of like a space pickup truck.
S: Right.
B: Were they referred to it as Apollo on steroids?
S: Apollo on steroids. Now, the only real new bit that it wasn't already released previously with this new press release was the probable location of the moon base, which is interesting. They want to put it near the southern pole of the moon on the rim of a crater. The reason for this is that at the poles, you can position solar panels so that they are exposed to light like 85 percent of the time.
B: There are areas on the moon, Steve, that you can get it all the time. Aren't there areas where essentially it's oriented such that it's always getting light, even if the sun is on the horizon. And since there's no atmosphere, it doesn't matter.
S: It doesn't matter.
B: It's as bright as much energy as if it was right overhead.
S: The article I read said that the sites you're looking at would have like 85, 90 percent of the time they would be able to get light.
B: It's probably a balance of things.
S: You might be right. But at the same time, because the sun's on the horizon, it also means that there are craters and places near mountainous regions that are in permanent shadow. So they have both either light most of the time or permanently, and then right next to it, they have permanent shadow. And the reason why the permanent shadows are important is because there may be frozen water in the shadow of craters that have not seen the light of the sun in millions of years.
B: When I read that, I was a little bit surprised because what I thought the final word was or the most recent word on the potential of ice on the moon. And they're talking here like, yeah, it's still a good possibility. And I thought they pretty much almost shut that down. And I did a subsequent search, and I couldn't find any corroborating evidence of that. So I'm not sure what the status is.
S: Yeah, I think there's been sort of inferential evidence both ways. But I think, as Evan said, they want to send a surveyor there to actually see if they can find some ice. And that would affect the location of where we build the moon base, because it would be a huge advantage to building a moon base in a location where you could get even a small amount of water out of the lunar surface.
B: Right, you'd have water. You'd have water, first of all. And then, of course, you could get the oxygen from the water, then you could use the hydrogen as a fuel. So that would be great. And from what I've heard, also, it's not just the water. I heard that the regolith, the top layer of the moon, is just full of elements that you can turn into building materials and all sorts of uses that if they just have the proper manufacturing on the moon, that they could really take advantage of just the dirt around you.
S: Right, although that's probably much longer in the future.
B: That's probably further in the future, yeah.
J: You know, the other thing I read about this was that they were planning on having people stay there 180 days. Do you think that they're going to have to have a gravitational like a gravitational simulator or thing that's going to let them experience gravity while they're there? Because if you were in a...
E: I would guess so.
J: Right? Wouldn't you just atrophy to nothing?
E: Well, you still have gravity.
B: It's one sixth.
R: Don't they have like exercises and things that they could do to... Was it without simulating gravity?
S: Yeah, even on the space station, you can, for example, jog in place with a harness attached to springs so that you're jumping up against the resistance of the springs and that's simulating gravity and that helps.
B: And they've got even more advanced ways, even beyond that.
S: They certainly would have to do that. It's definitely better on the moon than it is in orbit where the gravity is microgravity. It's almost zero. But it still would cause significant atrophy and-
B: Calcium loss and the bone weakness.
S: Absolutely. So they definitely will have to take steps to minimize that if they're going to be up there long term.
Flowing water on Mars? (14:36)
- www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/news/mgs-20061206.html
S: And speaking of water on extraterrestrial bodies, NASA had a press conference today where they released information that there may be evidence of flowing water recently on Mars. And by recently, we mean within the last 10 years. So like it's happening now.
R: Like possibly now.
S: Now, right, yeah.
B: That's incredible. That came out of nowhere. Who anticipated that, if it's true?
S: I think people have talked about that.
B: Really? I haven't come across that. That was a total surprise.
J: Well, where's the water? If there was flowing water, where is it now?
S: So the hypothesis is this. That there's water underneath the ground in Mars. There's a water table. And that occasionally it may push to the surface. When it does, the water that pushes through first immediately freezes, causing a plug of ice. And that plug allows the water pressure to build up behind it until eventually it blows it out. So there's this gush flow of water, like a flood, like the kind of thing that would happen in the desert, that lasts for a short period of time but creates these structures that they're seeing, which look like recent water flows.
E: I guess the surveyors that are there aren't close enough to actually drive up there and take any samples of these areas.
S: I don't know if they'll be. I don't know. First of all, it's inside a crater. It's always on hills or in gullies.
B: Chances are they're not anywhere near it.
S: And I don't think the surveyor would be able to go into the crater, into the gully.
J: So if there's bacteria on Mars, it's probably in that one.
S: Yes. It definitely raises the possibility that there might be actually living life on Mars.
R: Martians.
S: It could be Martian, bacteria-like organisms in these underground subterranean pools of water. That's much more plausible if that's the case.
B: Guys, don't forget. Don't get your hopes up too high, like we did when they thought they found life on Mars, Scott. How long ago was that now? 10, 12 years? Some colleagues of these people that are making this claim argued that a sudden release of carbon dioxide near the surface of this slope of the crater could launch debris downhill and kind of mimic that pattern. So it's not like a no-brainer that, oh, water, there's no question about it.
S: Yeah, it's not a smoking gun. It's a reasonable line of evidence. It's fairly credible, but it's not the only interpretation of the evidence.
B: So I'm waiting to get my hopes up really high.
R: Oh, what's wrong with getting your hopes up? It's fun. It's exciting.
B: Because I've been disappointed too many times.
J: That's life, Bob.
S: It funds the next generation of Mars probes.
R: Exactly. Getting excited is what it's all about. That's where the money goes.
E: And the moon base is the launching pad for the trip to Mars.
S: That, of course, is the big discussion because there are people on both sides now, some who say that we should just go straight to Mars, forget the moon. Mars is much more interesting.
J: No, we should have a moon base.
S: And we could go straight there. And there are others who say, let's go to the moon and then use the moon as a launching pad for going to Mars.
B: So what, would we construct the rocket on the moon and then launch it? Think of the infrastructure you would need to do that.
S: If we could do that, that would be hugely advantageous because most of the energy to the moon is getting out of the Earth's gravity. So there would be a huge advantage. But it's going to be a long time before we have factories on the moon. Probably we would bring the prefab pieces of the ship up there. Or at the very least just being able to go to the moon, resupply and then go to Mars. Even if it has a stepping pad, even if you're not building the ship there, there could potentially be some logistical advantages to having a base on the moon.
J: You know what they need? They need to have a shuttle from the moon to Earth orbit. You get the people up into space somehow. They were talking about the space elevator. I don't know how plausible that is.
B: I think it's plausible. Absolutely.
S: The infrastructure we need is a cheap way to get into low Earth orbit. A tug to get us from Earth orbit to the moon. nd then more long distance rockets and ships to go from the moon to the rest of the solar system.
B: Nuclear rockets.
