SGU Episode 63
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| SGU Episode 63 |
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| October 4th 2006 |
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| (brief caption for the episode icon) |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
R: Rebecca Watson |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Guest |
MS: Michael Shermer |
| Quote of the Week |
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. |
| Links |
| Download Podcast |
| Show Notes |
| Forum Discussion |
Introduction
You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, October 4th, 2006, and this is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Joining me this week are Rebecca Watson...
R: Hey, hey, hey!
S: Evan Bernstein...
E: Hello everyone.
S: ...and Jay Novella.
J: Good evening.
R: Did you all miss me?
S: We did.
J: Oh God, it was horrible last week without you.
E: I still miss you.
R: I know, I heard.
S: We muddled through.
R: Yeah, I could tell. That was definitely muddling.
J: Muddling or meddling?
R: Muddling. Because I need to clear something up right off the bat.
J: Oh, wait, wait. Let me play my violin music. Hold on. Okay, go ahead.
R: Listen to me. You lambasted my fans on the last show. And you thought I wasn't going to listen, didn't you?
S: I wouldn't say lambasting.
R: I would. You called them a bunch of nerdy dorks.
S: Well, we told them not to act like a bunch of nerdy dorks.
J: I mean, how many wedding proposals do we have to live through?
E: And goddesses and queens.
R: One a week it's not that difficult for you to live through. And it's a nice boost to my self-esteem, which makes everybody happy.
S: That's true.
E: I thought your being on this podcast was a boost to your self-esteem.
R: Only because it gets me more wedding proposals.
S: I see.
E: So you're using it as a vehicle.
R: Yes. No! (laughter)
J: Okay, so the general consensus is that your fans aren't uber dorks, or what is it?
R: No, they're not uber dorks. They are cool, sexy people. Men and women.
S: That was my only point. Act a little bit more sophisticated in your attempts at wooing Rebecca. That was it.
R: All right, all right, all right. And also, actually, there was one other thing that I wanted to take issue with.
J: Yeah, go ahead.
R: You mocked the name of a listener last week named Meatleg.
S: Oh yeah, Meatleg.
J: No, wait, hold on a second.
E: Come on.
J: Wait, wait, put a...
R: Are you going to do a little...
J: Put a hand bone in it.
R: It's a little late to start defending yourself at this point.
J: We discussed the different ways of pronouncing his last name.
S: And there was some speculation about whether or not it was really his name or if it was...
R: Well, I'd like to clear that up right now. It is his name, Geniuses. He is a kick-ass violin maker, and you can find his website online if you... I'm sure if you do a search for Eric Meathead, or whatever.
S: Meatleg.
E: Oh, great. There you go.
R: You can find his website. He makes super bad-ass stringed instruments.
S: Awesome.
E: Great.
R: So he is very cool, and I just wanted him to know that.
J: Okay, so you didn't take the time to write him and ask him how to pronounce his last name?
R: No, it's Meatleg.
E: Look, at least I know how to pronounce Stradivarius, but...
J: I think it's pronounced Meadle G, so we're going to have to figure this one out.
R: You guys didn't pronounce his first name right. You pronounced it Erich or something.
E: Yeah, Erich. I've heard of Erich before.
R: Really? Okay.
S: Well, listen, in all honesty, we asked our listeners to send a pronunciation guide for their name, and if they don't do that, whatever happens, happens.
E: That's right. We can't be responsible for that.
R: So Bob writes in and we can call him Boob if we want.
S: Every mail-in show pleads with their mailers, please tell us how to pronounce your name.
R: I just wanted to give a shout-out to Meatleg and let him know that somebody knows...
S: Somebody appreciates him.
J: Give her more wedding proposals, Steve.
E: I can see it now. Rebecca Meatleg.
R: Yeah, I wouldn't say no to a wedding gift.
S: A violin or something?
R: Of a violin.
E: Stradivarius?
J: And to the news.
R: I can learn to play. Anyway. Yes, the news. The news is very important.
News Items
2007 Skepchick Calendar (3:58)
- 2007 Skepchick and Skepdude Calendars now available
www.skepchick.org/calendar/
S: It is. The first news item, the most important item to talk about, of course, is the SkepChick and SkepDude calendars are now available.
R: That's right. We are taking pre-orders, which means that if you order your calendar or calendars now, you are guaranteed to get one. Last year we sold out pretty quickly, so pre-orders are a great way of making sure you get yours.
J: Rebecca, are you signing these?
R: I'll tell you what. Anybody who is listening to the podcast, if you want to go onto skepchick.org and order your calendars, and when you place your order, there's a little box where you can type a message. Just write in that you heard this on the podcast, and I'll sign your calendar for you.
S: Excellent. So everyone knows these are calendars of tastefully nude and semi-nude skeptical chicks and dudes.
R: Yes, there are two calendars this year. Last year it was all women, and due to popular demand, this year we have one calendar of all women and one calendar of all men.
E: I know what I'm getting Perry for Christmas.
J: Rebecca, isn't it a little funny that none of your fellow podcast members are in the men's calendar?
R: Well, I'll tell you. I considered putting Bob in.
S: Bob is pretty buff.
R: It was a little too late. By the time that I started up with you guys, which was back in May, we had already nailed down everybody who was going to be in it. That includes people like James Randi, Michael Shermer, Phil Plait, Richard Wiseman. So lots of really awesome people are going to be in it this year. And maybe next year you guys can all get together and do something interesting. Strip down and do a skeptic surprise.
J: I'm not getting naked with Perry. That's just no way.
S: Not again. Never again.
R: He's been scarred after that one weekend of camping.
S: Pencil us in, Rebecca.
R: Okay.
S: Since you bring up Michael Shermer's name, I'll just mention at this point that we are interviewing Michael Shermer later on in this podcast about his new book, Why Darwin Matters. So stay tuned for that.
Female arousal study (6:16)
- Study finds women arouse as quickly as men
http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/news/?ItemID=22044
S: And the second news item that we have is loosely related to the SkepChick and Dude calendars. There was a new study that was published that shows that it debunks the old myth that men are sexually aroused more quickly than women. This study finds that actually women are aroused just as quickly as men. Rebecca, you blogged about this I think either today or yesterday, is that right?
R: Yeah, I did. Because I just think it's hysterical that there are researchers, what they did was they watched a group of people watching movies and they recorded them through cameras that basically act kind of like night vision goggles where you can see radiation being given off by people.
S: Thermography.
E: Body heat. Body heat.
R: Yes, body heat. So sexy. And they watched people as they, like one group of people, they were just watching regular movies, little clips of movies, and then some others were watching pornographic films. And so they timed them to see how long it took each of them to hit maximum...
S: Arousal.
R: Yeah, maximum arousal. So I just love the fact that there are researchers and their job is to wear infrared goggles and spy on people watching dirty movies. I think that must be the greatest job ever. It's going to inspire a whole new legion of people to become scientists.
E: I wonder if there was another group watching them, watching them.
R: Now that's just insane, but also a little sexy.
E: Just a little.
R: Just a little.
S: Maybe we could do a study and look at the arousal patterns of men and women who are looking at the SkeptChick and SkepDude calendars.
R: That's what I'm thinking. I'd like to see some people do some at-home experiments. Pick your favorite friend of the opposite sex by one of each calendar. You get a discount if you get them together. And, yeah, do some at-home experiments. Exciting.
E: Certainly the prevailing thought in our culture and society is that men become aroused in moments and it takes women a lot, a much longer time to achieve that state. But hey, if this is the science, then this is the science.
R: Well, I think that the main problem here is that in everyday life, maybe it's the fact that women know how to turn on a man within seconds and men don't quite get how to turn on a woman in a few seconds.
J: Oh, will you please? Let's not even crack that one.
