SGU Episode 101

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SGU Episode 101
June 20th 2007
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 100                      SGU 102
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
“The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism.”
George Jean Nathan
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Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

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, June 20^th, 2007, and this is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Perry DeAngelis...

P: Hello.

S: Evan Bernstein...

E: Hi everyone.

S: ...and Jay Novella.

J: Good evening.

S: Rebecca Watson has the evening off, so she's not with us today.

J: Guys night out.

S: She will be back next week. We have an interview coming up with ORAC, the Skeptical Blogger, and it's a long interview, so we're going to keep the news and emails a little bit short this week.

News Items ()

Blackholes possibly don't exist ()

• Blackholes possibly don't exist

S: The first news item has to do with black holes possibly not existing. Bob, why don't you tell us about this item?

B: Yeah, this one was quite a shocker, if it's true.

S: I'm shocked.

B: According to an article accepted for publication by Physical Review D, black holes as we know them do not exist. This is the startling conclusion reached by Case Western Reserve University physicist Tenmay Vakaspati, Dejan Stokovic, and Lawrence Krauss, who also happens to be the author of The Physics of Star Trek. Specifically, they claim that collapsing stars never form an event horizon, the theorized area around a black hole that nothing, not even light, can escape from. Therefore, once anything crosses that boundary, there's no coming out. The problem this conclusion resolves is called the Information Loss Paradox. The rules of quantum mechanics forbid the destruction of information, but if nothing can escape the event horizon of a black hole, then say a terabyte hard drive with tons of information on it thrown in is irretrievably gone. So who's right? That's been a long-standing paradox that people have been trying to resolve. Some scientists have argued that Hawking radiation somehow encodes the information as it slowly leaks out of the black hole. Remember, I covered Hawking radiation last week, where particle and antiparticle pairs form just outside the event horizon. One is sucked into the black hole, and the other one escapes. So you appear to see radiation leaking out of the black hole. Some physicists say that this information loss is somehow encoded in this Hawking radiation. But according to these scientists, the event horizon itself never forms. They spent a year working on calculations on trying to determine what exactly happens during a stellar collapse. Their calculations seemed to show that as big stars collapse, the gravity of the collapse somehow disrupts the quantum vacuum, creating what they call pre-Hawking radiation, which causes the hole to lose mass and never form an event horizon in the first place. If no horizon is formed, then information is never totally lost. The pre-Hawking radiation is non-thermal, and can therefore encode information, which can then be reconstructed far from the black hole, the black star, as they call it. Stars only begin the process of forming a black hole, but never get there, is kind of what they're saying. Now, some physicists disagree, notably Nobel laureate Gerard de Hooft of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He says, I strongly disagree. The process he describes, or that the scientists describe, can in no way produce enough radiation to make a black hole disappear as quickly as they are suggesting. The horizon forms long before the hole can evaporate. So we'll see. If they are indeed true, that would be quite a-

S: Quite a change.

E: How do you test it? How do you test that?

S: Does it say? I mean, it sounds like the basis is theoretical. It's just a different way of explaining, just modeling what should happen. And I guess that would be the key, is to figure out a way to distinguish between a black hole and a black star, so you can make some observation. So there's got to be some observational prediction, but I don't know if the article covered that, or if it made a prediction.

B: No, the articles I read didn't cover that. I suppose it's possible. They are claiming that this pre-Hawking radiation...

S: So is the key difference that what's left behind does not have enough mass to form a black hole, because enough mass was radiated away with this pre-Hawking radiation?

B: Exactly. That's it. The pre-Hawking radiation is radiating away so much energy, which is equivalent to mass, that it never quite reaches the mass required to form an event horizon.

S: But don't we know that black... What about supermassive black holes? I mean, don't they have way more times the mass than would be necessary to form an event horizon?

B: Yeah, that's... They kind of treated them as a different beast, because that's not one star. One star did not collapse and form a supermassive black hole, whereas other black holes, from just a collapsing star, they claim could not form a conventional black hole with an event horizon. But that, yeah, that was kind of hard to understand how they reconciled supermassive black holes with this, because clearly there's plenty of mass there, and it's detectable mass, and there's no pre-Hawking radiation that's preventing it from reaching the mass required to form and density required to form an event horizon. So that's kind of a different... Somehow they treat that as a different class that somehow makes them distinct enough where... So why isn't there this information loss problem with these supermassive black holes? That I didn't get, and I couldn't find anybody to specifically address that in any of the articles I read.

S: I wonder what Stephen Hawking has to say about all this. Yeah, I'm sure he'll make his opinion known.

B: I haven't found anything.

S: This is really his specialty, is this whole information black hole thing.

B: Right, and of course Hawking radiation he came up with, and that just opened up a whole can of worms, because the Hawking radiation is thermal radiation, so there's no information encoded in that. That kind of exacerbated the whole information loss idea, but we'll see what happens as this develops.

S: Yeah, it's interesting. It's basically an alternate hypothesis that is consistent with the data we have and solves a problem. We'll see how it pans out. It'll be interesting.

B: Yeah, maybe we'll report on this in the future if we get some more developments and something to elucidate these ideas further.

News Item #2 ()

S: Another news item is just a quick follow up on the stem cell debate that has been going on for several years now. The Senate in the United States is trying to pass yet another measure to help fund and regulate embryonic stem cell research, but President Bush promises to veto their bill, so it looks like we're not going to get any embryonic stem cell funding during this-

P: I thought we put this to bed a few weeks ago, Steve, with the discovery of the stem cells from skin cells and so forth.

B: Well, the jury's still out on the effectiveness of those stem cells. If it works out, great, but a lot of those experiments turned into tumors and cancer, so the jury's still out on that. You can't just bet everything on this potential new idea that may or may not pan out.

S: Yeah, it's true. If that pans out, and I do think eventually we'll have stem cells that do everything we need stem cells to do that we can get from sources other than embryos, but there's two things to know. One is we don't have them yet, and we don't know how long it's going to take for that technology to pan out, and two is that the research that we're doing to develop these alternatives, a lot of them are dependent upon having embryonic stem cells as part of the research. In order to get there, ironically, we need embryonic stem cells in order to make us free of them, or at least it will slow down that research if we don't have the embryonic stem cell lines to utilize in the research.

P: This whole stem cell debacle is such a low point for the president.

S: Yeah, definitely.

P: I mean, it's just terrible.

J: Well, I heard him in an interview today.

P: It's indefensible.

J: He said, I heard him, I guess when he publicly announced his decision, he said, it'll be good for us to, along the lines of no one is going to be harmed with the collection of stem cells as if embryonic stem cells actually harmed anybody, which means he still doesn't get it.

S: He's saying federal money will not be spent to destroy an embryo, basically.

B: So he'll leave them. He'll let them be thrown in the garbage, though.

S: Yeah, but fertility clinics, what he says shouldn't happen is what is happening in fertility clinics.

B: Why isn't he making laws against that, then?

S: He's not making a stink about that because you're not going to take fertility clinics away from people. That would be politically untenable. He's just sort of pretending that that whole hypocrisy is not there, basically.

P: This is just almost politically untenable.

S: Yeah, right.

E: I have a feeling this problem will resolve itself in 2009. We just got to hang tight.

P: Around January 20th.

E: Yeah, we just got to hang tight for another 18 months, and I think we'll be all set with this one.

J: But what is it, I'd like to know, honestly, how the religion affects this decision. How does his faith affect this? Where's the connection there?

