SGU Episode 735

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SGU Episode 735
August 10th 2019
"An iconic robot ready to assist in a vintage sci-fi adventure!"
SGU 734                      SGU 736
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
"Researchers work not knowing when or where the big breakthroughs will come, or if they will ever come. That does not diminish their persistence and rarely affects their passion in the long term, although it may test their patience from time to time."
- Ian William Chubb AC FAA (born 17 October 1943) is an Australian neuroscientist and academic, who was the Chief Scientist of Australia from 23 May 2011 to 22 January 2016
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Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

Voiceover:You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality. Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 7th, 2019, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody. Cara Santa Maria. Howdy. Jay Novella. Hey guys. And Evan Bernstein. Good evening, folks. Jay, you're Skyping in from Colorado. That's right, I am on a family vacation.

US#01:I have my sister-in-law and her family live out in Colorado, so, you know, we usually see them over the holiday, but we decided, you know, let's take the kids on like a nice summer break.

S:And you know, I'm mostly working. This is for the kids. So one cool thing, I think now, you know, my birthday is coming up, and I think that my wife is going to take me to do indoor skydiving. Oh, fun! Indoor.

J:Oh man, I'm jealous. Better pull that chute quickly as you head to the ground. It's not far to go. Is that going to help you work your nerves up to doing real skydiving? Oh, I'm not going to go real skydiving. I mean, why would I hurl myself out of a perfectly fine airplane and test the limits of textiles and the fact that the person that may or may not have packed the parachute correctly, like, no way. I could do it indoors and I have virtual reality.

E:I don't need any of that. Yeah, they put you in a glass container, right? It's exhilarating, man.

C:Real one's exhilarating. Yeah, Bob, you did a tandem jump. But I wouldn't do it again. You would not do it again. You wouldn't? Oh, interesting.

J:So it didn't hook you. Bob, did you feel more alive when you were falling down to earth? More alive? I felt closer to death. But it was intense. It was, man, my adrenaline was going. And I remember that point, the point in time where I'm like, OK, I'm going to really do this. And that's when I was at the, my legs were hanging off the plane.

B:Off the plane, looking down 10,000 feet, I'm like, why did I make this decision?

C:But then I'm like, all right, the guy that's attached to me, I asked him, how many jumps have you made?

U:2,300.

B:Simulator. 2,300 jumps. It's got a secondary chute. And if we both pass out, it was activated automatically by an altimeter. It's just like, it was probably safer than driving to the place where I jumped out of the plane. So I did it. Thanks for watching! Yeah, it's at least one out of 2,300. It's probably more. Or less. More. Depending on what you're talking about, yeah. Less people that you're going to die. Remember, I think my dad told me, who was this?

S:There were people that packed parachutes for the army, I think, and they made them randomly use the parachutes that they packed to make sure that they, you know, hey, you might be using this parachute you're packing tomorrow.

C:That's a good idea. So I think as a quality control measure, for some reason that didn't make me feel good, it just kind of horrified me.

S:So they had to do that?

J:Like they had to make these people use these parachutes? Like they weren't doing a good enough job? Like what? Oh, I see. No, I think it's probably just put your own life on the line. That's some good motivation. Pack your chute as if your own life depended on it.

E:Evan, what was it? How many years ago was that? The MIT event was 19 years ago.

S:We also brought him in for a Yale event 20 years ago.

J:1999, he came and spoke at Yale, which was really a fantastic lecture and sold out that auditorium. Yeah, that was a great talk. Yeah, that was that was my first experience or have actually having met Randy got to sit next to him at dinner. It was like, up to that point, like the highlight of my skeptical career by far. Wait, and that means he was already 71. Yeah. Yes. Wow.

E:Yeah, I've seen him. I've seen him speak multiple times. And it's always so impressive. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. He weaves in magic, which he's so good at. Even when he's doing really simple, dumb little tricks, he just makes them so entertaining. You know, he's a hero here in LA at the Magic Castle. Oh gosh. You see pictures of him on the walls, people talk about him. He's obviously a Lifetime member.

C:He's part of their pantheon, no doubt about it. Well, Randy, if you're listening, thank you so much. You were and have been a major influence on us.

S:He was in our minds and had affected us greatly when we decided to start the podcast.

C:He was already a huge part of our skeptical journey. It was him and Carl Sagan, for me. Randy brought a level of charm to this whole thing.

J:I remember Randy talking about, he did this stunt where he ate a whole bottle of sleeping pills, but they were homeopathic sleeping pills. Oh yeah. And I remember him joking around, going, night tall. Nothing to worry about here. The one thing he said, the visual of this was just so perfect. He said, there would be one molecule of active ingredient if you ate an entire swimming pool of these pills. One molecule of active ingredient. Right. One molecule, yep. Yeah. So you're basically finding a pool full of sugar water, and you will get one molecule of whatever the thing is they say is going to make you sleep. And that's the other funny thing, is he said, and it does the opposite, right? It's caffeine! But don't forget, don't forget, you shouldn't do that anyway, because you never know what kind of quality control they had in creating that, and who knows what other types of weird stuff might be in there. Yeah, it might be adulterated with actual drugs. Yeah, I would not trust homeopathic manufacturers. Nope. Not one bit. Make them yourself if you feel the need to do it. Just as good. Yeah. All right. Well, we have some great news items for you guys. We're going to start with video game violence.

News Item #1 - Video Game Violence (06:50)

• None 

J:We're going to start with video game violence.

B:Unfortunately, this is in the news again. We're recording this after a weekend that saw two mass shootings, one in El Paso, Texas, one in Dayton, Ohio.

S:Always, of course, a very tragic, sad event. But what's more sad, in my opinion, is the political shit show that follows all of these mass shootings with people making just not evidence-based claims. I do want to do a side point here and talk about the most common logical fallacy that crops up, and it's what I call the real cause fallacy, right? It's when people go, no, the real cause or the real issue is... The real issue is mental illness, that's what they always say. Which is, it's always a, you know, it's prematurely or artificially narrowing the range of possibilities. Sure. We're presenting a complex multifaceted phenomenon as if it's completely dominated by one thing. As an analogy, Evan, I know you remember when we missed our plane coming home from Dragon Con, right? So we're just playing Atlanta. And we missed the gate by two minutes. And there was at least 10 things that delayed us that morning. And of course, which one of those 10 things made us late? They all did. They all did. But it's more fun to blame Bob. But there's no basis. If it weren't for this one thing, we would have made the plane. And of course, this is very, very common after the 2016 election with people making claims that the real reason that Donald Trump won the election is like, You can't say that. It's a complex phenomenon with multiple factors contributing to it. So what causes mass shootings in the United States? There is no one real cause. It is a complex phenomenon with multiple things contributing to it. But there are things that make the United States different from other nations. Yes. You can't say what is different about the U.S. than other nations, absolutely. But even then, there's no one thing that you could say is the one cause. That doesn't mean that there aren't things that we could do about it. That's a different question, which we're not going to get into. Often the specter of video game violence is raised as sort of the real cause of these events are this culture of violence, you know, typified by media and, you know, the video games that are out.

C:These kids today are playing their violent video games.

S:That's the real problem. I just want to dive into the question of, so what is the evidence? What is the current state of the evidence? With regard to, is there an association and can we make any causal statements between watching, playing violent video games and aggression, violence, whatever, right? And I think you probably can guess my short answer is it's complicated. It's not no, it's not no, Cara. Interesting. It's complicated. It depends on what exactly question you're asking and how you're asking it. Okay. Like any social psychological question, and you know this Cara, there's going to be multiple ways you can approach this. Like for example, how do you define an aggressive video game or a violent video game? Does it have to be first person shooter? Does it count if it's third person? Does it have to involve death? Are you counting just the act of killing things?

C:Is it only killing people?