R: I think that's a perfectly good theory because if you look at the scientific data, obviously women can get turned on just as quickly as men, so why is there this prevailing thought that they can't?
S: Maybe it's as quick, but maybe men are still easier than women.
R: Well, what do you mean? The movies they were watching weren't working harder to get them turned on. They were both just watching movies.
S: Yeah, but the movies may have been above the threshold of arousal for both men and women. Maybe men, though, have a lower threshold.
R: Possibly.
S: That's certainly my anecdotal experience, but I don't have any scientific data to back that up.
E: More experimentation must be done.
R: It actually hasn't been my anecdotal evidence because I've actually dated men where the situations have been the opposite. I was ready to go more often than they were.
S: Now, this is serious scientific research that just happens to deal with human sexuality, but it is hard to get away from the giggle factor whenever you're dealing with human sexuality research.
R: Especially when we were just talking about my fans being nerdy and sending sexual overtures.
S: But completely unrelated. Actually, I was going to use this item as a science or fiction for this week, but it was already out there. Rebecca heard about it. Somebody emailed us about it, so it was too high profile.
R: Sad.
Harry Potter ban (10:02)
- Woman pushes for ban on Harry Potter, warns of more school shootings
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=408490&in_page_id=1811
S: One more news item. This comes from The Daily Mail. A woman, Laura Mallory, who is a mother of four from the Atlanta suburb, is warning the public about the evils of Harry Potter.
J: Oh, boy.
S: She's been in the news before. This is her second warning. She wants to ban Harry Potter from public schools, and her warning is that ban Harry Potter or face more school shootings.
E: That's quite a correlation there.
R: It reminds me of the Onion article a while back where they wrote about school children learning black magic from Harry Potter. People actually took it as a serious article and passed it around the internet, and there was this huge uproar. Even though it contained quotes from the kids that were like, it was like, Jesus died because he was weak and stupid. And Christian Fundamentalists just ran with it.
S: The Onion is hilarious. That's priceless, though, somebody taking that satirical article seriously.
R: Again, it's just real life coming back. It's even worse.
S: We are just coming off of a week where there were three horrific school shootings. Sometimes they do tend to cluster, usually because the later ones are copycats of the earlier ones. It is absolutely horrible. Usually when things like this happen, the moralizers come out of the woodwork saying, see, you didn't follow my belief system or my morality. That's why this is happening. If you want to avoid it in the future, then you have to buy into my ridiculous belief system. This is just more of that. It's absolutely absurd that reading Harry Potter causes school shootings.
R: How does a nut like this even get into the news? Does anybody know that?
E: Good question.
J: It's sensationalism.
R: She should be on a street corner holding a sign.
J: I know, but Rebecca, every once in a while one of these stories slips through the emotional press, especially when you consider the topic. Anybody putting down Harry Potter, it's such a widely famous and loved series. I would imagine that more people would get pressed like this if they said it, because it's just one of those things that people want to hear about Harry Potter, good or bad.
R: I think we should try. I think we should pick some other well-loved series, and we should blame it for something, just to see if we can get in the news.
S: You can get in the news if you say anything, no matter how ridiculous. The more ridiculous it is, the more likely you are to get in the news. But I think this woman is just such a representative of this way of thinking about things. She's not the only one who thinks this. She has no particular standing either. She's just a woman. Of course, she has no evidence to back up what she's saying. This is completely unsubstantiated.
J: I think too, Steve, is you read her what she feels about Harry Potter, and the first thing I thought about was how unread, unwell-read she is. Because if she knew anything about fiction, she'd realize that Harry Potter is a classic example of the journey of a hero.
S: Yes.
J: And this theme has been used. It's used in the Bible. It's used in tons of modern fiction. It's used in mythology that goes back thousands of years, and she just doesn't see the common thread and make any connections there.
S: He's actually a very virtuous character. And if anything, there are very positive life lessons in this, but they're just spooked by the witchcraft. I wouldn't be surprised if she'd never even read the book. She's just basing it on the most superficial aspects that she thinks she knows about it.
R: What would be the official name for that fallacy of saying that that wouldn't have happened if you had done this?
S: That's assuming causation from correlation. Well, let's go on to emails.
Questions and E-mails
Cure for Autism (13:48)
Hello skeptical comrades,
I am an avid listener of about three months and I love the show, great job. I have a question concerning autism. My mother teaches at an elementary school and has dealt with many kinds on children. This year she has a student who supposedly has been cured of autism. Supposedly it was due to the purifying of his body of harmful metals. Here is a link to a site with the story:
healingautism.com/home.html
I am not all that convinced that it is true as my mom still thinks he posses autistic flags. However, I am not totally dismissing it as when I was young, and very sick, my mother took me off my medications as they were causing me to be very sick and weakening my immune system. She then gave me garlic pills and they were able to help me regain some of my immunity. So, is it possible to cure autism in this way? Or any way at all?
Calvin Ball
Las Vegas, Nevada
Article by Dr. Novella on Vaccines and Autism
www.theness.com/articles.asp?id=74
S: The first email comes from Calvin Ball from Las Vegas, Nevada, and Calvin writes, "Hello, skeptical comrades. I am an avid listener of about three months, and I love the show. Great job. I have a question concerning autism. My mother teaches at an elementary school and has dealt with many kinds of children. This year, she has a student who supposedly has been cured of autism. Supposedly, it was due to the purifying of his body of harmful metals. Here is a link to the site with the story. I am not all that convinced that it is true, as my mom still thinks he poses autistic flags. However, I am not totally dismissing it, as when I was young and very sick, my mother took me off my medications, as they were causing me to be very sick and weakening my immune system. She then gave me garlic pills, and they were able to help me regain some of my immunity. So is it possible to cure autism in this way or any way at all?" This is a common story within a certain segment of people who believe that autism is caused by heavy metal poisoning, specifically mercury. And along with this part of the lore of this is that there are people who are helped or cured of their autism by basically treating them to leach the mercury out of their body. This is completely without any scientific justification whatsoever. First of all, no evidence that autism is caused by mercury or heavy metal poisoning. The evidence is overwhelming and increasing that autism is a genetic disorder or a combination of genetic factors. It doesn't mean that environmental factors have been completely ruled out, but if they exist, I think that they are pretty small and the genetic factors are dominant. This is a grassroots organization or group of people and organizations who are dedicated to this. They have a couple of French scientists supporting them. They are very, very activist. They're very dedicated to this notion. Most of them think that vaccines cause autism for a time. A preservative was put in some vaccines that contains mercury, although at levels which seem to be below the level that would cause any toxicity. These have been removed from vaccines in any way, in any case, by the way, because the CDC believes that their job is to minimize human exposure to all mercury. Just for the sake of just generically minimizing human exposure to mercury, thimerosal, which contains mercury, was removed from childhood vaccines in the United States. Even still, they believe that mercury, with or without vaccines, maybe from fish or from the environment, are causing it. Again, the evidence does not support that in any way. On the other end, saying that getting rid of the mercury cures the autism, there's no evidence to support that either. What typically happens in cases like this is it's just wishful thinking on the part of the parents. I absolutely feel for the parents of autistic children. This is a very devastating disorder and I couldn't imagine what it must be like to have to deal with this. I definitely feel for people who have to deal with a child afflicted with this.
R: This seems like a classic case of one of those belief systems that's just born of helplessness.
S: I agree, and there is no cure for autism. It is a devastating and incurable disease, and you're right, it is born mainly out of helplessness and parents who feel that they want to do everything that they can. That often involves investing a lot of time, effort, emotion, and money in certain treatments. There's a well-known psychological phenomenon of investment justification. If you invest that much time and resources in something, you want to believe that it's helping. Some parents have just convinced themselves that their child is improved when objective measures or blind studies do not show that. Also, with many of the developmental disorders, children will still improve as they age. At six, they may be able to do more stuff than they were able to do when they were four. That improvement is interpreted as a result of the treatment when, in fact, it was just a consequence of ageing. Unfortunately, the bottom line is this treatment doesn't work. There are no treatments that work, and the whole heavy metals, mercury-causing autism thing is pseudoscience at this point.