S: Now this also gets back to the discussion that we've touched upon on this podcast several times before. Which is should man go into space at all? Should we be sending people out there? Should we just be sending our robots and our probes and have a virtual presence in space? If you remember Bob Park who was on our show, that was what he advocates. We can do much more if we put our money into robotic exploration and colonization. Because robots are much better equipped to handle the hostility of space than biological organisms are. And then on the other side there is the notion that first there's the romanticism of people going to the moon and going to Mars and establishing colonies there. Stephen Hawking weighed in on this debate recently with an article basically saying that people must leave the planet Earth. That this is an imperative if we are to ensure the long term survival of our species. That we can't have all of our eggs in this one basket of Earth. Which is an interesting point.
J: I would think that what we should do is send the robots ahead of us, build the structures that we need with the robots. Maybe not today's robots, maybe 50 years from now the robots could do that. Send them to Mars, have them build everything, check it out. And then we just come in and not have to deal with all the dangers of being there without safely built structures and all that stuff.
S: Right, when people arrive there's already stockpiles of food and water.
B: And fuel to go home.
S: And fuel and infrastructure and domes.
J: And a jacuzzi and stuff like that too.
S: And jacuzzi, right.
B: Steve, I'm surprised you're actually kind of going for traveling to other star systems. That seems a little, I don't know, I would think, I agree, don't have all your eggs in one basket.
S: You're talking about Stephen Hawking again.
B: Right, I agree, don't have all your eggs in one basket. But I mean going to another star system is pretty out there. I mean I think it's much more reasonable and feasible to first get a colony on the moon and Mars and then later on.
S: Was he talking about going to other star systems first?
B: That's all he mentioned, using matter-antimatter annihilation technology.
S: That's long term.
B: Absolutely.
S: And that's not exclusive to going also to the moon and Mars and other colonizing our solar system. Some have raised interesting ideas such as sending, of course you could send generation ships to other solar systems. You could also send, there's at least one science fiction novel I read about this and others have speculated, one way we could colonize other solar systems is by sending essentially frozen embryos to other systems. And then gestate them there and raise them by robots and computers on the other side.
J: Oh my god.
R: There's some happy kids. Thanks mom.
J: That is what I consider to be science fiction that is horrific.
S: At the moment that is science fiction but hey in a thousand years or two.
B: The thing is though, if you want humans in another star system, that might be the way to go. Because in order to send a projectile to another star system, mass is key. It's just a horrendous amount of energy to get atoms over there instead of just electromagnetic radiation. So the lower the mass you're sending there, the less energy intensive it's going to be.
J: Bob, Bob, Bob, stop. Just stop. Think about what Steve just said and trip out on how horrific it would be to be that guy or girl that wakes up being raised by a robot and there's like two other people around and you're living in a freaking pup tent in another solar system and they tell you, the robots say to you, hey a hundred light years away there's this tricked out planet and they've got all this awesome stuff and everything. You probably, and I'll tell you right now, they're not sending a PlayStation over there. You know what I'm saying?
B: Jay, this isn't going to be Robbie the robot. Think of the technology that would be required before even thinking about doing this. I mean, we're talking pretty incredible technology, not these Honda man robots. We're talking some pretty sophisticated stuff. That's like a prerequisite before you even consider talking about this kind of stuff.
J: It's terrible. It's a nightmare.
R: But I think that we can say with some amount of certainty that Jay is correct that they probably won't have access to a PlayStation and I think that that's what...
E: Sure. It'll be PlayStation 4525.
J: No, come on. It's horrific.
B: They have PlayStation 50 in their heads.
Molecular Manufacturing (23:16)
- National Academies Releases Report on Molecular Manufacturing www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=232
S: All right, Bob.
B: Yeah.
S: Talk to us about the National Academy's nanotechnology report.
B: The National Academy's National Research Council released a report about its assessment, its tri-annual assessment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. This was prepared in response to a congressional request and actually represents the first high-level, the first open high-level science evaluation of the concept of molecular manufacturing. And what they did was they got their assessment in two parts. It was the feasibility of self-assembly for materials and devices. And while they were evaluating that, they then decided to also evaluate the feasibility of atomic resolution manufacturing. I was a little surprised when I read this. I thought, hasn't the feasibility been established enough? I mean, why do we need to do a proof of concept for this? But apparently from what I've read, this assessment could actually open some doors for research and actually get some more money poured into it, which of course is a good thing.
S: It was basically positive, right? They said this is a good idea that we need to develop further.
B: Yeah, right. Two of my favorite quotes were, let's see, molecular assembly, self-assembly for the manufacturing of simple devices and materials is feasible. So it's nice to have people not just being so pessimistic about it. They're saying this is feasible. And for years, people were saying that they raised a host of problems saying that it's not feasible. And I was like, come on-
S: Those darn skeptics.
B: -there's so much ever done. No, not skeptics, deniers. Another quote, engineering of biological systems that can operate outside a living cell provides a model for future manufacturing systems. That's pretty cool too. So it was somewhat positive and it looks like it could actually open the door for more research. So it's good in my estimation.
J: And Bob, were these guys qualified? Who were the scientists? Do we know if there were any names that we would recognize?
B: Yeah, one of the guys that was partially, at least partially responsible for this part of the report. I think he works for Nano.org. This guy knows Nano and knows has a good idea of the potential. And I think he had a hand in helping shape this. So I'm glad that he was involved.
S: So it's interesting to watch. This is something that's in our lifetime is moving basically from science fiction to real science, the whole nanotechnology, molecular manufacturing thing. And we're already starting to see some of the early fruits of this new technology, mainly in like material science, being able to create new types of materials at the molecular level. I think more sophisticated things like electronics will be coming down the pike a little bit later.
B: Yeah, computers will be one of the early applications as well.
K-T Extinction Events (26:03)
Interview with Ken Macleod (27:12)
- Dr. MaCleod is the lead author on a new article favoring the single-impact theory of the K-T extinction event that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
rcp.missouri.edu/articles/macleod-dinosaurextinction.html
Dr. MaCleod's Homepage: rcp.missouri.edu/geosci_macleod/index.html
S: The last news item that I wanted to talk about this week has to do with a topic we discussed a few weeks ago[link needed]. Bob, if you remember, we talked about the KT extinction, the one that killed the dinosaurs, which happened about 65 million years ago, and whether or not this was due to a single impact or multiple impacts. So we were discussing new evidence that suggests that maybe this was actually multiple events, either impacts and volcanic eruptions over hundreds of thousands of years. However, more recent evidence actually is very much in favor of the single impact theory. The lead author on this article is Dr. Ken McLeod, and I actually tracked him down over email and he agreed to do an interview. I actually did a one-on-one interview with him already, which I know you guys have heard. And it's a very interesting discussion about this debate, the multi-impact versus the single impact debate. So let's listen to that interview now. I am joined now by Ken McLeod. Dr. McLeod is an associate professor of palaeontology at the University of Missouri. Ken, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.
KM: Thank you.
S: Thanks for agreeing to speak with me.
KM: Pleasure.
S: I contacted you because you are the first author on a paper that was just posted this week.
KM: Yeah, posted as in press. It will be published properly in January, I think.
