SGU Episode 1027
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| SGU Episode 1027 |
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| March 15th 2025 |
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"Cross-section highlighting the substantia nigra, crucial for movement and coordination." |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
"The burden of proof as far as authentication is concerned is on the claimant—not on anyone else to prove a negative. Asserting that a particular image must be paranormal because it is unexplained only constitutes an example of the logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance. One cannot draw a conclusion from a lack of knowledge." |
- Joe Nickell |
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| Show Notes |
| SGU Forum |
Intro[edit]
Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, March 12th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Everybody. Cara, Santa Maria.
C: Howdy.
S: Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.
E: Good evening everyone.
S: How's everyone faring? We've got some beautiful spring weather starting up, isn't?
E: It. Oh, I know it's percolating.
C: Really. It's raining here in LA. It's been quite dreary today, which I'm not going to complain about because no, you're not.
J: Cara, is it true? I've heard this from several people. Is it true that when it rains in LA that things look really clean for a couple of days?
C: Yeah, well, hopefully you get a couple days at least one day, like the day after it rains, you can see like the visibility is amazing. You can see out to the ocean. The mountains look crystal clear.
J: Oh, the sky is clearer too.
C: That's what they're talking about, OK. That's what looks. Clean the air. The air is clean after it rains. Yeah, but I have news. Good news, everybody. I took my exam today and I passed.
B: My God, I was.
J: I was sweating that and I was couldn't have been farther away from that test and I was worried about it.
C: So I took the E Triple P, which is the licensing exam for professional psychology in the United States. Everybody has to take it. I still have to take my exam for California licensure, but that's a lot shorter. It's it's just like the law and ethics. It's not nearly as intense. So yeah, I'm one step closer, but pretty much like I've jumped over all the big.
S: Hurdle, big hurdle.
C: Now, uh huh. Who do you remember, Steve? You remember taking that good old boards or I don't know how many? You have multiple exams.
S: Yeah, I'm actually I have 3 board certifications.
C: Oh well, yeah. So that was your which?
E: Will expire. Actually, yeah.
C: But you also do you have a licensing exam just for the medical license as well, I.
S: Mean initially there is but you don't have to retake that. You have to pass your your your examinations. Initially there's like 3 parts to it and you need to pass them in order to get license but then that's it.
C: But then that's like, I think equivalent to what I'm what I just did.
S: But then there's also board certification in your specialty, so I.
C: Which we also have.
S: Yeah, on top of it, I have 3 board certifications. Yeah.
C: Well there aren't that many board certifications in psychology. Like medicine has so many different boards. There's a handful in psychology. It's not 100% necessary, but obviously it can't open doors. I think the only one that I would really be interested in or would even be, I don't know, would make sense for me would be health psychology, but it doesn't seem to, I don't know, it doesn't seem to be required.
E: Cara, I have a question about the test, the examination, yes, how the material you studied in order to prepare for it, was it overall spot on? Was it a bunch of things that you wound up not being tested on?
C: Oh, a million, yeah. So many things I ended up not being tested on. Bunch of things on the test I'd never seen was.
E: It 100 questions or.
C: 225. Questions.
E: Multiple choice.
C: All of them.
S: But what they did in, in the, for the like the board exams is in the medical exams, they typically will like, they have obviously broad questions, but they'll pick one area and they do like deep questioning on one area. And but you better hope that they pick an area that you understand well or you just got to understand every area well so that whatever they pick you're you're you're good at. Right.
C: Yeah, that's basically it for for psychology. There's like multiple areas and the questions are so obscure. They're so narrow focused in these, you know, bigger areas. And a lot of times, you know, and there's whole sections of things that you have to learn fresh just for the exam. Like there's a whole bunch of questions on industrial organizational psychology, and clinical psychologists don't learn that during their PhD programs.
E: Yeah.
C: So it's like you.
E: Only learn it in preparation for this exam and.
C: I'll never use it again because I'm not an IO psychologist. And then there's just stuff that's like, I don't remember. It's stuff that sounds easy. Like when we talk, we've talked on the show a lot about classical and operant conditioning, right? Like these classic Pavlovian and then later these, you know, pairing and unconditioned stimulus with a conditioned stimulus to get a conditioned response. And so it seems really straightforward, but then it's the most random obscure, higher order conditioning question with all these distractors and confusing things. And you're just like, sometimes you read it and you're just go, I don't know what I just read. I don't know, answer this question. Your eyes are just crossing. And of course, Steve, when you did it, did they have testing centers back then?
S: Not when I did my very my original exams or my original board certification because they they came online before I had to do any of my subspecialty boards or my later recertifications.
C: Yeah, testing centers are so weird. Yeah, It's like there's a bunch of people there. They're all taking their own licensing exams for whatever specialty there. There's legal, is there? Yeah, legal people like yeah, counters.
S: And.
C: They like check your glasses and you can't have jewelry. And if you want to drink water, you have to like, raise your hand and leave the room and drink water and you're like being observed the whole time, cameras all over you. It's very intense.
S: Now my board research are online.
C: Oh, nice. Yeah, that's so nice.
S: Yeah, yeah, they're very hard to get. Originally certified and then fairly forgiving on getting recertified.
C: Yeah, that's that first turtle. I can finally breathe. And tomorrow's my last day of fellowship, you guys.
S: Right.
C: So I go into the hospital tomorrow, say goodbye to everybody.
J: How's that feel?
C: Weird. I mean, I already last week, I already said goodbye to all my patients. So that was like, you know, bittersweet. Now it just feels like, I don't know, I think I'm just very tired, you know, I got up very early this morning and I was very stressed all, well, not all day until I got that answer right after. Also very lucky in psychology that they tell you right when you finish what your score is.
J: Oh really? How come?
C: Because it's on a, it's on a computer, so it can be scored. Whereas, you know, I, I have friends who are lawyers who told me they had to wait. Like, I don't remember what it is, like six months for their bar results.
J: What?
C: Yeah, something, maybe five months, something obscene. And then they're like publicly posted. So I I feel very lucky.
J: Well, I mean, then what happens? This is this time of your life is ending and what's the next thing?
C: So the next step now is paperwork, right? I have to submit everything to the board and then the board will issue me my license once it's ready and then the hospital will start the process of credentialing, which can take months and months and months and months. And I don't really know what credentialing involves except for making sure that I'm like legally and ethically. And I don't know competently OK to work at the hospital. But I know they do a lot of background Y stuff and they do a lot of paperwork Y stuff and it takes months and months. And then once I'm credentialed at the OH and put me on all the insurance panels, I think is a big part of it. And once I'm credentialed at the hospital then I can come back on as an attending, but I'll be part time.
J: It's going to be a part as I was just going.
C: To yeah, I want to be part time there and then I'll probably have a part time clinic as well, just private patients.
E: You're making it happen. That is so great, Karen.
C: Going back to school when you're an old is weird you guys.
S: Yeah, my wife did. My wife got her PhD in her 40s.
C: 50s did she when? How old was she when she first started? Do you remember?
S: I think late 40s.
C: Wow. Go Joss. Yeah, I don't know if I could do that. Like I'm 41 right now and thinking about doing all this again. Oh, I would die. I just couldn't. I started at 36. Is that right? No, I started 34. This is a six year degree and I'm in. Yeah. And I just finished postdoc. I can't imagine doing it in my late 40s.
S: Yeah, and she was working as a job at the same time.
C: Yeah, I was working full time. It was really hard. Yeah, but you have to do that when you're an old, you're not like on mom and dad's health insurance anymore.
US#06: Right, exactly.
C: You got bills to pay, so anybody else out there who went back to school or changed careers, I feel you. You can do it.
US#06: I can't imagine. I couldn't imagine going through medical school now.
C: You know, I can't imagine sitting down and getting a PhD right now, even though I just did it. It's, it's too much now. I don't think I could.
US#06: Is it real?
C: I'm remembering back to like, guys, I was still working in television, so I would be on set or in my dressing room with textbooks like reading or like on location somewhere in another country and like sitting huddling in video village or something, studying between takes. It was nuts. What was I thinking?
S: Well, I mean, that's what that's what you got to do when you're young to get get to that, that base level where you want to start your career, you know?
C: Yeah, but I was starting a whole career over.
S: But I think my experience has been both personally and professionally, you know, that people who go through, you know, like go through medical school, go through training or whatever, when they're older, like after they've been in the private sector for a while or whatever, are excellent because they have a lot more perspective. They have a lot, you know, more, they're more versatile. They appreciate and understand what they're going through a lot more, you know, the value of the information that they're learning. They haven't just been in school their whole life, you know.
C: Right, and there's like there's also kind of like a confidence that's not a fake confidence, but you know, just a comfort sitting with patients that I definitely the younger folks that I would be working with. I did see, you know, a lot of them were like, I couldn't work in the older adult clinic like you do. What would I have to say to these people? Like they loved working with kids, I think because they didn't feel confident.
S: Something to be said for life experience, you know.
C: Yeah, yeah.
S: All right. Well, congratulations, Cara. That's why I had no doubts. I had no doubts.
C: I lied to them before we started recording but.
Voice-over: No, it was a lie of omission.
C: It's not like. You. But it's true. I hadn't, I didn't tell anybody when I was going to take it because I couldn't. I didn't think I could handle the either a good luck text or the how'd you do text in case I failed. But yeah, anyway, thank you, Steve. Thank you. White lie.
S: We forgive now, Evan.
E: Yes.
S: You're going to do your own.
What's the Word? (10:22)[edit]
- Psionic
S: What's the word?
E: Yes, I am. I first attempt at a What's the word? And this What's the word segment was inspired by Mick W Mick West. Yeah, one of the best UFO debunkers out there today. We highly recommend him go to his channels and subscribe to everything he does. He sent out a tweet back on February 24th and I'm going to read to you the tweet right now, word for word. Here's what he said. I find the history of word usage fascinating. The word psionic has briefly become popular in a corner of ufology, but it's primarily been a Dungeons and Dragons specific word. Looking at trends, the only spike was in August 2010 with AD and D book. This begs the question, are the people who use it now D&D fans? Is there perhaps a little fantasy involved here? Now, that may seem like an innocuous tweet to a lot of people, but to those of us familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, Oh my gosh. The responses poured in wanting to correct Mick about, you know, the fact that he's kind of saying, well, yeah, August 2010, you know, there was this spike. So maybe that's kind of where they they pulled it from. But Oh my gosh, the word psionic has a history before that. And I think I'll, well, Karen, not you, but but the four of us are are familiar with the term from Dungeons and Dragons and it is well before 2010. I'll read to you a couple of other follow up tweets that help paint the picture a little bit. 1 reply was the word means nothing, Mick. My mental association of it comes from playing Mass Effect in 20 in 2007 on my Xbox 360. You're looking for popularity in a cultural significance for a word that has plenty of synonyms. OK, so they used it in 2007. That's where this that particular person who sent a tweet or an X out had it from. And then there was another one. It was used in a late two-part episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, which I don't really remember even though I would watch Next Generation. Yeah. An ancient psionic weapon was assembled by Vulcan separatists. Robin Curtis guest star, and I actually think she's better in the role than Savic than as Savic in the films.
C: Are you saying Scionic like SCION? PSIONIS.
E: Yes.
C: Oh.
E: Sorry. Thank you, Cara.
C: No, it's good because I was like, there's a car called a Scion, but it's a different.
E: Yeah, and I'm going to get, and I'm going to get to the nitty gritty in a second. I just wanted a couple more tweets for some flavor here. Another one, Psionics and D&D ever been around heavily way before August 2010, Mick having first seen myself in the Dungeon Masters Handbook in the early 80's. The Dark Sun World, which was created in the early 90s, is based upon a world where everyone had psionics. OK, so this person's getting closer sort of to the origin of this and then a few other funny ones. It sounds better than magic or telepathy. It sounds more scientific, The word psionic I.
US#06: Agree by by design.