Bite your tongue (18:22)
Hi Guys (and Rebecca),
Love the show - keep up the great work!
My question is this: I'm working on my PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota and am addicted to science. I come from a small town, and thought you guys might have some advice about how to deal with family members who believe in pseudoscience. My mother is the worst (I'm ashamed to admit she's purchased magnetic insoles for her shoes, and is now taking classes in reflexology). I find it very difficult to bite my tongue, but cannot find a way to discuss the claims without sounding condescending or disrespecting. It makes her happy and I don't want to crush her - as long as she's not scamming people, is there any harm to smiling and letting her talk about her newest psuedoscience craze?
Thanks so much,
Bonnie Marsick
Minneapolis, MN
S: The next email comes from Bonnie Marsik from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Bonnie writes, "Hi guys, and Rebecca. Love the show. Keep up the great work. My question is this. I'm working on my PhD in neuroscience at the University of Minnesota, and I'm addicted to science." I guess that's a good addiction. "I come from a small town and thought you guys might have some advice about how to deal with family members who believe in pseudoscience." Move out. "My mother is the worst. I'm ashamed to admit she's purchased magnetic insoles for her shoes and is now taking classes in reflexology. I find it very difficult to bite my tongue but cannot find a way to discuss the claims without sounding condescending or disrespecting. It makes her happy and I don't want to crush her. As long as she's not scamming people, is there any harm to smiling and let her talk about her newest pseudoscience craze? Thanks so much." We've actually gotten some variation of this question multiple times, and this question has come up a couple of times on the message board.
R: It's a pretty common thing. I think just about everybody has somebody in their family or their close friends and they go through this. I think the answer we've pretty much always given is if it's a true believer, there's really not a lot you can do. I know I always feel like the relationship with your mother is probably more important than any kind of scientific data you feel like you can impart to her. I think it's just a matter of constantly just trying to reinforce any kind of logical belief as much as you can while kind of avoiding other subjects.
E: She asks in her question here though, is there any harm to allowing her mother to continue to believe in these sorts of things and not intervene, I guess. I would argue there is harm in that.
S: Right, especially in the realm of alternative or unscientific medicine. When people use reflexology or magnets or something or whatever to treat their aches and pains and minor ailments, what we call the symptoms of life, and then that convinces them that these things work, they're likely to turn to these sorts of things when they get really sick. That may delay their presentation to a physician or delay their getting real scientific or effective treatment. It may really distract their time and their effort away from more effective treatments. Some of these pseudoscientific treatments though, most are directly harmless because they're not really doing much. Some can be directly harmful as well. There absolutely is harm.
R: I really think though that you have to pick your battles because otherwise you're going to harp on someone for something that at the moment is harmless and push them further away. I've seen it happen before. I think the better tactic is just to keep your eye out. Basically just choose your battles. Make sure that you give her the knowledge she needs to make right decisions, even if you don't convince her all the way that something is bunk.
S: I agree with you that you shouldn't sacrifice the relationship in order to make a point or to take a hard stand. You do have to, to some degree, pick your battles. But I don't think that there's this dichotomy between just accepting it and smiling and not saying anything or harping on it in such a way that will degrade or harm the relationship. I think there are ways that you can approach family members or people you care about. Again, the case of professionals like me, like physicians approaching patients or therapists and clients or whatever, where you can make your belief known without being judgemental, without being overly negative. Let them know this is not something that you take personal, to really try to take it out of the personal realm. You can also, for example, just say, well, this is what the evidence shows and ask questions like, well, how do you think that might work and why would you think that the scientific community doesn't accept that? Just try to make them think about it more deeply. Let them know that you don't accept it, but don't ridicule them or make them think that you think that they're stupid for believing something or not believing something else. You can make slow steady progress with people if you do that.
R: Yeah, I agree with that. To give an example from my own life, my mom, who I love dearly, she sees a chiropractor. When she first told me that, I told her, well most of those guys, they're not real doctors, they don't go through the same training, blah, blah, blah. I kind of gave her a run down and she said, well, when I go, it makes my back feel better, so I'm going to keep going. So I didn't push it and the next time she brought it up, I asked her if I could send her a few links to web pages talking about chiropractors so that she would be able to make sure that she got a good one, basically. And then we just talked about it a little bit and I told her how some of them believe that they can cure disease by screwing around with your neck. And I told her all about all about subluxations, things like that, so that she understood what questions to ask when she goes to the chiropractor. And she's still going to a chiropractor, but he doesn't think that twisting her back will cure her disease. He basically gives her the equivalent of a massage when she goes in and makes her feel better. She pays her money. It's nothing she can't afford. And she goes home happy. So we've kind of struck this midway point where she's happy, but she hasn't gone over the edge to where I feel that she would be in danger.
S: Yeah, and that's fine. You make what progress you can. I don't think people should believe that they have to just accept it, because if you do smile and nod and not challenge it, then people will interpret that as tacit approval that you're not challenging them on it, therefore you think there's nothing wrong with it and that you accept it. So it's mostly, well, I don't believe that I have my reasons. I'll be tell you about them if you're interested or I have these questions about it. But that's fine. You know, I understand that you believe something differently and then just talk about it in a very non confrontational way. And you can have it both ways. You can do that without sacrificing the relationship. It sounds like you did that with your mother quite well.
R: Yeah, I think the moral is just you're never going to completely turn around a true believer, but you can strike some compromise and you can keep the people you love safe from from frauds.
S: The only thing I would say about that is if you wait until it is serious, it may already be too late, because once they are a true believer, then they're unreachable. And especially if they're in the grips of the emotions of a serious illness. So you actually it is worthwhile working on them when there is nothing really at stake because it may take you a couple of years to really move them over to a more reasonable way of looking at things or more responsible way of looking at things before they do get really sick and have to make important decisions for themselves.
R: That's true. I can get behind that.
Girl Excreting Glass (25:22)
Dr. Novella,
I learned of this article from a 'alternative' podcast regarding a young girl from Nepal who is allegedly excreting glass pieces from her forehead. (Not all skeptics exclusively listen to just their side of the science/paranormal divide.) I suspect a fraud. It does remind me of the recent tales of people in the United States who are alleged to emit pieces of thread from their skin. What could be next? People who perspire petrol? I thought you might find it of interest.
http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?nid=86844
Please keep up the excellent work. Your show is a real pleasure to listen to each week.
Howard Lewis
Hershey, PA
S: All right. The next email comes from Howard Lewis from Hershey, Pennsylvania. And Howard writes-
R: I love Hershey, Pennsylvania.
E: It's the second happiest place on earth.
S: And they make chocolate there. What's not to love
R: It's even better than Disney World. You can go in the factory. Anyway, go on.
S: "I learned of this article from an alternative podcast regarding a young girl from Nepal who is allegedly excreting glass pieces from her forehead. And he says parenthetically, not all skeptics exclusively listen to just their side of the science paranormal divide." That's good. And he goes on, "I suspect a fraud. It does remind me of the recent tales of people in the United States who are alleged to emit pieces of thread from their skin. What could be next? People who perspire petrol. I thought you might find it of interest." And he gives a link. "Please keep up the excellent work. Your show is a real pleasure to listen to each week." Thank you, Howard. Yeah. So these these stories are around recently. And this is into the realm of the the woo woo paranormal stuff. They have their tricks and things that that they do. And they sort of come and go like fads and the whole bit about excreting stuff from the skin is something that cropped up a number of years ago, a few years ago. And now we're seeing different permutations of it. And this is now just the latest really in the evolution, if you will, just a chain of these types of of manifestations.
