SGU Episode 960

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SGU Episode 960
December 2nd 2023
"Researchers seem to have solved the puzzle of LK-99. Scientific detective work has unearthed evidence that the material is not a superconductor, and clarified its actual properties."
SGU 959                      SGU 961
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.
John Dewey, American philosopher
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Evan's distal biceps tendon rupture

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, November 29^th, 2023, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone.

S: Basically, four old white guys and Cara.

C: You guys are so offended.

E: According to a recent email.

S: Many recent emails.

E: Thanks, listener.

C: You're not young people of colour.

S: That's correct. We do not deny the fact. We're very open about the fact that we are a bunch of old white guys.

E: There's lots of things I'm not. And I'm proud of it. Get off my lawn.

S: We're too old to do things like go into rock concerts, right, Evan?

C: Oh, Evan. Oh, no.

E: Not only talk about fashion, but right.

B: Nice segue.

E: But not go to rock concerts. Go to metal rock concerts because you might also risk injury such as a distal biceps tendon rupture in your left arm.

C: And by you, you mean you.

E: Yeah. That happened to me this past Saturday.

S: That sucks.

E: I was at a show and I'm in the crowd doing I've been now to a hundred of these things in recent years with Rachel. And crowd surfing is a thing. It just is.

S: It's still a thing.

E: It's still a thing. It just at every show there will be that occurring. And I'll reach my arms up and pass the person over no issues, no problems. Well, that night somebody to my side who I just kind of caught out of the corner of my eye knows he was going down for the count. Sometimes people fall to the ground and there was absolutely like nobody there all of a sudden for some reason. So I reached my arm out. This guy was going to hit his head and shoulders were heading towards the ground. I reached my hand out, my left arm in order to help break his fall. I caught him by like his shoulder blade. But this guy was big and he kind of took me down with him. I didn't fall to the ground, but it like hyper extended in a sense my arm, but stretched it out and snap ruptured the ruptured the tendon. And I felt and I did feel a absolute tearing sensation. I know why they call them tears now, because that is precisely the sensation I felt.

B: Have you guys ever walked if you guys ever walked to a window, you pull down the shade and you pull it a little bit too far, you let go and the shade goes up all the way up and flips around. That's what happened to Evan's bicep muscle.

E: So that's where it is. My bicep right now is entirely residing in the upper part of my left of my arm near my shoulder. It's all bunched up kind of in this in this.

J: Can you bend the arm?

E: Yes. So Bob was asking me about what I can do with this arm right now, even though it's injured. Surprisingly, I can do just about everything with the arm and I'm not feeling pain in that sense. Only when I put.

C: But shouldn't he probably not be doing stuff with his arm?

E: Right now I have what I'm calling full use of my arm with a few exceptions. If I hold my hand out in front of me, palm up like I'm ready to ask you for alms or something like that, right? Alms for the poor. And I can only hold so much weight in my hand in that position. Maybe maybe a couple of pounds. Anything heavier than that, it will trigger the sensation and I can't do it. By comparison if I have my arm down by my side and I'm holding a grip or a a suitcase or a briefcase, something like that. No problem. I feel nothing regardless of the weight. Obviously it's not working on that tendon.

B: And that's all forearm and deltoids is very little bicep work there. So that makes total sense. But dude, I would be like, knock me out and bring me into the hospital to wake me up when the surgery is done. I would not want to have my arm next to me. I don't know how you do it, man. It's tough. Bravo to you.

E: Well, because I'm not toughing out the pain. I mean, really, it's not like I'm gritting my teeth and just rubbing dirt on it. I'm really not not sensing that that pain right now. Except in that specific position. And my surgery is scheduled for Tuesday, December 5. In fact, when I went in and they and they officially diagnosed because I went to the ER right after it happened, a couple hours afterwards, I'm like, I better go to the ER and check this out. I don't think this is good.

C: A couple hours. You finished the show first, didn't you?

B: A couple hours.

E: Yeah. We all, yeah.

B: Oh, my God. I'd be like, airlift me to the hospital now.

J: Oh, God. So Evan, you stayed till the end of the concert?

C: Of course you did.

E: Yeah. There was only like an hour left.

B: It was a good concert.