S:What if you're killing only robots? Does the amount of gore matter? Does it matter if you're a good guy or a bad guy in the game that you're playing? Does it matter if it's PVP versus against an AI? And now we can ask, does it matter if it's virtual reality or not? So you could parse that up so many different ways. And then you have to ask on the other end, what are you counting as aggressive behavior or as aggression? On the part of the person who's playing or engaging in video game violence. Do you count aggressive ideation? Do you just count aggressive language? Does it have to be aggressive behavior? Does it have to be physically aggressive behavior? Or how about criminal behavior or behavior that results in harm? Where do you draw the line? Now, if you look for correlations between video game violence and measures of aggression, markers of aggression, which are mostly answering surveys about how you feel, what would you do, etc., etc., but some studies may put subjects in a situation and see how they respond, like give them an opportunity to be aggressive and see if they are aggressive. And you may be surprised to hear that there is a pretty solid correlation between video game violence and markers of aggression. I know that you said some is self-report and some is like some sort of like actual experiment, but is that immediately after playing or just people who on average play? So that's another way to parse it out. Short term versus long term. How long do you have to play? How long does the effect last? So we'll say systematic reviews have found that pretty much any way you look at it, short term versus long term, first person versus third person shooter, that there is a correlation between playing, engaging in video game violence, and increased aggression, decreased empathy for the victims of aggression, and decreased pro-social behavior. Interesting. But there's a big but coming. It's a huge but. It's a huge but. It's a huge but. There is a separate school of thought. There's basically dueling researchers, right? So I just gave you the consensus of opinion about that body of literature. But there are researchers who are led by one, championed by a researcher called Ferguson, who says that Wait a minute, hold your horses now. Even if that's true, you're not doing these studies correctly. And he's saying that there's only an effect there when you include mild forms of aggression, like verbal aggression. That when you look at actual physical aggression like going out and hurting somebody or committing a crime, he says the correlation essentially decreases the more significant the threshold of aggression and it's basically zero for criminal activity or hardcore aggression. That's huge right there. That's something. Think about that. I mean, throw in aggressive language. Oh boy, look at that connection. I mean, come on. You can't extrapolate from that to committing a crime, right? Well, and also, this is correlational research. There's no way to know if it's, oh, this is causal? It's both. It's both correlational and experimental. That's an excellent point, but there's also experimental data where you just randomize people, you play this sim game, you play this shooter game, and then what do you think about this over here?

B:And then people have more markers of aggression, but not actual physical aggression.

C:And he says, if you include proper controls, this is a more nuanced point.

S:But if you have, like, for example, he did a study of 3034 youths and... But this is in Singapore. There is a little bit of cultural effects here as well. It's more for Caucasians, less for Asians, and non-existent for Hispanics. So that's interesting. That's really interesting. Yeah. So he says if you use more active controls, so he says he used theoretically relevant controls like prior aggression, poor impulse control. And then he also compared it to non-relevant controls, like nonsense controls, and then compared the correlations. Like, is there more of a correlation with relevant controls, like prior aggression, than there is with nonsense controls? Brown hair! Yeah, and he found that there was not a statistically significant difference when you used that kind of control. And what he did say is that in order to produce, if you extrapolate from his data, in order for the effect to become statistically significant, that people would have to play M-rated games, rated M for Mature, right? M-rated games 27 hours a day, which obviously is not good. Well, if you're traveling, if you're flying towards the sunset in a jet, that's possible. Yes. And you don't have to sleep. So Steve, so Steve, if you actually could get some replication on these experiments, I think that would be really powerful, wouldn't it? Thank you so much for joining us today. And without a consensus emerging in the middle.

B:So, I think that Ferguson makes a compelling point, and at the very least you have to say, there's no evidence leaking video game violence to mass shooting, right?

S:There's consensus on that, right? Well, yeah, there's consensus that there's no evidence for it. But what the other side will say, the side that says there's a strong correlation is, well, we haven't looked for it. What we need to do is more research where we look specifically to see if these correlations that we are finding hold up when you try to extrapolate to things like engaging in mass shooting or whatever. We may never know that, though. Yeah, so I think my take on everything is that if you look at all the evidence, including what the two sides are saying, there's definitely a correlation and probably a causation that if you are engaging in violent activity in a video game, it probably ramps up your aggression for a while. And if you do it on a regular basis, it probably does key you up to some extent, but The evidence suggests this does not translate into actual criminal or problematic behavior, and certainly there's no evidence that it rises to the level where you're going to go out and kill somebody because you've been shooting people in video games. So you can't at this point in time, certainly, Say that it's a dominant factor in why there are mass shootings. That claim is completely beyond any evidence and is probably contradicted by the evidence that we do have. And of course, that's the relevant question when it's brought up. Oh, these mass shootings are happening because of so much video game violence and movie violence and media violence or whatever and role playing games, whatever. And the thing is, You'll only ever have correlational data on that. This is not the kind of thing that we can manipulate and look for outcomes on. And the truth of the matter is, there's probably no way to know if people who tend to be more violent tend to play more violent video games. And even on the flip side of that, if these video games may be serving as an outlet for many people and reducing physical violence. Right? That's true. I have another point.

C:I've played a lot of first-person shooters, and there is something remarkable that happens in every single time I ever play a first-person shooter. I also get shot. I'm learning how much I don't want to actually do the thing that my on-screen avatar is doing. I'm very happy sitting in my house. But also remember, too, that, I mean, I've been reading a lot.

J:I mean, I have been for years actually reading a lot about mass murderers, but most of the time people expect that they're also going to die. Yeah, they don't go into it thinking they're going to live, usually. Right, right. So there is that. All right, so there are studies looking at more trying to understand the phenomenon of video game violence, and not just is there a correlation and is there an effect, but

C:To try to understand at a deeper level, so for example, what kind of people respond to video game violence in a negative way. And there are a couple of studies which suggest that a person who is a loner, who does not have a good family support structure, does not have a social infrastructure,

S:That they may be more susceptible to the aggressive effect of engaging in video game violence. So it might be that there is this subset of people who are predisposed to violence and lack a social support structure. For whom they are drawn to violent video games and it reinforces their aggression and their violence. That's possible and there are studies which suggest that that is possible. But we don't know if that actually is an important factor in leading these people to then act on their aggression or on their violence. But that is something that needs further research. Because again, I think what we can say is that we're talking about a tiny minority of people, but that's all it takes. It could be part of the toxic stew that's churning out these people who wind up engaging in mass shootings. But it's not the determinative factor. It's not that, but for the video games, they would not have done this. There's no evidence to suggest that. It's part of this complicated thing that's happening, but then so is a hundred other things. But the thing that really is determinative Is that these are usually young white males who are on the fringes of society and they have been radicalized. Those are probably the more important factors. Well, yes, but the number, I can't say number one, but the vast majority of the variants, if you ask any researcher who focuses on this, is that they have access to whether Oh yeah, and what turns that radicalized loner into a killer is access to guns. Yeah, like the number one thing over and over. I don't want to say number one, but the largest portion of the variance that seems to be explained is just simply access.

C:Yeah, but it's like for somebody to commit a murder, you need motive, opportunity, and method, and mechanism, right? That's true. A lot of people have access to weapons. They don't want to go kill people. Yes, right. So you have two out of three.

S:So again, you can't say this is the one cause. You all need all of these things. But one of the things you need is ready access to weaponry.

C:So you can't factor that out just because there are other things that created the behavior.

S:And I do think – yeah, that gets me back to my original point, Cara, to say you have to avoid the temptation. This is the one cause that we need to focus on.

C:We have to focus on everything.

S:Yes, we need better mental health care. Yes, we need to red flag people who are at risk for this behavior. We need to address the loners in society and make sure they don't slip through the cracks. And we need to think about access to weaponry. I don't think that we're going to ban violent video games anytime soon. I don't think we could, given the internet and such. And we already have a rating system. I think that's good, having a rating system. Although, you know, when I was writing about it, I said the kind of parents who are going to restrict their children's access – Probably don't. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Cara Santa Maria. So he tweeted something like, in any given 48 hour period, these other things cause, you know, this many deaths. Right, prescription overdose.