E: The belief that life begins at conception.

P: Right, and he thinks that any destruction of an embryo is murder, and utilizing products from that murder, no matter what the benefit, is immoral.

J: But what about the fact that they get the embryonic tissue from afterbirth of normal babies?

S: Well, that's fetal, not embryonic, Jay.

B: Right, they're not as pluripotent.

J: But he doesn't even want that. He doesn't even want that, though, if I'm correct.

S: No, it's just embryonic stem cells, not other sources of stem cells. That's the problem. But of course, embryonic stem cells are the best. They're the ones that have the most potential. I think what it is, is the pro-life movement wants to draw a sharp line at conception, and they want that to be their line in the sand. They make basically a slippery slope argument that if they yield on that line, then that leads to murdering babies, basically. So an embryo is post-conception. It's a human being. It's over the line. They want to hold a line there. That's what it comes down to.

E: Steve, is there a scientific consensus as to when life begins?

S: When life begins? Or when does an embryo become a person?

E: The argument of life at conception.

S: Yeah, it's not the question. It's just the way you're stating it. I don't think it's when does life begin. It's when does that become a person.

B: Human life.

S: Yeah, when does it become a human person, as opposed to just an extension of the mother.

E: Okay, fair enough.

S: Or whatever.

E: So is there a consensus on that?

S: No. Because it's not a scientific question. It's not answerable. It's a continuum, and there's no objective place to draw a line.

P: But the Supreme Court has drawn a line after the second trimester, haven't they?

S: Yes. That's an ethical or political line. It's not based on science.

P: Well, it's a legal line.

S: Legal, yeah.

P: But it's a legal line that they drew, and you're right. It was arbitrary.

S: It was. It was.

B: But you could say things like, when is there a nervous system? When does a brain reach sufficient development? When can pain be sensed? You could draw other lines that clearly makes a human from a non-human.

S: But putting meaning on those lines is what's arbitrary. What do those biological milestones mean in terms of the ethical question of is it a person or not?

E: Science does not dictate at all when a person begins and where one ends.

P: These are deep, complicated questions. Look at, I'm serious, look at an anencephalic baby. That's a tragic occurrence, right? Is that a human being? This is a body with effectively no brain. Has a stem, but no brain.

S: It's a lizard, basically.

P: Is that a person?

B: No.

S: I don't think so.

P: You say no, and yet there are parents out there of anencephalic children who helped them to survive as long as possible. I believe their survival rate doesn't go beyond a few years. Is that correct, Steve?

S: I think it's even less than that, yeah.

P: Okay. Who will claim that every moment the child who's with them was a joy and just as fulfilling as their other normal children. You know? I mean, it's very, very difficult questions.

S: Yeah, so there are emotions, ethics, morals involved, and those are not amenable to objective scientific answers. And that's probably why this has been such an enduring controversy. There is no ultimate solution to it. There are moral choices involved. So we're certainly not going to solve this problem.

News Item #3 ()

S: The next news item, Perry, you sent this one to me. This has to do with towns using local legends in order to boost their tourism.

P: Yeah, this was a pretty simple piece there. Recently here in the U.S., down in Florida, there's been these cases of a couple of leaping sturgeons, which are very sizable fish. They can grow to a couple hundred pounds, I guess six to eight feet. And an incident in April, and again an incident in June, these sturgeons leapt up and out of the water to such an extent that they knocked people unconscious. Back in April, the woman actually lost some fingers and they had to be reattached.

J: That's one hell of a leap. What do they have, freaking ginsu knives attached to their backs? What's happening?

P: Actually, their scales are like armor. They're sort of prehistoric looking. They're pretty neat looking. Anyway, the point of the piece is simply that the town should handle this carefully because they could have a Bigfoot in the making. They could have a Nessie in the making. When marketed correctly, they can start to reap some of the rewards that towns like Roswell and so forth reap. That's really what the piece is about.

S: And just from the skeptical point of view, it does bring up the fact that once these sort of stories are created, there is a huge incentive locally to promote them and to keep them going because it does actually drive tourism and then it has a certain dollar value attached to it. So certainly, like Loch Ness, for example, there's a huge tourism there. So they are hugely motivated to promote belief in the Loch Ness monster.

P: Right. And this article points out that the place where these sturgeons have struck, if you will, is very scenic and it's on some beautiful river areas, you know, and so it's very easy to market and draw people in.

E: The sturgeon actually exists, though.

S: Yeah, it's a fish.

E: Nessie doesn't exist. Bigfoot doesn't exist.

P: And these two incidents actually happened, Evan.

S: Yeah, so it's a little different.

P: You're right.

S: I think probably the town that most exploits its local legend is Roswell.

J: Roswell.

B: Yeah.

S: The museum and everything.

J: Well, that's Salem, Steve.

S: You're right. Well, Salem does, but that's more of a historical thing, I think.

P: It's slightly different, but Jay, you're right. Salem is certainly a tourist trap if any of our listeners have ever visited there. It is a tourist trap.

S: Yeah, I was just there recently.

E: Roswell is newer. It's sexier. It's a little more...

P: Right. And there's no one town that can claim Bigfoot.

S: Yeah. That's true.

P: You know, Bigfoot's in the northwest, you know, sort of. I mean, actually, there's been sighting in all 50 states, but...

E: And Pennsylvania.

S: So he's up for marketing. He's up for grabs. You know, some northwestern cities got to grab Bigfoot as their local legend. He's currently unaffiliated.

P: That's right. You're saying, also in the piece, he goes on to say, you know, Hollywood could step in and make a few Sturgeon movies, you know.

S: Attack of the Sturgeons?

E: Attack of the 50-foot Sturgeon?

P: You could put it up there with Jaws, and certainly that greatly helps the process.

S: Right.

J: That'll be almost as bad as that Bigfoot movie on YouTube that Rebecca showed us yesterday.

P: And Night of the Demon?

E: We have a local legend around here called the Melon Heads. Maybe we could do something with that.

J: The Melon Heads?

P: That's true. Yeah. They dance in the woods.

J: You're a Melon Head. What? What is this?

E: They're a bunch of recluse, bald-headed, like inbred family that lives in the woods of Fairfield County, Connecticut. Look it up. Look it up online. Do a search for Melon Heads. You'll come across a couple little articles and references.

P: So maybe we're missing a potential pot of gold here.

E: I think so.

P: You know, it's possible.

J: What, are we going to parade these people around and put funny suits on them? What are you talking about?

E: Well, you've got to find them first. You can only see them at night in the woods when it's dark and they have no hair and these big eyes.

P: Jay, you have a lot of research to do before you start making money, okay?

J: Oh, I found a site.

P: You did?

J: Yes.

P: Somebody beat us to it?

J: The Melon Heads. These big-headed children have been rumored to roam the woods surrounding Windsor and King Memorial Roads in Chardon. They only come out at night, Evan you were right, and seem to be incredibly shy, often running away from others who spot them. Some believe these children were victims of freak medical experiments conducted by a Dr. Crow who injected their heads with water or chemicals.

S: Damn you, Dr. Crow.

P: This really is the stuff of P.T. Barnum, you know, when he used to put anybody with a medical malady up on the stage and charge people a dime to go look at them, you know?

S: The sideshow freaks?

P: The freaks. Absolutely.

S: Well, let's move on to your questions and emails.