E: My recollection of this word dates back to the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rule system, which came out in the late 1970s. I began playing Dungeons and Dragons in 1980s, so it wasn't soon soon after that I discovered it. And if you go to page 110 of that Old Players Handbook, which I'm sure many of us still have a copy of on our shelves, you'll find it. Psionics. Here's their definition. Psionics are various powers derived from the brain, and they enable characters so endowed to perform in ways which resemble magical abilities. OK, but I hadn't really thought about that. Really what? What about prior? Like what what was, Was there any use of the word psionic prior to the original Dungeons and Dragons books? Well, actually, yes. Let me tell you a little bit about the word psionic itself though. It's a combination of PSI, which is a reference to psychic phenomenon derived from the Greek letter PSI. PSI which has been associated with psychology, the mind, and parapsychology. And the last part are the suffix Onyx, a suffix that suggests a scientific or technical aspect similar to words like electronic or bionic. So psionic. Linguistically the terms origin is well before Dungeons and Dragons. So says the Rhine Research Center's director John Kruth. KRUTH, who was asked about this and replied eventually in one of in one of Mick's threads here, as he said so. Ionics is a term that gained popularity about 55 years ago in the 1970s. I first understood it to mean mechanisms that enable PSI to be expressed, and it includes different techniques developed through research like meditation or sensory deprivation techniques. It is most often used to discuss devices, human made machines, and other manufactured technologies that are considered to be either amplifiers of sigh ability or have the ability to store sigh intentions so that they can be released by the owner at a specific time or in a specific location. OK, so and he goes on a little bit more about that, but actually that's not really the origin of it. It goes back even further than that. You really have to go to the mid 20th century, the year 1951. This is really where it came from. The term scionic was popularized in science fiction and speculative fiction, particularly in the mid 20th century, 1951's. The first use of the word. One of the earliest uses was John W Campbell Junior's science fiction magazine Astounding Science Fiction in the 1950s. Campbell, a key figure in shaping modern sci-fi, used the term to describe psychic abilities that function like a science based power, often linked to telekinesis, telepathy, and other mental abilities. And while PSI has been used in earlier discussions of parapsychology, the structure term psionics emerged to frame psychic phenomenon as a kind of technology or scientifically measurable force, rather than purely supernatural. That is the origin of the term psionic or the word psionic. It derives from science fiction from the from the 50s. And if you think about it, it kind of makes sense that it would be incorporated in the 1970s when Gary Gygax and his other partner, who's I forget the people he worked with in order to develop the game system, Dungeons and Dragons, they were of the age, what would they have been reading when they were kids in the 1950s? That's exactly what they would have been reading. And they obviously borrowed it from from this era of science fiction and brought it in as a game mechanic to Dungeons and Dragons. So that is where the word psionics comes from all the way back to 1951. So this has been a very special What's the word inspired by Cara Santa Maria? As a segment of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, TuneIn next time when we explore the origins of the word phaco.
B: Or not nice. All right. Hey I found I found mention of the word psionic in Babylon 5 from the early 90s. Psionic. Yes, Psionic Monitoring Commission replaced the Cycorp, Cycorp. So yeah, I I knew they must have said it in there because Cycops were all was all over Babylon 5. So yes, Psionic Monitoring Commission.
E: Makes sense. It's it's a yeah. What's it a Is that a portmanteau? When you take 2 words, slam them together and make a new word out of it.
C: It is, except that's not really a portmanteau because this it's just using a suffix.
E: Oh, I see.
C: Yeah, portmanteau is if you take 2 words like psychology and bionic and you make it into psionic. But that's not how they they just used a word forming part. OK. Ponic. So it's. Not so. It's not technically. Oh no. It's just a not a malapropism. It's a neo neologism. It's just a new word.
B: Yeah, a new word.
C: Yeah.
S: Yeah, it's like 1/2 port Monteler. They took Onyx from words like electronics and then they just replaced the the prefix with PSI.
C: Yeah, yeah. But I mean, but it's not technology. Yeah, you could say like, I'm a computerologist, right? But that's not really a portmante, right? Right.
E: I love how a discussion starting with UFOs and this brought up by Mick, all of a sudden, you know, and they all ignored like the UFO aspect of it. It all turned into a discussion of Dungeons and Dragons. So. Yeah. It's funny in its own right.
S: All right. Thanks, Evan.
E: Yep.
News Items[edit]
Screen Time and Mental Health (18:53)[edit]
S: Jay, start off the news items with a discussion of screen time and mental health.
J: Yeah, I was reading a study that came from the University of California, San Francisco, published by or was published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. And the study shows that preteens aged 10:50 who essentially, you know, watch too many screens, right, Too much phone and, and, you know, iPad and computer screen use are at a heightened risk of developing manic symptoms. And that's kind of scary because, you know, if you read about mania, you know, it could be very severe and it could be very difficult to deal with. So the symptoms included an inflated self esteem, decreased need for sleep, distractibility, rapid speech, racing thoughts and impulsivity. And these are all characteristics of bipolar spectrum disorders. And a second study, this was a finished study at the University of U Vas Kula and the University of Eastern Finland. They followed 187 adolescents over 8 years. And their findings show that a higher screen time, particularly on mobile devices, this correlates with increased stress and depressive symptoms. So adolescents who engaged in regular, you know, physical activity and organized sports, they, of course had lower stress levels and fewer depressive symptoms. Notably, those with both high screen time and low physical activity faced the highest levels of stress and depression. Now, at this point, I think nobody is shocked at all, right? Anybody who is reading the news and who's been paying attention, even through your own experience, so, you know, would would be able to, you know, hear what I'm saying and be like, yeah, of course. Like, you know, this is not, this is not a surprising piece of information. What is really sad about it? And, you know, this is essentially just making people aware, you know, we have a huge number of people that are setting themselves up for mental health issues. And it doesn't have to be that way. There there are things that can be done to to help these people. So, you know, if you have kids or you have nieces and nephews, whatever your job is, like if you have anybody that you could you could help pass this information to, I think it would be very helpful. So let me give you some more information in case you get into a discussion about it. You want to talk about more details? So the screen times vary significantly, significantly across age groups, which I think tracks very nicely with my experience. This was coming from data from 2019 American children aged 8 to 12 spend an average of guess how many hours guys per day ages 8:00 to 12:00.
E: Oh my gosh, it's going to. Disturbingly, I was 6.
J: Yeah, you're right. In the zone it's 7 hours per day. On screen they're.
C: Right.
J: Wow, teenagers aged 1318 averaged how many hours daily?
C: 12O.
E: No, it's 8.
C: Oh really? Yeah, I thought it would be higher because they're on their phones all the time.
J: Yeah, I was going to. I was in the same exact place.
C: Yeah.
J: So younger children have lower screen times with those under 2 years old averaging 42 minutes per week. Wow. Like even even, you know, two years and younger, like 42 minutes a week, That's a lot of screen time. Two to four year olds averaging 2 hours per week, 5 to 8 year olds averaging 2 hours per week. These statistics definitely highlight this increasing engagement with screens as children grow older, right? This is a significant problem. It's a mental health problem, could also be connected to a child's physical health because screens are definitely keeping them from going outside and exercising and all that stuff. Like, I mean, this goes hand in hand. So it's definitely very concerning and it's really obvious. This isn't like muddy. You know, you know. Results this is crystal clear what's going on here. So over the past 20 years there, you know, there's been a a significant increase in mental health issues among various populations. This is going, you know, this is globally. In the UK, for instance, the surveys showed that mental health problems have been on the rise since the year 2065% of Britain's experience a mental health problem. This was in 2017 and in the United States, the National Comorbidity Survey replication, this is called NCS Dash R It indicated that nearly half of Americans, 46.4% reported meeting criteria for a mental health disorder at some point in their life. I don't think it's that uncommon for people to have problems throughout their life that could give them spells of mental health issues or whatever. It could be depression, anxiety, but we're not talking about a year or two of someone struggling with something like we're talking about something that is definitely persistent. You imagine this generation growing up who are, you know, heavily into their screens. You know, I, I struggle with my children as well. Like when the weekends come around like that, that's all they want to do and I can't get them outside. You know, they could be setting themselves up for a very uncomfortable future with with, you know, these mental health issues that will seemingly come out of nowhere. You know, my wife and I do the best that we can, but you know, other parents out there, I'm sure, you know, like it's very hard. And the other thing is like the screen screens are a like a pretty much a cure all for like adult problems. Like if I need my kids to be involved in something so I can focus on something, giving them screens like, you know, hands that to me very neatly, you know, but we got to stop using it that way. We've got to really monitor not only the kids screen time, but what are they doing on the screens as well, which that's a completely different topic. So they're saying here that, you know, regular, your engagement, of course, in physical activity and organized sports, these things promote a physical well-being. And it also acts as a buffer against stress and depression, meaning that if a child is doing this, it it's harder for the child to develop mental health issues because they have this, you know, built in essentially like a mental buffer that, you know, doesn't make it come on as quickly. So it's a very, very healthy thing for, for them to do, for all people to do. And also they're the, the experts are recommending, of course, limiting children's leisure screen time to two hours per day. And, and there are people inside of, of these studies that are, you know, making recommendations that are saying two hours is probably too much, even even though they're saying like, you know, if this is like the thing we're going to agree on is the, the Max number there, there are people that don't agree with that and think it's got to be even less, you know, but you think about it, my kids use screens in school every class. They, you know, my, I have a nine year old and a 12 year old and like, they have Chromebooks that the school gives them and they're on those screens non-stop and they're on them when they get home. And that's all just school related. It's still screen time. So I'm, I'm worried. I think, you know, this is one of those things that we have a lot of these types of issues that we have to deal with in modern times. Like, you know, just the plastic issue as an example is another thing. Like, I'm, I'm worried about it. I don't know what to do. It's a very hard thing to not fall victim to and it's a very it's a very hard thing to train your kids to not be screen addicts you.
C: Know one of the first things we can do is model good behavior because I can assure you that the vast majority of these kids parents are also screen addicts. Yeah. And I think it's really, we talk about it a lot in terms of it being like a kid problem, but how are kids supposed to have better impulse control than their own parents?
J: Yeah, exactly. I totally agree. I mean, kids definitely model their behavior after their parents. I mean, there are things that I say in my house like I'm not even aware that I'm saying them. And all of a sudden I hear my kids repeating them and using them. You know, they are picking up on our behaviors, on the, you know, tones of voice with the words that we use. You know, how angry are you? How you know, how calm are you? All of those things get passed down to them for.
C: Sure. How addicted to your phone are you?
J: Yeah, it's terrible. I mean, I, I work on my phone in one way or another. I got a phone in my face most of the day, you know, or my computer screen. Just just, you know, I can't do any of my work without a screen.
C: Yeah.
S: I think it's important though also as we and I know we've said this before that the strategy, the better strategy is probably maximizing non screen screen time rather than limiting screen time. Because if you just take the approach of it like you get 2 hours of screen time per day, but you're not making an effort to say, well, what are you going to do the rest of the time?
C: Yeah, you're just like you're on your own kid.
S: Yeah, then it's kind of a losing strategy where if it's like you're going to spend 2 hours outside there, we're going to do this thing together or, you know, whatever you have to give it, give them other things to do that does not involve screen time. And then you can also have some protected time. Like dinner is a great example, like no screens at dinner. Yeah, this is family time. You could come you incorporate some of that as well. But I agree Cara, the hardest thing is for parents to limit their screen time.
C: And I would see it all the time when I was working in the kid clinic, the parents being like, oh, my kids on their phone all the time. And I'm like, your phone is in your hand while you're talking to.
S: Me while you were saying that.
C: Yeah, exactly. Like why do you think? I mean, I'm not saying it's the parents fault. It's, you know, it's culturally normative now to be on your phone all the time. But yeah, I mean, how on earth is a kid expected to have, like, kids don't have a developed frontal lobe, you know? What I think it's. Really hard for them to control those impulses.
US Mass Shootings (28:03)[edit]
S: Well, Jay, I'm going to give you one more thing to worry about, OK? And that is the effect of mass shootings.
C: Oh yeah, sorry, I get, I know. So there's a new article that was published in Cosmos magazine, which is an Australian publication that you can access by what a name IMA Perfetto, who's a science journalist at Cosmos, and she wrote about a publication that just came out in JAMA Network Open titled Direct Exposure to Mass Shootings among US Adults. So the researchers here were interested in getting a little bit more information because we've talked about this on the show. So I'm not going to get too deep into the weeds on this, but we've talked about how historically there were barriers to accessing information about gun violence in the United States. And so there just isn't a lot of data. And what these researchers wanted to do is understand from a self report perspective, how many people in the US have had direct exposure to mass shootings? And also is that risk equal across different demographic groups? And what does?
B: Direct exposure mean.
C: Well, that's yeah, we'll define that. So they used a survey company called You Gov. I think we've, we've talked about You Gov in the past, which is a, a polling organization, a market research firm and they were able to put together a representative survey of adults in the US, so 10,000 adults. And then the, if you look at the kind of sample demographics, they're pretty representative of the US population. So like 4% Silent Generation, 30% Boomer, 25% Gen. X, 28% Millennial, 15% Gen. Z, almost half, half female, male 51 1/2 percent or 51% female, 49% male. And then also across race and ethnic ethnicity, 3% Asian, 12 1/2% black, 16% Hispanic, 62% white, 5% other, blah blah blah. And that they also have demographics on income and on educational attainment. And so they gave this survey to 10,000 respondents and they asked them some questions. And so the question that you were asking, Bob, well, first of all, they were asking specifically about gun related crimes where four or more people are shot in a public space such as a school, shopping mall, workplace or a place of worship. That's how they are defining a quote, mass shooting that's based on the gun Violence Archives definition. That direct exposure question, they said, quote, have you personally ever been physically present on the scene of a mass shooting in your lifetime? And then it further clarified, physically present as quote, in the immediate vicinity of where the shooting occurred at the time it occurred such that bullets were fired in your direction. You could see the shooter or you could hear the gunfire. So that's how they defined. Yeah, it's pretty specific. Then they asked for those who said that yes, they were. They asked were you physically injured in the incident and that could include being shot, trampled, or something else that caused physical injury. They coded that. They asked about mental health consequences of exposure, but they really focus in this publication on physical injuries other than psychological impacts. I'm sure there will be another study coming out with that information. They also asked about where the shooting occurred. Was it in a quote? Geographic area in which you reside or to which you feel especially close, such as a neighborhood, small city or area in a larger city or place where you spend a large amount of your time, such as a workplace, place of worship or recreational area. And then they also asked about media coverage. Was this, do you believe that this incident was quote, covered widely by news media, which they defined as national news media or by a media beyond your city? OK. So they got demographics on everybody and then they asked all of these questions and what they found was that 7% of adults.
