SGU 10-Hour Show Part 9

SGU 10-Hour Show
2nd May 2015
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 511                      SGU 512
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
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Part 9: https://youtu.be/Eh70jW1Z8Y8

Interview with Joe Novella continued: (0:00)

Note: This page is not transcribed, but it has been summarized, and statements of the rogues have been paraphrased in order to provide limited searchability. Text is in gray to distinguish it from normal transcription.

Joe: Efficiency when you convert fuel into heat, so there's a lot of efficiencies. Combustion efficiency, how efficiently is that heat getting into the space. So they're one hundred percent efficient.
But electric-resistant heating is expensive. You have to look at how expensive is the fuel? What is the actual dollar per BTU cost of delivering that heat into that living area? You have to look at the whole chain?
Electric-resistive heat is the most expensive way to deliver heat. There's a heat pump, which delivers heat from the air outside and brings it in. It's air-conditioning in reverse. You take heat from outside, and bring it inside. That's the most cost-effective way to bring heat into a space.
A space heater is nice because you can turn off the heat in the rest of your space, and just heat a small area.

S: This was awesome.

''(Joe leaves)''

B: Who we got now?

S: Some guy named, “Phil Plait.”

Interview with Phil Plait: EM Drive, and sci-fi movies (3:49)

PP: I've been watching you all day.

S: I specifically left some things to talk with you. What about space launches?

PP: So, there you guys are. You're all sitting the same way. This is the way things are in these video chats. I look like a glowing light bulb in space.

J: What's on your shirt.

PP: Just my Space X Dragon shirt.

J: I'm dying to know, are you going to see the Star Wars movie?

PP: I liked 8-Millimeter. I've learned now that after 8:30 at night, it's useless for me to do anything. I watch movies. I watched Star Trek into Darkness.

B: Why?

PP: It's worse than I thought.

J: It's a total piece of shit.

PP: I liked Fringe. There's some stinkers in it, but they're few and far between. It's not like I hate Abrams, but the past few movies haven't been the best things. I'm just not that into Star Wars. I'm a Star Trek guy.

J: Me too, but it's like having two children. You love them both.

PP: I watched Star Wars in the theater when it came out. I liked it, it just never resonated with me the way a lot of other movies have. Sorry.

S: This is a competition for Space X. Why does the launch vehicle look exactly like a penis.

PP: You're thinking “phallic.” 

S: It has to be deliberate.

PP: Look, I Tweeted about this after the Launch.

J: Hold on, we're having technical problems.

S:We're back. That's the first hiccup.

J: We're back.

PP: Wow, no Tweets making fun of that conversation.

S: People want to know about the EM drive.

B: Yeah, what the Hell is going on with this?

PP: This is using physics and engineering that I have never really studied. Beam radio waves inside a resonant chamber and going faster than light? Engineers are using terms like “fertilizer.” What comes out of the south end of a north-facing cow? That's probably true.

Apparently, what I've seen is that some people are saying the results have been very sloppy. I'm distressed. These tests are being done by one team, and a lot of the report is very credulous. They're not saying it breaks all the laws of physics. The media that's covering this is saying NASA says they have a faster than light drive. NASA never said this! I want repetition, an independent team examining this device, because it violates relativistic laws.

B: Why hasn't NASA said anything?

PP: I don't speak for NASA. I know some people. I haven't talked to them about this. But honestly, what are they gonna do? You're paying these people to do this research, then they start shooting their mouths off. Plus, they went to a great forum to announce this. But that's how you make your announcement? When you do that, you know what's gonna happen. This whole thing is a mess. I don't believe it. I need a lot more evidence for it. You're talking about something so huge you might as well say you've discovered time travel.

There are other groups working on similar drives getting their day in the sun as well.

S: This is like a free energy machine. We would need the same level of evidence to take it seriously.

PP: To apply the skeptical mind set to life is great, but in a card trick, the level of skepticism I will apply is different from violating the laws of physics.