S: And your area of expertise is the Cretaceous extinction that occurred roughly 65 million years ago. Is that timing correct?
KM: Yeah, the most recent dates are 65-5, but split in hairs at that point.
S: Now, we have talked about this topic on our show before, essentially covering the controversy over whether or not the Cretaceous or KT extinction, the one that killed the dinosaurs, was a single event, specifically a meteor impact at the Chuxulub Crater in the Yucatan Peninsula, or whether or not it was a series of multiple events spread out over hundreds of thousands of years. Now, your new study comes down pretty heavily in favor of the single impact theory, correct?
KM: That's, yeah, quite correct.
S: Well, why don't you give us a summary of that? Tell us about that.
KM: Well, the controversy, of course, goes back to when the geologic time scale was first formulated. This mass extinction event is dramatic enough that when the column was first separated, the division between the Mesozoic middle life and end life, or recent life, Cenozoic, was dramatic enough that the early stratigraphers put a boundary there. And in the subsequent 200 years, people have been trying to figure out what might have caused that. Much more recently, of course, the asteroid impact of Alvarez et al. in 1980 really focused down on whether you can explain large events in the geologic record like a mass extinction by true catastrophe, something that happens in a not just geologic instant but biological instant. And, of course, that runs counter to a central paradigm of geology that is the present is the key to the past, and big changes generally occur over long periods of time through the accumulation of small changes. So that's the back story. In detail, people have looked at this boundary and tried to determine, of course, what the cause is. And there's a lot going on in the Late Cretaceous coming up to the boundary. But the asteroid impact hypothesis, it was quite heretical when it was first proposed. It survived every test. Now, Gerda Keller from Princeton has been working quite extensively recently in the Gulf of Mexico region, where the boundary interval is actually quite complicated because, of course, you're close to the impact site. So there's a lot of energy pumped into the depositional setting there. Tsunamis, hundreds of meters high, land slides, caches. So the Gulf of Mexico is sloshing back and forth. So the deposits at the boundary there can be quite thick, tens of meters, hundreds of meters thick.
S: Just to summarize, what you're saying is that very close to the impact in the Chuxulub Crater or the Yucatan Peninsula on the Mexican side of the Gulf of Mexico, the high energy of the impact caused the sediment layers to basically become mixed up and that the chaotic complex sediment layers are therefore very difficult to interpret. Is that correct?
KM: I think that's fair. Now, I'm tipping my hand. Of course, I think there's a single impact. So I explained that interval has the chaotic deposits from a very high energy event. Dr. Keller takes a much more layer by layer approach and suggests that different layers within this boundary interval represent distinct and separate events.
S: So she's saying it's complicated because there were multiple events over a long period of time.
KM: Exactly.
S: And you're saying it was a single event, but that single event was complicated.
KM: Exactly.
S: What was her name again?
KM: Gerda Keller.
S: So there are two camps, the multiple event camp and the single event camp, and you're in the single event camp, and the evidence near the impact crater is complicated.
KM: That's true. Very complicated.
S: So what other evidence is there?
KM: Well, if you look very far away, which is a great line of evidence that the extinction is real, but of course you're far enough away and sedimentation rates are slow enough that the record of the boundary interval might be in just a few millimetres to a centimetre. And anything that disturbs the sediment, then even the thickness of the microfossils that I work on that are half a millimetre thick, that thickness might represent 500, 1,000 years at those kind of sedimentation rates. So it's very hard to separate very rapid events if they occurred closely together in distal sites. So it's difficult to argue whether there's a single event or multiple events.
S: So if you go to the other side of the earth from the impact crater, not as much material fell to the earth in that location. So the sediment layers are very thin there.
KM: And instead of, yeah, meters, tens of meters, hundreds of meters of a boundary interval, you have millimetres, maybe tens of millimetres.
S: So it's more difficult to separate out events over time because the layers are much thinner?
KM: Right. And so if two events occurred close together, they might appear as a single layer.
S: So it's a fuzzy record at that distance.
KM: It can be.
S: So now your study is looking at an intermediate zone far enough away from the crater so that it's not chaotic and mixed up, but close enough so that there are thick sediment layers.
KM: Yeah.
S: So what did you find?
KM: This site, which is on Demera rise off the coast of South America. The stratigraphic sequence is just beautiful and really remarkably simple. You get the millions of years before the boundary in just a open ocean, gradual accumulating sediment pile. But where are the sediments piling up at? A couple centimetres per thousand years. Then right at the top of a nondescript pile of Cretaceous sediment, there's impact debris.
S: And how do you know it's impact debris?
KM: Well, we've done a number of geochemical analyses on it, and there's a beautiful iridium spike right at the top. It's about a two centimetre thick layer. Sedimentologically, it's composed of these little spheres of clay, and those clay spirules are completely consistent with melt drop ejecta from the crater. When the asteroid hit the Yucatan, it melted a lot of rocks, splashed it up and ballistically emplaced it around the globe.
S: So it rained little balls of rock that had melted and then solidified again as they fell into little droplets.
KM: And solidified so quickly that they turned to glass, not crystalline, and then in the subsequent 65 and a half million years, they've altered to clay.
S: And you mentioned an iridium spike, and just for our audience, iridium is an element that is more common in meteors than it is in the crust of the Earth.
KM: Exactly.
S: So its presence there suggests an extraterrestrial origin.
KM: And it's not just iridium that we have. We did most of the trace metals, and all the siderophile elements have a beautiful spike right at the top of the impact layer, the stereo layer. And that stereo layer sits right above the youngest Cretaceous fossils. And then right above the impact layer, there's actually a little interval where there aren't any newly evolved taxa. So they're just a couple survivors from the impact that in the empty eco space do relatively very well. And we've got about four centimetres of that right above the impact layer. And that interval has been independently estimated to have spanned just about 10,000 years. And then we've got another two million years of deposition after the impact. We have close to a kilometre of sediment deposited within a couple million years either side of the boundary. In all that thickness of sediment, there's only one impact layer, and it always occurs precisely at the contact between the youngest Cretaceous fossils and the oldest Tertiary fossils. And we found it in five different sites.
S: Right. And again, just to reinforce this point, whereas other data from either very close to or distant from the impact site may suggest that the extinctions began within several hundred thousand years after the impact crater. Your evidence, which is much higher resolution, shows that the extinction occurred right at the impact.
KM: Yeah. The evidence of survivorship above the boundary can occur if, say, you've got nearby shelf deposits and older rock keeps getting washed in. So you rework the fossils. And reworking seems to have been minimal at Demerara Rise.
S: So that seems pretty case-closed to me. Do you think that's how the scientific community is going to interpret that?
KM: Most of the scientific community already believes that. The multiple impact campus in a distinct minority among mass extinction Cretaceous tertiary workers.
S: And do you think that will be the final nail in the coffin of the multi-impact theory? Or do you think there'll be some lingering skeptics?