US#00: Oh wow.
C: Were present on the scene at a mass shooting and 2% were actually injured in that same shooting. And so then the researchers extrapolated those numbers, right? Because this was a sample of 10,000 people that they believe was representative. And they think that approximately 1 in 15 US residents have been present at the scene of a mass shooting, one in 15. Yeah. So they also found a few other highlights. Younger people, especially millennials and Gen. Zers, were more likely to have been present at or injured males were more likely than females to report direct exposure. So those both, they kind of make sense, but there's no way to fully know. So basically, men being more likely than women to report direct exposure is in keeping with other statistics about gun violence and a gun violence risk. The generational difference, the researchers think, could be attributable to the fact that mass shootings are becoming more and more frequent. So it's simply a function of time. So younger people are being exposed to them more than older people. But they talk about some of the limitations of their study that there could be, like forgetting effects and things like that as well. And then there's an interesting section here, which I think is important to note on. So one of the authors said some have hypothesized this is a direct quote. Some have hypothesized that the US pays disproportionate attention to mass shootings because they affect mostly white people. But this report shows this perception to be incorrect. As with other types of gun violence, Black adults were more likely to report exposure to mass shootings. What the report does suggest, however, continuing the quote, is that we are simply less likely to talk about mass shootings that affect Black individuals or other marginalized groups. A lower proportion of Black respondents say that the mass shooting at which they were present received media attention. So according to this survey, proximately or extrapolating out from the survey, the authors believe, you know, if they can repeat this study because they do say this is a huge limitation, right? It's only a 10,000 person sample. What if it turns out to be biased? We don't have a lot of other measures, so we don't know if this has external validity because we can't compare it to anything else or not external convergent validity because we can't compare it to anything else. Like one of the authors said that this survey is the best we can do to estimate the number of people directly affected by mass shootings is frankly frustrating. We need better, more reliable data. But if this estimate turns out to be representative, that is that's epidemic, right? Like that's a, that's a really troublesome statistic. And we're not even looking at the psychological impacts of being present on the scene when there's a mass shooting. Witnessing death. You know, one of the the main diagnostic criteria for post traumatic stress syndrome is that you have real or imagined exposure to death. Like you either witness somebody else or you thought you were going to die. And so I'm not saying that everybody who's exposed to a mass shooting will develop PTSD, but if they do, the criteria are there, and that's really worrisome.
S: Yeah, that's an incredible number of people.
C: So we'll see, obviously, if we can continue to collect data and look at this. And if you are interested, you can go to thegunviolencearchive.org where these researchers have tirelessly been compiling gun data over the last several years.
S: All right. Thank you, Cara.
Stem Cells for Parkinson’s (35:42)[edit]
S: So guys, have you ever heard of using stem cells to treat Parkinson's disease?
E: No, not. Specific When would you guess?
S: When would you guess that started? When was the 1st?
E: 2000.
S: Actual treatment using STEM.
C: 2000 like on a person.
S: Yeah, on a human being.
C: Yeah, it's probably been a bit.
E: Last week I.
C: Don't know.
S: About 10 years ago.
C: 2015.
S: 1987.
C: Shut up.
S: 1987 in Sweden.
C: What were they doing?
S: What were they doing that was before were?
C: They putting it up in.
E: The yeah became a became, you know, well.
S: A well known term in 2000s is when like it sort of hit the public consciousness. It was fetal derived, dopamine producing neurons. Fetal derived. So that's how you got stem cells back in 1987, right? You got them from voluntary abortions, basically.
C: But how did they get them into the brain?
S: Yeah, you can get surgery so.
C: OK, OK.
S: Yeah, you implant them.
C: Cool.
S: The Parkinson's is interesting and it's an it's an obvious target for stem cell therapy because you have a very specific population of neurons in the brain that are dying, right? And so all you would think that we need to just replace those neurons right there and that could cure the disease. So it's always been on the short list in terms of like neurological uses of stem cells. Let me just very quickly remind people what Parkinson's diseases it is caused by degeneration of the substantia nigra pars compacta neurons which are dopamine producing or dopamine secreting neurons in the basal ganglia part of the brain which is responsible for smooth voluntary muscle movement, right? It facilitates movement. It modulates moment to moment the connection between the desire to move and the resulting movement. Right, So.
C: And and to be clear, you mean smooth as in fluid, not smooth as in smooth muscle?
S: Yes.
C: Skeletal. Muscle.
S: Skeletal muscle. Voluntary movement, yes, and not coordinated because that's the cerebellum, right? That's the cerebellar system. If this feedback loop is, is off in such a way that that connection, the gain of that connection, if you will, is increased. You get Korea, you get too many movements. If it's turned down, you get hypokinesis, you get parkinsonism, right? You, you know, you, you freeze up, you, you can't move as much. So that's basically what's happening in Parkinson's disease. So Parkinsonism is kind of the suite of neurological symptoms that you get when this part of the brain isn't working. Parkinson's disease is specific cause of that and it's, you know, spontaneous neurodegenerative disorder and it responds to treatment with dopamine. So early on the disease you can give L dopa, which is a precursor to dopamine and that increases the amount that gets made by the surviving, you know, dopamine producing cells, the basal ganglia. And it effectively, you know, treats the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but in the end stage, you basically lose most or all of your of those neurons. Then that doesn't really work very well anymore because there's no buffering, there's no neurons. This circuit is not complete. You're sort of bathing that part of the brain. And dopamine, the blood level basically determines your clinical effect. So people are constantly going through being hyperkinetic and then having a brief moment, you know, like five, 1015 minutes of being well managed and then they get hypokinetic again. Then they have to dose and they go through that cycle many, many times a day, right?
C: And to remind folks who they have seen the film Awakenings, which was based on an Oliver Sacks book, he, you know, talks a lot about using they they had post encephalitic Parkinsonism. Yeah. But yeah, that's that's not part of that movie. That's what's happening in that.
S: Movie yeah, they had a post infection destruction of the substantial Niger cells right so.
C: Which is why they awoke and then.
S: So they basically had end stage parkinsonism right away like they did the virus wiped out those cells rather than than dying over 20 years.
C: And so the L dopa worked for a minute.
S: It basically worked for a brief window, then it quickly burned out whatever remaining neurons they had. Yeah, which?
C: Was, but that's how didn't he discover that L dopa could be used in that way? Yeah, Yeah, it was amazing.
S: And you can also use dopamine agonists, you know, so drugs that mimic the effects of dopamine, they bind to those receptors. You can use anticholinergic drugs, which sort of have choline has the opposing effect. So it kind of pushes the system in the other direction. This is all a massive oversimplification, but you get the idea. So if you could, however, increase the number of neurons in that part of the brain, it would dramatically improve control of of patients with Parkinson's disease. But if you go back to like the 1987 kind of approach, they weren't putting really like neuron, like they weren't put those neurons and they were transplant. Those fetal neurons weren't making connections in the brain. They were just sitting there secreting dopamine. So in essence.
C: I pretty quickly, right?
S: They they, we were eventually able to get them to survive for a while, years, you know, wouldn't be really worth it otherwise. But it basically was just a drug delivery system, right? It wasn't repairing the damage to the brain. It was just another way of getting dopamine to the place where it needed to be. And it only worked in people who responded to L dopa as a treatment, right? So it's like not a treatment for people who were not responding to medication. It was just a way of improving the, the drug delivery and therefore the, the, the level of control never really became like a mainstay of treatment because it's, you know.
C: Because that's like you could just swallow L dopa.
S: You could just take it, Yeah, so.
C: Yeah, so why would you get brain surge?
S: Well, again, some people, they got better control because they're having a continuous release of dopamine rather than again being.
C: Right. That's a big risk. It's a it's benefits.
S: It's a very expensive, massive brain surgery for moderate improvement. Yeah, so it was. It's why I never really became a mainstay of treatment for Parkinson's disease. But then, you know, you Fast forward to the 2000s, Evan, right, when you twin the whole controversy over doing stem cell research. And of course, Parkinson's was one of the diseases that we were supposed to cure with stem cell research. This is now we're going to like embryonic stem cells, not fetal, not fetal tissue. And this was, you know, the infamous decision by George Bush to ban research creating new cell lines.
E: You. Could only use existing.
S: You'll only use existing cell lines, which is very, very problematic. And it was very draconian the way it was applied. And universities could lose like all their federal funding if one clinic was using stem cells in the wrong way.
B: Whatever. Proved. Right. You know, I didn't think I could get madder at a president.
C: I know I was gonna say, oh, they could lose all their funding, huh? Wow.
S: Yeah, I mean, it did.
B: Yeah, at the time it was.
S: Like the worst thing a president. Did in terms of health research, but it really had a very massive dampening effect on stem cell research in the United States. But in South Korea, they basically took the lead in stem cell research at that time, and Japan and elsewhere. Eventually, you know, what happened to the law was that it just became irrelevant because we figured out how to make induced stem cells. Yeah, so we didn't.
E: Didn't need the embryos.
S: We didn't need. Well, yeah, it's still, There are still advantages to embryonic stem cells. They're totipotent instead of pluripotent, which is.
E: Preprogrammed.
S: No, no, no it.
C: The they can become like.
E: Anything.
S: They can become anything, including the placenta, right? Whereas the the pluripotent could become any fetal tissue.
E: I see.
S: So in any case, because we could make induced pluripotent stem cells from like fibroblasts, we, we that opened up a whole new area of clinical research that wasn't dependent on these bands, you know, or very limited cell lines.
C: I love that about science. It's like, oh, can't do that, I'll figure out another.
S: Luckily it was easier than we thought. It was going to be like 4 genes and boom, you're done. So, and it didn't have to necessarily be that way, but it was. So we got very good at making stem cells and we can even make those stem cells. Then we can induce them to become the type of cell we want them to be like neurons. That's so you start with a skin cell, turn it into a stem cell, turn it into a neuron. We're good at that. The applications, not so much. And, and here's the problem, and I know we've discussed this before on the show, but just as a reminder, it's hard to get the, the, the stem cells to do what we want them to do and not do what we don't want them to do. So they're basically tumors waiting to happen. And it's the reason why we're not flush with stem cells to begin with, right? Evolution kind of minimizes the number of stem cells to just what we absolutely need because it's a double edged sword. Stem cells can turn into cancer and tumor. And that's a problem that we're having. If you don't know what you're doing and you know clinics are getting a little bit ahead of the evidence or whatever, they don't have the expertise. They're just injecting stem cells into your spinal cord there. There's a high rate of that becoming tumors.
C: Yeah, This is why you don't go get some unapproved stem cell treatment in another country.
S: Don't go to some stem cell clinic tourism somewhere in the world because, yeah, you know, you don't know what they're injecting into you. And there are lots of potential for harm there. But it's also hard to get neurons to make meaningful connections in the brain. And this is whether you're looking at stroke rehab or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, whatever, right? So we were hoping it's like, oh, we just have to like, introduce these stem cells into the brain and they'll automatically hook up with each other and start making meaningful circuitry and everything. Not so much research for a lot of neurological applications has shifted to all right, but they can still help because they could be support cells. These stem cells that we inject into the spinal cord, into the brain will, you know, again, produce neurotrophic factors and positively affect the local environment and maybe process toxins or whatever. They will improve the environment so that the neurons that are already there will survive longer and function better. And, and that's, so that's a lot of the research now is focusing on that application of stem cells, which is great, but it's not the cure we were hoping for. But we haven't given up on, on doing that. So given that we've been doing this now since the 1980s, it's, it may seem a little surprising to, to read that there's a phase one clinical trial just getting going, looking at using autologous induced pluripotent stem cells to treat as Parkinson's disease therapy. And again, in the hope of like really taking this treatment to the next level. Don't know how, don't know how it's going to work out again, it's just more they're getting the neurons to survive longer. And the hope is that they will not only take up shop, but actually start to to replace some of the lost functionality.
C: Right. So I guess then if we iteratively have improved the ability to like you mentioned kind of release trophic or Tropic factors so that OK, now I now I've nowhere to go and now I kind of want to stick and now that eventually they'll just work their way into the networks.
S: That's the hope. But even if even if they, they just improve the function of the cells that are there, it could still be advantageous. And just the fact that we're able to use the patient's own cells to make stem cells so that they don't require any immunosuppressive therapy. They don't have to be harvested from any, you know, exotic source. They're not animal cells, they're not fetal cells, they're the patient's own cells. So anything that we can do to reduce the complexity, the cost, the the risks of doing this procedure, then if you're doing a risk versus benefit analysis, right, even if it's the same benefit as we've already been getting like from the fetal cells from 30 years ago. But if we could do it safer, cheaper, faster, better it, then it changes the calculus to where it may become more of a mainstream treatment for Parkinson's disease.