C:Yeah, of like automobile accidents, you know, all these different things. And so of course, people, for good reason, were upset by this. They thought it was a bit tone deaf, which is fair. He also said people are more attracted to spectacle than... He did say that. Which I think there's a lot there's a lot to be said about that. But regardless, he was trying to talk about scale. He was trying to improve people's numeracy. I mean, maybe not the right time. But the one point that a lot of people pointed out was all of the things on the list are actively being researched. But one of the things that we have a long standing history, and we've talked about this before on the show, is that we have managed to not put a lot of research into gun Thank you for joining us today. We can talk about the political reasons behind that. Regardless of that, I think a fair point to be made is that when you look at all of this variance from a purely scientific perspective, we are researching all of these factors and actively creating policy to mitigate them, except for this one third rail issue. And that becomes very problematic from a purely scientific perspective.

B:He was absolutely correct, but it was the wrong context to make that point.

C:That wasn't the way to make that point because there are people, for political reasons, who are actively trying to minimize these kinds of events. By making the point in that context and in that way, you're aiding and abetting the minimizers. Well, it was, I mean, and it was cruel. It was a bit inhumane. You know, I think I think it's a fair statement to say, like, dude, like, let's be respectful.

S:Yeah, like, too soon? Yeah. Yeah. It's even just the wrong topic to make that point. You know, it's like, yeah, sure, we could make comments all the time about how frail human memory is, all the failings. Thank you for joining us today. Well, also, his very first thing that he put under the number of deaths caused by was medical errors. We just debunked that on the show. That's how it got brought to my attention as all these people started tweeting about it, and they were CCing us, like, hey, guys, he got the science wrong here. Yeah. And that's a blind spot of his. Yeah, Neil's had an interesting history with some, yeah. Yeah, I'm not, you know, I just don't really like his point. I don't like the point.

C:Like, you know, from a narrow perspective, it's correct that people do get distracted by dramatic events and not necessarily by the numbers, right? So people are more afraid to die from a shark attack than the thing that's actually going to kill them.

S:Right, like jumping out of a plane or driving to the airport. Which is fair, but... To be fair, we know that driving a car is dangerous, so we have seatbelts and we have airbags and we're constantly improving the technology and we're focusing on these things. And it was studied, it was studied deeply when traffic, when traffic deaths were really out of control, they studied the crap out of it and they say, and they implemented safeguards and now it's thousands and thousands less.

C:I think one of the things that tweaked me about about it was it was almost like he was saying like you know like should like the question is should we really be focusing on these other things and I'm saying wait a second but I feel and I feel like a lot of people feel like gun violence is something that we could fix relatively quickly.

B:It doesn't have to be this big black hole mystery of how would we ever fix it. I mean, I think that there is a lot of things that we could do to significantly lower the incidence of gun violence.

J:Lots of examples throughout the entire world of what works, what has worked in some scenarios. It's an interesting point, though. This is a side point, and I've thought about this, because when you do look at the numbers, The actual number of people who die in mass shootings, well, every death is a tragedy and it's horrible, but it is a lot smaller than a lot of other things that are killing a lot of, a lot more people. If you just look at the numbers. But that's just mass shootings, not violent. Look at the individuals who are shot. I'm talking about mass shooting.

B:Yeah, gun violence is more like 30,000 a year. Something like that, I know. It's a lot, right? A lot of those are singular events.

S:Half of those are suicides. Yeah, like over 20,000 people a year die from gun related suicide. 500 are just accidents. But my point is, is it appropriate to look at it from a perspective of sheer numbers? Is there something to be said for the effect that mass shootings have on the psyche of our country? Of course. So that even though, yeah, if you just look at the numbers, yeah, more people are dying from cigarette smoking, but that isn't striking terror into our nation and ripping us apart.

J:And so you have to consider the effect that it's having. It is terrorism.

S:It is meant to invoke terror in order to disrupt our democracy. And so that is a factor we have to consider as well, not just the number of people who are dying. And I think that is also a point that Neil was toning.

C:And yeah, it's murder.

S:There's motive. Like he was comparing things like car accidents. Like it's in the name. It's an accident. Like, of course, you can't compare those things. And doing it like literally the day after the nation is just... So Neil deGrasse Tyson did apologize. He wrote, what I learned from the range, this is just an excerpt, he wrote a couple of paragraphs, but what he wrote is, what I learned from the range of reactions is that for many people some information, my tweet in particular, can be true but unhelpful, especially at a time when many people are still either in shock or trying to heal or both.

C:Timing counts. Totally. Of course.

S:Be sensitive, man.

C:Don't sound like such a robot. Come on. So it was a sincere apology that does seem like he gets it.

S:Well, I think that's why I use the word tone deaf. That's really what it felt like to me. It didn't really feel like it was malicious, but it was very tone deaf to the point where some people took it as malice, I think. No, I mean, he's a science communicator looking for a public opportunity to make an important point.

E:We know that.

C:He missed a mark and he tried to make amends. It's a dangerous platform. Why doesn't Twitter have a option in which you can bank for at least a little bit of time your tweet before it actually goes out?

S:You can, it's called save as draft. Yeah, well, you know, I guess people should probably use that a little bit more. But you know, I guess speed counts. You have to be the first one out there making your exclamation. Right. Otherwise it gets lost in the in the woods.

J:Show it to a few people.

E:What do you think about that?

J:There you go. That's good. It's the reaction that when it hits you in the face like, oh crap, that was a mistake.

E:You need your test tweet subgroup. It goes to just a dozen people you select.

C:Here's a good thing. Why don't you run it by your wife?

E:Yeah. Just run it by your wife. I think a lot of times, like a lot of these bad tweets are coming from, like I call them toilet tweets. God. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, and Evan Bernstein.

C:Who like, like I have people who like give me the female perspective because, you know, Cara among them, but other people as well, because I clearly don't have that.

J:I'm a guy or whatever. Just, just, just am I being a nerd here? Am I being tone deaf? Just, you know, give me some feedback before I get public with something. I'll never let you audition for a singing contest.

S:See, that would come in handy, right? More realistically, or simulation, right? Having a tweet simulation where you send your tweet out and then you get a simulated response from the community before you go into the real world.

E:That's brilliant.

S:I love it.

E:There's no way that the future AIs that are going to exist at some point, there's just no way they're not going to hate us.

B:Not about hate, but they'll think poorly of us.

S:They're gonna be like Vulcans looking at the humans just shaking their heads. All right, that's just one news item, guys.

News Item #2 - Public Trust of Scientists (34:11)

• Public trust that scientists work for the good of society is growing 

S:All right, so Cara, some good news about public trust in scientists.

J:Yeah, I'd say it's mostly good. I think that it's caveated, so we should keep that in mind.

E:But there's a new Pew Research Center study in the Science and Society subcategory, I guess they call it, I don't know what they call it, vertical.

B:That shows that yes, public trust, that scientists are working in the public interest is rising.

S:So I've got some takeaways. You can you can slice and dice this a lot of different ways. So we'll talk about a handful of things that we took away from this Pew study.

C:And you can you can look it up. It's trending all over the Internet and you can read about I think it's like 4000 some odd people who took it that, you know, Pew does a pretty good job of trying to match, like do representative surveys to match the demographics of the country in general. Public confidence in scientists has increased in recent years. So they compared from June 2016 to January 2019, which is the last bit of this survey, and they found that, you know, they often will break it down into, you know, adults who say that they have blank amount of confidence in scientists to act in the best interest of the public. A great deal of confidence, a fair amount of confidence, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so in June 2016, 21% of US adults said that they had a great deal of confidence. And now it's 35% of US adults, which is actually apparently on par with public confidence in the military, which is interesting. So, military was pretty unchanged. It boosted a tiny bit between 2016 and 2019, but public confidence in scientists boosted quite a bit to reach up to about the same levels as the military. That is higher than religious leaders, higher than the news media, and higher than, as expected, elected officials. Oh, gosh. Yeah, they got the lowest there. Higher than elected officials right now. I'm looking at a chart that doesn't have the actual numbers across the bottom. This is published on Nature and those look real low. They look like they're at about 3%, 4% or something like that. But we're well over it. So religious leaders still under 20%, news media about half that, elected officials barely any. And yeah, scientists 30-some-odd pushing that there on a great deal. And then a lot on a fair amount, if you add that, we're up to a great deal plus a fair amount, we're up to over 80%.