R: How do we even excrete a solid? How is that possible?
S: Well, of course, it's impossible. Our bodies don't make glass.
R: I mean, just in general. Name one thing on the planet that excretes a solid. That's so odd.
S: So these appear under her skin, like under a blister on her and on her like the side of her forehead. And then, yeah, well, she's just shoving them under there.
R: Yeah, it sounds like a cheap trick.
S: There was a there was a it's a parlour trick. Yeah, there was a girl in I think in South America somewhere, I think it was Brazil, who was crying glass or like little shards or little gems. And like they would come out from underneath her eyelid. Well, she she put him there and Joe Nichol actually demonstrated how you could do that without actually hurting your eyes. Not as amazing as you might think. It's really easy. A kid could do it literally. But the article is hilarious. When you read the articles about these kinds of things. I mean, they're just so so ridiculously credulous. So she was examined by local physicians who say the CT scan report indicates that she has some kind of problem in her forehead skin, said Dr.-
R: The problem is a pieces of glass are falling out of it.
E: She's sticking glass. That is a problem.
R: Surprise!
S: The pieces do not seem to be coming out from the bone, but we can give more details only after further investigation.
E: Oh, come on. What a bunch of crud.
S: Wants to study the process of formation and emissions of the glass pieces. All righty.
J: So he's buying into it.
E: Yeah. Good luck with that doctor. Let us know what you find out.
S: This is a strange case.
J: So is she selling the glass or is it magic glass?
R: Yeah, I couldn't find anything about that.
S: Yeah, that's phase two probably. Well, she has international fame. That's step one. We'll see where she goes from there. She showed she's like in the picture on the article. She has shows like a table with a bunch of these pieces of glass on it. She excreted like her mother said the girl has been emitting triangular glass pieces every day since August 7th this year. Once she excreted 12 pieces of glass in one day. This is not a medical phenomenon, folks. This is fakery. But it does show how easily scientists or physicians who are not familiar with skepticism or the paranormal or fakery or trickery can get taken in by this because it's just like almost as if it doesn't occur to them that this little girl is just doing a simple trick.
R: Well, it probably goes back to the whole, oh, she's just a little girl. There's no way that she could be fooling. Why would she fool people? Which which goes all the way back to the freaking fairies.
E: Exactly. I was thinking the same thing.
R: And most recently, the the girl who claims to be able to the girl with the x-ray eyes.
E: Oh, yeah. The Ukrainian girl or the Russian?
R: Yeah. They just Weisman and Ray Hyman just tested her in New York. And turns out she doesn't have X-ray eyes.
S: Shock.
R: Go figure.
S: That's an old one, though. They've been debunking it for a long time.
R: Yeah, but they they just had her out in September to New York. You can find the video of it on YouTube, I think. I'll dig up a link and see if we can put it on the link because it's a good one.
S: That's just a peeking trickery. It's always the most ridiculous, stupid thing. We've done a few screenings for the Randy Million Dollar Psychic Challenge. And one was this couple who claimed that they could operate a Ouija board. They could actually spell out cogent answers to questions. And so we screen them. We just wanted them to actually just spell out anything blindfolded. I don't care what the content of what they were doing was. And we properly blindfolded them and videotaped the whole thing. And they could not get the planchette the thing that you hold onto on a Ouija board, to actually land on unambiguously land on a letter, let alone spell out a word. I mean, it was gobbledygook. It was nothing. And all we did was just make sure that they were properly blindfolded.
E: And the excuses started even before the testing began. So right away we knew where this was going.
S: And the wife helpfully offered. We usually just do this with a handkerchief. Oh, I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do. So yeah, it's like any magic trick. You think it's this like real clever tricky sleight of hand or something really sophisticated. It's not. It's the most stupid, simple, ridiculous thing. It's so simple that you won't even think about what it is.
E: Doing those preliminary tests, though, for the JRF million-dollar prize is a lot of fun, though, I must admit. Every time we've done it, I've found it to be, if nothing else, a fun experience.
J: I love the guy that you were testing him for mind reading. And he got tanked, right?
E: He can only do it if he's had like three beers, three or four beers.
J: He got boozed up. It's true. And then he goes, you're thinking that I can't read your mind right now, aren't you? No, no, we're not. We're not thinking that at all, actually.
R: You're thinking I'm crazy. Oh, my God, he can read my mind.
Name That Logical Fallacy (32:05)
- Logical Fallacies
I came across this message on the web a while back. I suppose it is some kind of inspirational message, although it doesn't work very well for me. I thought you might like to use it in one of your 'Name That Logical Fallacy' segments, since it seems to be a pretty typical example of the shoddy reasoning used by a lot of people. One of my (Christian) friends actually thought it was very insightful, which is why I find it interesting: it's something that seems reasonable from a distance, but that perception disappears when you look at the details.
'Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark, and a large group of professionals built the Titanic.'
Thanks,
Peter Murawski
Waterloo, Canada
S: We have another email this week, but this one is a name that logical fallacy. This one comes from Peter Murawski from Waterloo, Canada, and he sends this in. "I came across this message on the web a while back. I suppose it is some kind of inspirational message, although it doesn't work very well for me. I thought you might like to use it in your name that logical fallacy segments. Since it seems to be a pretty typical example of the shoddy reasoning used by a lot of people, one of my friends actually thought it was very insightful, which is why I find it interesting. It's something that seems reasonable from a distance, but that perception disappears when you look at the details." And here's the quote, "Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark and a large group of professionals built the Titanic." So what is the logical fallacy in that statement? There may be more than one, in fact.
E: I need my list up in front of me.
S: Any guesses, any thoughts? Bob? I'm sorry, Bob's not with us this week. Well, there certainly is a pretty glaring premise in there that, in fact, a lone amateur built the Ark. So that's a matter of faith. But even if we grant them that article of faith as a premise, there's other problems. So, yeah, a large group of professionals built the Titanic, but they also built a lot of other ships, too. That's a hasty generalization. So you're taking this one example, the Titanic, and generalizing it to say that, well, if professionals design a ship, that doesn't mean they have any greater chance of seaworthiness than some amateur just throwing something together. So I think that's primarily, there's a major assumption in the premise, but primarily there's a hasty generalization from this isolated example. And quite an unusual example, too.
Interview with Michael Shermer (34:12)
- Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Lecture Series at Caltech, and the co-host and producer of the 13-hour Fox Family television series, Exploring the Unknown. He is the author of In Darwin's Shadow, about the life and science of the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. He also wrote The Borderlands of Science, about the fuzzy land between science and pseudoscience, and Denying History, on Holocaust denial and other forms of historical distortion. His book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, presents his theory on the origins of religion and why people believe in God. He is also the author of Why People Believe Weird Things, a book that was widely and positively reviewed and landed on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list as well as the New Sciences science books bestseller list in England. Dr. Shermer is also the author of Teach Your Child Science and co-authored Teach Your Child Math and Mathemagics.
He is with us to talk about his latest book, Why Darwin Matters.
Dr. Shermer received his B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University, M.A. in experimental psychology from California State Univesity, Fullerton, and his Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate School. Since his creation of the Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, and the Skeptics Lecture Series at Caltech, he has appeared on such shows as 20/20, Dateline, Charlie Rose, Tom Snyder, Donahue, Oprah, Sally, Lezza, Unsolved Mysteries, and other shows as a skeptic of weird and extraordinary claims, as well as on documentaries aired on A & E, Discovery, and The Learning Channel
The Skeptics Society: www.skeptic.com
S: Joining us now is Dr. Michael Shermer. Michael, welcome back to the Skeptics Guide.
MS: Oh, thanks for having me.