C: And Parkinson's, Stephen, I'm curious, like might be getting into the weeds. Is it literally just the dopaminergic cells? Do some of the glial cells get damaged? Like is there structural support That could be? I'm just wondering if like a cocktail would be better for integrating?
S: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean my understanding is it's definitely predominantly the the dopamine producing neurons. It is the and you could see it, you could like if you look at either an MRI scan like there's a, we do what we call the DAT scan, it's like a dopamine scan. Or you could look at the pathology, you know, slides of brains of patients. You could see dramatically the loss of the substantia nigra. It's those neurons that are dying. Now why that's happening is not clear, and it may be different reasons in different people. Again, it's the disease is defined largely by the populations of neurons dying, not why they are dying. Just like ALS is defined by the population of motor neurons that are dying, not why they're dying. And so there's different types based upon the cause. But in any case, you know, the, the stem cell therapy thing like this is one of the things that we lived through, you know, starting with, I mean, I obviously knew about them in, in my medical training in the 90s, but really became part of the popular discussion in the 2000s. And there's a lot of hype around all the amazing things that stem cells were gonna do. And it has been largely unrealized.
C: Yeah, don't we really only use them for like a handful?
S: Of yeah, they're still pretty limited. I mean, bone marrow transplants are technically.
C: Bone marrow transplants, I think skin graft kind of war, yeah. But there's not that many things that are like approved as skin cell therapies.
S: Yeah.
C: I'm sorry, as stem cells?
S: Yeah, it's 25 years later. This is one of the things that I 25 years ago, I would have predicted we would have been much farther along than we are today. But that's because it's just turned out to be the technological hurdles are massive. And it's really, it's turned out to be a much more difficult nut to crack. And we may have to settle for, you know, some really good applications that are just not what we were hoping for in terms of like cures. It may not be a cure for these neurodegenerative diseases, but it may be another therapy that is effective, you know, safe and effective.
B: And as usual, the good shit will come out after we're. Dead.
S: Yeah, probably.
C: But hey, there there is good shit. Like that's the thing, like, yeah, we're like a bone marrow. That's true. It's like do you understand? Like that's. There's some good shit, people. Are cured of their cancer through this? Yeah, cured. I mean, that's amazing.
S: But Bob, we always have an eye on what's coming. We're always 20 years behind, you know, the cutting edge, right? But the that. But there are things out today that we were just dreaming about 20 years ago, you know, And so, and there are some fields where it's like, exceeded my expectations, like genetic engineering, you know?
B: Some of the stuff I. Really. Really.
E: Want the reverse aging, Bob? Come on, say it. Admit.
B: It it's lots of things. I want Wolverine claws and lots.
E: Of you want the coolest telomeres.
B: Did we have this conversation last week? All right, we have this. Conversation every week. Well, all right, Bob, I was looking of the what you're going to talk about is another, you know, body hack.
Brown Fat and Exercise (51:55)[edit]
- Special Type of Fat Tissue Could Promote Healthful Longevity and Help Maintain Exercise Capacity in Aging [4]
S: Tell us about brown fat and exercise.
B: This was a lot of fun. Researchers claim that mice without a specific protein developed an enhanced type of fat of brown fat that not only increases exercise capacity but also extends healthy lifespan. Wow. So this fascinating study was published in the journal Aging by team of from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. The name of the study was brown adipose tissue enhances exercise performance and healthful longevity. All right, let's dig in. So let's start this one with the skinny on fat. What basically everyone means when they refer to fat is white adipose tissue. That's the fat that's right under our skin. We all know it, we all have it, and most of us want to get rid of at least some of it. The fat is primarily energy storage, but it's also for insulation and hormone production. And it's also not just under our skin. This white fat is also around our organs. And it's actually not good to have too much fat there because that's because then the fat gets into the blood and then all sorts of crazy bad stuff happened. OK, there's another type of fat called brown adipose tissue, or just brown fat. Not too many people, I think, have ever even heard of this. This fat is in many ways like anti fat with little goatees like evil Spock in the mirror universe. But this fat is not evil. It's kind of awesome actually. I've I've known about it for a couple of decades and I've always wished I had more brown fat. So in a nutshell, brown fat can't make us fat. It makes us warm. That's what it does. It's this is thermal regulation. When you get cold, what happens? What typically happens when you get cold?
C: You shiver.
B: You shiver Why? Why do we shiver has ever thought about that? What does that to?
J: Produce heat to produce.
B: Heat Shivering generates heat, and brown fat also kicks in when we get cold and it generates heat for us by itself. And it's actually funnily is funnily a word. It's actually humorously referred to as non shivering thermogenesis. Non shivering thermogenesis is now. So this is now, this is incredibly important for newborns who have a lot of brown fat relatively, I think 2 to 3% of their body weight is brown fat. So when they get cold, they don't have all the mechanisms fully in place to make them warm that we do. For example, they literally cannot even shiver. They cannot shiver.
C: Little baby shivering Weird. Yeah, I I've never thought about that until right this moment.
B: Right.
C: It's just a tiny baby shiver.
B: It's just not develop the musculature is nervous system is not developed enough to even make shivering happen. But they have brown fat. They've got a good amount of brown fat and that literally can save their lives. You know, maybe not so much in modern days, but of course in the centuries past, I'm sure it saved a lot of babies lives. Now these cells diminish as we age and we used to think that they disappeared, but they, they found them in adults not too long ago, I think maybe 30 or 40 years ago. And we have, we still have them mainly in our, in our upper chest and neck area. But now brown fat cells, they're small, They're smaller than than white than white fat cells. And they're different. They're actually different, but I don't need to go into too much detail about that. And they're spread out. So I remember micro microbiologist Covert Bailey, some audio books years ago, He was saying things like that. If you collected all the brown fat cells together, it would be the, the size of a small organ, a little heat generating organ now and they're brown because these cells are packed with mitochondria. And that's the reason why it's one of the most metabolically active tissues in our bodies. It's just so ironic that a type of fat is so metabolically active. Where do you guys think the mitochondria in these brown fat cells get their energy from? Where do they get all this energy to generate this heat? Where they where they, where they pulling it from? From regular, from regular fat cells, from white adipose tissue, which is great actually, if you think about it. That means that when you activate, when you get cold and you activate these brown fat cells, it's burning calories from your regular fat. And that of course then can promote weight loss and enhance it'll, you know, enhance insulin sensitivity. And that has intrigued.
US#09: Researchers don't tell me ice baths are good now for weight loss. Is that?
B: Oh man, dude, I'm telling you it it would it, it would actually help activate and even perhaps even generate extra brown fat cells. So, yeah, so yeah, that that's actually a thing. So This is why this, you know, enhancing insulin sensitivity and weight loss. That's This is why brown fat has intrigued researchers, researchers for years, because brown fat has could have or should have some obvious therapeutic potential for obesity and diabetes and and a host of other conditions. But that isn't exactly why these Rutgers researchers were studying the brown fat of mice. They were studying brown fat because other researchers had noticed that mite mice that lacked a signaling protein called RGS 14 they they seem to have better longevity and even exercise performance than typical mice. So they wanted to dig deeper and see what the hell was going on there. So what So what they do, they created specific knockout mice, right? Knockout mice that that do not have RGS, the RGS 14 protein, but otherwise they were the same as the, the control mice. So when they looked at the brown fat cells from these knockout mice, what they found almost seemed like a a super brown fat to me. It was like what this this is really happening the mitochondria. Now we know mitochondria, right? These are the powerhouses of the cells. They were essentially souped up. They were more efficient than normal. They were better at producing energy and heat and the and the mitochondria had greater overall heat generating capacity as well. And even enzymes, the enzymes levels like SIRT 3S IR, T3, they were enhanced as well. And those, these enzymes further enhanced mitochondria function and they also so protect, protected the mitochondria from things like oxidative damage, which they're very prone to. And let's see one other big benefit here. The brown fat cells themselves benefited from the creation of new, of new blood vessels to give them better blood flow and nutrients and metal and, and boost and also boost the cells metabolic performance. So all that stuff is a lot of is that are the things that they found. And so when they looked at the knockout mice themselves, of course, they showed some interesting changes. I mean, if you're changing, you know, your, you know, your metabolism to a certain extent to that level, you're going to be seeing some things, you know, just like right out of the gate here. So, and I'm not even sure how much I believe some of this stuff. It's just like, are you kidding? So they noticed that the maximum lifespan was significantly greater in these knockout mice than in the control mice for both males and females. And they also get this 124 month old knockout mice. Now that's a, that's an old mice. And this is a quote from the study. These knockout mice did not show the aging phenotype normally present in the control mice of similar age, including body atrophy, loss of hair, graying of fur of fur color. So these mice.
C: Get old and Gray at two years.
B: Oh yeah, they, well, that's. Sweet. It's sad. It's sad, but it makes some great, you know, lab animals, right? I mean, a couple years you go through the whole life cycle. And so they're looking at old mice and they're seeing that no atrophy, They're seeing no balding mice, and they're not seeing much graying of the fur either. It's like, I mean, what the hell? And if that wasn't good enough, good enough, the researchers also showed improved exercise performance and endurance of the knockout mice as well to a significant degree. One site was saying 30 percent, 30% exercise performance improvement. And that's, but I didn't see too much those specific numbers in the study itself. All right. And then to make this even cooler, when the researchers transplanted the knockout brown fat into the control mice, right, because they wanted to say, all right, these, these knockout mice don't have this protein. So let's, let's just transplant that brown adipose tissue, the the brown fat. Let's just transplant that in and see what happens. So if it's something, if something happens that we know it's the, it's the the brown fat that's doing it and not some other, some other reason. So that So what happened was when they, when they transplanted the brown adipose tissue into the mice, within three days, they were showing similar exercise capabilities in the during and enhanced durability capabilities. So when they did it from knockout mouse and when they. Did it from control mouse to control mouse. They saw some enhanced enhancements, but it took eight days and it wasn't nearly as significant as what they were seeing. So I guess if you put extra brown fat in your body, you're going to see something that's noticeable, some enhancement in performance, but it was nothing like when it was transferred from the enhanced brown fat, right? You follow that.
C: So the knockout mice had a gene knocked out that coded for a protein that suppressed adipose tissue. It's like, what did the protein do?
B: One of the things that it does it, it, it's a, it's a signaling pathway for, for metabolism, as you might imagine. So that's why that's why we're seeing this difference here. It, this, this protein essentially puts on the brakes for a metabolism. It's, it's, it's very similar to myostatin. You've heard of the myostatin protein is similar. It puts the brakes on muscle growth. So when you, when you see like a whippet, a dog or, or some like cattle that do not have the myostatin protein, protein, they're, they are must, they are jacked to the, to the sky. It's incredible because there's no break. So this is similar in that without this protein that these certain, certain metabolic pathways just don't have the brakes. It makes the changes that I've discussed in terms of mitochondrial efficiency and and all that, all that. Exercise.
C: So here's a question.
B: Yeah.
C: What is the evolutionary purpose of having a break on our metabolism?
B: I don't.
C: Know if we knock that out is that bad downstairs? Because it's one thing to look at a 2 year old mouse, it's another thing to talk about a human that has like a 90 year lifespan.
B: Yeah, I don't, I don't know. And there's also, there's also other problems because this, you know, this protein, it impacts, you know, metabolism, but it also impacts other things like like your nervous system and plasticity. So that's one of the things that that I think they need to, they need to be concerned about if this, if this does take off, they're going to have to seriously study what, what are some of these other potential impacts? You know, you just can't like, oh, let's, let's do this on people now, because who knows, you know what else it could impact. But let me let me mention this other piece here that they took a control mouse and they put the enhanced brown fat into the control mouse at three months old. And when that mouse was old, it also wasn't Gray, wasn't losing hair, wasn't atrophied. So just by having that, that enhanced brown fat in their bodies, it it made it made, it gave them all these benefits.
C: And to be clear, Bob, when you're, you're using shorthand when you say a mouse, right? They didn't only do this once.
B: Oh, yeah, there was. They had a lot of Yeah, they. Did this a lot of just making sure. I don't know the exact number, but yeah, it just wasn't just one of mice. So this is a bunch of mice. Yeah. I'm seeing here from my notes that they had the. The other effects of of this protein is is it impacts learning, memory and synaptic plasticity. So yeah, so that's just like, Oh yeah, you just can't mess around with that stuff.
C: Does the protein suppress those things, or does the protein enable those things?