E:Yeah, approaching 90%.

C:Yep, that's a really good sign. Now, as you start to slice and dice it, things look a little bit more nuanced. An interesting thing that Pew tends to do is they tend to focus a lot on medical stuff. I've noticed this. And so one of the ways that they sliced and diced it is that they compared a bunch of different medical doctors versus researchers, like they bucketed them all together as science, and some kind of interesting trends emerged. So the percent of U.S. adults who say their view of each of these groups is mostly positive. All right, so there's mostly positive versus mostly negative, and then there's neither. So this one doesn't have a lot. It's just like yes or no. Mostly positive, mostly negative. 74% of American adults say their view of medical doctors is mostly positive, but only 68% say that their view of medical researchers is mostly positive. And you see the same thing when it comes to like 60% for dieticians, 51% for nutrition researchers. And as they started to ask some of the questions about that, they realized that it seems to be the case that Americans are skeptical about conflicts of interest. And you know what, I got to be honest, I think that's a good thing. I'm actually happy to see that there's some skepticism there and that the skepticism seems to be tied to things like industry ties or malfeasance. I think we should be skeptical about those things within the scientific community. I don't want to become cynical about them. I think that the skepticism should be tied to reality, but I think that there's a good reason for some of the skepticism that we do see in these Pew studies. Interestingly, too, they were able to divide out who is answering these questions. And of course, when it comes to things like scientific misconduct, Black and Hispanic respondents were more likely than whites to see scientific misconduct as a big problem. For good reason, because we know about historical wrongdoings like the Tuskegee trials, the syphilis trials. We know that, for instance, low SES and multicultural individuals tend to be significantly more affected. To me personally, I take away that this is a good thing. People trust scientists to the extent that they feel like they're making decisions for the public good, but they're still wary. When there are like industry ties on the line, how the research is funded is is a big question that's on people's minds. And I think that that's kind of interesting. It's weird, though, that I do feel like both Pew and the American public tend to conflate medicine with science. Do you notice that, Steve? Do you feel like that's kind of an issue? Yeah, I do see that. In fact, I think that part of that's a manifestation of the media, who if you look at journals or sections on science, it's all medicine and technology. Right. Yeah, those are the things that interest people. That's true. Biomedical stuff, tech advances. And then for some reason, the most what we think of kind of as like the most esoteric, but like cosmology and like quantum mechanics is super fascinating to people, which I love that.

S:I love that there's still that core interest that, you know, it's a bigger stretch for how does it directly apply to me, but people still love those kinds of stories. It does apply pretty dramatically, though. Oh, absolutely it does. I just think it's maybe harder for some people to make that link. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, don't worry, Bob.

C:I agree with you. I still disagree on peanut butter, but I agree on that. But yeah, there's also some interesting kind of partisan differences, which don't surprise us. But one of the big takeaways from this is that confidence in scientists is stronger among those who have more science knowledge, obviously.

US#07:The higher the science knowledge, the higher the confidence in scientists.

C:The number of people who say that they have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in science So I'm adding those things together. 93% who have a high science knowledge, only 75% who have low science knowledge. You also see a difference. It's not huge, but it is a significant difference statistically between Democrats and those leaning Democratic. They have more trust or more confidence in science. Thank you for joining us today. say that they have high confidence in science, scientists, whereas only 82% of Republicans and those leading, leaning towards the Republican. And maybe that's a shift with the current administration. It's hard to say. But, but yeah, there is some difference there on the partisan scale as well. I was disappointed though, it's only 48% of people surveyed thought doctors gave fair and accurate information. That's less than half. Yeah, I mean, I know. And it's lower for medical researchers. It's much lower. It's 32% for medical researchers. So if you're a practitioner, they also tend to trust people who are outreach to engage with the public more. Yep. It's like people who they like, it does seem to be the case. And this is actually really interesting and cool.

S:It does seem to be the case that if you can make a good case for what you're doing, if you can explain what you're doing to me as a consumer, I'm going to trust you more. So I trust my doctor more than the researchers in the kind of whether they want to look at it this way in the ivory tower in the lab behind closed doors. They don't know what's going

C:has become so important. We've got social media. We've got, you know, all of these means for scientists themselves to interface with the public.

S:And the ones who do it well are the ones who are making the best impression.

C:So keep that in mind if you are a scientist and you don't feel like you need to be talking about your work. Maybe you're not the right person to do it because I personally truly believe that not every scientist should be a science communicator. But I do think that every lab, every institution should have strong science communicators tied to it. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. Cool, cool. All right, Jay, so I understand that we're all going to be replaced by robots.

News Item #3 - Robot Workers (43:42)

• People don’t want to see workers replaced by a robot—themselves excepted 

C:All right, Jay, so I understand that we're all going to be replaced by robots. How's that going? It's going really well, and the robots are doing this painlessly behind the scenes. I'm sure you all have heard about the idea of people's jobs being replaced by robots or probably more accurately by automation of some sort. Work is important, as we learned in The Matrix, guys. You can't just make the world a playground. Humans need something to fight against.

S:That's right. So anyway, would you believe it if people were first talking about machines and automation replacing human workers, say, a hundred years ago?

J:Absolutely, yes. Yeah, because that's when people started to worry about automation replacing human jobs. Before that, even sabotage. Yeah. So there's this recent study that researchers were trying to qualify if job loss due to automation creates a specific collection of worries. Is it predictable? Is it something that we can measure? Granulo Christoph Fuchs and Stefano Putoni, they used survey data from European residents that agreed robots are displacing human jobs. So the researchers found that there's two ways to interpret the results that they were seeing in the data. The first is that respondees may be worried that they will end up in a job that could easily be replaced by automation. Let's say that you worked on a manufacturing line of some sort. Clearly, these are jobs that are very risky of being replaced. Now the second is that respondees may be worried in general about people losing their jobs and its impact on society. So there's something more altruistic here. I don't think that people should have their jobs replaced by automation or robots because it's just overall not a good thing for the world. Some people might feel that way. The researchers found that there's good information about people's general feelings about this coming spike in automation, but there is a lack of data on how people feel about losing their job specifically to automation. They split test subjects into four groups. So they're questioning these people and hitting them with fake scenarios to get their responses and their emotional reactions. So here's the scenarios that they had. They had, there's someone that lost a job to a person. There's someone that lost their job to a robot. Their job was lost to a person, or their job was lost to a robot. So you see the four groups. They found that there was a 2 to 1 ratio if the job was not their own, that they preferred it to be lost to another human being. Because they feel bad socially about robots taking people's jobs. Apparently, that's the conclusion that we can draw from that. When people thought that their job was going to be lost to another human being, they didn't like it. The people actually didn't care as much if their job was lost to a robot versus to another human being. I'm so surprised by that. I know, me too. Because I figured people still want, they're going to blame somebody and maybe you're right, they're not going to blame the robot, but they're still going to be pissed because a person made the decision to put that robot in that position. More of a justification. They want to think that the robot or the automation is just a more sophisticated piece of equipment that can do the job more efficiently than they personally could, as opposed to being replaced by another person who may actually be a better person at the job.

C:It makes them feel like it was less their fault. Yeah, it's apples to apples versus apples to oranges. I find that fascinating. I think this is such a cool study. It is fascinating, and it does kind of surprise me.

E:Me too, because you would think people would be like, man, I'm not being replaced by, it's not even alive, you know? Yeah. But they feel the social, you know, there's two things about the socialization here. There's two things about being a human being and living in a society. If another person is losing their job, they would prefer that a human being gets the job, because it's good for people.

C:But if it's their job, it's not good for them emotionally to lose it to another human being. They'd rather have an expert robot replace them because it gives them the emotional out.