S: I've been enjoying your Crash Courses in astronomy.

PP: Thank you, I just submitted another script today. 

B: Your camera is super-high res.

PP: This is just a Logitech HD camera.

J: Phil, our background is cooler than yours.

PP: Do you have a solar telescope? Oh, you have a batleth. 

S: I own one, and I tried to wield it as a weapon. It has too much torque. But you have to be a Klingon in order to wield it.

PP: On the show, it must have been aluminum. Is that steel?

S: Steel, yes. So, Crash Course Astronomy.

PP: Hank and John Green. An educational video series on government, health, biology, chemistry, math. There's so many now. Last year at ComicCon, I was approached, and they asked if I want to do an astronomy one. So that was great. Derek Muller from Veritasium was talking about it. So, it was this all online science video people getting together. It was a no-brainer.

So we're doing 46 episodes, 10 minutes each. It's like taking an astronomy class, but keeping it short. It's been hard. These scripts are about 2000 words. You can write that in an afternoon, but they won't be very good words. Steve can do it ... But you have to write it, edit it, and 2000 words to cover an entire topic.

Mars: Here's an entire planet that we've been studying for a thousand years, and I've got ten minutes.

So the idea is, if you're interested, you can learn stuff, but if you're taking classes, it's supplemental. It's a huge amount of fun.

J: Phil, producing content like that, you're enticing people to learn more about the subjects. You really just want to capture.

PP: Of course, it's called Crash Course Astronomy. And it's on the web, so there can be links. Sometimes when I post a video on the blog, I can add more info.

S: You can use different social media to complement each other. I talk about my blog posts on the shows, and treat them different ways. I have a very classy commentariat on my blog.

PP: Like anything else,  you ignore the comments that say anything ridiculous. The other fun thing is writing a blog post is different than scripting something you're going to say. You can put two words together in a blog, but you can't say it. Like, you can't say “Crash Course.” But it's fun. The people behind Crash Course, these are really good people. They're really young. They're devoted to this. Their slogan is “Don't forget to be awesome.”

They're telling you, when you get up in the morning, do good, do stuff. I come home and go, “Holy cow! What am I gonna do to make the world a better place?” It's wonderful.

J: That is awesome. You have that too. Your attitude about learning is inspiring. You are one of my favorite scientists in the world!

B: Plus he gave us dilithium crystals. Wait, is that a secret?

PP: It was dilithium crystal snapped off a set. I said “I'm gonna steal something,” and he snapped something off.

J: That was a really cool gift. We'll talk Star Trek for thirty seconds. Are you original series or Next Gen?

PP: I like Star Trek! I don't have a favorite. I can rank them ... but even Voyager, which was basically Gilligan's Island in space. Voyager had some extraordinary episodes.

B: Some of the Borg episodes were fantastic.

PP: Jerry Ryans was great, and he's a huge science Dork. Enterprise was hit or miss. The Xindi arc was kind of painful, but the fourth season was one home run after another. I love the Original Series, and I love Next Gen. Oh, there you go!

''(Bob is holding up a model Borg Cube for some reason)''

PP: Where'd you get that?

B: eBay I think. This was the coolest Borg Sphere I could find.

PP: What's it made off?

B: Plastic. If you shine light, it glows green. 

PP: You can't see behind me, but I've got a globe or Mercury, and the Earth. I've got my poster for the original Airplane movie, and that's it.

J: That movie was great.

S: I saw it with my daughters. It was great.

PP: It doesn't quite work for people today. We watched it again recently, and I thought we were gonna have to defib her she was laughing so hard ''(his child)'' The sequel was the same jokes.

Jerry Zucker started the Science and Entertainment exchange, which brings scientists and Hollywood types together. If your movie has science in it, or games, they get everybody together, and they try to improve the portrayal of science. I love this group.