B: I wonder if it puts the brakes on it as well as as metabolism. I'm not sure. So obviously all that would have to be would have to be studied. OK, so but for people to benefit from this, right, Because this is where we're going, right? We want it. We want to benefit people with this discovery. So that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, we have to make ourselves and knockout people that don't have this RGS 14 protein. So as they say in this study, it becomes it's increasingly important to develop a pharmacological analog to the RGS 14 knockout brown fat that can be translated to the clinics to promote enhanced exercise capacity and healthful aging in patients. That's the wet dream scenario, right For this. And not knocking out our own proteins or genes, but targeting therapies, creating these targeted therapies to give us to give our own brown fat similar properties without necessarily getting any of the potential downsides, but some some some sort of targeted therapy that could do it. So that would be that would be amazing. I mean, but I mean, to me, like, what are the odds of this transferring to people? First off, yeah, you can never assume that that these these what you see in these studies and mice is going to transfer cleanly to people like almost guarantee that that's not going to happen. But it does happen. And we may learn enough about this enhanced brown fat that we could we could mimic these properties and and transfer that somehow through some some therapies to people. That would be amazing, you know, to to, you know, the impacts to enhancing, you know, longevity and health and and dealing with obesity and and diabetes and all these other problems that it that it could potentially ameliorate. I think could be it could be dramatic if this transfers well, but we'll see. But I.
C: Guess, Bob, an important question is like, I don't know if you've done the research on this because you're so interested in it, but I feel like every day we're seeing more and more that these like GLP ones or these semaglutides have these positive benefits beyond what they were originally developed for. How do they affect brown fat?
B: Yeah, I don't.
C: Because we might already have. I mean, I'm not saying that they're a panacea by any stretch, but like there we already have these targeted therapies that really, really seem to be helping people metabolically. And so I'd be curious to see if I don't know, it might not be that crazy an idea.
B: Yeah, I hope, because I mean this by knocking out this protein, it turned the mice brown fat into like super brown fat super. I mean, it really was this is dramatic where you're looking at an old mouse and it's not Gray in atrophied. I mean, that's just like, what the hell, That's that's incredible. I mean, even if it doesn't and it doesn't have to extend our, you know, our lifespan, it what it needs, what it would be great if it could extend our healthy lifespan, you know, if it compress the morbidity so that so that we're in really great shape until we're, you know, into our 80s. And then you know what, that's the goal, right? You you experience this compressed morbidity where over the course of a year you really decline really fast. And it's not like 15 years of just a horror show of like medical expenses and decrepitude and all that nasty stuff.
C: I'm seeing like just a quick quick Internet search an article in Cell Biochemistry and function that's from 2022. Semagluta, a GLP one receptor agonist, stimulates Browning on subcutaneous fat adipocytes and mitigates inflammation in visceral fat adipocytes of obese mice.
B: Yeah.
C: So it's like we already have drugs that are doing this. I mean, it's cool, but like I don't think it's. It feels iterative to me.
B: Scientists have noticed that these mice before and that's why that's what these these researchers did. They're like, wait, you know, these people are seeing mice that, that seem to have increased longevity and, and enhanced exercise capabilities. What's what's going on? That's why they they took a deep dive onto the brown, the brown fat and like, holy crap, look what's happened to this brown fat.
C: Right. Because there's already individual differences in mice and people. There's already people who have never had a problem with their weight their whole lives, and there are people who really, really struggle. Like what's going on there from a genetic perspective, from a protein perspective? I don't know. There's a lot to learn.
B: Yeah. I wonder if you like, like, you know, like there are people that don't have the myostatin protein and are, you know, really muscular. Maybe there are there, maybe there probably are people out there that that already don't have this and they could and they can check them out. And that would be, Yeah, sound like an awesome study right there.
S: All right. Thanks, Bob. Sure.
Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:07:41)[edit]
J: Jade, who's that noisy time?
B: All right guys, last week I played this noisy.
C: I think it's an animal.
B: Yeah, that that sounds like some flying mythological creatures from a Ray Harry house and stop motion movie scene.
C: But but I think it's a real animal.
B: Steve, what do you got?
S: Yeah, it's, I mean, I definitely sound like an animal.
C: You. Know Is it a bird?
J: Is it a? Play No, it is a It is not a bird.
C: OK.
J: Frederick Niant wrote in and said I believe this is someone pulling the string on a broken 80s to 90s voice box found in dolls. It's a promulent, promulent guess. That is not correct but thank you for trying. Hunter Richards wrote in and said hi Jay. I know a lot of people are going to say it's an animal of some kind, but if you listen closely it sounds too mechanical. My guess is this is a record being scratched. Most likely someone has a hold of the belt that turns the platter and is pulling it back and forth while the stylist is in contact with the record. Not sure what kind of record, but something that when speed up and played backwards and then forwards sounds like a growling baby bobcat. Now what that person just described is actually this. OK, that's that is my tool to.
E: Recognize that.
J: No, I mean to say like that, it's funny when I read it, I'm like, I don't know. Does he not know? Does he not know that this is like been around for a very long time? That is not correct. But but thanks for the guests. Let's move on to JD Bergen. JD said It sounds like it could be some little angry rodent, like a sugar glider A.
E: Sugar glider? I've not. I don't know what that is.
US#01: They're not angry.
J: How do you know though they might be?
US#01: They're so sweet. Have you ever met a sugar glider?
J: No, I wish I did though, I think they look really cool.
US#01: They're cute.
J: All right, there's no winner this week. Guys, I'm. I'm shocked. I'm utterly shocked that there was no winner. I'll play it for you one more time. OK? That's a skunk.
B: What?
J: OK, Yeah. And I now I I grew up with a standard poodle. That was the dog that we, my family had growing up and our dog would get sprayed by skunks, you know, at least twice a year. It was not uncommon. And I remember hearing the the mother and baby skunks making that noise as they were running away. So I recognize this right away, but I'm really surprised like nobody, nobody really did it. Maybe it was an off week, but you know, it is what it is. You know, sometimes I stump you on on some something that I would consider to be pretty easy. All right, I have a new noisy for you guys this week. Kerry, you were correct all the time. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Dale Robinson. If you think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, e-mail me directly at WTN at theskepticsguide.org. Steve, very quickly. Yeah, the SGU is. Changing significantly this year because Steve is going to retire. So Steve will be going full time at the end of June, early July, he'll be taking his certification in July he will. We are giving him a 225 questions skeptics guide. He'll have to answer. Yeah, he'll have 20 minutes to answer the questions and I'll give him the answers immediately. The bottom line is if you'd like to help support us during this time when Steve's going to be going full time, because we could really definitely use the support. And if you also want to support us, because I don't know, the world is in a very non skeptical place. And I think, you know, we need skeptical outreach now more than ever. Please consider becoming a patron. You can go to patreon.com/skeptics Guide. You can also join our mailing list. We send out an e-mail every week giving you details on everything that we did the previous week. You can go to theskepticsguy.org to check out our e-mail list. You can give our show a rating on whatever podcast player you're using. I think iTunes is still like the number one place to rate podcasts and that's it. Oh no, it isn't the conference. Guys. I know you're excited. I can hear you guys chomping at the bit wanting to talk about how excited you are about this. No, we are. We are very excited just because we know how much fun it is. And you know, we've been working on this conference for the last six months. Very, very excited and happy that we're running it again. If you'd like to join us, it's called Nauticon, Nauticon 2025. We have a Beatles team this year and it'll be on the dates May 15th, 16 and 17. You can go to nauticoncon.com for information about the conference. Everything you want to know is on there and also you can buy tickets there. Please join us, it's going to be great.
S: All right, thank you.
Emails (1:13:04)[edit]
S: Jay could do one e-mail. This e-mail comes from Tim Graham from Canada and Tim writes, Dear skeptics, your show is a highlight of the week for me. I am sure I am not the first to point out inaccuracies in episode 1026 regarding the Texas measles outbreak. I certainly got the sense from the skeptics that fund was being poked at the recommendation to use vitamins in the treatment of measles. According to The Who guidelines, vitamin A has been and continues to be a core treatment for measles, and cod liver oil contains not only vitamin D, as reported, but also vitamin A. In the situation with the Mennonites, it's plausible that this traditional remedy would be more palatable, given their cultural norms, than pills from the big bad government. For example, Cochrane states that vitamin A reduces death by 87% in children younger than two. Any cursory search for measles treatment would have outlined the importance of vitamin A. While I think the reporting content was uncharacteristically shoddy, it was actually the tone that I found more problematic. I agree with the general premise that RFK Junior has been a dangerous vaccine skeptic, but in this case he basically seems to be recommending the correct treatment. Well, I understand the bias of judging RK Junior based on previous crackery. Each time the skeptical community Stoops to judging the current behavior in this way, it feeds the narrative at the Sky is Falling. If RFK Junior starts to promote general health via exercise, will that be taken at face value or also laughed off? Lest we forget, vaccine hesitancy and denialism exists on all sides of the political spectrum. I would hope the skeptics can try to stick to a more neutral and fact based approach. Keep up the great work.
C: Well, no, there's a. Lot here.
S: I responded to Tim with the information that I'm back to give you guys and he responded simply. Thanks for the correction because Tim is completely wrong here and but in a very interesting way that is worth exploring. So the idea is that, well, vitamin A is actually AWHO and actually CDC recommended treatment for for measles. And therefore we were we were unfair to criticize RFK junior in recommending vitamin A for measles. But that's not true. I wrote about this today on on science Based medicine as well. If you want to have all the references, here's the skinny. If you look deeper into the data, what the data clearly shows is that what vitamin A is treating is not measles, it's vitamin A deficiency. The problem is that measles exacerbates vitamin A deficiency. It depletes vitamin A. The infection itself depletes vitamin A. So if you already have vitamin A deficiency, measles can make it worse. What The Who is essentially recommending is targeted vitamin A supplementation in at risk populations who are either likely to get measles or do or who do get measles. It's also true that measles and vitamin A deficiency both it weaken the immune system, right? So there's also a synergistic effect there.
C: Yeah, and in like a developed country where somebody is not likely to have vitamin A deficiency, they may still be given vitamin A as an adjuvant treatment, but it's not going to because measles does make you deficient in vitamin A. So while they have the measles, they might have temporary vitamin A deficiency, but it's not like, oh, if you get the measles, don't worry, you can just take vitamin A and then you won't have the measles, right? That's. It's actually.
S: Actually more, I would go farther than that Cara. So you know, because it's been studied. So first of all, the 87% figure is highly misleading. That was in one small study. The most recent systematic review I found had actually put the number at 12%, so a 12% reduction in mortality. RFK Junior actually referenced a study, an earlier review, an older review that cited 65%. Why are these numbers so wildly variable? It because it depends on the level of vitamin A deficiency in the population that you're studying. But all of these studies, all of these studies are in developing nations with rampant vitamin A deficiency. All of them. It also found, by the way, even right in the maximally positive patient population for the effects of vitamin A, no preventive benefit. It does not prevent measles. It doesn't prevent the spread of measles. It doesn't prevent a lot of complications of measles. It does reduce overall mortality from vitamin A deficiency, right? It also prevents blindness from vitamin A deficiency. So yes, vitamin A is an effective treatment for vitamin A deficiency. It it doesn't have any anti measles viral activity, right? It has no antiviral activity. It's not treating the measles. It's treating the vitamin A deficiency we see in measles. I found one study that specifically looked at the effects of vitamin A in the treatment of measles in a developed nation. And you know what it showed 0 benefit, no benefit. So citing data from parts of the world with vitamin A deficiency for the efficacy of vitamin A supplementation and then applying it to Texas is classic, classic RFK junior. It's completely getting the science wrong. He's interpreting it on the most superficial level possible with no medical understanding. Not like as a physician, you hear that there's a massive reduction in mortality from measles from vitamin A. The first thing you think of is, I wonder what the mechanism is that are they just treating vitamin A deficiency? But if you're not a physician and you just think, oh, it's treatment, right? It's just, it's treating the bezels, you know, and just take something that supports your your ideology that like everything is nutritional, right? And also he's while he has to make positive statements about the vaccine, he's still throwing out all the vaccine anti vaccine tropes. And if you know, then he gets interviewed later on Fox News and he's bringing up vaccine side effects and it's a choice and all that stuff was he's still a hardcore anti vaccinationist.
C: It's, you know, you know, what's so infuriating to me is that it obviously there's so much misinformation there that's going to lead people to make bad decisions because this is now a public health official. Yeah, I should say disinformation. But like, to be clear, and this is the part that's so infuriating, there is no cure for measles, right? Which is why we have to rely on vaccination. When we think about the vaccines that have really dramatically changed the landscape of these diseases, it's usually diseases for which there is no cure, right? If you get this virus, all we can do is give you comfort measures and hope that your immune system can fight it off. That's all we can do. That's so scary. We can't say oh, after the fact, you're going to be fine. You'll be fine.
S: Take vitamin A, you're good even though it has no benefit in like America, right?
C: Right. It's like, it's like COVID too. Like that's what's so infuriating. It's like people are going to die from this. People die from the flu. People die from all of these diseases. And even though we have quote treatments, those treatments don't actually fight the disease.
S: That's right.
C: They do things like reduce your mortality.
S: Yeah, the only. Thing the only messaging the the government should be having on this with the primary messing messaging should be full throated support for vaccination. You know, confusing people by misinterpreting the vitamin A literature is counterproductive, right? And so the like people say the CDC recommends it. This is what the CDC has to say. Supportive care, Supportive care. Again, physicians know what that means. It's not a treatment. It's not a disease modifying treatment. It's just making the patient better able to weather the storm of this illness. Supportive care, including vitamin A administration under the direction of a physician may be appropriate. Whoa, is that lukewarm? Right. That's just like it may be, you know, adjunctive supportive care. It's not a treatment for it completely gets it wrong, but in a way that's very typical for RFK Junior and for cranks in general who don't.