J:It's a little bit of candy that softens the blow. Yeah, it's almost like you could throw it to them and be like, yeah, what can I do at that point? Yeah, so they got this robot that could do 20,000 an hour and I can only do five. Okay, how can you argue that? But I'd also be interested to see, because this is one of the problems that we see in like social psychology research or really clinical, any sort of research, is that it's one thing to ask somebody about a scenario and then have them answer based on, what if? And it doesn't always reflect to real life. And I'd be interested to see if in real life everybody is like, F that robot! There is definitely a threat to self-image. You know, from a human replacement.

C:You know, people also preferred that if there were a human replacement, they'd like to hear that the human replacement would also have AI or an algorithm helping them do the job. Because again, it's a buffer. It allows them to say, yeah, they brought the new guy in, but he needed this software too. It's not just him or this other person. It's the software as well. It's so human.

J:All of this is so human. When you think about that aspect of it, it makes perfect sense. So Jay, I was interested in the question when you sent me this news item. So how many jobs have actually been lost to automation to robots, and how many will be lost in the future? And the answer is— All of them. Yeah. Yeah, all of them. Well, so there was a good article on MIT Technology Review where they put together all of the estimates they could find, and they're all over the place. Nobody freaking knows. Yeah, nobody knows. It ranges from anywhere from zero to two billion.

S:And it's also like by 2020, 2025, 2030, so one estimate was worldwide 2 billion by 2030. But they also include jobs created, some have more jobs created than lost, some more lost than created. I think the only thing that's clear is that a lot of jobs are going to be replaced by software and automation, and a lot of jobs will be created by this technology, and nobody really knows how it's going to shake out.

News Item #4 - New Type of Star (49:59)

• MSN 

S:I think the only thing that's clear is that a lot of jobs are going to be replaced by software and automation, and a lot of jobs will be created by this technology, and nobody really knows how it's going to shake out. It's a shift, yeah. The estimates are all over the place. But I do think we have to say that this is disrupting the job market, automation. And that we do need to think about this, anticipate it, and retool our economy to deal with it. You know, we can't... But it also has been for decades. Yeah, it does seem like this... We've been dealing with automation. I agree, I agree. I remember there was a Twilight Zone episode from whatever, like the 50s. Remember that with a robot replacing everybody? This is something that people have been anxious about for literally 60 years. Forever. Yeah, for forever. But objectively, the pace is increasing. People are going through more jobs more quickly. And so we just need to build that into the system.

C:We do need to be able to train people for jobs.

S:But wait, Steve, there's something here that has never happened before. And we really have to be humble to this. What's the name of that company? Bell Labs? I mean, they have a parkour robot. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, and Evan Bernstein.

J:But also a hundred years ago, people had jobs where they did the same thing over and over and over all day. And they had a pension and they had health insurance and they could expect to work for 60 years and then retire with a gold watch.

C:And a lot of things have changed.

J:It's not just about automation. I think people in my generation and younger have to learn how to be freelancers or they have to learn how to maybe work multiple jobs. They have to be lighter on their feet and they have to be flexible because you can't just do the same thing.

C:If jobs like that, that are like skill focused on a single skill, those are the jobs that are going to get replaced. Yeah, if you're doing anything boring, repetitive, mundane, your job is going away. I think that's pretty clear. So you need to get people, you need to get trained to do more intellectual creative jobs, because those are the ones that have more staying power. But so it does seem that this is like the peak whatever thing, like we never quite reach it because, you know, you can't extrapolate from current trends because the game itself is constantly changing. So, but it is sort of an interesting theoretical question. Is there some limit to that?

S:At some point, can robots do everything and where there'll be no need for human workers? But the thing is, we are the human workers. What will we do? You know, we will do something. We will, we don't have to. Well travel will create, will work out, we're just tons of shit. Screw work! I think create is the important nail that you hit on the head there, Bob. Like a lot of people would argue that when it comes to our mental health, right, like the things that we talk about on our deathbed, the things that bring us a sense of purpose in life, that the three main pillars are work, love, and play. And if we don't have our work at all, we're going to have to fill that with something.

B:And I think you're right. We have to make things. Sure. What's your art? Right.

C:What's your art? This October, I'm going to make a 10-foot tentacle wrapped around a pirate skeleton, and it's going to be huge. It's going to be my art. And it's going to be beautiful and it's going to be so rewarding. You can't earn any money doing that, but wow. Well, but if we don't have to earn money because the robots just earn our money for us, then we can do that. I can probably sell it on eBay for 400 bucks. The robots are not even close to being able to put out this podcast, so we're okay.

B:There are some things, that's right. We're going to do a couple of quick astronomy items, starting with you, Evan. You don't usually do the astronomy items. I don't, I know.

E:Yeah, but that's okay.

C:It's good to stretch outside your comfort zone every now and then. So tell us about a new type of star.

B:That doesn't happen every day. No, it doesn't, and it's called a hot subdwarf pulsator.

J:Newly identified, newly discovered. Jay, if I were to say the term hot subdwarf pulsator to you out of context,

S:In this context, we're talking about the star newly discovered by a team of scientists led by University of California Santa Barbara researcher Thomas Kupfer along with UC Santa Barbara doctoral student Evan Bauer and Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics director Lars Bildsten.

E:Their results appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

C:So, what are we talking about here? Let's take a starting point.

E:Let's take our star, the sun. That is the star by which we measure all others, because that's the one that matters to us the most. A subdwarf, as its name implies, are comparatively smaller than our sun. A subdwarf is about one-tenth the diameter of our sun. The subdwarf is all- So I'm assuming it's smaller than a dwarf. So smaller than a dwarf star, right? Yeah. Right, as well. But the sub dwarf is also smaller in mass. The mass can be anywhere from about 20% to 50% of our sun. And these things are hot. They're incredibly hot. Their photospheres are 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit. By comparison, our sun's photosphere is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. So that's where the term comes from, hot subdwarf.

US#05:It's the pulsating part that's the new observation here.

E:Now Jay, did you know that our sun pulses, just like our brains? It's not a very pronounced pulsation. At its peak, our star pulses to about one-tenth of one percent of the sun's average light output and happens slowly, peaking once every 11 years or so. By comparison, the hot subdwarf pulsator can increase its brightness to as high as 10 percent over their normal output, and the peak can occur as frequently as once every 200 seconds.

US#02:That's just over three minutes.

E:So we're talking about something very different. That's quick, man. Right. Exactly. Kopfer went on to say that many stars do pulsate, even our own sun does. Those with the largest brightness changes are usually radial pulsators, breathing in and out as the entire star changes size. Interesting to think about a sun as kind of this breathing mechanism. That's kind of a good way, I think, to visualize it. Okay. They've discovered these things. What's the cause? The change in brightness can be produced by eclipsing binaries. Most sub-dwarf stars that we've identified do appear to be members of a binary system. What the researchers had to do in this case is rule out the possibility of a companion star causing an eclipse. That's exactly what the researchers were able to do. Once they had done that, They're still looking into the exact mechanism behind the oscillations of these things, They think it may be, in one case, they're suggesting unstable radial modes produced by something called the iron kappa mechanism, which Bob probably knows a lot more about than I do. Not much. It's a buildup of iron in the star that produces an energy layer that results in a pulsation. So they're going with that as a possible mechanism, but they just don't know, too soon to know, we have a lot more to learn about these things. Yeah, neat. So we'll have to keep an eye on this one because it looks like they're still trying to figure out what the real nature of these kinds of stars are. But it also shows you there's so much out there because, you know, there's trillions of stars, right, if you're looking at multiple galaxies worth of stars. So even exceedingly rare events are going to be out there. Oh yes, numerous ones. They use these Zwicky Transient Facility. This is at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego.

S:They're hoping that this particular facility, which is obviously very advanced and very good at finding these kinds of items, these kinds of stars, who knows what else it'll reveal in the future? New identifications of other types of stars that we just don't know about yet. That's what they're hoping for. It's amazing. Just get a lot of hydrogen together and see what happens.

E:It does amazing things. All right, Bob, you're going to go from stars to planets.