KM: I understand that Dr. Keller sent an email dismissing our findings to some other reporters that picked up on the press release. So no, I'm guessing that she and her colleagues continue to believe there's multiple impacts and we'll have to find some more nails.
S: Right. But you think this will further marginalize the multi-impact theorists and put them into a shrinking minority?
KM: I think it's by far the cleanest, prettiest, simplest boundary interval that's been found yet. And it fits the impact hypothesis perfectly.
S: Well, Ken, I really appreciate you taking your time to come on to the Skeptics Guide and explain your research to us.
KM: Pleasure to talk about it. Great. Thanks for having me.
S: Take care.
KM: Goodbye.
S: So that was a very interesting interview. It really is, I have to say, a pleasure to talk about a researcher about their own research. It's always fascinating. They definitely give you, they cut right to the chase and they give you that really good insight into the nature of their research and the controversies within it. So thank you to Dr. McCloud. He was very nice. He was also very nice with me in all the exchanges that we had. He was very accommodating. So let's move on to your emails and questions.
Questions and E-mails
Hi from Down Under (38:14)
Hey people
How I love to hear the new episodes of your show. Just the thing to listen to while walking through the streets of Sydney. I have recorded a short greeting and a question for you (attached). Maybe you can be a guest on my podcast sometime?
Wishing you well and another year of podcasting.
Richard Saunders
Producer of the TANK podcast
Home Page
www.MysteryInvestigators.com/richard
Investigator / Editor / Film Maker
www.MysteryInvestigators.com
Australian Skeptics Inc
www.skeptics.com.au
S: The first one comes from Richard Saunders, who is the producer of the Tank podcast and a member of the Australian Skeptics. Hi, Richard.
R: Hey, Richard.
S: "Hey, people. How I love to hear the new episodes of your show. Just a thing to listen to while walking through the streets of Sydney. I have recorded a short greeting and a question for you. Maybe you can be a guest on my podcast sometime. Wishing you well and another year of podcasting." So let's listen to Richard's greeting.
RS: Hey, Stephen, Robert, Rebecca, Perry, Evan and Jay. Richard Saunders here from Australian Skeptics, Mystery Investigators and, of course, the Tank podcast. Here's my question. When are you going to come and visit us in Australia? Lots of strange things to investigate here, I assure you. I hope to be visiting the States in 2007. Maybe I can drop by. Until then, thank you for a fantastic podcast. I think it's one of my five most favorite podcasts on the net at the moment. Many things to listen to and many things to consider. Bye for now.
S: Well, that was nice. Thank you, Richard, for sending us that greeting from down under.
R: So, Steve, when are we taking a group trip to Australia?
S: Yeah, I'd love to go down there, you know.
B: I'm there. I'm so there.
S: As soon as we can logistically and financially manage it, I guess.
R: It's summer there now, right?
S: That's true. Yeah, we definitely have to go sometime when it's winter here and summer there.
R: Yes, so now would be appropriate.
B: That's a no-brainer.
R: There are a ton of awesome skeptics in Australia.
J: And the women are so hot there, it's ridiculous. Did I say that right?
B: Plus, the Great Barrier Reef is there.
R: Yeah, anyway. But the guys, very sexy.
S: They have some kind of an opera house there or something.
R: Something. That's besides the point. But seriously, it's a very skeptical continent.
S: That's good. Well, obviously, we'd love to go down. I don't know when we could manage it, but I'd love to get there.
J: Did you guys like the mystical music in the background?
R: It was very well done.
S: Yeah, that's the music that they play during their podcasts.
J: I think we should do that with our show. The whole time we talked, there should be stuff going on in the background.
R: Just when you talk, Jay.
S: All right, send that to me, Jay, and we'll work on it.
J: Yeah, we'll get that going.
E: Circle file that.
Chiropractic HIV Denial (40:44)
Hi,
As always, I really enjoy your show. I am a former chiropractor, now skeptic, who listens every week.
The reason I am writing you is because I found a great article (or series of articles, rather) that you can possibly discuss on your show. I'm not sure if you have ever done a program on people who deny that HIV is the cause of AIDS, but recently there was a THREE PART interview in 'Today's Chiropractic Lifestyle' magazine promoting this theory. Here are the links:
www.todayschiropractic.com/issues/2006/oct_nov/bull.html
www.todayschiropractic.com/issues/2006/oct_nov/bull_02.html
www.todayschiropractic.com/issues/2006/oct_nov/bull_03.html
'Today's Chiropractic Lifestyle' is published by Life University in Marietta, Georgia. It is where I attended chiropractic college. While at chiro college, I was misinformed about almost every public health topic you can imagine. This article above is a good example of chiropractic misinformation and seems to contain almost every 'HIV denialist' argument available today.
I am happy to no longer be a quack and enjoy learning about science and reality from your podcast. Keep up the good work!
Jeff Jones, D.C. (Life University class of 2001)
Tokyo, Japan
S: Here's question number two. This one comes from Jeff Jones, D.C., which stands for Doctor of Chiropractic. And he's sending this from Tokyo, Japan. And Jeff writes, "Hi, as always, I really enjoy your show. I am a former chiropractor, now skeptic, who listens every week. The reason I am writing you is because I found a great article that you can possibly discuss on your show. I'm not sure if you ever have done a program on people who deny that HIV is the cause of AIDS. But recently there was a three part interview in Today's Chiropractic Lifestyle magazine promoting this theory." And then he provides the links. He said, "Today's Chiropractic Lifestyle is published by Life University in Marietta, Georgia. It is where I attended Chiropractic College. While at Chiro College, I was misinformed about almost every public health topic you can imagine. This article above is a good example of the chiropractic misinformation and seems to contain almost every HIV denialist argument available today. I am happy to no longer be a quack and enjoy learning about science and reality from your podcast. Keep up the good work."
R: Welcome to reality.
E: All right, Jeff.
J: Thanks, Jeff.
R: Good to have you here.
J: You know, Steve, he would be a very interesting person to interview. He could really give us some good details.