Questions and E-mails ()

E-mail #1 ()

S: The first one comes from Joseph Van Geel in Belgium and he writes, dear all, he gives the name of an organization which is basically the Belgium Organization Against Quackery and he says, this is one of the oldest skeptical organizations in the world. It was founded 125 years ago, I wasn't aware that there were skeptical organizations around for that long. He says, it's located in the Netherlands. Last week they have been brought to court by Mrs., the name is...

E: Sikkens.

S: Well, actually, I think it's Sikkens without the N. I think he misspelled it in that one. On the other side, I could not find Sikkens, but I can only find Sikkes, S-I-C-K-E-S-Z, which is kind of a funny name for her to have.

P: Either way, she sikkens me.

S: Yeah, right. Because they had nominated her as one of the top 20 biggest quacks in the world. So basically this anti-quackery organization had their top 20 biggest quacks in the world list and Mrs. Sikkes was on that list and then she sued them. So the judge decided that the organization was not allowed to name her as a quack and condemned them to publish an advertisement in all big Dutch journals to declare that she isn't a quack. This also will cost them a lot of money and they basically can't afford it. So I also read that they have to pay the court costs. So the combination of these mandatory advertisements and the court costs would essentially bankrupt this Belgium skeptical organization.

P: I think it was about 30,000 euros, I believe, was the price I remember.

S: Yeah, he said 30,000 euros. Then he goes on to say, as all skeptic organizations, they only live from gifts, which means that this group is not able to bear these costs. The result will be the end of the organization. So please mention this topic in your great podcast that might motivate many skeptics to support them and help to survive the situation. He has a link. This was also written up by James Randi in his online Swift journal, which I'll link to that as well. I tried to get more information about this, but unfortunately most of them are in Belgium so I couldn't understand them. There wasn't much in English about this. But apparently her schtick is some kind of manual therapy, which relies heavily upon sort of chiropractic notions. She's been doing this for quite some time. It's a gross miscarriage of justice, of course. I think originally, according to the Swift article, she lost her lawsuit against the skeptic organization, but then it was appealed and now the judge just decided against them.

P: There's no higher court?

S: I don't know. I don't know. I think there may be appeals left to be made if they can afford to do it, if there are some lawyers out there willing to give them some free advice.

P: My suggestion would be to dissolve the organization and start it up under a different name.

S: Yeah, although it'd be a shame. A 125-year history is hard to give up.

P: I understand. I understand, but I would never, never publish those articles or ads saying this woman's not a quack. That can also destroy your organization.

J: Steve, don't you think if they took the money instead and spent it on lawyers, it might benefit them instead of them actually doing the advertising?

S: Well, I mean, they were court-ordered to do it. I don't know. I mean, I guess if they initiated an appeal process, then they wouldn't have to do it until that was carried through. I'm not an expert on law and the business.

P: And Jay, we don't know if there's anywhere else to go. This could be the end of it.

J: They could have hit the ceiling.

S: Apparently, the judgment turned on the definition of the word quack. And she was saying that that implied that they were calling her a fraud. And they were saying that, no, quackery just means that your treatments are not valid. In fact, the dictionary definition gives two definitions. The first one is just it's someone who makes claims that are not supported by the evidence and who uses invalid treatments. And then the second one was a fraud. So the judge was basing it entirely on the second definition, not the first definition, which seems kind of silly to base the judgment on that. But even if you were, the judge got it wrong, apparently, in this case.

P: So the judge sounds like a flaming ass.

S: But it's terrible. I mean, it's a terrible decision. Can you imagine? You know, so that means charlatans can promote any nonsense they want in the Netherlands. I mean, any scientist or skeptic who stands up to point out that their claims are bogus can get sued out of existence. I mean, it's a terrible, terrible precedent. But I think we just talked about it, I don't know if it was just last week or recently, about the fact that this is a big threat to skeptics because, you know, we're out there taking on oftentimes con artists and charlatans. And they are often fairly savvy about harassing us or trying to silence us with these kind of lawsuits. And it's particularly shameful when it works.

J: Yeah, it's sad when you see a court of law pander to a psychic.

S: It's terrible.

P: Ugly, ugly.

S: It is.

P: Ugly decision.

J: Well, Steve, so what could we do, honestly? What could we do to help?

S: Obviously, they're looking for donations so that they could financially survive this. Again, we'll have the link to that organization. I think they probably, most of all, need some free legal help, although, again, that would need to come locally from somebody who has practiced law in the Netherlands.

P: If there is an appeal available.

S: Yeah, if it's available, right.

P: But I wouldn't do it. If I asked for donations, got the 30K, I wouldn't do it. I would dissolve the organization first.

S: That's a good point.

P: I would never, ever, under the name of my skeptical organization, publish ads saying that this freaking quack is an actual therapist or doctor or whatever the hell she's claiming.

S: Yes, I agree. I could not do that. I'd cut off my right hand first.

P: Couldn't do it, yeah. I'd dissolve the organization.

E-mail #2 ()

S: The next email comes from Trevor Daly in Canada, and he writes, In 1632, Galileo Galilei was accused of heresy for questioning the Aristotelian consensus model of the universe, which held that the sun and all other heavenly bodies revolve around the earth. He was threatened by the Inquisition with torture for holding these views, despite the fact that he, and anyone who troubled to do so, could see through a telescope that moons orbit the planet Jupiter. An old man, Galileo was forced to recant and confess his error. He thereby escaped being burnt at the stake and was instead sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life. Science and history have, of course, proven him right. Ever since, the notion of enforced consensus has been anathema to scientists. Until now. The dawn of the 21st century sees relentless, strident attempts to enforce consensus about global warming theory. These modern inquisitors, replete with Supreme Court rulings, brand deniers of impending apocalyptic global warming as heretics who lack blind faith in the theology of infallible computer models. Today's Galileos are being threatened with loss of their positions, credentials, and titles. Foisting theories upon scientists and the public by means of verbal persuasion, elections, court orders, or intimidation is the opposite of the scientific method of determining the truth. Well, I wanted to include that because it actually represents the view of a lot of emails we get. And it is actually, from my readings, one of the primary points of the global warming skeptic camp that they basically are being oppressed. And that the scientific consensus that there is global warming is being used to silence the debate prematurely, to end it, to harass or oppress anyone who dares to say that there isn't global warming. I basically don't buy the whole thing, to be honest with you. It sounds an awful lot like the kind of stuff the intelligent designers were saying about evolutionists. Oh, you know, if anyone dares speak out about the faith in evolution, then you lose your tenure, you can't get published, or whatever. It's really the exact same rhetoric as is coming from the ID camp, just global warming instead of evolution. The other thing, the comparison to Galileo, I know we've mentioned on this podcast more than once before that that is like a guaranteed invitation to be compared to all kinds of nonsense. The analogy to Galileo has many flaws in it. The first of which is that Galileo existed in essentially a pre-scientific era. And you can't compare the consensus of opinion that was based on dogma. The consensus that existed at the time of Galileo was not a scientific consensus, it was an authoritarian dogma. And to compare the two is to really completely miss the point. It also, you know, comparing one's position or one's self to either Galileo or Einstein or whatever, again, just invites ridicule. So I wouldn't go there. I think that Trevor and the people that are making this point are doing themselves a great disservice in forcing that comparison. And again, it doesn't work. The bottom line is that there is a scientific consensus that there is man-made global warming. Now there's always room for debate, and even sometimes the minority opinion in the long run turns out to be the correct one. I think we need to continue to allow for there to be a debate. At the same time, we have to make decisions based upon the best evidence and the best conclusions that we have around right now. And right now, there is a consensus about man-made global warming. Other emailers have said that basically playing the consensus card is making an argument from authority, and I don't think that's a legitimate point either, because we're not saying that global warming is happening because some guy says it is. That's an argument from authority. We're just saying that the world community of climatologists have looked at all the data. They've debated it for decades. They've done lots of research to answer all the questions that have been brought up on both sides. They've really hammered out a consensus, and when you have a broad consensus that's mature, that's been hammered out over a long time, and where all of the data has been looked at in a very transparent way, the probability of that consensus accurately reflecting the actual evidence out there is pretty good. And what I haven't heard from the dissenters is, you know, really why we should be skeptical of that consensus. And when they are asked that question, they basically come out with all this conspiracy kind of stuff that Trevor is saying, which I don't find compelling. I just don't buy it, and it's just too much like what the intelligent design people say about evolution.