C: Yeah, I almost wish that the language would be even stronger though. Like I'm I'm looking at the Mayo Clinic and they literally say there is no specific treatment for measles infection once it occurs. Treatment includes providing comfort measures.
S: It's that's it. And also to be emphasized, it is not a substitute for the vaccine, no, but people are doing it. They are taking vitamin A to prevent measles. And it even in the studies that show that it's effective in reducing mortality, it doesn't prevent the contraction of the illness, right. And vitamin A is like the most toxic vitamin that there is, right? You're aware of that. Like it's very easy to overdose on vitamin A with horrible consequences.
C: Yeah, you can overdose on vitamin A just from eating too much liver.
S: Yeah, that's correct.
C: You like it not just from taking too many of the supplements. This is why it's so dangerous when there are these supplements that are like 2000% of your daily value.
S: That happened by, you know, there was one polar mission that they had to kill and eat polar bears. They ate the polar bear livers. So safety tip, don't eat predator livers because predators eat livers and their livers concentrate all of that vitamin A and they got hypervitaminosis A and died from vitamin A poisoning because they ate a polar bear liver. So I thought, I don't think that we were unfair to RFK, but point the point is well taken that we we shouldn't reflexively say that anything that he says is wrong because he will throw in correct things at times as well and.
C: That's what good pseudoscience.
S: They do like, yeah, and this is like rampant in the healthcare, like the alternative healthcare. And so they got eat right, you know, have a lot of vegetables, exercise regularly and take these bullshit supplements. It's like, you know that that is par for the course.
C: As part of a Weld.
S: Yeah, yeah, we even haven't. This is the Trojan horse phenomena. We even have terms for this. We write about this all the time, how they do this. You, you couch your nonsense in reasonable and reasonable sounding common sense or generally accepted good health advice and it gives it the air of again of reasonable isn't that you're reasonable and just throwing in this thing. But but there's the poison pill always. There's always the nonsense. And he is touting inappropriately touting vitamin A because he's an anti vaxxer period. He's trying to present. It as an alternative and. It's not.
C: Steve, I'm I'm looking at the symptoms of vitamin H. Horrible.
S: Your skin like melts off your body.
C: Yeah, your bones get thin and chronic. Terrible. But in acute exposure, listen to this increased intracranial pressure.
S: No, you're organ failure. It's terrible.
C: Oh my God, yeah. You don't want that.
S: No, no, no.
C: Yikes. So if you're if you if you've been taking vitamin A, it says, and you have a headache and a rash, you need to seek medical attention.
S: Don't just yeah, stop taking the vitamin A, but go to the doctor. That's why the CDC CDC says under the direction of a physician, they do not want people self medicating with vitamin A because it's dangerous.
US#01: But it's just a vitamin, Steve.
S: I know.
US#01: All right.
S: Well, we have a fun interview with Dave Farina, Professor Dave, coming up.
Interview with Dave Farina (1:24:41)[edit]
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorDaveExplains
S: So let's go to that interview now. We are joined now by Dave Farina. Dave, welcome to the Skeptic Guide.
US#08: Hi, thanks for having me.
S: Dave, you are also known as Professor Dave from your Professor Dave Explains YouTube series which is very popular. Obviously been been enjoying watching. I just watched your most recent one. I think it's your most recent one. Reacting to pathetic answers in Genesis propaganda video.
US#08: That's a good one.
S: You seem to have a good time doing that one.
US#08: I do. The reaction videos are fun, it's just I can kind of just let loose a little bit so.
S: So tell us a little bit about your this project, how you how and when you started it and how it's been going.
US#08: Sure. I started my YouTube channel in 2015, January of 2015. So I actually just celebrated my 10th anniversary, if you can believe it. But yeah, I started out just, I had been teaching organic chemistry and I had noticed that some people were uploading educational content, tutorial based content to YouTube. Not that much. This was quite a while ago, but there definitely was some up there, most notably Khan Academy and some other things like that. And I thought, well, why can't I do that? So I upload, I basically just filmed myself delivering my organic chemistry lectures as though I were teaching class and did a little branding, made a little theme song, you know, some fun little tidbits to make it a little more fun and, and put them online and, and just thought, well, we'll, let's see what happens. And it was, I was actually pretty shocked at how well it was received immediately, which prompted me to start making general chemistry tutorials, this time with green screen and some animations and, you know, kind of upped the production value a little bit. And those were also received well. So I started doing biochemistry and physics and astronomy and math and just really, you know, kind of was off to the races with as many topics as I could cover. And then around 2019-2020, a new component of the channel emerged. I started to do some debunking content where I just take charlatans and frauds who lie about science and and expose them, debunk them increasingly maliciously I guess over the years, which has become something of a reputation for me. And so those are the two things that I do to this day.
S: Yeah. So we we kind of started with debunking. That's kind of was. I think it's a critical part of scientific science communication.
US#08: I think so.
S: Yeah, it's funny that you kind of found it after the fact that, Yeah, because, you know, most people have misconceptions about science. No, you're not just filling a void. You're correcting misinformation, Right?
US#08: That's right.
S: Dave, I saw your videos. I think all of them at this point of your, your ongoing battle with the flat earthers.
J: And yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I really like your angle on it. I guess, you know, you're at the level of aggression that I wish that I could be at.
US#08: Yeah. I.
J: Mean it's perfect. It's perfect because, you know, it's really interesting as the as a science advocate and science communicator myself, like, you know, you're saying the things that I wish I was educated enough in that particular area. You know, I just isn't one of my areas that that I've done a deep dive on, you know, and it seems so obvious to most of us that this is so ridiculously, you know, I'll it's an I'll thought out position, right? It's just like you can't, you can't. It doesn't hold water on so many levels. How did you get into that? Like, tell me about the story behind how that kind of became your focus.
US#08: So I mean, it was, I definitely wouldn't say it's my focus now, but I would say that it's the first thing that I debunked because I kind of got dragged into it. So I was making an astronomy series and, you know, basically astronomy one O 1, right? Tutorials to accompany a freshman year undergrad that's taking Astro one O 1, right? This is what you learn in class. Here you go. I just thought at the end it would be kind of fun to do a couple of pieces, one debunking astrology and one debunking Flat Earth. I didn't look into anything that flat earthers say. I just had heard that there were flat earthers and I thought, ha, ha, that's so silly, isn't it? So I did those two pieces and I thought I'd get more heat on the astrology one, but nobody seemed to care on that. But with the Flat Earth one, all I really did was kind of recapitulate points from earlier in the series. How did we, how did the, you know, in antiquity? How did we observe the celestial sphere things that we noticed that helped us understand that the Earth is a sphere 2500 years ago, right? Here are some things to talk about. And that video went to the top of the Flat Earth keyword search that day when it went out. So these guys, the Globe Busters, decided they were going to do a live stream just tearing it apart. Oh man, this guy so dumb. This Professor Dave is so indoctrinated. He's a NASA shill. And they did this long, long, long, Long live stream just, and they were really, I mean, they were really nasty towards me. And that it, it's just at the time I was not used to people talking about me on the Internet. Now it's every minute of every day. And it's just, it's, it's a constant barrage of, of vitriol being thrown my way. But at the time I just, I, I wasn't used to it and I got, you know, I took it personally. So I did a response video. I did a 45 minute video tearing apart their little live stream that never. It's the first debunk I've ever done. It's the first long form content I'd ever done and I loved it. I found out that I'm really good at it. People loved it. It's still to this day the most viewed video on my channel by a lot. And so it was just this incredible thing where I discovered this other type of content that I felt compelled to do that I really enjoyed doing that looked like it could be lucrative as well, which would help me, you know, not have to do other kinds of work and I could really focus on science communication. So I really went for it. I mean, I stuck with Flat Earth for a few more videos, but then I pretty quickly branched off into creationism and electric universe and anti vaxes and just quantum mysticism or whatever. I felt like debunking there's a it's a never ending well that we can dip into things to debunk, but just kind of went for it.
J: I used those videos to introduce my son to Flat Earth and, you know, he really got into, well, he and I both liked your, your point of approach. You know, I just think it was like, first and foremost, you really knew all the answers. Like you, you weren't, they weren't really get one over on you, which is their typical way of doing it is they'll throw a bunch of lingo at you and, like, make you second guess your position just because you're not, you know, following everything that they're saying. Yeah, I could see that they were being aggressive towards you and that you decided that you're going to take the gloves off a little bit, which it worked really well. Obviously, like people really responded to it. Other than that, what what are some of your topics that you felt you know landed really well?
US#08: I mean, I creationism and intelligent design is, is one of the biggest focuses, if not the biggest debunking focus just because like Flat Earth, it is a denial of entire fields of science depending on the flavor of creationism, right? Flat Earth is a denial of the entire field of physics, the entire field of geology, the entire field of astronomy in a, you know, in the same way young Earth creationism, it denies almost as much science as Flat Earth. The difference is that it's tremendously more prevalent and is also, you know, part of a political movement, right? There's definitely a push towards Christian theocracy, the erosion of church and state. These are things that really the, the separation of church and state, trying to get religion taught in public schools, things like that. These are things that I'm really concerned about from a societal standpoint, right? Flat Earth is, is, is adorable in comparison, right? It's a very silly, tiny little cult and it's fun to make fun of. And it's important to expose how stupid it is and use it as a case study in conspiratorial thought to teach lessons about it. But creationism and intelligent design and all that movie that, that's something that actually directly threatens our freedoms as a country, as a citizenry. So I've devoted quite a lot, a lot of attention to that. And now I'm starting to look at, you know, what the current administration is putting out. I'm, I actually just finished editing a piece on that will come out probably this Saturday about all the Trump, the trans mice comment that he made. And it's just like insane. And I mean, this is where our government is at. So I'm trying to be topical and do things that are, you know, I got to talk about RFK Junior. I got to talk about people in his cabinet. I got to talk about this stuff and hope that that makes an impact. So that's definitely at least part of my the main part of my focus at the moment with the debunking.
S: What I found with the flat earthers actually is that I think a lot of them are creationists because even though it might have started as kind of this more of a cult thing on its own, it's kind of merged with the well, it's the firmament. You know, that notion of our firmament comes from the Bible. And so to them to addicted to a lot of the the ongoing flat earthers, it's a support of creationism of, you know, the literate, the literal interpretation of the Bible, right? There is no space because there's a firmament up there. They quote the Bible when they talk about it and.
US#08: Well I mean I wouldn't say merge. I think that there is a sub community of flat earthers that are that way because they are biblical literalists. Some are just conspiratorial thought on on steroids. Like it's just a conspiratorial.
S: Yeah, it's absolutely the conspiracy. The hardcore conspiracy theorists are into everything conspiratorial right regardless. But then there's the ideological conspiracies.
US#08: Yeah, if you're a flat Earther, you believe in every single conspiracy. But the difference is that the overwhelming majority of creationists are not flat earthers. There's only about 10,000 flat earthers at the most in the world, whereas there are millions upon millions of of creationists, even young earth creationists. They're a much larger demographic and they believe these things in earnest. And ironically, they mock flat earthers, Right? Even Kent Hovind is. Will will mock. Flat earthers as like a silly belief system. And it's like that's the one thing that you don't that you don't advocate for, you know? But yeah, it's, it's pretty incredible.
J: Dave, what are you working on right now?
US#08: Literally this moment today I was working on the, the piece I was just telling you about the, the Trump trans mice. Other than that, I'm working on like I'm, I'm also constantly working on academic tutorials. So I'm working on some math tutorials on differential equations, I'm working on zoology tutorials, I'm working on forensic science tutorials, I'm working on world history tutorials. And then a whole bunch of other debunks are constantly kind of in the queue, as it were.
J: When, when you're going to in the future, talk about the Trump administration and what the government is doing. Are you, you know, we're struggling with it right now, right? Because first of all, we started out this show being a political we we really don't want to talk.
S: About not a political nonpartisan. Nonpartisan, yes, We don't talk about things that are strictly political. But of course, whenever politics is has a scientific angle to it, we talk about the science. You know, if you're getting the science wrong, we will absolutely talk about just like we don't, we don't talk about religion, but we talk about religion like creationism when they make scientific claims.
US#08: Correct.
S: Yeah. So yeah, just. But I wouldn't say we are not political because that's just not accurate. We just have to be clarified. So we're nonpartisan.