When you talk to writers, and they're going to make a movie about a solar flare that boils the atmosphere. They go, “I didn't know that!” You can see the gears go off in their head. When they learn the real science, I never tell them, “You can't do that.” But if you can inform the story with more science that they might not have known, I love that.

Sean Carol, he was an adviser for Thor. He said to make Natalie Portman into an astrophysicist because she's looking for a wormhole.

S: Not a nurse?

PP: Jerry Zucker, and his wife and daughter, they're doing all kinds of stuff. I love seeing these media trying to do better.

S: Well, Phil, it's a great pleasure talking to you. We're already winding up the show. We'll get you back on the show sometimes soon.

PP: Do we know how many times I've been on?

J: I think you've been on at least ten to fifteen times.

PP: Tenth anniversary. Julia mentioned that this was the tin or aluminum anniversary. I didn't know where tin came from. Where does tin come from?

S: The Earth? I have a vague memory that it's horrible to get. It's a by-produce of iron smelting.

E: It doesn't occur in veins like other ...

PP: I'm an astronomer, right? It comes from supernovae. You have nuclei of atoms floating around, and they capture protons. But they also come in high mass stars as a by-product of all the fusion, and it gets blown away by red giants. So, planetary nebulae are blowing out quite a bit of tin. When the star explodes, it releases more.

J: So a star had to die to wrap my sandwich.

PP: Well, that's true of everything in the sandwich too. It's a linear regime from massive star exploding to podcasting.

E: So supernovas are responsible for the Kardashians too.

S: Thank you Phil.

J: See you soon!

''(Interview ends)''

SGU's award: (40:00)

S: All right, hang on. I have a couple things we gotta do. Do you guys know what this is? This is our 2015 podcast award in the category of science. This is our fifth one. Fourth in science, one in education. I want to thank our listeners. It's a fantastic way to support us. This one was very meaningful to us because there were so many good podcasts that we competed with, but our listeners voted for us.

The SGU is going through some changes. Rebecca left, and we're changing a little bit. Thank you. And here is our last in studio guest.

Interview with Jocelyn Novella (Steve's wife) (41:40)

(Exact transcription follows)

Joc: I'm another one of those Novellas.

E: But you weren't always a Novella.

Joc: I wasn't. I was a Hididean.

S: This is my wife, Jocelyn.

E: That's right! Jocelyn.

S: This is your ...

E: I knew you looked familiar. In all those wedding pictures with Steve.

S: first interview on the show. Ten years ...

Joc: Ten long years of marriage ...

S: Maybe eventually you'll listen to an episode.

Joc: Maybe I will!

(Laughter)

J: My god!

Joc: That's the stuff I usually filter.

S: I see.

Joc: I don't listen to the show, that's usually filtered.

S: But seriously, I wanted to bring you on to talk about ...

Joc: Out of pure guilt?

S: Out of pure guilt.

Joc: Or it's in our own basement?

S: That actually is true. She actually sacrificed her basement and allowed the masses to descend upon our homes so we could have our studio down here and do this. So, thank you sweetie.

(Laughter)

S: But I did want to ...

Joc: Love of my life.

S: talk about ... light of my life ... your area of expertise. You're a counsellor.

Joc: Yes.

S: So you talk to crazy people. We don't use the c-word though.

Joc: We don't use the c-word.

E: Use the n-word? Nuts?

(Jocelyn laughs)

Joc: Vernacular? Nuts?

S: So tell us a little bit about your area of expertise.

Joc: Well, we've talked a lot about the fact that there's a lot of mental health woo out there ...

S: Yeah, quite a bit.

Joc: unfortunately. And I'm not here necessarily to defend the field, because there is a ton of mental health woo, but I would say that the trick with counseling and therapy, and I'm sure many of you have been to therapy, but the trick with it is that if somebody came in, and you actually said, “Oh, okay. You were abused by your uncle, and so you have post-traumatic stress,” right, from being abused.