J: The next question is, where do you draw the line? Like, at what point is the evidence enough?

S: Yeah, I know. Yeah, and we definitely, there's that demarcation problem that I think we're having with the global warming issue. I think that, yeah, there is a consensus, but what does that mean? Does that mean that you can't hold a dissenting opinion? I don't think it should ever mean that.

J: I agree.

S: I think we always have to have room for other ideas, you know? Science does change over time, absolutely. I don't think you could ever close off debate. Science does not work that way, and I don't think the scientific community is trying to do that. Maybe some politicians are, you know, again, when science starts to blend into politics, that's when, you know, I think people may be inappropriate, but I don't think the scientific community is doing that. So as I said, we have a long interview coming up with Orac, so let's go to the interview now.

Interview with Orac ()

Joining us now is the science blogger Orac, who also goes by the first name of Dave. Dave, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.

DG: Hi, everyone.

J: Hey, Dave.

S: And as I said, Dave writes a science blog called Respectful Insolence, which of course we'll have the link to, which covers a lot of topics and not just straight science, but a lot of skeptical topics, too, so I guess technically you're a skeptical blogger.

DG: I would like to think that.

S: How long have you been doing that? When did you start off the blog?

DG: It was two and a half years ago now. I believe it is December of 2004, been pretty constant since then.

S: Is that the first time you got involved with any kind of, you know, promoting the public understanding of science or any kind of media like that outside of your profession?

DG: Sort of. I've had a long interest, or I've been an online presence for quite a while, but not as a blogger. As far back as the late 90s, I used to be a regular on a fair number of Usenet groups, if you remember.

B: Remember Usenet?

DG: You remember Usenet?

B: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember that.

S: It's ancient history now.

DG: In actuality, I guess the first serious skepticism that I got into was combating, actually, of all things, Holocaust denial. In fact, I don't know if you know the news group Alt-Revisionism. I was a regular on there for quite a few years, and then starting around 2000, 2001, I started getting more interested in the whole problem of alternative medicine and non-evidence-based therapy, shall we say.

S: Right. And for background, I don't think I said it. You are a surgeon, and you have a specialty in oncology, is that correct?

DG: Surgical oncology. I do mostly breast cancer surgery. I run a lab. I have NIH funding.

S: Yes, you have an academic appointment.

DG: Correct. I'm an associate professor of surgery.

J: So Dave, do you consider yourself a breast man? You must hear that joke like every week.

DG: I was going to say, you know.

J: But you did laugh, so.

DG: Yeah, I know. I was being polite.

S: So you do cover a lot of very important topics on your blog. The Holocaust denial is interesting because that's kind of outside of your professional background. How did you get interested in that?

DG: Basically, ever since I was actually a little kid, you know, like a little kid or at least a teenager, I was interested in World War II history, and I think it was sort of just an outgrowth of that. I posted about this, like, pretty early on in my blogging career when I first discovered Holocaust denial. I basically, you know, could not believe that people were out there who denied that the Holocaust happened, you know, or minimized it or what have you. It totally blew my mind, actually.

J: Yeah, it's pretty absurd.

S: It's kind of like me and creationism, just the notion that, you know, a group of people can deny such a well-established science. Again, it is mind-blowing. So I guess it's the same thing with Holocaust denial.

DG: Well, that was a later reaction when I, you know, I didn't take that much of an interest in creationism until a few years ago, and it was a similar sort of reaction.

S: Yeah, and they're both denials, denialism, and they're very similar. They're both kind of the same thing, and also like HIV denial.

DG: Yes, yes. I mean, they all use very, very similar logical fallacies, techniques of distorting data, cherry-picking evidence, all of that.

S: Do you find that once you sort of figure out what the logical fallacies are and how these people's reasonings go astray, you can pretty much apply it to anything as long as you have a reasonable fund of knowledge in an area. You could then, you know, apply those logical fallacies and deal with a wider range of topics.

DG: Oh, yes. I mean, there's one area that I don't write about much or if at all, and that's essentially global warming. And the reason is because I don't think I know enough about it to be, you know, intelligent about it. So...

S: Yeah.

J: Don't get into it. It's a big pain in the ass. Let me tell you.

S: Let's shift a little bit to your area of expertise as an oncologist. You write a lot about cancer cures and either alternative or fake cancer cures or dubious cures. And that's a huge industry, obviously. You know, cancer is a very desperate illness and it definitely attracts a lot of quackery. One treatment, however, that you've been writing about recently is dichloroacetate, which in and of itself is not necessarily an illegitimate treatment. It's just the way it's been marketed. Can you give us a summary of that?

DG: Oh, no. I mean, I think dichloroacetate is a really interesting way of targeting cancer. I mean, basically to make it simple, the idea is this. There's a characteristic of cancer cells that's known as the Warburg effect. In essence, cancer cells, or at least a large percentage of them, utilize glucose for their metabolism preferentially. And even in the presence of oxygen, they still do anaerobic metabolism. They do glycolysis primarily and they don't do oxidative phosphorylation. Dichloroacetate is a treatment that essentially alters that and pushes them back to a more normal metabolism. Now, there's been a lot of discussion about the metabolic changes that occur in cancer and whether this is a case of the chicken or the egg. It's actually kind of blurred now in that, you know, it's not entirely clear whether it's the cause or a consequence of cancer, but it is fairly clear that by normalizing cellular metabolism by either blocking enzymes that shunt the metabolism back to a more quote unquote normal state that some cancer's growth can be stopped. In fact, this is a hot area of research. Dichloroacetate, it was originally used for metabolic diseases in children. I think what happened is in January, a scientist at the University of Alberta named Evangelos Michalakis, and I hope I'm not butchering his name, basically tested this drug against a variety of cancers in rats and got promising results. The way it was spun in the media or the way it was reported, okay, this is a small molecule. It can't be patented. I mean, its use for cancer can be patented, but use patents are kind of weak, and big pharma is not interested in it, you know, the dum-dum-dum, you know, but what's different about it as compared to like a lot of other drugs that might have been in this situation is that it's a small molecule that's fairly easy to synthesize. So a guy named Jim Tassano in Sonora, California decided to start synthesizing this stuff. He has a business, of all things, a pesticide business as far as I understand.

S: But it means he can make chemicals.