US#08: Yeah, when, when, when demagogues politicize science. I'm going to debunk their politicization of science. And so, you know, it's, it's annoyed, it's turned some people off. You know, I'll talk about trans issues, but it's because I'm tired of this aspect of the culture war and people, 10 years later, we've been talking about this people still refusing to learn about what trans people are. So I try to teach them aspects about human anatomy and Physiology and what gender identity is in these things. And I do get comments, you know, why are you being political? I'm not, I'm talking about science. This is about, you know, hormones and, and, you know, human anatomy And like, that's biology, my friend. That's called the science. So, but it it has to be done. It just I'm really tired of the discourse. I'm really tired of the abuse in in our government of science. And now I'm finally seeing scientists turning around and and starting to become more available for commentary because of the gigantic funding cuts, the NIH funding cuts. So scientists are panicking, right? They are finally starting to realize what I've been saying for years. And that is that public perception of science informs voting behavior, which informs your ability to do your jobs, right. That Trump got in there is why you guys are all freaking out about about your work. So work with me, right? Let's let's all together the scientific community and us science communicators help the public figure out what the hell is going on and how they're being lied to left, right and center by this administration and and others.
J: And that's part part of the the problem and issue as science communicators, like, you know, we have audience members, we have people who listen to the show for a long time and who can't really tease apart the idea that, you know, we're talking about the science and the how politics has affected it and distorted it. You know, but we're not specifically talking about politics. Like, you know, that's not our focus. That's not the thing that we get out of bed in the morning, right? Again, we have to talk about it because things have become so unbelievably unclear. The trans issue in particular is something that the the skeptical community is really bringing their hands over because there isn't agreement inside. Inside the skeptical community, there is an agreement about what the science says.
US#08: Yes, yeah.
J: And it's unfortunate. Yeah, I'm. Actually shocking. Yeah, it's very frustrating because.
S: Unfortunate and completely unnecessary, right? Because, and I've spoken about it quite a bit recently as well. Of course I get, I get attacked as a woke ideologue, you know, liberal because I say like, yeah, well, you know, biological sense sex is not strictly binary. You know, it's just a fact and correct. But, but they say but, but it is because of gametes, right? You encountered the gamete theory, right. This the the gamete gambit. Like that's the new ideology. That's the, that's the dogma. It's like, well, it is strictly binary because the gametes are binary. Yeah.
US#08: But that's flawed but.
S: People are not single celled creatures, and that's not what we mean by biological sex. Well, you're trying to redefine biological sex.
US#08: But the But the reason it doesn't work is that so OK, so how do you so when a boy is born, are they not male until they begin producing sperm?
S: Right, exactly. It's nonsensical. I agree.
US#08: It doesn't work right? You cannot use a strictly gonadal definition nor strictly genital based definition, right? Sex refers to a suite of characteristics that don't always agree.
S: But they say it doesn't. So that's, that's the, that's the weird dogma they've gotten themselves into. Like because of evolution, it's really only about gametes. So, yeah, but we're talking about people, you know, which and, and at the very, at the most, you're making some kind of weird. It's a semantic argument. It's a completely semantic argument. All right, So call it something else, but the fact is you can't divide all of humanity cleanly into two categories.
US#08: They're trying. To impose a rigid mathematical certainty onto the biological world in a way that just does not fit. Period.
S: Right. It also just like it doesn't make sense in this is the conversation we're having. Well, you know, men shouldn't compete in women's sports like. Well, yeah, OK, But the definition of men and e-mail from a sporting perspective is not so clean. It's like, yeah, but gametes, it's like, yeah, but we don't have gamete leagues. Like we don't have a sperm league and an egg league. So what you're using other features that you are telling me now are not part of biological sex because of evolution or something to to divide so that it doesn't even make internal sense within the own argument that they're having?
US#08: But but more importantly, you know, they're informed, Nuanced discussions about social issues are never going to happen until everybody agrees on the science, right? We're not there yet. We're still having people called, well, men can't be women, men can't have babies, blah, blah, blah. Right? Until, while people are still talking like that, how the hell are we going to talk about these nuanced social issues? Everybody has to understand the basics, then we can talk about what to do, right? I'm not going to have this this sport conversation or the locker room conversation while people are still talking this way. It's ridiculous.
S: I go, This is why it's unfortunate. I think that, you know, the science communication community needs to get their shit together because if we're arguing with each other about how to define biological sex, we have no hope of having a coherent message to the public. It was kind of this a little bit of the same way 25 years ago with climate change. And I think that was one of the, there's not the first issue, but one of the early issues where the sign the the ivory tower scientists had no idea what was coming for them. Right. And then come on like a wonky field of climate science, like we'd probably never had enter in any interaction with the media before suddenly becomes at in the crosshairs of a political movement. And they didn't know what they didn't know how to deal with. It took them 10 years to get their shit together in terms of dealing with the public. Now I think they they kind of know what they're doing, but I think we're still kind of in the same place with the trans issue and the biological sex issue.
US#08: Yes.
S: Yeah, we went through it 50 years ago and then it kind of got swept under the rug and now we're going through it again. Unfortunately, I'm afraid of what's gonna happen.
US#08: Yeah, I'm actually doing a piece. I'll probably put it out not this Saturday, but the following about. I was actually asked to be on a Piers Morgan panel with Jerry Coyne. So there was the whole FFRF resigning from the board of Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, these guys. I think what you're alluding to is, you know, these figures, largely extensions of the, you know, atheist community that are doubling down on the on the on the conservative talking points on this issue. Yeah. So I'm doing a piece on what Dawkins said on that panel, and I'm tearing him a new one in that. And yeah, it's, it's really disgraceful. You know, I mean, it's, it's what the irony about it is that he is accusing people that actually educate themselves about gender identity and all. And you know, all of these concepts that he's pretending to have expertise in, he's accusing them of being ideologues when in fact he is, he is bending over 4 ideologues that are using his rhetoric to try to impose Christian nationalism. Right. These guys, Dawkins and Coyne, they're famous for fighting against, you know, anti evolution propaganda in the in in that space. And now they're tools. They are instruments of the very same people. It's just it's you can't write this stuff you.
S: Know, I know I hate to say it, but it's just so is Michael Shermer. They're they're complete tools of Christian nationalists and they don't, you know, they don't see it, but all.
US#08: Because they refuse to learn something new. It's just ridiculous, you know?
S: I think they've decided that anyone who disagrees with their perspective are liberal, you know, woke liberal ideologues. And then it shuts down any discussion and it, and so it's very dismissive, you know, so you can't have a conversation. So it's, and the, the, the vitriol and the rhetoric is so intense. It's like, can we lower the heat a little bit and just, and then and try to focus on what our common ground is? Like there's none of that happening. And they're just stuck in this ridiculous semantic argument that is just fueling the, you know, this, you know, again, this right wing Christian propaganda. It's so ironic. I agree. It's a completely ironic. Yeah. But Steve, if you ignore all the edge cases, it is binary. Yeah. If you ignore. Yeah. It's like they always come out at night, except during the day.
US#08: It's binary except for when it's not.
S: Except for all the exceptions. I mean, Jerry Coyne recently, I'm going to call him out a little bit because we invited him on the podcast to talk about this issue and he refused to come on, right. But then he's still trash talks me on his blog and on a recent one where he was touting a survey and that said, look, most of you know, scientists agree that sex, biological sex is binary. The question was is, you know, biological sex binary? And then with an asterisk and nest of the asterisk asterisk has said if if you don't include all of the intersex people, right. So like 52% of people of scientists, whoever agreed with the statements. So he's saying that's what that's supposed to mean. Something is biological sex. If you don't include all the people who are not binary. It's ridiculous.
US#08: But it's also, but it's not just intersex people. The far more interesting cases are the I forget off the top of my head the names of the syndromes. But you can have XY chromosomes and express express female genitals, and you can have XX chromosomes and express male. Genitals, yeah, I mean, they are technically. Different chromosomal situations.
S: Those are they are technically intersex, but now these. Kind of intersex. Yeah, the term would be difference of of sexual development.
US#08: DSD or gonadal dysgenesis, right? But the thing typically we're talking about intersex, we're talking about X monosomy or XY trisomy, We're talking about irregular chromosomal situations. We're talking about instead there are situations where you have X and XY just like everybody else, but you express the the opposing set of genitals and reproductive organs. Yeah, I use it as. In the binary.
S: There's CIS, right? There's a complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. They're XY. They have going, they have testicles, they make sperm. The sperm doesn't is not functional because they testes don't descend, but they have no response to testosterone and therefore they develop completely morphologically female. They are industry, they don't have uterus, but other than that they are completely morphologically female. And you know, according to according to coin, they would that's a male that's a guy because because they have sperm inside of them even though there.
US#08: He'll also say it's based on genitals. This was the funniest thing about the peer segment is that coins started talking about it's based on the genitals. And they go yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he goes, no, it's based on the go Nets and go, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then peer starts fixating on that boxer, that Egyptian boxer who was born with female genitals and reproductive organs and everything, but has XY chromosomes and, and he starts saying that, that, that that's a man because of the, it's like you guys, you don't even realize you're contradicting each other because you don't care about any kind of accuracy. You're just grandstanding to get the the points from the conservative audience that you're courting, right? It's just ridiculous.
S: Yeah. I mean, I don't know that that's, oh, I mean, I think Coin is sincere and just misguided in his conception of this. Yeah, I think he he's just applying. He's making a category mistake. He's making the wrong argument and he doesn't realize the full context.
US#08: It's unfortunate, yes, he's chosen his camp and he'll, you know, that there these men are of a certain age coin and Dawkins and it's just yeah, never going.
S: To I think it's generational. I agree, Yeah. The idea that there's something different than just men and women is so anathema they can't wrap their head.
US#08: For them to wrap their head around. Yeah. I just, it's, I wish that everybody could just learn the lesson. You know, I'm, I'm not quite old enough. I mean, it was the 70s and 80s, I think primarily when people started to become aware of the homosexual community and that sexuality is not as rigid as, you know, as, as the Puritans would have us believe. And now, right, even even conservatives, even mainstream conservatives are tolerant towards different sexualities. You know what I mean? And it's because it just would be so incredibly unpopular, right? It's not, It would not be trendy to be bashing on gays in 2025. And so they're tolerant of gay people. It's like you guys, can't you just learn the lesson here, right? Take I'm it's not Adam and Eve, it's Adam and Steve, right? Can't you see that that's what you're doing about trans people right now? Can't you Fast forward 20 years and just like, get the tolerance that we're all going to have societally, hopefully?
S: I, I do think it's generational talk to the younger generation. They don't give a shit, you know, I, I just, they're, they're not going to have the same ick reaction that I think the, the older generation has about it.
B: Just got to wait till they die out.
S: Unfortunately, that's the way revolutions happen sometime in science. Gotta wait for the old guard to die off.
US#08: Yeah.
S: All right. Well, Dave, thank you so much for being on the show. Why don't you tell our audience how they can get to your content?
US#08: Absolutely, yeah, I am, Professor Dave explains on YouTube. And that's pretty much all I do. I have some other socials, but I don't really use them, so yeah, OK, let's.
S: Go there. Sounds good. All right. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, Dave.
US#08: Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot.
Science or Fiction (1:49:31)[edit]
Theme: Ancient Roots
Item #1: Persian scholar, Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni, proposed in the 11th century that India may have been connected to other continents in the past.[5]
Item #2: Aristarchus of Samos was the first to propose a heliocentric system, in which the Earth revolves around the sun in one year and rotates on its axis in one day.[6]
Item #3: In his 1025 work, Muslim physician Ibn Sina proposed human-to-human transmission of disease through invisible entities, and was the first to propose a quarantine to limit the spread of contagion.[7]
| Answer | RevealItem |
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| Host | RevealResult |
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| Rogue | RevealGuess |
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Voice-over: It's time. For. Science. Or fiction.
S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or fax 2 wheel and one fake, and then I challenge my panelists got to tell me which one is the fake. You guys are coming off a sweep from last week.
US#09: See how you do.
S: This week there's a theme. This week there's a theme. Ancient roots. These are modern scientific ideas that have roots that go back maybe a bit farther than you thought. I've done this before. I like this theme. Are we?
US#09: Ready.
S: Here you go. Item number one Persian scholar Abu Rahan Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al Baruni proposed in the 11th century that India may have been connected to other continents in the past. Item number two, Aristarchus of Samos was the first to propose a heliocentric system in which the Earth revolves around the Sun in one year and rotates on its axis in one day. Item number three In his 1025 work, Muslim physician Ibn Sina proposed human to human transmission of disease through invisible entities and was the first to propose a quarantine to limit the spread of contagion. Abby, go first.
E: These are all very plausible. I won't try to pronounce the names though, because I will fail. But the first one about the 11th, the one proposed in the 11th century that India may have been connected to other continents in the past. I think of the three, this might be the one that I've have some inkling, some sort of memory in filed way in my head where there was there was there was early suggestions that that that India was was not originally part of Asia. I just, I just don't know if it's tied to this Persian scholar specifically, but something is saying that this is right science #2 The second one about the heliocentric system in which the Earth revolves around the sun in one year and rotates on its axis in one day. You didn't give the year.
S: Oh, I should, I meant to. It's this is like BC something from 3:10 to 2:30 BC, so somewhere in there.