And I, as a therapist brought out my tome of, “Here's the protocol for what you do when somebody has post-traumatic stress,” right? And this is how they do research on it, is they run a protocol, and it's very exact, with a large number of people, and they get a clinical result, and that's how they show that. But the problem is that if you did that, and you said, “So this is what's been proven in the research to be effective. And let's sit here and go through session one, session two, session three.” What do you think the response would be if somebody who's having panic attacks every day and isn't sleeping, and having flashbacks from PTSD?

J: What their response would be to what?

S: To textbook ...

Joc: To that therapist, that therapeutic style.

E: Forget it!

J: They probably wouldn't agree.

Joc: Forget it.

E: Not for me, thanks.

Joc: So, therein lies the rub, is that you can't do, unless you're doing a research trial, and your client knows that they're engaging in a research trial, and that's what they're there for. As a therapist in this field, or I work in a college campus, therapy becomes a combination of an art form, and the science. So what's evidence-informed, and the relationship, which is the number one most important thing in therapy. But that's not like, “Do A, B, and C,” and you're gonna have a good relationship with your client.

S: You're not fixing a computer.

Joc: No.

S: But that makes it very challenging to be evidence-based or science-based therapist.

Joc: It does!

S: Because as you said, the relationship is probably some massive percentage of any therapeutic effect.

Joc: That's the most important.

S: So if you're good at establishing a therapeutic relationship with your client, you could wrap that around any bullshit ...

Joc: Yeah

S: and it will seem to work.

Joc: Exactly, and that's what happens with the Sandy Hook Newton situation. As soon as something happens where you're gonna have a lot of post-traumatic stress, you're gonna have a lot of people suffering, then people descend with all their woo treatments ...

E: Sure

Joc: that have absolutely no basis in research, but they just say, “Hey, this works!” And so, people are so hungry ...

E: For anything.

Joc: for feeling better; and with the placebo effect, and with the relationship, it's a really nice person, they're trying to help me. They feel like, “Hey, I'm getting better. That's actually helping.” But in the mean time, somebody's making a lot of money on it.

J: Yep

Joc: They are always selling their trainings. If they don't sell the actual therapy sessions, then they sell the trainings to other people. So in Newton, they're using this tapping technique, which is all tapping on acupuncture points.

E: Oh, meridians?

Joc: And while you tap, I don't know where you tap, tap anything. I don't know where they are, but you tap, and at the same time you say things to yourself that's sort of like ...

S: Small enough?

J: You tap yourself?

Joc: You tap yourself.

(Jay makes a bunch of gobbledy noises, then laughs)

S: To me, that's like eye movement desensitization, where you imagine whatever you're stressed out about, while you move your eyes back and forth, there's always that extra added bit that's completely unnecessary.

Joc: Right

S: It's like you have to have the cognitive therapy, the relationship behavioral therapy, plus some candy-coated bullshit, but that becomes the marketing thing, right? Eye movement desensitization therapy, or tapping therapy, or whatever therapy. No! It's just, you're just repackaging cognitive behavioral therapy over and over again with different marketing ...

J: That's ...

S: schemes.

Joc: With trauma, the whole thing is most effective treatment is prolonged exposure therapy ...

S: Yeah

Joc: right? So some of the times like with the MDR, you're doing this thing with your eyes that the client is so focused on what they're doing with their eyes, that in the meantime they're retelling the story of what happened. That's exposure therapy.

S: Yeah

Joc: That's already been proven to work.

S: Right

Joc: So, rather than moving their eyes ... the only thing it can do is it distracts them from the horror of retelling the story ...

E: Okay

Joc: and they can retell it.

S: It's exposure therapy with some distracting technique.

Joc: With some distracting technique.

S: The thing that drives me ... if they were honest about it, I wouldn't care.

Joc: Yeah

S: If it's just a gimmick to distract them while you do the exposure therapy, that's fine; but when you read articles about, “It's causing the brain to ...