DG: He could hire someone who could make chemicals. They set up a website, two websites. One was called ByDCA.com, and the other was called the DCASite.com. They had all these discussion boards, and they talked about DCA and how great it was and that it was going to be the cure to cancer, and that's how it was being spun as the cure to cancer. A lot of bloggers that I normally kind of respect sort of fell into this line of thinking, for instance, Digby, Digby's blog, if you're familiar with that one, is going around, this is the drug, this is the cure to cancer that big pharma doesn't want you to know about. It's sounding a lot like Kevin Trudeau. Basically, the guy set up these websites, and he started making this stuff, and he started selling it, and people started discussing on the websites what was happening. Meanwhile, Dr. Michalakis was obviously appalled by this because contrary to what they say, this drug is not without side effects. For one thing, it can produce a pretty bad peripheral neuropathy, which as a neurologist, I'm sure you know how nasty that can be, and a number of other side effects that were reported. The other thing is these people were basically taking stuff that they didn't know whether it was truly pharmaceutical grade. The DCA site claims it was pharmaceutical grade, but you have no way of knowing. Here's the really disingenuous thing. They started out selling it as quote-unquote pet DCA. We're selling it so you can give your dog or your cat with cancer DCA, but they slipped up, and I kind of caught them on this. They talked about, well, we recommend that you see your doctor first. I'm like, well, what do you got to see your doctor for if you're giving this to your pet? The funny thing is after I wrote a blog piece pointing that out, they started switching things and taking that stuff out.

S: So, basically making an end run around the FDA and regulations.

DG: As far as I could tell. To this day, he's still in operation, and I still don't understand why the FDA hasn't shut him down. This drug has only been shown to have activity against tumors in rats. Many of the drugs that have activity against tumors in mice and rats that don't make it in human clinical trials, maybe only 5% or 10% of such drugs actually make it to some sort of marketable product. It could be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it could be this miraculous, powerful chemotherapeutic agent that we would all hope that it is, but you don't know until you do the clinical trials. It's kind of frightening what you see on that site. There are these people who are just dying of cancer, and I understand that they're desperate, and I don't know that I wouldn't be tempted to do the same thing if I were in their shoes. But they're taking a risk for what is probably no benefit. The other thing is what these people don't seem to understand is how we evaluate the effectiveness of cancer drugs. There's one person there who's actually fairly savvy. He was a physician. He's an unfortunate guy. He had metastatic sarcoma, and he was on this, and he was reporting that his tumor was this size then, this size then, and this size then, and on the last one, he said there were more tumors in his lungs, and it was this size. And then some of these people were going there, okay, well, we're measuring the volume, and it looks like the growth rate is slowing down. Well, there's such a thing as called Gompertzian growth. Basically all tumors do that with no treatment. As they get bigger and bigger, they outgrow their blood supply. The growth fraction decreases, and they don't increase in volume as fast, and they kind of slow down with no treatment at all.

S: Right. It's the natural course of history.

DG: And the natural, you know, and of course when it levels off completely is when you're dead. You know, they're stoking the hope of these people saying, oh, look, it's working. These tumors are slowing down. They're not shrinking. They're slowing down. Does it mean that they're actually, that it's actually doing something? Well, maybe, but you have no idea without a control group.

J: It's also a good example of people giving other people advice when they don't know what they're talking about.

DG: Well, here's where this pulls into skepticism. One of the big boosters of DCA is an old friend from a certain intelligent design website.

J: Hey, come on. What are you getting at?

DG: What am I getting at? Well, no. I mean, well, have you heard of Dave Scott?

J: No.

DG: Okay. He's over at Bill Demski's blog, which is Uncommon Descent, I believe. He was a big booster of this very early on, and he would periodically show up in some of my blog posts, saying, yeah, yeah, look, it's working, and then I'd go look at it, and I'm like, no, it's not, or I can't tell if it is. I'd go to the boards and see no evidence that it's working. There's only one way on earth that you would be able to tell from this sort of uncontrolled experiment that this stuff is good against cancer. That would be if it was so good against cancer that it basically cured everybody or it cured somebody.

S: You had some home runs.

DG: Yeah, a total home run. It totally shrank the tumor to nothing, and of course, we don't see any of that.

S: We could say at this point that we're not seeing that. It's not a dramatic cure.

DG: My perspective is it might very well be a very useful chemotherapeutic agent, but it probably won't be useful by itself, and it probably won't be all that much more useful than a lot of other stuff that we have. There's a certain mindset in alternative medicine that chemotherapy is bad. It's evil. It's poison, and radiation therapy is burning, and surgery is slicing and cutting. I mean it is, but I like to think it's a little more precise than that. Yes, thank you.

S: That's the common phrase from cancer quacks is that the standard treatment is slash burn and poison.

DG: In any case, what is DCA? It's chemotherapy.

S: Yeah, it's a drug.

DG: It is chemotherapy. It is a chemotherapeutic agent. That's what it is, but they're flocking to it in spite of that, and they're denying that that's what it is. They go on about how it naturally turns the tumor cell back to a normal metabolism. It's magical thinking.

S: Yeah, just throw the word natural in there, and it just gets a mystique that makes it somehow seem different.

DG: There was one particularly egregious article that came from a student newspaper somewhere, but it keeps getting passed through the web, and I keep seeing it again and again. The headline was something along the lines of, they cured cancer yesterday, but no one cares or something like that, or but you can't have it, and this still keeps popping up. I have a Google search set to dichloroacetate to see what new stuff comes up, and I keep seeing the same old stuff coming up again and again and again.

S: The core of the conspiracy claims is that this is a drug that cannot be patented. It's already out there, so the pharmaceutical industry can't make as much money off of it. They make about, from what I've read, about 20% off of an unpatented drug as they would off of a patented drug.

DG: You can make money, just not incredible amounts of money, not like Viagra type money.

S: That leads to the notion that not only would a pharmaceutical company not invest in it, which I think is a reasonable conclusion that they may not think it's worth their investment, but then they go the extra step and say, therefore, they're going to suppress it. They're going to keep anyone else from studying it, and that's where it just gets absurd.

DG: The whole thing out there is, oh, because big pharma isn't interested, no one's going to study it, even though a promising drug like this can attract grant money. It's just, obviously, it'll take time. It'll take a few years to figure out if this stuff actually has activity that's in a favorable side effect profile. To determine if a drug actually has an effect on survival, it'll take a few years.

S: Yeah. If you want to know what the five-year survival is, it takes five years, at least.

DG: Well, at least. Yeah, exactly. Maybe more. Well, I mean, you can estimate it through Kaplan-Meier survival curves, but it takes a few years at least.

J: Dave, do you notice that your cancer patients tend to go to other alternatives first, or is there any correlation between a patient's sex and their willingness to use an alternative medicine? Do you know any stats on that?

DG: Do I know stats? Not really. I mean, from my own practice, there seem to be a lot of women who take supplements and stuff like that, but that they don't really rely on it to treat their cancer. It's not like they're telling me they don't want surgery. I have no problem with that. As long as you're getting effective treatment, I just need to know what you're taking in case it makes you bleed more when I operate or something like that. One set of statistics that they throw out there, it implies that huge numbers of people use this stuff, and I'm not sure how accurate those are. And you're right.

S: Numbers are inflated because you have to look at the details. Often the percentage of people who are using hardcore alternative modalities, like they're trying to cure their cancer with homeopathy, those are single digits, very small numbers. But then there's a few types of treatment that inflate the overall numbers, like prayer. So if anyone's ever been prayed for, they consider that using alternative medicine.

'DG: Practically everyone... I grew up Catholic, practically everyone I know has been prayed for.