S: And for those of you, those two or three people who may not know. Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, director of the Skeptic Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, I think I heard of that journal, the host of the Skeptics Lecture Series at Caltech, and has a long list of skeptical bona fides. He's the author of many books, including his latest book, Why Darwin Matters, which is why he's joining us tonight to tell us about his wonderful new book. So, Michael, why don't we start off with the obvious question that's unavoidable? So why, in fact, does Darwin matter?
MS: Well, Darwin matters because the theory of evolution is the preeminent scientific theory of our age in terms of placing us in nature and in the cosmos at large and where we came from, where we're going the big questions. And since science is the best method we have for understanding the world and Darwin has given us one of the half dozen most important theories and best supported theories of all time, it matters deeply and it influences pretty much everything as we start to apply the theory to politics and economics and literature and personal social life and humans and so on. It's just one of these incredibly interesting and important theories and the fact that it's generated so much controversy, I think, tells us it must be important. Even if you don't believe it, you have to acknowledge it's pretty dang important because it's obviously generated a lot of controversy.
S: Why do you think it has? I mean, we've talked about this a lot on our podcast, but why do you, in your words, why do you think it has generated as much controversy as it has more so than any other scientific theory?
MS: Well, a couple of things. It is the controversy is primarily an American phenomenon. So that tells us that the counter theories, intelligent design or creationism or whatever, can't have anything to do with science because it would be like going to India and discover that they do a completely different kind of physics there. That would alert physicists that there's something weird going on in India, that they're doing some completely different kind of physics. So that alone tells us that whatever intelligent design and creationism is, it isn't science because it's an American phenomenon. It has something to do with politics and our culture and religion especially. So obviously that has something to do with why people don't accept it and what the resistance to it is. I think there's other factors as well that it's not well taught in American schools because of the controversy. So there's just basic fundamental misunderstandings. Pretty much a day doesn't go by that I don't get an email from an evolution skeptic that says, how can you believe that all this is completely random? I always respond, I don't. It's not random. No one ever said it was. If it was random, we wouldn't be here. Or the other popular one, if we came from monkeys and monkeys are still around, how do you explain that? That's what I think. So I think a lot of people just simply don't even know what the theory is. I didn't when I was a Christian and a student of Pepperdine. When I went to Cal State Fullerton for graduate training, just for fun, I took a course in evolution. I was already pretty much on my way out of being religious anyway for other reasons. So I thought I'd take a course in evolution just to see what all the fuss was about. I thought I understood it because I'd read all the creationist literature that told me what it was and then the scales fell from my eyes. I remember sitting there in class thinking, holy moly, this stuff is actually real and this isn't at all what they said it was.
S: It does always amaze me that creationists really think they understand evolution. They are totally oblivious to the fact that they don't understand the first thing about it.
R: Who's your book aimed at? Is it aimed at people who don't know anything about Darwin or who exactly?
MS: Yeah, everybody. I mean in the sense that it's pretty basic. There's a general discussion of what evolution is, although that's not really what the book is about. There's plenty of good books describing evolution, but I'm really trying to reach, I guess on one level, creationists, Christians, conservatives, and so on, just to say really there's nothing to fear here. You don't have to reject it. In fact, there's perfectly good reasons why you should accept it because it's true and here's all the evidence, but more importantly, it really isn't a threat to your deepest beliefs. It doesn't have to be anyway. There's ways to work around that. I guess on one level, we divide the world up into thirds. There's a third, true believers, who will never convert, and a third, skeptics, who already agree with us and already accept science and evolution. It's this vast third, middle third, that hasn't made a behavioral or cognitive commitment one way or the other that we're all after. I think that applies actually in general to everything you guys are doing, we're doing, all the skeptics are doing. It's that middle third that we want to reach.
S: I totally agree with that, but I also think that we serve the function, your book serves the function of educating the skeptical third, because even though you may be generally skeptical and may believe in evolution, it doesn't necessarily mean that you know everything there is to know about it or you can marshal very effective or efficient arguments against creationism. We actually service the skeptical end of the spectrum as well.
MS: Yeah, that's right. Providing ammunition, that's what we try to do at Skeptic Magazine, what you guys do with your work. That's what all the skeptics groups are doing on one level. Here's the answers to the claim. It's one thing to say, oh, those creationists are just religious. Well, so what if they're religious? What if they have good arguments? It doesn't matter if you're religious if you have good data and good arguments. Yeah, all right. What are those arguments? Are they good? No. Why not? Well, here's why. That's actually the longest chapter in Why Darwin Matters is the chapter on what their arguments are and what the explanations or answers to those arguments are.
S: Now, before I forget, I want to mention for our listeners that Dr. Shermer will be appearing in Boston on October 10th at Hall D, the Harvard Science Center. You'll be giving a lecture on Why Darwin Matters beginning at 6 p.m. There'll be a book signing and a reception to follow at the Red Line Restaurant. You can get the details for this on our website. It's actually on the NESS website, theness.com, which you can get to that from the Skeptics Guide website. So if you are in the Boston area on this coming October 10th, you can meet Dr. Shermer for yourself and hear him talk about this live. Well, let me ask you again, Michael. So you say you deal with their arguments. You deal mainly, though, with intelligent design in this particular book, in Why Darwin Matters. But although intelligent design, as we've discussed on this show before, is creationism, it really isn't a different set of arguments, although it has, I think, a different emphasis than, say, creation science. So what are the main things that you deal with on the intelligent design side in your book?
MS: Well, yeah, I think that's well said. In Why People Believe We're Things, I have a couple chapters on the old style creationists and what their arguments are. And these arguments, in principle, are no different. They're still the God of the Gaps type arguments. X cannot be explained by science, therefore X is explained through supernatural intervention, something like that. But the intelligent design arguments are much more sophisticated. I mean, who knows or cares about bacterial blood gelling, for god's sakes? I mean, when I came across these arguments, I could barely remember that from high school biology. Oh yeah, bacterial blood gelling. I mean, I kind of remember that. What the heck is that? And so they're picking new targets, more molecularly based and a little more technical type arguments than the old geology type, flood arguments of the old creationists. So I think the three best arguments they have are the fine-tunedness of the universe, just sort of the bigger cosmological type arguments that the universe seems, in terms of the structures of the laws of nature, seems fine-tuned for life. And so we have perfectly good counters to those. And then more technically on the biological side is this business of irreducible complexity. If you have a complex system with, say, a dozen parts and you remove any one of the dozen parts, then the whole thing doesn't work. So how did the dozen parts come together in a stepwise gradual Darwinian mechanism, which you have part one, then part two, then part three. But you need all 12 at the same time to work. And our simple answer to that is because whatever that structure is you're talking about, it wasn't a poorly designed X, it was a well-designed something else that was later co-opted to become an X. So let's say this bacterial flagellum, in fact, one of their tricks is they'll say something like the bacterial flagellum with all those parts. Well, it turns out there is no V bacterial flagellum. There's a bunch of different kinds. Some are simpler, some are medium complex, some are very complex, and you can see how it could have evolved in a stepwise fashion. Some have one function, some two functions, some three functions. So it could have evolved for one of the functions initially and then co-opted the other uses later. And so it's not fair to look at an organism and say the thing it's doing right now is the thing that it evolved to do originally. And you guys can't explain that with the Darwinian stepwise gradual mechanism, therefore it couldn't evolve. Well, maybe it evolved doing something completely different and only recently did it start using it for that purpose. So that's one of the flaws in their theory there.
S: Yeah, which always makes me think because you have scientists like Michael Behe, who wrote Darwin's Black Box, and he's one of the main proponents of the flagellum as an example of an irreducibly complex structure in biology. Now, this has been pointed out to him. In fact, Darwin marshaled these ideas. This is not a new argument, the idea of co-opting structures that were used for another purpose. Now, what's your personal opinion? Do you think Behe really doesn't understand this, even though it's been so crystal clearly pointed out to him? Or do you think that he gets it but doesn't care?