E: Anyways. And and Rachel was in there. Actually, Rachel was doing photography for the show. So she was kind of working the show at the same time.

B: Cool.

E: And I was texting with her what was happening. And she's like, well, do you need to go now? I'm like, I think I'm OK. We can wait for the end. So we left at the end. But it was in New Jersey. So I actually drove back to Connecticut that night and went to my local emergency room. Went there. They put me through a few tests. They gave me an X-ray, make sure no bones were broken, anything like that. Fine. But then they said, get to get to the specialist. We'll tell you where to go. Went to this. This was and that was a Sunday. Monday comes. Go to the specialist. And they said, yeah, here's what you here's what you got. We're going to confirm it with an MRI. MRI happened Tuesday, which was yesterday. And it confirmed it. And they already had my it's amazing. With this particular injury, OK, they moved it to what they call STAT. And Steve, you know what STAT means in this. And I tell you, they move. I've never heard of like the bureaucratic nature of the system of that medicine and insurance. And the whole thing is because you've got to get approval for this. I was not in it within an hour of receiving that diagnosis. I had the they had the MRI scheduled for the next morning, had the surgery. They bumped someone else out of the place in line for surgery. They put me in their place. Now I'm going on Tuesday for the surgery. And they already scheduled the first two post-surgical appointments for me. And they had all that done like within less than an hour. That was pretty darn impressive. But it also kind of showed the nature in this kind of injury. They have to get to it fast, otherwise there'll be complications the longer that it goes. And in a matter of weeks, my arm will start to suffer some other problems if I don't get this done right away.

B: I'm seeing some images here. It looks like there's two distal bicep tendons by the forearms. So it's more complicated than I thought, obviously.

C: Your recovery is going to be long. But how long are you in some sort of like sling or like how long are you immobilized?

E: For a couple of weeks, Cara, I didn't say exactly. I guess they don't know for sure. It will not be a cast. They say it will be sling and or brace. I don't know what ultimately determines that. I guess I'll talk to them more about that next week and what they're going to do to me. And I guess I'll start the physical therapy, assuming the two appointments that come after the surgery, which are scheduled within a week, a week later and a week later. If those go OK, then the physical therapy will start at that point. And this will take about three to four months to fully heal.

C: Right, right.

J: And then are you back to 100 percent?

E: Yeah, yeah. Then I'll be. In fact, in some ways, what he was describing to me, this particular procedure he's going to do, it's going to be better than it was before.

B: No shit.

E: Warning, I'm about to describe something medically graphic. So, OK, so plug your ears. They're going to drill holes, they said, through my through the bone in my forearm. And they're going to tie, they're going to pull this stuff back through and tie it through the through the holes in the bone.

B: Whoa.

E: Tie it off tight. And when it heals, when the bone heals and everything, it will cover it will it will make it even stronger. As it as it covers.

B: I got to get this done.

E: As it covers the tendon.

B: Cool.

E: No, you don't. You don't want this.

B: I wonder if that's because that there's very little tendon left on your forearm or your forearm bone. Because I remember reading about that. If there's if there's a little tendon left there after the tear, they they stitch it together. But if there isn't any left, it was if it was cleanly pulled off, then they'd have to stay basically staple it. This is the description I read many years ago, so I'm sure-

S: Yeah. These kind of surgical techniques evolve all the time.

B: But this. Yeah. This seems like an interesting-

C: It sounds like they need to reattach it in a way that they know it won't fall back off.

B: Yeah. Better. So it's much better than a staple, it seems. That's cool.

E: Thy describe several different types of surgeries that they perform for this, Bob. So I imagine it will. It ultimately depends on what the MRI tells you. But he but my particular surgeon is going to do this as he's seen the best success with this particular method. So that's what he's.

S: Yeah, I'm reading about it. Apparently, they suture it to a to like a button that they put through the hole. Then the button is on the other side of the hole on the other side.

E: Interesting. Will it be a metal button, Steve?

S: It'll be. It'll be a biocompatible, maybe titanium. I don't know.

E: Oh, interesting. So I will have metal in the body.

J: That's nuts.