S: Right. But that makes it turn into 50% or 60% or something, and they say, 60% of people are using alternative modalities. Yeah, but it's almost all just people who have ever been prayed for, and then very, very tiny numbers of the hardcore stuff that we actually think of as alternative medicine. So those numbers get artificially elevated. I know you've blogged about, as I have, about certain cases where parents have tried to refuse standard cancer treatment for their children in exchange for alternative medicine. And of course that brings up a lot of very thorny ethical and legal and moral issues. But what's the bottom line? What do you think about that? I mean, obviously it's not a great decision, but it's come up when the states have tried to intervene, and then you get the conflict between the state trying to protect a child and the parents who are trying to exert their parental rights. What do you think about those kind of situations?

DG: Yeah, you're right. These are very tough. There are two people that I've primarily written about over the last year or so. They both have lymphoma, different age. One of them was named Katie Wernicke, like late 2005 or so. She was 12 then, developed a fairly aggressive lymphoma, apparently got one round of chemotherapy. She went through one course of chemotherapy, and doctors thought that she needed radiation, and the parents balked, and they wanted to go to some clinic in Kansas to get high-dose vitamin C, and they actually went on a lam. They ultimately won the right to take her to that clinic. From what I can tell, now for her, because she was 12, and I think she's 14 now, I think it's fairly clear. She's nowhere near the age where she can make the decision for herself. As much as I understand and am actually wary of the state telling parents how to raise their children, I think that not providing proper medical care to a child, and this goes to Christian scientists, for instance, or Jehovah's Witnesses. If a Jehovah's Witness says that you can't transfuse their child when their child's bleeding, you transfuse the child. You go to court and do it. However, when it comes to these various alternative modalities for which there is no evidence, and for some of which there's evidence that they plain don't work, for some reason, the court seem to look at those as being okay or almost equivalent to evidence-based medicine, and they're more likely to say, okay. In fact, that's what they did with Katie Wernicke, and in fact, it's very sad. They have this family blog, Pray for Katie, and actually several months ago, they posted something about follow your markers. You got to get scanned every couple of months. You got to be very vigilant about your cancer, and I saw that and I was like, oh, she's recurred. I just knew it, and a couple months later, they posted that, yes, she had recurred, and she had some sizable tumors in her chest, but I haven't really heard anything much since then other than that the Wernicke's are suing the state of Texas, and it wouldn't surprise me if they'll say something along the lines of, well, the state interfered with us going to get the treatment, the vitamin C, and therefore, that's why Katie is dying now.

J: Yeah, always blame every single thing else you possibly can other than yourself and your own logic.

S: We talked about a similar case, Isabel Pritchard is a 13-year-old girl who has a brain tumor. This is even worse. The parents are not opting for an alternative treatment, but there's this Russian psychic healer who's telling them that it's not a tumor.

DG: I remember that.

S: It's normal brain tissue that's not a result of his healing intervention, so they're not going to get it treated at all.

DG: The second case is a young man who I believe was 15 when he was diagnosed. He's 17 now by the name of Starchild Abraham Cherix. Now this is a little more difficult because he's closer to the age of consent. He's closer to being 18. What happened is his story is kind of eerily similar in a way. He's diagnosed with what seemed like a fairly aggressive Hodgkin's lymphoma, underwent one course of chemotherapy and had a lot of problems with it, a lot of side effects, and decided he didn't want to do any more. His parents supported him in this, and quite frankly, this is the kind of thing where the parents kind of have to step to the plate and get the kid to take the chemotherapy. But they also were of kind of an alternative bent, and he decided he wanted to take the Hoxie therapy, which is this concoction, and I forget exactly what it's made of, but the legend is that a guy by the name of Hoxie noticed that when his cows were out in the field or when his horses were out in the field, if they came in contact with these certain plants, if they had skin tumors, they would regress. I mean, it's typical, no evidence, and this is a therapy that is given at this clinic in, of course, Tijuana. So I mean, he wanted to go there. Now, he's tougher because, like I said, he's 15, 16, he's more of an age where you can think that he could decide for himself, and my personal philosophy is kind of on the lines of, well, if you're an adult, you can choose any sort of quackery you want, you can turn down regular therapy, that's all your choice as an adult. But if you're a kid, I think there is some obligation for parents or the state to make sure that you get the proper treatment. In fact, one thing about the Cherex case that's very disturbing is it ended up causing a law called Abraham's Law in Virginia, which basically says that anyone over the age of 14 who has a quote-unquote life-threatening condition can refuse treatment or can choose whatever their treatment is or whatever they want. In essence, if you're over the age of 14 in Virginia and have a life-threatening condition, it's open season for quackery there.

S: Everyone looks at it completely from the point of view of the right of the patient to choose their treatment, but that doesn't mean that any provider should have the right to provide any treatment that they want.

DG: That's an excellent point.

S: So somebody should not have the right to sell a fraudulent therapy, a therapy which has been shown to be unsafe or ineffective and to make claims about it, no matter how implied or inferential they are. Getting back to the anti-vaccination thing, I want to use that to segue into just the recent autism omnibus, the mercury causing autism. Briefly, what's the update with the court trial that's going on now?

DG: It's finished its first week and now we're well into the second week. The way the autism omnibus works is there are 4,800 sets of parents who have sued or filed for compensation under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. They're going through a group of test cases. By these test cases, they're picking, I guess, their best cases or where they think they have the best evidence that vaccines injured the child and caused their autism. This first case so far hasn't gone well. One of the first witnesses, I believe his name is pronounced Dr. Aposhian, basically on the stand last week, in essence, admitted that he made up his hypothesis like three weeks before. There was nothing published. If you look at the transcripts for the first week, which is all the plaintiff's witnesses, there are some howlers in there.

S: They're just making stuff up.

DG: They're making the stuff up as they go along. Going back real quick, the concept that mercury injury causes autism, which is not supported by science. Yes, mercury, as I think you pointed out the other day, mercury is a neurotoxin but the question is, at the doses that it's given in vaccines, can it cause autism or other neurologic injury and there's basically no evidence that it does. Again, this is a magnet for quackery. This week, Dr. Fonbone, he's done a number of studies. He basically ripped apart the plaintiff's side so far. The only thing they could touch him on is that he's taken pharmaceutical money in the past so they start trying to rip him for a conflict of interest but the way I look at it is, if the conflict of interest is stated clearly and not hidden, that's one condition. The other condition, I look at it and I'm like, okay, there may be a conflict of interest there. I'll be a little more skeptical about the data but in the end, the data has to stand on its own. It's the data, not the person.

S: But they're quick to dismiss scientist for any tenuous link and they will make a leap from that, so if you've ever gotten pharmaceutical money ever that you're actually in their pocket and you're adulterating your research and you're basically working for the pharmaceutical industry. That's a huge leap to make. Did you have a chance, by the way, to read RFK Jr. recent article in Huffington Post? I blogged about it today, I don't know if you had a chance to read it.

DG: Oh, stay tuned. I've already written a response, it's going up tomorrow. ut I saw your response and I liked it. You're nicer than I was.

J: You guys are blog-buddies, aren't you?

S: We are, we're blog-buddies.

DG: But actually you should read, if you want a really snarky reponse you should go read Kevin Leach's blog. He also wrote about it. He happens to have a daughter with autism and he's very much into this skeptical, he's very much against this stuff, all this conspiracy-mongering nonsense. His post is precious.

S: I have to read it.

J: Hey Dave, I noticed that you blogged about scientology today.

DG: Yeah. And I know you guys have talked about it on the podcast.

S: Jay's favourite topic.

DG: It's just so stupid.