Joc: Yes, yes.

S: reprocess the information,” it's like, no! That's all nonsense!

Joc: Yep

S: They're just, that's when it's annoying. Or like the acupuncture points.

J: So this is ...

S: There's no reality to that whatsoever.

Joc: I've gone to workshops where people say, “We don't know how,” - and this is with the (unknown) therapists. “We don't know how it works, but it works!”

S: But what's “it,” that's the thing.

Joc: That's distressing, whether it's tapping ...

S: But I mean, like you say, it's exposure therapy, it's cognitive therapy, that's what's working; but you're ...

Joc: Yeah

S: saying it's the tapping that's working.

Joc: Yes

S: You haven't established that the tapping is what's working. Before you say, “We don't know how it works,” you have to figure out if it works.

Joc: Yes

S: And that's all about controlling variables, which is what they're not doing.

Joc: Which is what they're not doing.

J: So, you're saying

Joc: Which is very hard to do.

S: It's hard to do, but ...

J: These people that are doing this, so let me try to ... I'm not getting the whole picture here. Are people coming up with these other modalities or whatever, and then professionals like you, some people buy into it and start doing it?

Joc: Oh, totally!

J: That's the problem, right? So there's no ...

Joc: That's the problem.

J: So you're saying there's not enough skepticism in your field.

Joc: There isn't, but what I'm saying is it's so challenging because part of what you do is really an art form. It's like an interpersonal art form.

S: Yeah

Joc: And when you have that much creative license as a person, then that tends to make you freer. You're not following a protocol. It's not like other sciences I guess you would say.

S: The other end of the spectrum.

Joc: It is a science, but it's got this creative component that makes people feel like, “I can pretty much do anything!” You know what I mean? And sometimes they do! And you go back to repressed memory, there really wasn't any evidence for that, but people are feeling better.

If I told somebody that the research showed that if they did ten jumping jacks at the end of the day, if I had a good relationship with them, and they really trusted me as their therapist, and I sold it ...

J: Yeah

Joc: Like this is gonna make you feel less depressed, then nine times out of ten, they're gonna come in, and they're gonna at least temporarily ...

S: At least temporarily. There's also the novelty factor.

Joc: Yeah

S: And there's research that shows that you introduce anything novel into the therapeutic relationship and the people this, “Oh! There's something new and interesting happening.”

Joc: Right, right.

S: “This is gonna do something.”

J: So what are you gonna do about it?

(Jocelyn laughs)

Joc: What, are you challenging me now? I was just gonna come on the show, talk about it and leave.

J: You are married to and related to a powerful activist, and I wanna know what you're gonna do.

Joc: Believe it or not, the people in my office happen to know me as the skeptic in the office ...

J: Good, yeah

Joc: and whenever somebody comes in with some kind of wackadoodoo idea, like tapping was brought up, and things like that, I'm always the first one. They all know snopes.com ...

E: Oh yeah, that's good.

Joc: I've got the whole office. Some of them listen to the show. But it's a huge, huge problem.

S: Yeah

Joc: This is outside of the research and psychology field. It's in the private practice field where you just have individuals who get trained, who get licensed, and then they're doing whatever the eff they want, basically.

S: It's not qualitatively different than any field of medicine. It's just maybe quantitatively different, meaning there's maybe ...

Joc: I think it's qualitatively different.

S: Because, again, all medicine is already science. It's all, you're taking protocol, then you're individualizing it to the patient. And the individualization has a lot of subjectivity and judgment ...

Joc: Yeah ...

S: involved. If my patients tell me they're having a symptom, you can't just look it up and know what it means. You have to put it into context and know how significant it is, and how the way in which the patient is telling you about it tells you some nuanced, subtle things.

Joc: But you're always thinking of mechanism ...

S: Yeah

Joc: and what leads to that. In counseling, you can't get bogged down in mechanisms. It's so complex ...