S: I thought about that. And there I also know a couple of other ex-chiropractor now skeptics or some practicing chiropractors who try to practice scientific chiropractic, but who are very skeptical of a lot of the things that chiropractors say and do. So perhaps we'll do that sometime. I read through the articles that he linked to, and it is a pretty much standard HIV denial fair. We have spoken about this on our show before on episode 28 with Tara Smith. If you recall, we did address the issue at some length. Reading through this is instructive read through these links because it reveals a lot of the way they think about things. Now, we talked about chiropractic as well on the on the show before us, too. And if you recall, there are different flavors of chiropractic. So basically there are two broad groups, straight and mixed. And the straight chiropractors are ones that adhere to the original philosophy of chiropractic, the notion that there is this innate intelligence or life force, or they may call it nerve energy, that goes from God up above into your brain through your spinal cord and through your nerves to all of the parts of your body. And that's what keeps you healthy and that all illness is caused by disruption in this flow. Basically, the real straight philosophical chiropractors don't even like the concept of disease because disease is a scientific notion. They prefer the philosophical notion of illness. And therefore having something as reductionist as a virus causing the disease of AIDS doesn't jive well with their whole philosophy. They linked up with the HIV denial group. But reading this article reveals a lot of the way they think about things. For example, the author of this article, who is Dr. Heidi Hartman Taylor, writes, "Most importantly, we were taught the value of a properly functioning nervous system because nature needs no help, just no interference. In other words, this is you can heal yourself from anything as long as the nervous system is functioning properly, meaning that the innate intelligence is flowing." So they don't like actually any medical intervention. "So why is it then when it was announced that a virus called HIV was causing AIDS, we in the chiropractic profession didn't stop and ask, can this really be true? Instead, it appears to me that for 20 years, many chiropractors, along with the vast majority of health practitioners, went down the rabbit hole of the HIV causes AIDS theory, along with the rest of society." So that kind of talk is right out of the HIV denialist literature. This whole you're drinking the Kool-Aid, you're going down the rabbit hole, you're buying into the propaganda, you're believing the government. That's like the worst sin that you can commit is to actually believe that the government what the government is saying is it might have some truth to it. So then it goes through the Koch postulates saying that the notion that HIV causes AIDS does not meet the postulate, Koch's postulates, which were designed about 150 years ago or so to say, well, how do you know when an organism is causing an infection? Unfortunately, those postulates were created before we discovered viruses, and they don't really apply to viral infections. They apply better to a bacterial infection. So they're kind of obsolete, but that doesn't stop the HIV deniers from using them. Sometimes it's strangely comforting, I have to say, when one pseudoscience completely endorses and supports another pseudoscience. It kind of confirms the whole notion that these guys are wacky when they decide to say a lot of really ridiculous, wacky things. It makes my job a little bit easier.
High Tech Dowsing (45:38)
I have begun listening to your show very recently, and I'm trying to catch up on them.
Tell Rebecca Watson that I got her skepchicks calendar yesterday, and after paging through it, I'm satisfied in a great investment.
Anyway, on to the secondary reason for this message.
I'd like you to take a look at this, and maybe see if there's more information about this out there: http://www.carteblanche.co.za/Display/Display.asp?Id=3233
There was another article, published over a year ago: http://www.sabcnews.com/south_africa/general/0,2172,93664,00.html
To me, it sounds like some kind of futuristic method of dowsing. The only positive results I've heard about this is from the articles, and they are obviously anecdotal. If the only evidence that it works is anecdotal evidence, should it be discounted? Is it too early to dismiss this, or should we give them time to come up with actual experimental data?
Thanks for your time,
Matt Frederickson
South Dakota, USA
S: The next email comes from Matt Frederiksen from South Dakota, USA. And that writes, I'm going to skip ahead to his question. He says, anyway, onto the secondary reason for this message. I'd like you to take a look at this and maybe see if there's more information about this out there. And he gives a link. There was another article published over a year ago, and he gives a second link. To me, it sounds like some kind of futuristic method of dowsing. The only positive results I've heard about this is from the articles, and they are obviously anecdotal. If the only evidence that it works is anecdotal evidence, should it be discounted? Is it too early to dismiss this, or should we give them time to come up with actual experimental data? Well, Matt, the short answer to your direct questions is, can we dismiss anecdotal evidence? Yes. And is it too early to dismiss this particular claim? No. And let's go in and let's talk about why. Interestingly, basically, Matt got it right in that this is dowsing. That's what this is. Dowsing is actually one of the most common pseudosciences that also has a lot of different presentations. I remember James Randi, for example, saying that about half of all of the claims that he tests on the JREF million-dollar psychic challenge, but half of them are basically dowsing, one form of dowsing or another.
B: So what involves the ideomotor effect, then?
S: Something like that, the ideomotor effect being subtly moving a part of your body, like the hands, and thinking that something is moving by itself when, in fact, you're subconsciously moving it. So the classic form of dowsing, of course, is you have either two wires or a Y-shaped stick, and when you pass near water, sometimes it has to be flowing or whatever. Whatever you're looking for, the rods turn in or move or the stick will turn up or down. You're actually moving it yourself because you know when and where you're supposed to get a result, but people convince themselves that it's moving on its own and that it's telling them information. So basically, any time you use any kind of physical system like that in order to divine a yes or no answer to any kind of question, that is conceptually within the framework of dowsing. You can dowse maps. You could ask a question about where is something, and they hold the rods over a map and they'll turn in when you get to the point on the map where the thing you're looking for is. And you could look for things other than water. You could look for people, for minerals, for anything.
J: I love gold.
S: What this item is, it's this person claims that you can put the DNA from a person into their machine, their black box, and that it could then locate the person to whom that DNA belongs anywhere within, I think they claim now hundreds of miles.
J: How does the machine locate them?
S: Well, that's the trade secret that he won't tell. The article that Matt linked to is really totally credulous. It was written by, it was published on carte blanche by Ruda Landman wrote it, and she just writes this gushing article where she says, can you remember when the fax machine first became part of the office setup? And she talks about how all these newfangled devices were at first mind boggling, and now you take them for granted. And now there's this device which seems mind boggling, but tomorrow we're going to be taking it for granted.
R: No doubt.
S: Steering the project she writes is Danny Krugal, a former police superintendent. So he's the guy who developed this "technology". And the device gets some endorsements from a private investigator who says that it's working. And basically the article is a list of anecdotal reports of how it worked. But being the journalist that she is, Ruda Landman decided to put the item to the test. So what she did was she cut some hair from her cameraman, and he went to a diner somewhere. And then they put the hair into the machine, and the machine apparently located him.
B: From just hair?
S: Yeah, from just hair.
R: I'm sure this was all double-blinded.
S: Right, so there's obvious procedural problems with this.
J: Now Steve, are we talking like, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, there's the guy, you know what I mean? Like they wave a wand or something, and it lights up when it's pointing in the right direction?
S: Yeah, they didn't go a lot into the mechanics. They're very vague on all that they did. But it's basically a cold reading. Bob, I know what you're going to say, but go ahead.
B: Well, if you just cut hair, you're not going to get any DNA on it. You've got to pull the hair by the root. You've got to get a little bit of that flesh that's hanging at the end of the hair.
S: That's exactly right. So if the claim is that it works by somehow analysing the DNA, just cutting the ends off the hair would not have provided the DNA. But it didn't stop the machine from apparently working.
R: Wait, really? Actually, I wouldn't have guessed that. I would have assumed that there was something in even your dead hair. It would still have DNA in it.
S: No, you need the root, you need the follicle. And only a certain percentage of hairs that you get pulled out actually have one on there. And it's actually quite hard to get the DNA from that.
B: That's why some DNA testing for like Sasquatch is really difficult to find the DNA, at least for one instance that I read. Because I think it might have come from a rug or a costume. So it wasn't just hair that fell off and was on a bush. It's actually from something that's probably been...