MS: I think maybe initially he really believed his arguments. I find it hard to believe at this point with all the debunkings that have happened since his book came out almost a decade ago now. Well, it is a decade. There's been hundreds of debunkings. You can go on the web page and type it in there and you'll find all the rebuttals to his arguments. And he continues to make the exact same arguments as if no one ever responded. And then, what really irritates me, they whine and complain that no one gives them any attention. Baloney, these guys are all famous. They're way more famous than almost any living scientist today. Everybody knows who they are. I wouldn't want to be famous for what they're famous for. But everybody knows who they are. They know their arguments. Their arguments have been debunked. And that's what tells me they're not doing science because when all your colleagues say, no, I'm sorry, you're wrong and here's why, you have to respond to that. You can't just ignore it and keep making the same arguments. If you do, you're not going to be invited back to the club meetings anymore.
R: Now, Michael, one of the chapters in your book actually goes into the actual problems that evolution has. Is that right?
MS: Yeah, right. The last chapter, right. Yeah. Well, problems. Well, other interesting problems to solve.
R: Yeah. Right. So why do you think that these people are concentrated on the complete wrong kind of, the things we've answered again and again and again, and they're not even touching anything that could actually be considered an unsolved portion of evolution, of the theory of evolution.
MS: Because they're not doing science. They're not evolutionary biologists. They don't go conferences and debate some of the more interesting problems. They sit on the sidelines and read journal articles and pick them apart, which there's a role for that in science within the club, so to speak. But you can't just say your theory is wrong and here's why. You have to present a counter to it. So, okay, you don't think it happened this way. How do you think it happened? They really have no good answer to any of those challenges that I constantly give them when I debate them in person or on the radio. It's like, okay, if DNA didn't come from RNA, where do you think it came from? The answer is always the same. I don't know. An intelligent designer did it. Well, that's interesting, but how do you know? And don't you want to know how the intelligent designer did it? I mean, what if the intelligent designer used RNA to make DNA? Do you think that's possible? Well, yes, I guess that's possible. Don't you want to know how the intelligent designer used RNA to make DNA? Maybe he used the basic mechanisms of genetic inheritance and so on. When you do that, then you're just doing science. So why even introduce the whole intelligent design component into the formula? It doesn't make any sense at all. It doesn't add anything.
S: Right, because as you say, they're not interested in science. They're not interested in exploration or investigating. They're interested in mystery, and they want to stop right there.
MS: Yeah, and they want to stop at the very place where it gets interesting, right at the point where we really need some new research. They stop and say, well, we're done. There is no more research. The answer is, it did it. Well, no, I'm sorry. It may be true, but it's not science. It's irrelevant. There's nothing to take back to the lab to test. Like in your neck of the woods, I like Lynn Margulis' theory of symbiogenesis, that complex cells came from the simpler prokaryote cells. I think it's interesting as all to get out, and she spent 40 years testing this hypothesis, and I think it's a pretty well-founded theory now. But at least throughout all of that, she kept going back to the lab to test more hypotheses. There was something to do. Now, a lot of people didn't like her theory, and they said it was wrong or whatever, but at least she gave them something to go back to their labs to test. The intelligent design people, they don't do that. They don't give us anything, and I think that's the point, is that it's not science.
S: Right, that's exactly right. That's why it's not science, which is why the whole teach the controversy thing is not legitimate. The idea that we should be teaching evolution and intelligent design or creationism, because it's a scientific controversy, because it isn't a scientific controversy, because intelligent design is not a science. It's not in the game. It's not even in the ballpark.
MS: Yeah, I think it's perfectly legitimate for teachers to review all the critiques and debates within evolutionary theory. I mean, there's lots of really interesting ones. Dawkins and Gould on how much natural selection operates on the individual as the target or the gene or the organism or the group or whatever. That's an interesting debate, but no one's saying that evolution didn't happen in that debate.
S: That's right, yeah, and I think this partly answers the question that Rebecca asked before. Why aren't they harping on the real controversies within evolution? It's because none of those call into question the fact of evolution, just the mode and tempo and the particulars of the history of evolution, but not whether or not life evolved, because that's been answered. There is no mystery. There is no controversy over that.
J: Dr. Shermer, what do you think will happen over the next 20 years or so with the ID issue in schools?
MS: Really, seriously. Well, it'll mutate into something else, and I don't think the issue will go away. They'll continue to tweak their arguments and think up new clever phrases and things like that. I don't hold out hope that we won't have to debate them anymore, but we'll see. I could be wrong.
E: Do you touch base at all on the Dover, Pennsylvania case in the book?
MS: I think the best part of that is the fact that Judge Jones was a Bush-appointed conservative, self-described evangelical Christian, so there's no way anybody can argue that his decision, which completely slammed Dunk the Intelligent Design Movement, he called them liars and a complete waste of taxpayers' money. There's no way anybody could argue, as Ann Coulter does anyway, that this was an activist judge, a leftist judge, one of these liberal judges. No way. He's not. To me, that was a huge blow against their case, although they're backpedaling from that, saying, well, we really didn't want anything to do with that case. Yeah, right. Okay.
S: That was the icing on the cake, the fact that it was a conservative Bush-appointed judge, because it really did remove the only thing they had to whine about, which was fake, but they would have whined about it if they could. You bring up Ann Coulter. She's another great example of their intellectual dishonesty. Now she's going around saying that nobody will debate her and nobody will answer the charges that she had. BS. They just make this up as they go along. It's like, if you say it bold enough, it's ridiculous enough, people will believe it, because nobody would want to believe that you would lie so brashly, but they do. That's the bottom line.
R: Speaking of debating these people, we talked to Eugenie Scott a little while ago, and Genie seems pretty adamant that debating creationists and intelligent design people, that it's useless, but you debate them. It seems like you're debating another one every week. How do you feel?
MS: Well, sort of. I've done a few debates here, and I know that Gould and Dawkins and Genie, they don't think it's a good idea because it gives them recognition. I agree. That's probably true. There's probably a good argument there. On the other hand, open debate and court cases like that force them to put their cards on the table. I say right up front, right in front of everybody, all right, you can teach it in class. What is it you're going to teach? Tell us right now. You have two weeks for the next section on genetics with the high school, junior class in biology. What is it you're going to teach? They sit there slack jaw. They have nothing to say. They have nothing to teach, and they have to say, well, we have nothing to teach. It's like, okay, well, then good. Go away.
S: Basically, you can call their bluff.
J: Rebecca, I saw Dr. Shermer on C-SPAN a couple weeks ago, and I've got to tell you it was pretty cool because he was talking about the 9/11 conspiracy. I learned a couple of things from listening to him, and I thought it was interesting just because people were really calling in with the old argument that, hey, this thing is a conspiracy and everything. I thought you did a very good job answering the questions very politely, and I think that some people listening to the show probably did benefit from it.
MS: I think that's a case of where once somebody on the fringe like that gets a cultural toehold and starts getting attention, which to my utter amazement, I guess I shouldn't be amazed considering my job, but my utter amazement is these 9/11 conspiracy theorists have really gotten a toehold. It's amazing how much media attention they get. Okay, what are the claims? I didn't know any answers. I don't know why buildings fall or what happens when a plane hits a building or what the temperature is of jet fuel. Why would anybody know that stuff? You have to go look it up, and sure enough, they're pretty much wrong. Well, they're not pretty much wrong. They're wrong in every single thing they say, and yet they completely ignore that. I can understand why somebody doesn't like the Bush administration. There's plenty of room for criticism there, but for God's sake, you can't in one breath say he's the biggest boob whoever have it at the White House, and on the other hand, he's the greatest, most sophisticated, complicated, intelligent conspirator of all time. You can't have it both ways.