News Item #5 - Dead Planets (59:10)

• Dead planets can 'broadcast' for up to a billion years 

E:All right, Bob, you're going to go from stars to planets. You're going to tell us about dead planets. Yeah, that's one way to think of it, Steve. Astronomers will soon be testing their theories, hopefully, that the cores of destroyed exoplanets can survive long enough to form a detectable circuit with its white dwarf star companion that creates these distinctive radio waves that we can then detect.

B:So that's kind of the whole thing in a nutshell.

S:This is from the research led by the University of Warwick's Dr. Dimitri Veras from the Department of Physics. This has been published recently in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

B:So just when you think we've discovered lots of exoplanets, and what number are we up to now?

U:4,000?

B:Over 4,000? We may see yet another surge in a heretofore undetected subpopulation of exoplanets. Ooh, nice use of heretofore. Thank you. So the big picture scenario being discussed here is you got a white dwarf star, which we were just talking about, which is a star like our sun, which has consumed enough of its nuclear fuel to swell its outer solar atmosphere, kind of like Jay's abdomen after a 10-meatball dinner. Now, this wreaks havoc on anything nearby, consuming some nearby planets and stripping others of their atmospheres and crust and mantle, exposing their cores. So just kind of decimating nearby planets, if it's not too close, but maybe not too far. Ultimately, the star, of course, is an Earth-sized, super-dense stellar corpse with a mass similar to our sun as it is right now. So now we've seen solar system remnants in environments like this. We've actually seen, you know, what's been left at this stage. We see things like what's been called like metal pollution, circumstellar gas and dust, and we've actually even seen more recently actually individual objects orbiting white dwarfs recently, including high density metallic core fragments. Which is very encouraging, and you'll see why in just a minute. How would you go about finding a full core? If there's, say, these cores of exoplanets around white dwarfs, how are we going to find those? Well, for years, we've known that two bodies in orbit around each other can create radio emissions in special situations. So think of this, we've got Jupiter and its moon Io, our examples. So in this situation, Io is a conductor. This is the moon of Jupiter as a conductor. And when it traverses Jupiter's magnetic field, it sets up a current which emits detectable radio waves. So that's a scenario. Bob, can we use it as a radio for speaking to God? Speaking to God. Sure. frequency. I can't find my Ark of the Covenant laying around. That radio is packed in a huge warehouse that you'll never find. A similar scenario can happen with some exoplanet cores and magnetic white dwarf stars. In this scenario, you've got the interactions between a magnetic white dwarf and a conducting planetary core.

S:And together these can create what they're calling a unipolar inductor circuit, similar to Jupiter and Io's that I just described. Now that circuit itself can then emit radiation in the form of radio waves that we can detect using radio telescopes on Earth.

B:We've known about this for a while, many many years. The problem though is that it didn't necessarily look like these planetary cores would survive long. So being able to find them is fine, but if they quickly collided with a white dwarf, The new bit that these researchers have uncovered is that they've done some new, more inclusive modeling that showed that such exoplanet cores can likely survive a long time, on the order of 100 million years up to 1 giga year. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe Did you know that white dwarf planetary systems are everywhere? There are as many of them as there are main sequence planetary systems like our sun. I didn't know they were that prevalent, but it kind of makes sense when you think about it. Also, adding to that, you've got the possibility of finding such exoplanets leaped by a huge margin just recently when our list of known white dwarfs increased by an order of magnitude last year in 2018. And I don't know how I missed that, but there was a massive dump of astronomical data from the European Space Agency's Gaia Space Observatory. They actually increased the known white dwarfs that we were aware of by an order of magnitude 10 times. So now we've got this huge, huge, much bigger database of potential planetary cores or maybe hopefully more. Thanks for watching! Therefore, a discovery here would represent firsts in three different senses for planetary systems. So there's a chance to make a very interesting first discovery if this comes to fruition. So perhaps in billions of years, alien astronomers will find the core of the Earth singing to the universe in radio waves as it orbits the sun's white dwarf corpse. I kind of like that idea, and hopefully I'll be around to enjoy it. You'll have to let us know where that goes, Bob, because that will be a feat. All right. All right, thanks, Bob. Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:05:30)

B:Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time. All right, last week I played this noisy.

E:So what is that?

J:Any guesses?

S:Well, it has an arcade game quality sort of sound to it, or an Atari.

J:Yeah, something like that.

U:It's like simultaneously obnoxious and comforting. That's a funny perspective, I like that. That would be ColecoVision, then.

E:A listener named Chris Eichberger said, message, hi guys, I think it sounds a bit like the voice of an alien that the Doctor and Seven teach to speak from Star Trek Voyager episode The Void. Thanks for the show and keep up the good work. P.S. my wife bought me your book for my birthday. I didn't even need to drop hints.

C:Ah, nice.

J:That is not correct, but I'm sure that Steve and Bob and I appreciate a Star Trek reference, of course. Evan too. Evan loves his Star Trek. I do. I had another guest sent in by a listener named Visto Tutti. So they say, hi Jay, I can hear some frequency shift key data in there for sure, but the scream I'm not so sure about. So I'll go out on a limb and say that it is. Weather data sent over shortwave, and then that scream is ionospheric solar interference. What? Cool. And then at the end of this email, they call me a tricky bastard. Oh, and there's another thing that this listener said, Steve. PS, you have not yet nailed the true Aussie pronunciation of Melbourne. You still have one too many vowels in there. Australians are prodigiously lazy with pronunciation. You may hear which vowel it is when you get here. Thanks for watching! Whatever. That's as close as I'm getting. And then, of course, yeah, we're trying to say it correctly according to our Aussie friends. And then someone writes, you're making fun of an accent, not correct pronunciation, which is a discussion we had on the show before. But also, leave us alone.

S:We're doing our best.

C:All right? And also, wait, when everybody in the country has the same accent, isn't that pronunciation? Yeah, right?

S:Yeah. If we didn't care, we'd be calling it Melbourne, okay?

C:Melbourne. How about that?

S:Another listener named Michael wrote in and said, I don't know what the equivalent of waterboarding is for robots, but that's what it sounds like. I want to play this for you guys.

C:A lot of people wrote in and said it sounds like Missile Command.

E:Now, without going into the particulars here, here is the legit Missile Command that you played in a real arcade.

J:Alright. So there's Missile Command, that's the arcade sounds real quick. There is also, I'm not going to play them, but there's the Atari sounds. This is a recording Of one of our speed radar units, the radar unit works by projecting a Doppler radar signal and then reading the change in frequency as a result of hitting a moving target. This sound is an audible representation of the radar signal that the unit is receiving. As the target speed increases, so does the pitch of the sound. This unit is inside a patrol vehicle, so This is the sound you hear as you are driving and operating the radar. Normally, the sound is turned off for obvious reasons. That is really cool. I just thought that was brilliant. So we have a new Noisy this week, and this Noisy was sent in by a listener named John Fauquat. This guy's last name is Fauquat. Oh, my God. Lord Fauquat. Thank you, John. Beautiful. So here is the Noisy. If you think you know what the noisy is this week or you heard something really cool, email me at WTN at the Skeptic's Guide dot org. Steve, Bob, Evan, I'm terribly excluding Cara because she will not be at Dragon Con this year because she's going to Africa.

U:The SGU private tickets

J:You can go to Skeptic's Guide dot Eventbrite dot com and buy Dragon Con 2019 SGU Private Show tickets. They are still available. It is a private show. We are off the rails at these private shows and the Dragon Con private show by far is the most off the rails we get. So please buy the tickets and come see us. Cara sends her regards. Regards! But Cara will be in Africa. It's true. Skyping in for the private show. Will you be Cara? Oh, yeah, I'm pretty sure in the bush. I'll have great Wi Fi in the background. All right. Thanks, Jay. So we're going to do a follow-up email. This is a follow-up to our discussion about the 30-meter telescope, which they're trying to build on Mauna Kea, and there are locals who are protesting.

E:So we had a long discussion about that. We're not going to rehash that.

C:We just want to go over the kinds of emails that we got in response. And they were expressing a variety of opinions, which is great.