R: So next time you run into Sasquatch in the woods, pull it out by the root people. Otherwise we can't tell. Good to know.
S: Now of course there are other applications to this amazing technology too. If there is an outbreak of anthrax, you could then put the anthrax in the machine and you can identify the source of where the anthrax came from.
E: That's great. We should all be handling anthrax.
B: Patient zero.
S: Anyway, so this is just high-tech dowsing, complete pure nonsense.
Testing ID (51:26)
Hi guys (guys is non-gender specific in England)
Love the podcast. I've nearly caught up with you now, I'm just on the October shows. It's nice to be able to listen to voices of sanity in what can seem a pretty insane world.
I have a question - more of a challenge - for you.
I know ID is not a science, and the actual answer is 'you can't' but I'd like to hear you guys trying to design some experiments for a science class on Intelligent Design.
The issue is raising its head over here (only in a small way though) and I thought it might be fun to have a bit of ammunition.
John Ansari (pronounced AN-SAAR-EE)
UK
S: Next question comes from John Ansari from the UK. And John writes, "Hi guys. And then parenthetically he says, guys is non-gender specific in England."
R: You know, we don't need to keep...
E: We've heard that before.
S: We have.
R: It's cool. Why did we even get started on that? I mean, I thought that...
J: Because everyone is afraid of you, Rebecca. They don't want to piss you off.
R: I'm not going to yell at people.
E: I think they were from Canada. They said in Canada, guys is thrown around to mean people.
S: But we asked if this is true throughout the world or not. So I think he's just answering our question for England that it's also the same in England. Anyway, John writes, "Love the podcast. I've nearly caught up with you now. I'm just on the October shows. It's nice to be able to listen to voices of sanity in what can seem a pretty insane world. I have a question, more of a challenge for you. I know ID, that's intelligent design, is not a science. And the actual answer is you can't. But I'd like to hear you guys trying to design some experiments for a science class on intelligent design. The issue is raising its head over here, only in a small way though. And I thought it might be fun to have a bit of ammunition." Well, yeah, we have touched, this is an interesting question. We have touched upon this. And the answer, the short answer is you can't. But it depends on one key thing. And that is how you formulate the notion of intelligent design. So again, we've talked about this multiple, multiple times on the podcast. But very briefly, intelligent design is the notion that life on Earth displays complexity of such a nature that it could not have evolved. Therefore, it must have been designed by an intelligent designer, being coy about who that intelligent designer might or could be. The real problem with ID is that it's not science because there's no way to falsify it. In other words, in order to falsify intelligent design, in order to craft a test for it, you have to be able to say what an intelligently designed biological ecosystem would look like, what it should look like, what features should it have. And the intelligent design community has not only failed to do that, in many cases they've specifically refused to do that. Because first of all, if you do do that, it becomes apparent that life is not intelligently designed. So that they have to retreat to this position where, and again, I believe I've mentioned that when I cornered an idea on this, he said, well, you can't challenge the mind of God. In other words, or you can't question the mind of God. So you can't say what the intelligent designer would have made life to be like because they could have made life to look like anything they wanted. And that means you can't ask the question, what would an experiment look like that would distinguish between an intelligently designed life and evolved life. So if you say, well, here's an experiment. We'll look at 100 species and we'll see if their molecular genetics follows a hereditary pattern. And if it does, that suggests that they have evolutionary relationships. And if they don't, that would suggest that maybe they were designed as they are, without any hereditary or historical background. But the idea would say, well, the intelligent designer just made them to have the appearance of heredity, of these relationships. They basically would undercut any experiment. They don't get to the first point. The first step in designing an experiment is predicting what an intelligent designed life form should look like. And they can't and won't do that.
E: Well, according to them, it looks like us.
S: It looks like whatever we find. But you can't do your experiment that way. I'm going to look and no matter what I find, that's what it is.
R: It's not like it's a hypothesis. It's an answer to them. It's the end result that they're claiming and not a question that they're posing. And that's why it can't be. It's not science.
J: So basically what you're saying is they're creating a universe in which you can't test their statements.
B: It's unfalsifiable. So it's not science.
S: Unfalsifiable, therefore not science.
B: Game over.
J: So what do we do with them? What do we take them out back, smack them around a little bit, throw hot water around them? What are we talking about?
E: Continue to do what we are doing.
S: Educate the public, fight them in court.
J: Skepticism is pretty much a thankless endeavour. They're always going to be coming up with it. There's always going to be the next thing. There's always going to be a next crop of people coming.
B: It's human psychology.
S: I wouldn't say it's thankless. I would say it's endless.
R: I was about to say, weren't we... We were just discussing before we were recording about how many great emails we get every day from people thanking us. So for us at least it's not thankless.
J: You're right. I don't mean it. You're right. I definitely am correct. Not thankless, but yeah. It's not like we're gaining any headway though.
S: It's a journey. It's not a destination. There has to be this constant pressure of rationality and reason in society.
R: I think we do gain headway. You might be able to look at things and say that there's just as much pseudoscience now as there was in any period in the past. And maybe you'd be right, but look at how far science has progressed. And skepticism is really just... It's all wrapped up there with science. We defeat one kind of pseudoscience or one kind of superstition, and then we get to move on to the next. And that's not just... Even though the amount of pseudoscience might stay the same, it's always changing because we're moving forward and we're progressing. And I think that's really important.
S: In a way that's true. I think some of the themes keep cropping up. But in a way that's true in that as science advances, pseudoscience and mysticism is in retreat. We often talk about the god of the gaps where mystical notions often fill in the gaps in science. But those gaps are shrinking, and the mystical notions have to shrink along with them. Or they have to constantly stay out of reach of the advance of science, which is moving.
E: It also helps to live in an age where you won't be drawn and quartered for discovering some new scientific things.
S: At least in our society. Not in every corner of the world yet. Well, let's move on to Randy Speaks.
Randi Speaks (58:02)
- The Uncompromising Observations of a Veteran Skeptic
Each week James Randi gives a skeptical commentary in his own unique style.
This week's topic: Will they ever learn? The end of the world and other nonsense.
JR: Hello, this is James Randi. My question for this week is rather simple: Doesn't anyone ever learn? I refer to the fact that prophets are always predicting the end of the world, and have been doing it for generations now. So far as I've been able to ascertain, the end of the world has not arrived. Now I do live in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where not every item shows up in the local papers or on TV, but you'd think that there might be some sort of a mention of it if the world were to come to an end and that I would therefore see it. But hey, it just didn't happen. The prophets continue. All over the world, they are predicting the end of the world next Thursday or next month or whatever. And they won't tire of doing that, simply because the media will cluster around them, give them time and space on television, on radio, and in printed articles as well, if they make a sufficiently silly claim. That's the way the media works.