S: It's got to be MRI compatible and it's got to be biocompatible. But yeah, that's really interesting. So that mechanism of injury is very common. Suddenly trying to brace somebody who's falling, especially if they're big. I see a lot of nurse. It's a very common nursing injury because, again, you're taking care of a big patient. They fall. And you got to catch him. You got to whatever. That causes a lot of injury. You got to always be very, very careful because you're not in an advantageous position. You just threw your arm out. Your arm took the whole weight of a big person.

C: It's funny how many, it's like an ACL tear in a soccer player. There's just these injuries that people get over and over because of that kind of motion. It's interesting that they're so common. I also think it's so fascinating how much orthopaedic surgery is just like carpentry.

S: It's carpentry.

C: On body parts.

S: Yeah. I mean-

C: It's like plumbing, electrical. It's just like-

S: Yeah. Neurologists are the electricians. Cardiologists are the plumbers. Orthopaedists are the carpenters.

J: It's rare that you hear such a good outcome for something that seems like such a major injury.

B: Evan, I'm sure from pictures I saw, I'm sure you probably have a lot of black and blue because the arm that I saw was crazy black and blue.

E: Yeah. I'm looking at it right now, Bob, and there is surprisingly very little black and blue.

B: Wow.

J: Wow.

E: There's kind of this one little point-

C: I wonder if it was a super clean injury.

E: I suppose it was pretty clean in that sense. No. There's no external swelling or really anything. I felt no neurological, they put me through a battery of pushing, pulling, asking me all about different sensations I am having or had, and no, nothing like that. I'm fortunate, I suppose, in that regard. One thing I will say to sort of put a bow on this, do you guys remember at NOTACON? We each had to submit some facts about ourselves, things that no one in the audience or certainly anybody else among us would know about each other. It's a fun little game we played. What was one of my fun facts that turned, yeah, I never had a surgery in my life.

J: Oh, yeah.

C: Never had anaesthesia?

S: Your streak is over.

E: Never.

C: Are you scared?

E: Never. Never a surgery to repair something. Yeah. Well, I guess I suppose there's a bit of anxiety just because I have no clue, no frame of reference from a personal standpoint on any of this, so it's all new. I had my first MRI yesterday. I've had x-rays before, but that was my first time in an MRI.

S: Did you get claustrophobia?

E: No. No, I didn't. I thought it was going to be more coffin-like, but instead it's more like an enormous circular disc that you get moved underneath, but it was open to the left and the right of me, so I didn't have that sort of thing.

C: Oh, so you were in an open MRI.

S: That was an open MRI.

E: That's an open MRI?

S: Oh, yeah. Because the non-open ones are very coffin-like.

E: Yeah, I was definitely not in a coffin, so yeah, no problem there. I think if I were in that coffin one, that would have been a little bit disconcerting. I have this little bit of fear about loss of mobility of my arms, of all things, right? If you feel you can't help yourself if you needed to, if it's a helpless feeling.

S: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was all the way head-first in an MRI scan for an hour and a half. You're shoulder-to-shoulder in that thing. You can't move, and at some point you realize, if something happened, I am completely helpless. There's no way I could get myself out of this thing.

E: Well, they gave me an emergency button to shut down the procedure. Yeah. They put into my right hand a kill switch or something. They said, press this button if you're feeling anything wrong.

S: They call that the coward switch.

E: Well, I didn't press it.

C: Well, Evan, a little trick that I learned. I had my first surgery last year, and I was scared of anaesthesia for sure. Well, I had two surgeries. Little trick I learned is you can always ask for the, part of the cocktail they give you when you go under is anxiety medicine. It's part of it. Different cocktails have different ones. Mine was Versed. You can always ask to get that a little early. If you're at the hospital and you're feeling really anxious, you can say, can you help me with this a little early?

S: Yeah. Pre-game it a little bit.

C: Yeah. Pre-game it.

E: All right.

C: And there's nothing wrong with that.

E: They are going to put my arm to sleep before they put me to sleep. They're going to deaden my arm. Whatever they use for that is going to last about 24 hours of my arm being...

B: 24, wow.

S: They're just going to give you a block, and your arm's going to be completely.

C: Like an epidural, but up for your arm.

E: They said that, I guess, I don't know, even for people who are under, they can involuntarily move a limb if they don't secure it that way. Is that right?

C: Smart.

S: Yeah. You definitely don't want to move during surgery.