S:I do think that was an interesting discussion, which sparked a lot of further discussion in the emails.

Emails (1:11:55)

S:I do think that was an interesting discussion, which sparked a lot of further discussion in the emails.

S:I do want to say that this actually ties into what I was talking about at the beginning of the episode. Some of the emails did fall into, in my opinion, the one real reason is, right, rather than appreciating this as the complex and nuanced phenomenon that it is. So like the real reason that the local indigenous population are protesting is this one thing. It's not some other thing. So some people thought it was all about religion versus science. I didn't think that that was a major part of this. So it's like you could frame this in so many different ways. But I just did not think that the people, that they were primarily being driven by their religious beliefs. It seemed that they were primarily being driven by their Today, we're going to be talking about the history of our identity as indigenous Hawaiians and that there is a history here, which is definitely important, of multiple broken promises about this is the last telescope and we'll take care of the environment and we won't build it in the wrong place, etc. But on the other hand, people say, yes, that's true. But this time around, they're doing everything right. They're giving all the concessions. They're giving millions of dollars to the community. They're not building on any place. Important, et cetera, et cetera. So it depends on how you look at it from that angle. I got, there was one very interesting email. It was from somebody who lives in Hawaii, and I could not verify this, but this is, they were saying that a lot of the, one other aspect, a historical aspect is, so the protests are stemming from a group that are essentially saying Hawaii should be for the indigenous Hawaiians. You know, the people who were living in Hawaii before Europeans came there. And basically that part of that is due to, is being driven by the Hawaiian families who ruled Hawaii before Westerners got there. And they basically want to reestablish their hegemony over the isles. So, you know, that's an interesting perspective that I had not heard, but I could not verify that. Well, yeah. I mean, colonialism in general, it's complicated in every country and each country and each culture. And I know I'm saying country because most of the time we are talking about countries. Of course, in this case, we're talking about a modern American state. But it's totally different depending on the culture. And none of us are experts in this area. And so that's like such an important thing to remember. I actually tried very hard to find news reports from local from Hawaii.

C:And I did, but they were all telling the same story. Pretty much every news report I found framed this as that the protesters were, their motivation was that they thought they should be the ones to control the mountain because it is important to their culture and their identity. And yes, their religious beliefs are tied in with that, but that really wasn't a major issue.

S:No, they're inextricably linked anyway. Of course. But again, the real story is probably horrifically more complicated and deeper. And yes, we're just trying to make sense of it from the mainland, the continental US. But even when I tried to access local papers, I didn't feel like I was getting any deeper insight. And I even asked some of the people who emailed me who are Native Hawaiians, I said, Can you send me a reference to back that up? And they said, Nope, I just know this from talking to people. I don't really have a reference for you. So yeah, well, and it's hard to because we have to sometimes remember when we're looking at these from these issues from an anthropological perspective that certain For me, again, not rehashing the whole thing, but the bottom line is these kinds of situations are always complicated. Don't accept one simplistic narrative and be humble about our ability to understand these things. Look at them as complicated and nuanced as they are.

C:I did want to go clarify, just for me personally, because people are saying, oh, I thought that you would have been on the side of the telescope. And I am sympathetic to the scientists who want to erect a telescope there.

S:And I do think, in my opinion, from what I've read, and again, this is admitting that I'm getting this from my perspective, that they have done enough to compensate the local people for building a telescope there. They are trying to do it the right way, and I think that they're being reasonable. But I'm simultaneously sympathetic to the natives who think that, hey, we've been screwed for 50 years, and why should we believe you this time? I get it. I get that perspective as well. It's complicated. But I do hope they build the telescope there at the end of the day. Okay. So without rehashing the whole thing. All right, guys, it's time to move on to science or fiction. It's time for science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:16:53)

Theme: Food Origins Item #1: Chicken Tikka Masala was definitely invented in the UK around 1970, but there are dueling claims from Glasgow and London. Item #2: Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924. Item #3: Pasta originated in China and later exported to Italy, although not by Marco Polo.

Answer	Item
Fiction	{{{fiction}}}
Science	Item #1
Science	Item #2
Science	Item #3

Host	Result
Steve

Rogue	Guess

S:It's time for science or fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panel of Skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. So we have a theme and there are four items today. The theme is food origins. So I'm going to give four statements. Food oranges, okay. Food oranges, yes.

US#01:Here we go. You'll understand. Cheetos. What else? Doritos.

U:Actual oranges. What?

S:Okay, here we go. Four items about the origins of foods. Item number one, chicken tikka masala was definitely invented in the UK around 1970, but there are dueling claims from Glasgow and London. Item number two, Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924.

C:Item number three, pasta originated in China and later exported to Italy, although not by Marco Polo.

S:And item number four, chop suey, a quintessential Chinese dish, was actually invented in San Francisco during the gold rush. Cara, go first.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:18:12)

"Researchers work not knowing when or where the big breakthroughs will come, or if they will ever come. That does not diminish their persistence and rarely affects their passion in the long term, although it may test their patience from time to time."  – - Ian William Chubb AC FAA (born 17 October 1943) is an Australian neuroscientist and academic, who was the Chief Scientist of Australia from 23 May 2011 to 22 January 2016, (description of author)

S:Cara, go first. This is so mean. Okay, so, Steve, who knows? Honestly, okay. Chicken tikka masala, which, you know, is an Indian dish, was definitely invented in the UK around 1970. I don't like that you put definitely in there, like right there, that's a red flag. But there are dueling claims from Glasgow and London. I mean, it would make sense, right, if it weren't invented in India, which usually like our bastardized versions of international cuisine were made in places that weren't those places.

C:It would make sense that it would be in a colonial state that occupied India for a long time, right? So okay, I buy that one, but I don't know if it's true. Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana, maybe. Cesar is a Spanish name. I mean, maybe? I don't know. Pasta in China, but exported to Italy. Like it, but not by Marco Polo because, yeah, this is like a spice guy. Maybe he didn't do pasta. Chop suey, a quintessential Chinese dish was actually invented in San Francisco during the gold rush. OK, all of these things are true. How about that? Is that like an OK answer? It's wrong, but yeah. OK, I like Tika Masala. I think I like Cesar. Pasta in China. OK, let me see. This one, originated in China. There's one thing that could be wrong. Later exported in Italy, another thing that could be wrong. Marco Polo, another. There's a three-parter. Chop suey, invented in San Francisco, one thing. During Gold Rush, two things. There's a three-parter versus a two-parter. I'm going to say the three-parter is the fiction. So that's China. Pasta in China. Yeah, China, Marco Polo.

E:Okay, Evan.

C:All right, the chicken tikka masala for the reasons Cara gave. I think that one is also going to be science. Definitely, you know, obviously, India used to be a colony of Britain and a lot of Indian influence in the United Kingdom and yeah. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe

E:I think I'm agreeing with Cara that this one about the pasta is going to be the fiction. I think we have a misconception on a lot of levels. Marco Polo in the China trade, right, it was spices. You know, pasta, we think of it an Italian dish. And then, yes, we were talking about the noodles that Marco Polo brought back. But did he really bring back the noodles? No, he didn't. But I don't even think pasta originated in China. It's probably, we'll find out it's going to be, you know, Greece or somewhere in Africa, you know, in the year whatever, you know, BC50. BCE50 or whatever, we're going to find that that's going to be the case. Chop suey, Chinese dish, San Francisco, that makes somewhat sense. I'll go with Cara. Pasta, China, Marco Polo, fiction. OK, Bob? I am genetically obligated to say that pasta is quintessential Italian. Fiction. Done. Mic drop. OK. Jay. That's the shortest science or fiction Bob ever did, and no one makes a statement about that? I did. I said Jay. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by

B:The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Cara Santa Maria, and Evan Bernstein.

J:Okay. All right. Jay's striking out on his own. We'll see how that serves you. So we'll start with number two, since you all agree on that one. Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924. You all think this one is science and this one is science. is science. Yep. So yeah, you're good so far. So Cesar Cardini was Italian, not Cesar. So Cesar Cardini was an Italian American restaurateur living in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924. 1924 is critical there. What do you think about that? What was happening in 1924?