S: Yeah

Joc: human psychology, that you can't get bogged down in mechanism-response all of the time. You know what I mean? Otherwise, you never get anywhere. You gotta go with developing that connection, and that's just a creative, artistic sort of process. And I think it is qualitatively different, but I still think it's a science.

S: Yeah

Joc: I don't think you can say that we can leave the science part of it behind. That's what a lot of people are unfortunately doing. And the thing that really pisses me off is when people are really suffering, and they're Sandy Hook people ...

S: Yeah

Joc: They're people who have gone through tragedy and somebody throws something at them that is based on absolutely nothing: That pisses me off.

J: Yeah

Joc: It makes the whole field ...

J: I know!

Joc: It makes the whole field look bad, and these people are truly emotionally suffering.

J: Yeah

Joc: And they're just making stuff up.

S: Yeah

J: It's just like every other pseudoscience that treats anything.

Joc: Yeah

J: You're taking up their time, energy, and money ...

Joc: Yeah

J: away from real treatment.

Joc: Right

J: Proven treatment.

Joc: Right

S: Also, you mentioned, all right, they're getting a positive placebo effect from the therapeutic relationship, and then the bullshit's incidental, that's the most benign form of it, although they are instilling I think pseudoscientific bizarre notions. But some of the therapies are not benign.

Joc: No.

S: Sometimes they're doing things which are actually harmful.

Joc: Right

S: For example, with post-traumatic situations, sometimes you can make people worse by forcing them to relive their trauma.

Joc: Right, it has to be done in the right way. So absolutely. You can make people much worse, or convincing people something is gonna work, and then depression or the anxiety or whatever it is comes back, and now they've lost their trust in you, and you were the only person that they really were holding on to. So it's ... I'm workin' on it. I'm workin' on it.

J: It's overwhelming for some one in your position because you're operating probably alone as the skeptic and as a person that understands the science.

S: But you know, one person in every group who has the skeptical voice has a huge impact, because otherwise if it wasn't there at all, they would just be totally cut loose to fantasy-land, you know?

(Laughter)

J: Joc, I will leave you with one of the most important science fiction statements of all time. “In every revolution there one man – or woman – with a vision.” (Austrian accent) You can do it!

(Laughter)

Joc: You're supposed to go off and ...

S: All right, sweetie.

J: That's a beautiful scarf you have by the way.

Joc: Yeah, you got it for me.

J: I did. Looks gorgeous. (Jocelyn laughs) I love you Joc.

Joc: I love you guys too.

S: Thank you, sweetie.

Joc: All right, enjoy the rest of your show!

J: You'll have your house back in sixty-one minutes.

E: We'll put the bean back up and everything.

S: You missed it.

Joc: You missed it.

(Jocelyn leaves)

S: It's time for our last interview with Richard Saunders.

E: I'm gonna swing over to Jay's side.

S: Our transcontinental podcast

Interview with Richard Saunders: (56:13)

S: Mr. Saunders!

''(Richard's mouth moves, but no sound can be heard)''

S: Thank you. Isn't it cool? You're jealous. I know you're jealous.

RS: It took me years to make this one.

S: What time is it there for you?

RS: It's just one 11AM on Sunday. That was wonderful.

S: So what have you been up to?

RS: It's been an interesting time in Australia. One of the things that we follow is really starting with Dr. Rachie, and recently followed up is our continuing efforts to promote science and reason by getting parents to get their children vaccinized, I mean immunized. On a purely personal point, last year, I launched a documentary called The Vaccination Chronicles, based on old people who had relatives die from vaccine-preventable illnesses. 

It's taken on a life on its own. I've been asked to make a Swedish version. They sent me the Swedish subtitles. They gave it to all the people at their recent convention. The week before last, a mention of it came up on my feed, and some people have dubbed it into Russian. 

J: I want to see a clip of that.

RS: just Google that. That is just to get the message out. From the outset ...

Part 10