S: That's the nature of conspiracy theories, but you're right. That's the dilemma activists, skeptics face, any of us who try to educate the public, is that we do not want to bring undue attention to obscure cranks or pseudoscientists by debunking them, but once something is self-perpetuating within the culture like creationism or these 9/11 conspiracy theories, then they definitely need to get skeptical scrutiny. Then I don't think that we're helping them out by addressing them or answering their questions
R: I do have to say that Dr. Shermer does a really great job when you are confronting these people. I've heard you on, for instance, Coast to Coast AM with George Norrie, which is just the biggest carnival of insanity that a person could hope for. You pretty much take all comers and you explain things very patiently, and it seems like they really appreciate that. I do feel like there are a few people out there that maybe you're reaching through that attitude. I think that too often as skeptics, we kind of put ourselves out there a little too aggressively and turn a lot of people off.
S: Not on this show, of course.
R: No, never. Not us.
MS: Well, thank you. Yes, I hope that the approach works. I do cut those guys a little slack, George Norrie and Art Bell and those kinds of shows. If your job is to fill five hours of air time, I don't know how I'd do it every day. They just got to put every whack job on there and let them go on for as long as they want until the next commercial break. This is radio. Let's face it, they've got to make money. I understand why they do that, but somebody's got to respond and that's our job, right?
S: That's right.
E: It is.
S: Well, Michael, it was wonderful having you back on the show again. Thanks for joining us.
MS: Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having me again.
S: Again, for those of you out here there who are maybe in the Boston area, Dr. Shermer will be giving a lecture for us at the Harvard Science Center on October 10th at 6 p.m. You can get details on the website or contact me for more specifics. So, Michael, I hope you'll come back on our show sometime in the future. Probably when your next book comes out, we'll have you on. Hopefully before then.
MS: Any time.
R: Great. Thanks, Michael.
J:' Thank you very much.
MS: Thanks.
R: Bye.
Randi Speaks (56:27)
- The Uncompromising Observations of a Veteran Skeptic
Each week James Randi gives a skeptical commentary in his own unique style.
This week's topic: Business Astrology
S: And now, Randi Speaks.
JR: Hello. This is James Randi. There exists in Denmark a very interesting organization: The International Society for Business Astrology. This group is headed by a woman named Karen Boesen; that's B-O-E-S-E-N if you want to look it up on our website. Karen has been engaged in an ongoing battle for years now with a fellow named Mogens Winther, who is a high-school teacher in Denmark and a frequent correspondent of mine. Perhaps I need not tell you that Mogens is, well, not exactly supportive of Karen's work; in fact, he thinks that astrology, as I do, is just nonsense. I have some correspondence in front of me here that he engaged in with Karen, and some of the claims made by her and by her association are pretty startling, even for astrologers. You see, the work of the ISBA is devoted entirely to the use of astrology in business. They say, for example, that they're able to judge who's suited for a job or not merely by looking at the job applicant's horoscope. Now, that's not so bad; that's what all astrologers say: they can tell these wonderful things by looking at the alignment of the stars with the planets, et cetera. But for the JREF challenge, we wanted to test a rather different quality of astrology. For example, Mr. Winther quoted U.S. astrologer Linda Goodman, who we haven't heard much of lately, as saying that Pisces depend on lies, drugs, or alcohol. That would seem to be something more fundamental that we could examine. But perhaps a little too hairy, because we might have to insult some people. Actually, for the ISBA, the International Society of Business Astrologers, we suggested pitting their abilities against some high-school students in Denmark to see who would do a better job. A Viennese astrologer named Manfred Zimmel decided that he'd take us up on it and we started to make arrangements for a test. Well, a bit of a kink was put in the operation of the ISBA. When the minister of works in Denmark declared that people couldn't be given a job or be kept out of a job based on their horoscope. In fact, it was declared illegal to ask anybody about their star sign and/or what the planets might be doing in the heavens. As Mogens wrote to Karen, "further, the work ethical council is keeping an open eye on business astrology. At least one union has publicly announced that they will take a case to court to test the latter point, as soon as they get any possibility of doing so." And then he asked an interesting question: "why should your stuff"—astrology, that is—"be any better than the old German Reich's phrenology, the pseudoscience judging people by, for example, the distance between their eyes?" There were other factors, too, as Mogens pointed out. The nose profile, the eyebrows, the shape of the fingers, for example. One of the ISBA's astrologers even published a whole paper saying the Capricorns could be recognized on their easily visible overbite; that is, the protruding of front teeth. Course, as he said to Karen, "you will still claim that your pseudoscience, astrology, is the very truth itself, much better off than phrenology or similar stuff. Now this was back in May of 1998. We still haven't heard anything from Mr. Zimmel. What happened to him, I wonder? Why a Karen Boesen herself or perhaps a whole board that she could appoint a committee, perhaps, of astrologers. That sounds powerful, doesn't it? Why they couldn't do it, I really don't know. I tell you these details because you should know how difficult the work of the JREF really is. We have a hard time keeping anybody pointed in the right direction. To get them to stay with the project long enough to get it done seems almost impossible. Now I don't think we'll ever hear from Mr. Zimmel again, nor will we probably hear from Karen Boesen anymore, unless this particular sound-byte gets her excited enough to jump up and down and send something off to Mogens Winther. Ah, but we have some very interesting people coming out. One gentleman says that if you hang a weight on the end of a string, and you put it in front of him... ah, but I see I've run out of time. That'll wait 'til next week. Thanks for the use of the hall. This is James Randi.
Science or Fiction (1:01:38)
Item #1: Researchers are developing a 'protective' virus that they claim with prevent or treat any strain of the flu.[1]
Item #2: As if it did not have enough uses, new research now shows that aspirin is an effective treatment for cancer.[2]
Item #3: New study published in the Journal of Nutrition finds that chocolate chip cookies are as effective as prescription drugs in treating major depression.[3]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | Chocolate chip cookies |
| Science | Flu |
| Science | Aspirin prevents cancer |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| ' | win |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|---|
Evan | Aspirin prevents cancer |
Rebecca | Chocolate chip cookies |
Jay | Aspirin prevents cancer |
Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.
S: Every week I come up with three science news items or facts. Two are genuine and one is fictitious. I then challenge my panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake and of course you all can play along. There is a theme for this week. I've had a theme in a while. The theme of this one is the miracles of modern medicine.
E: Isn't that an oxymoron?
S: You guys ready?
J: Absolutely. Number one, researchers are developing a "protective" virus that they claim will prevent or treat any strain of the flu. Item number two, as if it did not have enough uses, new research now shows that aspirin is an effective treatment for cancer. And item number three, new study published in the Journal of Nutrition finds that chocolate chip cookies are as effective as prescription drugs in treating major depression. Evan, why don't you go first?
Evan's Response
E: Okay, well, mm-hmm. The protective virus against strains of the flu, I think that seems the least probable, but I don't know that that necessarily makes it fiction. Whereas the second one, which is aspirin, is effective in a fight against cancer. That one seems kind of general. Lots of cancers out there. And chocolate chip cookies to treat depression. Okay, I can buy that one. I'm gonna say number two is false.
S: That aspirin can prevent cancer.
E: Yes, I'm sorry. That aspirin can, right. Aspirin is effective for treating cancer. I'll say that is fiction.
S: Okay, Rebecca?
Rebecca's Response
R: I don't know. I kind of feel like that one is so general that it could be true because it's just too general. Like it can help in a lot of different ways maybe. I don't know. I think I'm gonna go with the chocolate chip cookie one because that just seems too obvious.
S: Too good to be true maybe. Okay, Jay?
Jay's Response
J: Well, I would have gone with the chocolate chip cookie ones, but you said it treats major depression.
S: I did say major depression.