Now I'm sure you all remember the famous alien autopsy that came up a few years ago. Garish films were shown in black and white, of course, made apparently by an 8mm camera, of this dreadful operation taking place on a poor alien figure sitting on the table. It got a lot of attention, and it made a lot of money for the people that supplied the film. It was on every newscast for quite some period of time. When, eventually, that bubble burst, what was the reaction of the media? Typical. You see, what they did was mention that it had turned out to be a hoax, and then they forgot about it entirely, apparently ready for the next similar hoax to come along. Just look at our favorite, quote, "psychic", unquote, Sylvia Browne. Now it's pretty evident that Montel Williams, who dotes on this woman's attention on his program, knows what she's really doing. Williams is a very well-educated man. Look up the records sometime. And he's smart enough, too, to know the techniques that she's using. He sees how often she's wrong. But the point is he simply doesn't care, because she gets him sponsor satisfaction. That's the bottom line. With that sort of media responsibility working for her, she can go on forever, no matter how wrong she is.
Another one of my favorite hoaxes is the perpetual motion machines. These things are being invented every ten minutes, it seems, all over the world. Not only that, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will issue a patent on them very easily. But think of it. If there were a perpetual motion machine or a free-energy machine (either will do), that would be such a huge step forward in technology and in the scientific and technological outlook, wouldn't it? So where do we find one, uno, einz, une, one of these machines that has been set in operation and actually can be demonstrated? They simply aren't there, friends. But that will never stop millionaires from investing in them, and some people taking their hard-earned cash and investing it in stock companies that sell that kind of product. No, we just don't learn. Now I remember when I was a kid up in Toronto, Canada, the Great Pyramid was supposed to have all the secrets of the universe in it. It was supposed to have prophecies that went hundreds of years ahead and showed the future of mankind. Oh, really? Well, now, let's count the number of prophecies that have come true that are supposed to be shown in the Great Pyramid. Let me see. Gee, zero. That's not a very large number, friends. But the pyramid nuts are still out there. They'll still preach this nonsense to anyone who will listen, and to some who won't. A few days ago, I had some Jehovah's Witnesses call by my home in Plantation, Florida. Well-meaning folks, I'm sure, but simply wrong. The one thing they don't want to discuss is their prophecies and whether or not they've come true. You see, they get the same count as the pyramidologists do, zero. Ah well. This is James Randi.
Science or Fiction (1:03:04)
Item #1: New study suggests that homo sapiens innovated male/female division of labour and this gave them a critical advantage over Neanderthals.[1]
Item #2: Newly published study has linked frequent cell phone use to declining cognitive function, as measured by standard IQ.[2]
Item #3: New research shows that the effectiveness of advertising has nothing to do with the actual message they contain.[3]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | Cell phone use |
| Science | Division of labour |
| Science | Advertising |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve | clever |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|---|
Bob | Advertising |
Rebecca | Cell phone use |
Evan | Advertising |
Jay | Division of labour |
Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.
S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts. Two are real and one is fiction.
E: Except the time that three were real and one was fiction. Go ahead.
J: Except for the two times that you had four. But go on.
S: I challenge my challenged skeptics to figure out which one is the fake.
R: Did you just call us challenged?
S: Did I do that out loud?
R: I'm pretty sure Steve just insulted us.
S: Hey, the numbers speak for themselves. What can I say?
R: My mother prefers special.
S: Are you ready?
E: No. I mean yes.
S: No theme.
J: Absolutely.
S: No theme for this week.
R: Good. I hate themes.
S: Number one, new study suggests that Homo sapiens innovated male-female division of labour. And this gave them a critical advantage over the Neanderthals. Item number two, a newly published study has linked frequent cell phone use to declining cognitive function as measured by standard IQ. And item number three, new research shows that the effectiveness of advertising has nothing to do with the actual message they contain. Bob, why don't you go first?
Bob's Response
B: Let's see. I'm going to go with three.
R: Short and sweet.
S: Three meaning the advertising not having to do with the message. Okay, Rebecca.
Rebecca's Response
R: I think that the advertising thing sounds very reasonable. Number one, the first one, the Homo sapiens division of labour thing. That sounds reasonable too because they're always looking for how the hell the Homo sapiens won out. So I'm going to go with number two.
S: The cell phone.
R: Even though I know people on cell phones in public tend to seem dumber than the rest of us, I think that that's a little too believable to be true.
S: Okay.
R: So I'm going with that one.
S: All right, Evan.
Evan's Response
E: This is actually a tough one.
B: Hurry up, man. Come on. Jesus.
J: Oh, yeah, Bob. I'm still in shock that Bob went three.
E: I'm going to agree with Bob that the advertising having nothing to do with the message is fiction.
S: Okay, Jay.
Jay's Response
J: I'm going to be Bob tonight. Okay, the first one you said that Homo sapiens, the theory is that they evolved their own classification and role.
S: They innovated the male-female division of labour.
J: Okay, then the cell phone one you said was that people who frequently use cell phones had a lower IQ.
S: Declining IQ over time.
J: So as if, are you saying, though, is that supposed to mean that using the cell phone is what is making them decline their IQ, their declining IQ as a result of it?
S: You're assuming cause and effect. The study is just showing a correlation, but that would be the implication. Sure.
J: All right. Well, I'm going to go with the first one as the fake, the Homo sapiens.
S: Okay. So you're all spread out. We got Bob and Evan for the advertising, Rebecca for the cell phone and Jay for the male-female division of labour. Well, let's take these in order.
Steve Explains Item #1
S: Number one, the study suggested Homo sapiens innovated male-female division of labour. That is science.
R: Oh, sorry, Jay.
S: Sorry, Jay. This is a really cool study.
J: Don't you dare apologize to me because I'm stupid. I'll take my lumps every week.
S: Jay, using cell phones too much.
B: This has nothing to do with being stupid, Jay. Just read up on your science news. That's all. That one was right in the science news, Jay. Right in the science news.
E: If Steve found it, you could find it.
S: So the evidence suggests that Neanderthals were all basically involved with hunting big game. That was their primary food source. So probably the males were the ones who were wielding the weapons, but the women and children may have either cut off roots of escape or beat the bushes to scare the animals out. They all show injuries that suggested that they had a very rough and tumble, as they say, life. And their diet consisted mainly of big game. But Homo sapiens at the same time showed a much greater diversity of diet, suggesting that the women were gathering. This was the hunter-gatherer division of labour. They were finding much more varied sources of food. And also they had other innovations like sewing, which suggests that a segment of the population was not engaged all the time in hunting and that they had more time to engage in some higher technology activities. And that this division of labour was a tremendous advantage to Homo sapiens. Interesting line of reasoning. Let's go to number two.
Steve Explains Item #2
S: A newly published study has linked frequent cell phone use to declining cognitive function as measured by standard IQ, and this one is fiction.
R: Ha-ah!
S: Good job, Rebecca.
E: Well done, Rebecca.
R: Thank you.
S: Now, the actual story is that you guys may have heard over the last 10 years or so that occasionally there are studies which suggest that cell phone use may be linked to increased risk of brain tumours or brain cancer. And I've been really hoping that this doesn't turn out to be true because I really like my cell phone. I've basically been using the cell phone and crossing my fingers.