S:Well, we just got over the big flu epidemic, the Spanish flu or whatever that was. That was a few years after that, 1924. Why would a restaurateur move to Tijuana in 1924? Oh, wait. No. To escape? Never mind. To escape prohibition. Oh, well, there you go. So there were a lot of Americans going down to Tijuana, and therefore there were a lot of restaurants opening up in Mexico, serving an American clientele.

E:So this is an Italian-American restaurateur opened up a restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, And, you know, definitely invented what is now called, in his honor, Caesar salad.

S:The story, this is always where it gets tricky, like the exact story of how it came to be, is that it was the Fourth of July, some customers came in late, they asked for food, he didn't have anything ready to go, and he basically made a salad of what was available. Garlic, romaine, croutons, parmesan cheese, boiled egg, olive oil, and Worcestershire sauce. And that was Caesar salad. What? It's so different now. Well, of course, now there's multiple variations on a theme. In 1926, two years later, his brother Alex added anchovies to it and an aviator's salad, but that actually then became pretty much the standard for Caesar salad. And Caesar salad doesn't really have eggs in it anymore, does it? It used to. It used to. I've had a classic version. In fact, in Europe, when I've ordered it, it almost always comes with an egg. I have to tell them, don't give me the answer. Yeah, but that's not classic.

C:It was invented in Mexico.

S:I understand that. That practice fell out of favor because of Salmonella. That makes sense. And then sometime around 2000 in Connecticut, a guy by the name of Steven Novella made a different version of Steven Novella. Oh, tell me about that one.

C:That is the quintessential Caesar salad. It is amazing.

E:Is that the one that has the tangerines in it? Yes, tangerines. Sorry, clementines.

C:No, mandarins. Mandarins, thank you.

E:I love all those.

S:I'm going to withhold my judgment. No, I'm judging you deeply right now. I will make it for you. But anyway, so that's the pretty well-documented origin of the Caesar salad. OK, you all agree on number four, so we'll go there. Chop suey, a quintessential Chinese dish, was actually invented in San Francisco during the gold rush.

E:You guys also all think that this one is science, and this one is the fiction.

S:Ah, well.

E:Sorry, guys.

S:Aw, crap.

E:So you swept us. This is the fiction.

S:This was devilishly plausible.

C:Yes, I did sweep you.

S:Because, yeah, there obviously was a large Chinese-American population. There was a Chinatown, et cetera, in San Francisco, and during the gold rush, et cetera, it seems likely that that would happen. But, and in fact, in fact, that is a common myth. It's a common myth that chop suey, because chop suey kind of sounds like an Americanization of a Chinese dish.

E:Yeah, like General Tso's chicken or something. Yeah, General Tso's chicken was not made in China.

S:Where did it come from? It came from China, so the chop suey is basically you take what you have, you know, what's left over, and you chop it all up into a dish, right? So the idea that people weren't doing that for a really long time isn't very plausible, but they actually were able to trace it, researchers looking at this, were able to trace it back to the Toisan region of China, and the original name in Chinese was something very close to chop suey.

C:The name was Americanized,

S:So there were lots of names for it over the years, but they think they've tracked it back to the original name, which was like Choi Sui or something, very similar sounding name. But then they got Americanized to Chop Sui and was marketed during the gold rush, but was definitely the origins are traced back to China. That was a very plausible fiction. So, this means, Jay, unfortunately, chicken tikka masala was definitely invented in the UK around 1970, but there are dueling claims from Glasgow and London. The Glasgow claim seems to be the better of the two. Glasgow actually submitted to the EU, they tried to get chicken tikka masala branded As a Glasgow dish, but they were turned down, so they didn't go for that. The story goes that this is in Glasgow, an Indian restaurant, and one of the customers thought that the Thanks for watching. Yeah. And of course, these are all very plausible because we live in a global world where people of different cultures live in different places and stuff happens, right? Pizza was invented in New Haven, right? New Haven. New Haven. Yep. Not Chicago. Not Chicago. Not Chicago. But it was definitely invented in the U.S. So it's like Italian-Americans developed it. Spaghetti and meatballs is like an Italian-American dish more than it is an Italian dish. And I don't care, because it's my favorite dish. But pasta was already becoming popular in Italy in the 13th century when Marco Polo left and came back to China, so he couldn't have been the one that brought it there, predated him. But it was in the 13th century.

J:The Chinese invented the wheat-based noodle, but it has become a staple dish around the world.

S:You know, that got exported west through, you know, Western Asia, Europe, and then eventually to Italy. The Italians, of course, perfected it. Does that make you feel better, Bob? Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. And then, you know, pasta is made out of a certain kind of durum, of wheat, and there's also different kinds you use for the fresh soft pasta and then the hard pasta, that's the semolina wheat you use for that. And the reason for that is that it has a long shelf life. Pasta is one of those foods. I think I could eat it for every meal. Breakfast to me, in the United States, breakfast is basically dessert.

US#07:Breakfast pasta is pretty baller.

S:I love breakfast pasta. I could have pasta for dinner every day for the rest of my life and be totally happy. And be totally fat. Totally right. That's basically our go-to, first of all it's comfort food, but it's also how we always have somewhere between 10 and 20 pounds of pasta in the house, and that's always a dish we can go to no matter what is going on.

J:We haven't been shopping in a week, we have nothing in the house, okay we'll have pasta. 20 pounds. That's our backup dinner. Wow.

S:And you say that like it's a bad thing, though.

C:That's a wonderful thing.

J:That's dangerous for me. I can't keep pasta, like, I can't keep pounds of pasta in my house.

S:That's also my winter, you know, getting snowed in emergency supply of food, because it's basically a dried good. I could keep 20, 25 pounds of pasta in the house. As long as you can boil water, you're okay. Yeah, as long as you can boil the water, you're good. Yeah, but you need sauce. You don't need salt. A little oil, a little garlic, a little sari.

C:You could do alio, right?

S:Alio, olio, whatever you call it. You could do it with oil, you could do it with butter.

C:So all you really need is parmesan cheese.

S:If you have parmesan cheese. Ooh, cacio e pepe. It's my favorite. Bob is dying a thousand cuts here. But yes, sauce is awesome.

E:No, no, no.

S:Cacio e pepe is like a very classic Italian dish, and that's just Parmesan cheese, oil, and black pepper.

E:And in the summer, we pick fresh tomatoes and basil from our garden, and that's it.

S:We have pasta with tomato and basil. It's awesome. I like a little pesto with my pasta sometimes. That's what I'm saying, yeah. And then after you have that meal, you play a little city of heroes and you're good.

J:But we have China to thank for it. We have to acknowledge that. I have no problem with that. Well, this was an interesting science fiction.

C:Evan, that's my only goal, is to be interesting.

S:Sweeping you is just a side benefit. Researchers work not knowing when or where the big breakthroughs will come or if they will ever come.

E:That does not diminish their persistence and rarely affects their passion in the long term, although it may test their patience from time to time.

S:Ian William Chubb Australian neuroscientist and academic.

C:He was the Chief Scientist of Australia from 2011 to 2015.

E:So there's a position in Australia called the Chief Scientist.

U:2016.

E:Of Australia. Well, January 2016. That's true. Science is mostly drudgery. Yes. Because it's almost by definition tedious, right? You've got to dot all the I's and cross all the T's. But that eureka moment you get every now and then makes it all worthwhile. For now and then, or if it even doesn't come, you just have to understand it's about patience. And there are correlations there with skepticism as well. As we try to explain to people what this is all about skepticism and a skeptical worldview, some people it just takes a while for them to kind of come to terms with it or grasp it or even understand it.

S:And it's good for the skeptic teaching other people to have patience with other people when it comes to enlightening them. Yeah, absolutely.

E:All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week. Thanks, Steve. I'm going to go eat some pasta. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info at theskepticsguide.org, and if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com slash skepticsguide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community.

S:Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.