J: And I'm not so sure that I'm thinking real quick what's in a chocolate chip cookie the whole bit. I mean, I know they're fun and delicious, but I just don't see that. The protective virus is very intriguing and that's another one of those ones where I want it to be true. It just seems too good to be true. I'm going to go with the aspirin cancer cure as false.
Steve Explains Item 1#
S: Okay, so Evan and Jay, you believe that the aspirin cancer cure is fake and Rebecca, you believe the chocolate chip cookie treating depression is fake. So you all agree that number one is science and you are all correct about number one. This is research led by Professor Nigel Demick at the University of Warwick and he's developing a, this is really a completely new approach of protecting against the flu. It basically involves developing a benign protecting virus that will rapidly reproduce and essentially crowd out an infecting influenza virus. The interesting thing about this is that it's not really specific for any strain of the flu, so it theoretically could treat any strain including the bird flu, H5N1. It also can be given after you've caught the flu. Most vaccines you have to be vaccinated beforehand and they prevent infection and once you're infected it's too late to vaccinate. But this one can work so quickly theoretically that it could actually take effect after the flu has already been caught. So this is a completely new way of approaching this and it's basically using the properties of viruses as a protective effect.
R: That's very cool.
E: That's great. I hope they can develop it.
Steve Explains Item 2#
S: Evan and Jay, you thought you did not buy the aspirin research and that one is also science. The article is therapeutic levels of aspirin and salicylate directly inhibit a model of angiogenesis. So what is happening is that one of the properties of aspirin is inhibiting the formation of new blood vessels which is necessary to when cancers grow they need to feed themselves with by growing new blood vessels and this inhibits that. So this could actually potentially treat any kind of cancer especially those like solid tumors that require angiogenesis or the formation of new blood vessels in order to feed themselves. So it has potentially broad implications and this is not the first thing that we've looked at in terms of inhibiting angiogenesis as a potential treatment modality in certain kinds of cancer. So aspirin is truly an amazing drug. It does some basic things in the body that has potentially a large number of uses.
J: So Steve, should we take daily aspirin?
S: That is an interesting and complicated question. The short answer is unless you have a specific reason to take it you shouldn't and there's actually was some recent studies a recent study which supports that. The problem is is that aspirin also can cause ulcers and it can also stress out your kidney. So the the risk of that actually outweighs the benefits of aspirin unless you have a specific indication to take aspirin as a preventive measure. If you're at high risk if you've already had a heart attack or a stroke if you're either you don't get a high risk for either of those you definitely should take it or something under the direction of your physician something that has an aspirin or aspirin like effect. If you're a healthy 30 year old with no particular risk factors you shouldn't just start taking a daily aspirin for preventive therapy because you're more likely to cause yourself harm than good.
J: So your answer is no. (laughter)
R: Thanks Jay, I was a little lost too.
S: You shouldn't take aspirin on a daily basis on a routine basis unless you have because of the risks of it. If you're going to do that you should ask your physician about it and do it under the direction of a physician so they could walk you through the risk versus benefits.
R: So that's all really interesting but what exactly does that have to do with me winning this week's science or fiction?
Steve Explains Item 3#
S: Now of course this means that number three-
E: It means I have a headache and I'm going for the aspirin now.
S: A new study published in the journal of nutrition finds that chocolate chip cookies are as effective as prescription drugs in treating major depression is fiction. That one is fake. However there was a study just published in the journal of nutrition about chocolate chip cookies.
R: Really?
S: The title is a combination therapy including psyllium and plant sterols which were included in a particular brand of chocolate chip cookies lowers LDL cholesterol. So chocolate chip cookies can lower your cholesterol but this is only the specific brand of chocolate chip cookies in which they specifically added these supplements psyllium and plant sterols in order to you know which they suspected would have a beneficial effect on cholesterol. I do have to note this was one study. It was a double blind study. I mean it is peer-reviewed but this is a commercial product that's being sold by a company.
R: So does that mean we're not going to plug it because I'm really kind of curious now.
E: I'm hungry.
S: We'll have the link.
J: I'm not depressed I want cookies.
S: It'd be nice to see it replicated but it is interesting. I also wonder if you just take these things in pill form of course that wouldn't be nearly as fun as eating chip cookies.
R: You are such a nerd.
E: How many calories worth of cookie do you have?
R: What kind of nerd says I wonder if you can take this chocolate chip cookie in pill form? What's wrong with you?
S: Oh without all the calories.
R: Listen to yourself. Can you hear yourself? Pill form.
S: Just wondering out loud.
R: Dork.
S: All right well congratulations Rebecca.
E: Well done Rebecca.
J: Yeah once again.
E: Your weekly coin flip turned out better than ours.
R: Oh yeah I love that. You guys get it right. I'm sure it's all due to your vast intellect. I get it right. It's a coin flip.
S: One of three of you got it correct. So from my end of the things that's even odd. So I'm just that's random guessing as far as I'm concerned.
R: Oh look at mine-
E: Coin flip.
R: No look at my record. Somebody on the forum had started to collect them I think.
S: And Jay you're at chance level.
J: I'm literally, I am swinging at the fences over here.
E: Why not? Why wouldn't you?
J: I have to admit that I know Steve so well that um that skews the whole thing. The reason why I get it wrong so often is because he's my brother. I know him so well it just throws the whole thing off.
S: You're trying to out-think me. Don't out-think me. Just base on the items themselves.
R: Yeah Jay's problem is clearly thinking too hard.
J: Rebecca you're smarter than me.
R: Oh my god.
J: But I can punch you in the mouth.
R: Did somebody record that? I'd like to see you try to punch me in the mouth. I think we should have a we should have a throw down at some point.
J: A throw down hoedown? Yeah let's get in the ring.
S: Will there be jello involved?
R: No no no I mean gloves.
E: Now that's a calendar.
J: Yeah that's right.
E: That calendar would sell.
J: We could take 12 really good pictures of you and I slugging the hell out of each other.
R: 12 months of me kicking Jay's ass. (laughter)
J: Rebecca each month could be like another another snapshot of the fight as it progresses so no one will really know how it ends until the last month.
R: Here's Jay's teeth flying out of his head.
Skeptical Puzzle (1:11:21)
Last week's Puzzle:
A ash-bark perpetual motion machine was conceived a very long time ago.
Who proposed it?
(Hint: the answer lies within the statement itself.)
Answer: Bashkara
S: Well let's give the answer to last week's puzzle. We have no new puzzle for this week but we're going to re but we're going to give you the answer to last week's. Evan sent this one in. A ash bark perpetual motion machine was conceived a very long time ago. Who proposed it? And he gave the hint the answer lies within the statement itself. Well the answer is Bascara's wheel. Bascara is the guy. Bascara's wheel is the item. This was invented in the eighth century and the hint was that the guy's name is an anagram of a ash bark. B-H-A-S-K-A-R-A. We had one correct entry on that. This was Clint from the message board. Got that one correct. So congratulations Clint. And that is our show for the week.
Quote of the Week (1:12:06)
'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.'- Voltaire
S: As usual we'll leave you with our skeptical quote of the week. This one skeptical quote is "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And that was said by none other than Voltaire. Just a quick reminder before we go. Again October 10th Boston Harvard Science Center Michael Shermer will be giving a lecture on why Darwin matters. If you're in the area please join us. This event is free and open to the public so just show up and bring your friends. Also one more plug. The reason Bob is not with us tonight is because he is putting the finishing touches on his haunted corn maze. That's right Bob runs a haunted corn maze every Friday and Saturday night in October. So if you're in the Connecticut area come check it out. You might run into a skeptical ghost or zombie or two. This is located at Larson's farm on Federal Road in Brookfield Connecticut and we'll have all the details on our website. Well guys thanks again for joining me. A pleasure as always.
J: Word up. Good night Steve. Good night all.
R: Okay thanks Steve for a fun time as always.
E: Yes doctor thank you.
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.
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