J: I know, it's a freak show on the dance floor. Scientology is just a train-wreck.

DG: Yeah, I mean, I wrote about John Travolta because he basically blamed the Virginia Rampage on psychiatric drugs.

B: Oh man. Wow.

DG: I always sort of thought, scientologists, John Travolta is kind of low-key, he doesn't talk about religion much, he's kind of amiable, he doesn't bother me. But then I saw this, I'm like, oh great, he's way up there with Tom Cruise.

J: They're making him step up now.

DG: What I said about it is like, ok, you've got to remember this - even if a peson is a truly commited scientologist, no matter how amiable and reasonable they seem on the surface, you look underneath the surface, they're as crazy as Tom Cruise.

B: Oh yeah, if you're buying into that stuff, the Xenu.

S: The whole Xenu stuff, they drank the cool-aid.

DG: Yeah, they drank the cool-aid, definitely. In huge quantities, gallons of it.

B: Dave, quick question for you about the potential future of cancer therapies. Maybe the next five to fifteen years.

DG: One of the good things about cancer therapy over the last few decades is it's been moving away from more radical to less radical. For instance, back in the seventies every woman with breast cancer got mastectomy. Couple decades before that they all got radical mastectomy which is really deforming and involves taking the underlying muscle as well. Now they all get, and they all got their lymph nodes removed under the arm. I've never even seen a radical mastectomy. Most women these days get a lymphectomy and only a sampling of the lymph nodes instead of taking all of them. And then they get radiation. The other big theme in cancer these days is moving towards more targeted therapy based on molecular alteration in the cancer that you're treating. How much these will pan out is hard to say. You may have heard of receptin, that's a targeted therapy against a certain receptor that some breast cancer express. There's anti-antygenic therapy which is my area of interest. Attacking the blood vessels that feed tumors. There are other targeted therapies based on other specific molecular alterations. The idea being hopefully less toxicity but still equal tumor control. I think that tends to be where things are going now, there's no other way of putting this - cancer is a bitch, like really really tough. And it's not just one disease, that's another thing that alternative medicine really bugs me. They all refer to it as cancer, a cure for cancer. There is no cure for cancer. There may be a cure for a cancer, but there's no cure for cancer.

J: Out of all the cancers out there, overall, what's our cure for cancer rate if you were to average it out.

DG: Overall, it's probably, I'm not a 100% sure this is right, but it's around the order of 50% range, but that's like everything. You're mixing pancreatic cancer, nastiness of nasties. Or you're mixing breast cancer which is very curable, especially in the early stages with esophageal cancer, which is not so, very difficult to treat and cure.

S: there's probably not going to be one cure for cancer. It's going to be a lot of baby steps, baby steps. Slowly, slowly, slowly we'll gain ground.

J: Slowly weed it out, right?

DG: Yeah, I wish I could say that I though it will happen in my lifetime but probably not.

B: Really? Not even in 30 years? We won't knock down some big cancers out there?

DG: Well, I think we'll make progress, I don't think there will be any magical or even... I don't think there will be a cure for most cancer in my lifetime. I wish I could say it wasn't true. But it's just tough, it's not just one disease, it's many diseases and it's a very tough oponent.

S: Well, Dave, thank you so much for joing us on the Skeptic's Guide.

DG: Thanks.

S: It was a lot of fun.

J: thank you very much Dave.

B: Thanks Dave.

DG: All right, thanks a lot.

Science or Fiction ()

Question #1:

S: Ech week I come up with three science news items or facts. Two are geniune and one is fictitious. Then I challenge my skeptics and you at home to tell me which one is the fake. Are you guys ready?

J: Yes. Ready.

B: Yes.

S: Okay. Item number one, in the recent publication researches describe process for making a liquid telescope on the moon. Item number two, geophysicists have used magnetic eruptions on the sun to image deep layer of the earth. And item number three, biologists have discovered that certain species of electric eel use their electrical discharges to cummunicate complex information, such as the precise location of prey. Even you go first.

E: The first one was researches describe process for making a liquid telescope on the moon. Liquid telescope. Okay. I could believe that. Number two, geophysicists have used magnetic eruptions on the sun to image deep layer of the earth. Why I don't really understand how's that possible. And the third one was biologists have discovered that certain species of electric eel use their electrical discharges to cummunicate complex information, such as the precise location of prey.

B: Is that communication amongst other electric eels?

S: Yes. Yesh. I thought that was implied.

B: Yeah, I figured.

E: That sounds right. I'll say that the eel one actually is the fiction.

S: Okay.

E: I think you're throwing the curve in there somewhere.

S: You think there's something fishy about it? Perry?

P: The eel one sound perfectly fine to me. I mean if bees can dance, eels can shock. The first one? Sure. Liquid telescope on the moon. Why would you need a liquid telescope on the moon? And the last one, the middle one. That's the one that's I am ignorant as to how that process could work therefore I will choose it. That one is fiction. Number two, geophysicists have used magnetic eruptions on the sun to image deep layer of the earth.

S: Okay, Jay?

J: You're doing it again Steve, you're very good. The eel, in particualr the eel one, being able to locate their prey using electrical discharge-

S: Not that to locate the pray, to communicate information about the prey.

J: Oh, communication like the location of the prey.

S: Yeah, yeah.

J: So it's just the communication, okay, that one sound very reasonable to me. The liquid telescope, my first question is, why does it have to be liquid and liquid seems to be difficult to handle on the moon because lack of pressure and atmosphere and all that. It doesn't sound as bad as the second one. Something's funny about the second one to me, the geophysicists have used magnetic eruptions on the sun. I'm going to go with number two.

S: Okay, Bob?

B: All right. The liquid telescope on the moon. I don't know if you have ice telescope up north, [inaudible] ice telescope on the moon. I don't have a problem with that.

S: Down south actually.

B: South, north, it's a pole.

E: That's true.

P: He's right.

B: Let's see. Geophysicists have used magnetic eruptions on the sun to image deep layer of the earth. I can kind of see that. Perhaps charged particles from the sun, some small percentage of them can actually travel through the earth, which can be detected, which can might reveal some detail about the deep layers of the Earth, that's conceivable. Now the electric eel, using electrical discharges to communicate complex information. That would be interesting. I just don't see electric eels as being kind of team players. I don't think they give a crap about communicating anything to other electric eels. If other electric eels can somehow interpret it, that's another thing, I don't think it's an intentional communication. Did you mean to imply it was intentional?

S: Yes.

B: So I'm not buying that.

P: Never saw the old cartoons Bob, where the eel would change it's shape and went to eat at Joe's?

B: Yeah.

S: That's exactly it. All right, so you guys buy the liquid telescope on the moon?

J: I'm not buying that. It's gotta be millions of dollars.

B: Absolutely.

S: And that one is in fact science.

J: Yeah.

B: Jay I told you about that one.

J: You did. Thank you Bobby.

S: The concept is really cool now. You can use a liquid to make, instead of a glass lense, right? Or collector. And the advantages, if you use a liquid and you spin it, the force of the spinning will form it into pefectly smooth parabolic shape.

B: Not necessarily heavy.

S: It's true.

B: It's not heavy and it could be huge.

S: Right. That's right. It's actually a really neat concept.

B: They're talking ten to hundred meters which would make it one thousand times more sensitive than anything we have-

J: That's awesome.

B: A thousand times more sensitive.

J: Bob, how much they have to spend on that?

B: Billions, I don't know.

S: Billions and billions?

B: I don't know.