C: Well, at least you know you really won't feel anything, so that's good.

E: Oh, yeah. Yeah. He said you won't feel a darn thing until that starts to fade, but you'll, he said you'll want your painkillers. Okay.

C: Yeah.

E: We'll see. We'll see. Pain's different for everybody.

C: It is.

E: Let's see.

C: And there are non-opiate approaches.

E: I have no way to know. I have no surgical experience about pain at all.

B: Yeah. Also, I'm sure the doctor will tell you, but I had one of the upper tendons of my bicep moved, so it was kind of detached and reattached, and the guy's like, all right, Bob. After a week or so, your bicep's going to feel fine, but don't lift anything heavier than a can of soda, because he's had patients that felt good, and they did stupid stuff, and it tore. The tendon tore, which means that, so one of the tendons detaches. There's two up by your shoulder. One of them detaches, and the doctor said to me, he's like, Bob, if you tear it, I'm not going back in. And I'm like, oh, okay.

E: I'll follow the instructions. Whatever instructions I am given, I will abide by them.

S: Yeah. Don't mess with that. Can you imagine if that happened to you before the 20th century, before modern medicine? That's it. You have to live the rest of your life that way.

E: There it is. If it's untreated, or if they didn't fix this, people can lose about 40% of the strength and mobility and other things related to the arm over time.

S: Hey, Evan, you will not be on the show next week, just so people are aware. We're not going to make you do the show this afternoon for surgery.

C: No, we're going to make him record from the hospital. What are you talking about?

E: Yeah. Right off. No, they send me home same day. They're sending me home.

S: Wow.

E: I'm not having it even at a hospital. It's just an ortho facility that handles surgeries.

B: Oh, wow.

S: Yeah, neat.

B: Is that your dominant arm?

E: No.

B: Oh, you're so lucky. That's good.

E: I'll tell you what. Of my five extremities off of my torso, I'm happy. Of all of them, it was this one. Yeah.

S: That's the one you would choose, right? Your non-dominant arm?

E: Your left arm. Absolutely. My legs I need, and my right arm I need. My head I need.

S: I don't think the head is technically an extremity, but yeah.

C: I know. It took me a second to be like, what five is he referring to?

E: I meant six.

S: Yeah. You could think of something else there. All right. Still, I would put the left arm as the number one. The non-dominant arm. Okay. Let's move on.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]

Internet Use and Mental Health (16:20)

• Internet Use and Mental Well-Being 

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Methane Capture (33:14)

• Capturing methane from the air would slow global warming. Can it be done? 

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Bitter Revenge (47:15)

• Revenge Is Rarely Sweet 

Underground Microbes (1:01:11)

• Minimalist or maximalist? The life of a microbe a mile underground 

PopSci Magazine Closes (1:09:02)

• After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine 

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Quickie with Steve (1:17:40)

• LK-99 isn’t a superconductor — how science sleuths solved the mystery  
   (Note: this article is not from the SGU show notes page)

[_mention_of_previous_discussion_]^{[link needed]}

Who's That Noisy? (1:20:33)

Answer to previous Noisy:

RIDGID NaviTrack® Scout

here's a video that has a similar sound to the Noisy

sonde locator

here's some info about this technology

[High-pitched warblings]

New Noisy (1:23:38)

[Deep, airy pulses]

short_text_from_transcript

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups (1:26:25)

Email #1: Dr. GPT

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Science or Fiction (1:35:06)

Theme: Mushrooms Item #1: Evidence shows that many mushroom species will increase their growth after a lightning strike, with shiitake crop yield doubling. Item #2: Three popular supermarket mushrooms, cremini, button, and portobello, are all the exact same species. Item #3: Although originally classified as plants, the kingdom of Fungi is genetically closest to the kingdom of Protista.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Fungi closest to Protista
Science	Growth after lightning strike
Science	Supermarket 'shrooms same

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Evan	Fungi closest to Protista
Bob	Growth after lightning strike
Cara	Fungi closest to Protista
Jay	Fungi closest to Protista

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

Steve Explains Item #2

[_mushroom_nutrition_past_SOF_or_news_item]^{[link needed]}

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:52:26)

Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.  – John Dewey (1859-1952), American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Signoff

S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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Today I Learned

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• Fact/Description
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References