R: So you're one of those idiots in public, right?
S: Oh, yeah, I use my cell phone all the time. Now, actually, I have to say, although I'm quite a technophile, I find it rather disconcerting when somebody is talking to nobody. You know, they have one of those ear things. Yeah, yeah.
R: I can never think, and speaking to someone who lives in a major city, it's the worst because there's people just walking down the street talking to the air, and you cannot tell if they're insane or not.
E: Yeah, some of them have a phone.
S: It's very interesting that we haven't adapted the social cues to know, like when someone's holding a phone to their head, you know they're talking on the phone. You get the social cues.
E: Or they're pretending to.
S: But now when their hands are free and they're just talking into the air, even when I see the earpiece, it still looks disconcerting to me.
R: Yeah.
J: I just feel like it's very rude. Like, I feel like I'm being rude when I do it. Like, sometimes I'll be in my car talking to someone and then I'll go into the supermarket. I feel like I'm being rude to the people that I'm with. I was very self-conscious about it, and I feel like I shouldn't be doing it either.
S: Honestly, I use the hands-free when I'm in the car because it's actually the law in Connecticut that you can only use hands-free phones in the car. So when I'm alone in the car, I use it when I'm driving. Otherwise, I take out my phone. So anyway, there's now a Danish study that followed 420,000 people. Denmark has an incredible cancer registry that is an incredible repository of medical information. And basically, they found no link, zero link between frequency of cell phone use or cell phone use at all and the development of brain cancer. So this is a very strong piece of epidemiological evidence showing a lack of any cancer risk from cell phones. So that's nice, very reassuring.
Steve Explains Item #3
S: Which means that item number three, new research shows that the effectiveness of advertising has nothing to do with the actual message they contain is science. That one is true.
R: You should have gone with me, guys. I'm an advertising major in college, so it's my thing.
S: So you're saying it wasn't fair. You had an unfair advantage.
R: I did have a, well, yeah, my brain is the unfair advantage.
E: It's okay. I get a sports question next week.
S: This was a study published by Dr. Robert Heath from the University of Bath's School of Management found that advertisements with high levels of emotional content enhance how people felt about brands even when there was no real message. So the existence of a message within the advertising did not seem to have an effect. What did have an effect was how well they manipulated the emotional content, which we kind of all know intuitively, but it's interesting. This is the first one to actually study that particular question, and it's interesting how profound that was. Sometimes you watch those commercials, like, what was that about? Sometimes it's even hard to know what's going on in the commercial, but it's all about just making us feel a certain way and associating that feeling with the product. That's really all it's about.
R: And that's why the big thing these days is not using commercials to sell you something directly. It's to build a brand image and to make you feel a connection to a certain company.
E: Those commercials often have nothing to do with the product. I mean, zero.
S: Or even iPod.
R: Actually, yeah, I was about to use them as an example. Apple has a very strong branding image.
S: Absolutely. They're selling a lifestyle, not a product.
R: Exactly.
S: You're someone who uses an iPod. You're cool and you can dance, apparently.
R: That's why I use an iPod, because I can kick it.
E: Dancing podcast listeners out there.
S: You have a great silhouette.
R: I do.
S: Yeah.
'R: You didn't sound convinced there, Steve.
E: I was convinced.
R: If you don't trust me buy the calendar. My silhouette is in the calendar.
E: Invite us to the pyjama party and we'll see.
S: I'm still waiting for my free calendar.
R: Not happening.
E: Yeah, coward.
S: It's one of those studies that kind of tells us what we already know, but it's still very useful.
Skeptical Puzzle (1:12:30)
Last Week's puzzle
This person had good motives in mind when he proposed that mans activities occur in predictable waves. He took stock in this belief, and in his own bullish way, brought his philosophy to bear. Perhaps he should have invested more time in his research, for he could have used some corrections to realize his theory would crash.
Who is this person?
Ralph Nelson Elliot
Winner: John Maddox
This Week's puzzle
Take a mylar coat.
Put it in a machine and mix it up.
Lay it out.
What's left is something that was once believed to exist, yet has never been found.
What is it?
S: So, Evan.
E: Hi.
S: You were going to tell us the answer to last week's puzzle.
E: But first I'm going to read the question itself, or the puzzle itself. Okay. This person had good motives in mind when he proposed that man's activities occur in predictable waves. He took stock in this belief and in his own bullish way, brought his philosophy to bear. Perhaps he should have invested more time in his research, for he could have used some corrections to realize his theory would crash. Who is this person? The answer is? Ralph Nelson Elliott, founder of the Elliott Wave Principle.
R: That was a pun-tastic puzzle.
E: I felt it was on the easier side, but you've got to throw an easier one, I think, in there every once in a while.
R: It was pun-erific.
E: Congratulations to John Maddox for being the first one to guess it correctly.
R: Good job, John.
E: And he did that rather quickly, I think right after the podcast went up.
S: All right. So that was an easy one. Now you're going to give us a more challenging one.
E: This one is much more challenging. Here's this week's puzzle. Take a Mylar coat. Put it in the machine and mix it up. Lay it out. What's left is something that was once believed to exist, yet has never been found. What is it? Good luck, everyone.
R: Did you say a Mylar coat?
E: I did.
S: Coat.
E: Coat.
S:' Well, that is our show for this week.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:13:50)
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
– Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), German theoretical physicist
S: Bob, as always, is going to close out the show with a pithy quote. What's the quote this week?
B: It's a great quote from Werner Heisenberg, of course, originator of the famed Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, regarding the bizarre counterintuitive quantum experiments that were being carried out at that time. He said, "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."
S: An excellent skeptical principle.
B: The double slit experiment is a classic example of that.
J: It's also nature as we perceive it, or we can perceive it, right?
S: Right. It's our methods of both observing and questioning and thinking about it. We can only see what we look for and what we have the instruments to see and the concepts to see. Well, everyone, thanks again for joining me. Always a pleasure to have you.
J: Thanks, Steve.
E: Thank you, Steve.
R: Thank you.
S: Had a good time?
R: I hope that somebody on the forum, I think somebody who's keeping track of the puzzles or the science of fiction, so make sure you update that to reflect my win today.
S: You're on a run.
J: We are also impressed and proud of you, Rebecca, really.
R: I really am kicking butt lately.
S: You're on a good run.
J: You are. It's great. It's because you're very well read and you remember a lot. Very smart girl.
R: Thank you, Jay.
J: You're not quite, not much of a looker, but you're very smart.
R: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
J: And everyone, come out and see us at TAM5 in Vegas. It's going to be awesome.
S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. Please send us your questions, suggestions, and other feedback; you can use the "Contact Us" page on our website, or you can send us an email to info@theskepticsguide.org'. 'Theorem' is produced by Kineto and is used with permission.
References
Today I Learned
- Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference[1]
- Fact/Description
- Fact/Description
References
- ↑ [url_for_TIL publication: title]
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