S: But the teoretical problems has been finding a liquid that we get to hold up in the harsh evironment of the moon.

B: I guess they did.

S: And that's the breakthrough is that they figured out the way. This is the international team including researcher Hermano Bora from University Naval Centre for Optics, Fotonics and Laser. And they basically figured out how to make liquid that could fit the bill. That could theoretically be used to make this kind of telescope on the moon. Of course having it on the moon is an advantage, because there's no atmosphere.

P: So it's a synthetic liquid?

S: The called it an ionic liquid with silver by vaporizing it in a vacuum. That was the breakthrough.

J: That explains everything.

E: I should have thought to do that.

B: So Jay, however much that thing weighs, multipley ten thousand dollars per pound and that's a minimum it's going to cost.

E: Yeah, but one sixth the weight because it's on the moon.

B: It doesn't matter.

S: But it's got to get of the Earth.

B: Still in our gravity well.

S: So now Jay and Perry think that the magnetic eruptions are fake and Bob and Evan think tht the electric eel is fake. So is it electricity or magnetism? Which one is the fake?

P: Well, we all know magnets are BS.

S: Let's go to the third one, the elctric eel. Biologists have discovered that certain species of electric eel use their electrical discharges to cummunicate complex information, such as the precise location of prey. And that one is fiction.

E: Ooh.

B: Yeah.

S: That one is fiction.

J: Good work boys.

B: Hi five Bob. Mi streak is intact.

S: The real study showed that electric eels do use their electric discharge in courtship. So the males and females do kind of like a song back and forth to each other with their electrical discharges. But they're not communicating complex information, that part was made up.

J: See, because I rememebr reading that one.

S: Yeah.

J: You did it again, Steve.

B: Very good.

S: And that means that geophysicists have used magnetic eruptions on the sun to image deep layer of the earth is science. And this is also cool. Bob, you got this pretty much right on the nose, that they're using these earthquakes on the sun. They're not earthquakes, magnetic quakes on the sun, which gave pulses of discharges. And they can measure that over time and it does penetrate the deeper layers of the Earth. ANd they can use that as a method of imaging deep down into the Earth. What they found using this technique was that there is a large layer of molten mobile rock beneth Arizona, basically. This is done by Arizona geophysicist Daniel Tofermayer and James [inaudible]. They detected a molten layer with comperatively new and overlooked technique for explaining deep earth that uses magnetic eruptions on the sun. Very cool.

B: Cool.

S: So good work Bob and Evan.

E: Oh, thanks doctor.

Skeptical Puzzle ()

This Week's Puzzle

Identify the 6th number in this sequence: .426, .424, .420, .420, .409


Last Week's Puzzle

I notably lurk on the fringes of physics
I rely on people's ignorance of water's specific capacity
I was the world's only teacher of my practice from 1977-1984
I don't spend much time doing what I do
I keep my momentum, yet try to stay uneven
And if those dollars are burning a hole in your pocket, I can teach you to attain virtually any goal

Who am I?

Answer: Polly Burkin

S: Evan, tell us the answer to last week's puzzle.

E: Do you want me to repeat the puzzle itself?

S: Yes. It's assumed.

E: Okay. I notably lurk on the fringes of physics. I rely on people's ignorance of water's specific capacity. I was the world's only teacher of my practice from 1977-1984. I don't spend much time doing what I do. I keep my momentum, yet try to stay uneven. And if those dollars are burning a hole in your pocket, I can teach you to attain virtually any goal. Who am I?

S: Is it Wink Martindale?

E: No. That's a good guess. Ever heard of a gentleman named Polly Burkin?

B: That rings a bell.

E: You got to know who Polly Burkin is. He is the self-proclaimed creator of the fire-walking movement.

S: Fire-walking?

E: Fire-walker.

J: So he's got sweaty feet?

E: He is a professional fire-walker.

B: Well, that's been done for millenia though.

E: According to him, he's been researching fire-walking since 1977 and is considered to be the formost authority on the subject. Listen to what he says here, this is from his website. Knowing the secrets behind fire-waling can improve your life. Knowing how it works can bring better health and increase personal power. Why? Because fire-walking demostrates how your thoughts impact everyhing else in your life. Fire-walkers are instructed to pay close attention to their thoughts since those very thoughts are the way in which we create our own realities.

B: Oh man.

P: Wait a minute, those are from The Secret.

S: Yeah, this is The Secret.

E: Posite thinkers literally live in a different chemical environment than negative thinkers.

B: Oh man.

S: Different chemical environment.

E: A different chemical environment.

S: Can I legally call that gobbledygook?

E: You can call this guy a quack I think and quite-

P: It's no secret that he's an ass.

S: Nonsense. So he reseached this? Did he ever had somebody walk over hot coals thinking I'm walking on hot-burning coals. And does that matter? Do they burn their feet if they think that?

E: Our good friend doctor Andrew Wile says, today we see people of all sorts learning to walk over beds of glowing coals after a few hours participation in seminars thought-

S: Andrew Wile. I love it when one quack endorses [inaudible] form of quackery. It warms my heart.

E: James Mapes, famous hypnotist, probably heard of him. Totally changed my definition of impossible forever.

S: And just for the record, fire-walking is possible because of physics, not because mental woo-woo.

B: Tell him to look up heat capacity and therml conductivity and I will believe all that clap trap when I see somebody fire-walking on molten metal. Then I will believe it.

S: Red, hot steel.

B: Yeah, it doesn't have to be molten, red hot, just red hot.

P: That's the first time steel has ever burn feet.

S: All right, Evan, give us a new puzzle.

E: All right, so new puzzle is as follows. This one is a logic puzzle, another sequence puzzle, so here we go. Identify the sixth number in the sequence. I'm going to give you the first five, you have to identify the sixth. 0.426, 0.424, 0.420, 0.420, 0.409. What's the sixth number in the sequence. So wrap your mind around that and good luck everyone.

S: We call this formula 409.

Quote of the Week ()

“The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism.” - George Jean Nathan

S: Perry, do you have a quote to end the show for us?

P: Yes I do. The quote is as follows. "The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism." That was George Gene Nathan, 1882 to 1958, an American journalist, essayist, and editor of some note.

J: Thank you, Perry.

S: Excellent.

J: Fans love you, man.

P: Don't thank me.

E: Nice quote. Thank George Gene Nathan.

S: Thank you, George. Thank you all for joining me once again.

J: It was a pleasure. The pleasure is totally ours, Steve. Steve, have a great vacation.

B: Good episode.

E: Good episodes Steve.

S: You may have noticed, those who are paying attention, that we actually recorded two shows Cumberland, Maryland, where we don't have fancy things like internet access.

P: Hunting Bigfoot.

S: So I won't be able to record a show next week, which is this week when this episode is coming up.

P: So next week is this week.

B: You know what's going to happen? Something amazing is going to happen. Some black hole is going to pass near the earth, and we're not going to talk about it next week.

S: Right.

E: If a black hole passes near the earth, I don't think anybody is going to be talking about it.

B: Well, if it's far enough away.

S: It depends on how big it is.

B: Yeah, and how close.

S: Yeah, I mean, the universe can collapse into a quantum vacuum, and we won't be here to talk about it.

P: It's true.

B: Oh, man.

Signoff

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

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. Please send us your questions, suggestions, and other feedback; you can use the "Contact Us" page on our website, or you can send us an email to info@theskepticsguide.org'. 'Theorem' is produced by Kineto and is used with permission.

References