E: I don't know. I mean, they, they were able to figure out pretty early that size of the Earth. I remember there was a measurement done around that time in which they were able to pretty much accurately figure out how that the Earth was a sphere and roughly how big it was. They were pretty close. So could they have also figured this out back then? Maybe, maybe let me look at the last one again. 10/25 was this one Muslim physician proposed human to human transmission of disease through invisible entities and was the first to propose a quarantine to limit the spread of contagion. And just plausible. But you know, you don't think of that until what like the 19th century is kind of I think when that came back or maybe late 18th century. So that's a long time. That is a long span in which they proposed, but they did talk about, all right, I have to say something. So I will go with the Earth and revolving around the sun and rotating on its axis in one day. I think of the three, that one will be the fiction.
S: OK, Cara.
C: Hass.
E: OK, automatic failure for Cara.
C: Oh, damn. Never mind. Never mind. OK, so Evan went with Aristarchus. I like the name of Samos. So first to provide. I don't know, somebody must have thought of it before, even if they couldn't prove it, like they could draw a picture of it. No, I feel like that's the case with all of these things. Like, OK, I don't know, let's get creative. Human to human transmission of disease. Like if you just watch people, you notice that people that are close to each other get sick. So what if we take them apart and then they don't get sick? Like we don't even really need a model of, you know, viruses or anything. So that one feels reasonable too. India may have been connected to other continents in the past. Plate tectonics in the 11th century. I don't buy that one. The maps weren't even that good, were they? No, Didn't people still think that they could sail off the edge of the earth? Persian though? Persian scholar maybe. They did have good maps. They were very mathy, that name, too. Abu Rehan Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al Barouni. Wow, that's a good name. I'm going to say that it wasn't him. I thought it was somebody with an easier name. I don't know. I'll say that's the big show. Let's spread out so we can sweep. Steve, You guys all right?
S: All right, Jay.
J: I'm pretty sure that see what's his name? Aristarchus.
E: Aristarchus.
J: Yeah, Aristarchus Samos. He's of Samos, yes.
E: Yes.
J: OK, well that changes everything. Well.
E: Yeah, I mean, if you're from Samos I.
J: Don't know something something about this rings a bell for me about him being the first one to say that the that you know the heliocentric system of Earth. So I, I think that one is science. The Muslim physician proposed a human transmission of disease. Why that 1025 and then the first one here. So this guy, this guy had a the his name is Rayhan Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al Barouni. I'm going to say that one is the fiction because I, I, I don't have a good reason, Steve. I just, my gut is telling me that that he wasn't the first person to say that.
S: OK. And Bob?
B: Yeah, these are good. These are really good and looking forward to see what's what here. But I'm on what's rubbing me the wrong way is the Aristarchus and heliocentrism. I mean, I, I don't know, care. I don't know. This is just a swing. I, I mean, everyone knows Copernicus is the heliocentric guy, right? I mean, it wouldn't surprise me, but I think I just would have, no, I would have heard of this or known this. So I'll just say whatever and say that's fiction.
S: All right, so you guys are all spread out, so no sweep for me. So I'll take this in order as I do when they're all spread out. I start with number one, Persian scholar, Abu Rahan Muhammad Ibn Ahmed al Baruni, or just Al Baruni, proposed in the 11th century that India may have been connected to other continents in the past. Kerry, you think this one is the fiction? Jay, you think this one's the fiction? Also Bob and everyone think this one is science and this one is the fiction hey.
E: Way to find it?
S: Although none of what you said is true, but so yeah, this is not true. Although all right. So I used ChatGPT to research this theme for science of fiction and this is one of the things that ChatGPT spit out. And of course I don't take chat GPTS word. For anything, Of course not. So then I typed in. Can you give me a reference to support this And chat GPS said I'm sorry I made a mistake, this did not happen and then.
B: It does that. All right, Saved, you know.
S: I mean, I had looked it up anyway and I kind of, I couldn't find it. I'm like, why can't I find it? So give me a reference what I did find which was true. So Alba Rooney, So this guy was an amazing polymath, astronomer, mathematician, map maker. He calculated the size of the Earth within 2% of the modern value just using some trigonometry and measuring mountain heights or something. So just really pretty amazing what he did do. So after he calculated the size of the Earth, he reasoned that there should be another continent between Europe and Asia, like on the other side of the planet, basically the Americas. That's that's what he really, he anticipated the discovery of the Americas. So that's too.
C: He's like, that's too much water.
S: Yeah, why would there be all this land on one side of the Earth and then nothing but ocean for the all the what? There's got to be a continent over there. And he was correct.
C: That's cool.
S: Yeah. He also thought that they would probably be in the temperate zone, at least part of it, and they're therefore that's probably inhabited, which was also correct. He so dumb, but he did not anticipate plate tectonics. Nobody did. People did did notice the map thing though. Cara so does so the even before plate tectonics was discovered. You know there were observations of even going, you know, later than this, though not quite. More like 15116 hundred, right?
C: When they can see the Americas, right? And they were like, whoa, that fits. Yeah, yeah.
S: Once you once we started, once we once you like mapped out North and South America and Africa, people started to say, wait a minute, that and then also fossils were lining up to Leonard da Vinci actually was one of the early proponents to say, oh, maybe there's a land moves around you. Like the why are there fossils on mountains? Like why are there shells on mountain tops? You know, maybe land moves, you know that, so that there's the inklings of these ideas that Bland can move and these things sort of pieced together on the map, you know, even before plate tectonics was discovered. All right, let's go #2 Aristarchus of Samos was the first to propose a heliocentric system in which the Earth revolves around the sun in one year and rotates on its axis in one day. Bob, you said that one was the fiction. This one is science. He got it pretty much exactly correct. He also, by the way, agreed with those ancient Greeks who said that the sun is just another star, so his cosmology was pretty spot on.
C: Wait, I just realized that I said Ptolemy but he's geocentric. When was Ptolemy? No, Ptolemy. Yeah, he. Was geocentric what he compared to Aristarchus?
S: Ptolemy is basically Ptolemy won out over this guy, right? So Ptolemy's views predominated over Aristarchus until Copernicus. And in fact, Copernicus cited Aristarchus in his in his writing, although we later tried to suppress the the the citation so that he can keep the credit for himself.
C: No such thing as a new idea.
S: Yeah. But yeah, so it was just Ptolemy beat out Aristarchus, but Aristarchus is completely correct. So it is amazing to think that the ancient there were ancient Greeks like Yep, the Earth 3 evolves about the sun. It spins in a day and rotates around the sun in the air, and the sun is just another star.
C: So like they didn't have screens or anything, all they did was just stare at the sky.
S: Yeah, yeah, They had no telescopes. It's all naked eye astronomy.
C: Yeah.
S: All right. All of this means that in his 1025 work, Muslim physician even Cena proposed human to human that transmission of disease through invisible entities, and was the first to propose a quarantine to limit that the spread of contagion is also science. This guy also amazing.
B: Yeah, what the hell, man?
S: Yeah, so and again, he didn't, he didn't quite nail the idea of germs, but he knew it was particles as opposed to Cara. So yes, you are miasma. Exactly. So the idea that there's contagion was definitely around because you're right, it's just easy to observe that there's contagion. But the predominant belief was that there was miasma coming from the soil and the air, right? Bad air, but not necessarily people to people. So that was the human to human transmission was definitely something that he was an early proponent of the idea that it was particles and not miasma. Also him the idea that it was microscopic organisms. He didn't quite get there, but he got pretty far to like the modern germ theory and also the idea of quarantine. He thought 40 days like there's human to human transmission. We need to quarantine people for 40 days to in the middle of an outbreak or epidemic in order to spread his. So his work, these, these guys like you read about these ancient, like polymath scholars, like they write hundreds of books. He wrote the Canon of medicine in, you know, 1025. That was the work in which he, he proposed this, this was among a total of 450 works, right? The Canon of medicine was used as a global medical textbook for 600 years after he wrote it, basically until the modern times, until we started to like do scientific medicine. And I do think that in our, you know, Western centric history of the world, we don't spend enough time studying the Persian and Muslim scholars. That basically was, you know, science and scholarship in our Middle Ages, in the West's Middle Ages.
B: Like amazing accomplishment.
S: Yeah, absolutely. They they, yeah, they absolutely amazing. The astronomy, the math, the medicine, all of.
B: Them. Yeah, Optics.
S: Yeah, yes, optics was they, they were for 1000 years, they were it. They were the the scientific and cultural centers.
B: Of the world, they leveraged that, Yeah, I think like what religion came in and he messed it all up.
S: Well, no, it's that's an oversimplification because a lot of them, the religion was there the whole time, Bob and a lot of them did it like a lot of the astronomy was done specifically to to to create the religious calendar.
C: Yeah, you literally wrote in his 1025 work Muslim Physician.
S: Yeah. No, no, the religion was there to begin with. Yeah, and it wasn't, it was not an impediment. It wasn't. It was actually part of it. It's really just more modern evangelical type.
C: Yeah.
S: Fundamental or fundamentalism. Same modern fundamental type interpretations that would have, you know, hold anti scientific views, but at this time they, they completely accepted, you know, science and scholarship and it was just part of, of their their culture.
C: Yeah, there's actually.
S: Alongside their religion.
C: There was a phenomenal Sudanese journalist and researcher at this conference that I was just at earlier this week and she was talking about communicating climate science to Muslim communities in Sudan. And she, she was like, I couldn't remember the number that she cited, but she was like, I dug into the Quran and I was able to find like dozens plural of passages to promote taking care of the earth, to promote planting trees, to promote like she's like, there's so many ways that you can meet people through the religion and promote that kind of science. And there's, you know, a lot of religious passages that that enforce that it's what we choose. It's what we choose to read right, and how we choose to interpret it.
S: All right, Well, good job, Jay and Cara.
C: Yeah, Jay all.
J: Right. Well. Done.
S: This was the fun one, but that man ChatGPT still hallucinating. You can't trust anything it says It's but it's how it is helpful to just like throw out a bunch of ideas, you know what I mean? Then I could do the research on them, but just to like give me a starting point.
E: So don't ever do that.
S: Again, it's a bit of a time saver. Like I just said, give me, you know, 3 examples of modern scientific theories that have deep ancient roots. And there's a guy actually had to give it, give me like 20 of them before I settled on the ones I wanted to use. But, and if so, that was good, just a good way to just say kind of starting points like Wikipedia, you know, it's a good starting point. You can't use it as your ultimate reference. You know, you got to go to, you know, first sources, primary sources. But it's, it's a good, you know, shortcut.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (2:05:45)[edit]
"The burden of proof as far as authentication is concerned is on the claimant—not on anyone else to prove a negative. Asserting that a particular image must be paranormal because it is unexplained only constitutes an example of the logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance. One cannot draw a conclusion from a lack of knowledge."
– - Joe Nickell, (description of author)
S: All right, Evan, give us a quote.
E: The burden of proof as far as authentication is concerned is on the claimant, not on anyone else to prove a negative. Asserting that a particular image must be paranormal because it is unexplained only constitutes an example of the logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance. 1 cannot draw a conclusion from a lack of knowledge. That was written by Joe Nickel. Joe Joe Nickel, Who died. Last week. Last week and kind of a shock to the entire skeptic community. Do I need to explain who Joe Nickel was to our audience?
S: Yeah, I know we heard about that after we recorded last week's show. But yeah, Joe Nickel was a, you know, a friend of ours. He was one of the first people that we really got close to in the skeptical movement, a really consummate skeptic. He really what he said. I mean, so many pearls I remember him saying over the years that were totally true. Like he really, really got the process, the logic, you know, the essence of, you know, skepticism as an endeavour investigation is the consummate investigator. Again, the only person really at the time definitely who was a full time paranormal scientific skeptical investigator, you know what I mean? And he, he did it, man. He was boots on the ground, you know what I mean? Also a great lecturer. I enjoyed every lecturer so that I.
B: Interesting to listen.
S: To he knew how to tell a story.
E: Great lecture.
S: How to tell a story?
E: Wonderful. In an interview. His books were fantastic. So much information, so much that we all learned.
S: Inquestion on the Shroud, The definitive debunking of the Shroud of Turin.
J: Yeah, that's right.
S: Absolutely definitive was Joe Nickel.
E: Without question, and also one of the 1st to take really kind of take down the Warrens.
S: Mm hmm.
E: During the during their rise throughout the 70s and in the 80s, he, he, he was there toe to toe with them the whole way. So many great stories and just my gosh, we will be missed. He he, he was tremendous.
S: Yeah, he was. All right, guys. Well, thank you all for joining me this week. Sure.
E: Man, thank you, Steve. Thanks, Steve.
S: And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
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- ↑ www.sciencedaily.com: Limiting screen time protects children's mental health
- ↑ cosmosmagazine.com: 1 in 15 US adults have been on the scene of a mass shooting
- ↑ theness.com: Stem Cells for Parkinson’s Disease - NeuroLogica Blog
- ↑ www.rutgers.edu: Special Type of Fat Tissue Could Promote Healthful Longevity and Help Maintain Exercise Capacity in Aging
- ↑ en.wikipedia.org: Al-Biruni - Wikipedia
- ↑ en.wikipedia.org: Aristarchus of Samos - Wikipedia
- ↑ www.trtworld.com: How Ibn Sina's work became a guiding light for scientists facing contagions