SGU Episode 606

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SGU Episode 606
February 18th 2017
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SGU 605                      SGU 607
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Ineffective therapies are always harmful. The greatest danger lies in the risk that a still treatable disease (is) not really being treated at an early stage, by first trying an alternative therapy. In the worst case, this can lead to the death of the patient. This is more common than you might think.
The Association Against Quackery, The Netherlands, established 1881, considered to be the oldest continually running skeptical organization in the world.
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Introduction

You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, February 15^th, 2017, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening, folks.

Special Report (0:26)

• Lawsuit Update

S: So, good news everyone!

E: O-h-h! I love good news!

S: You like good news?

E: So rare, these days, yes.

S: I won my first of two appeals on the Tobenick case today.

E: Yes!

J: (British accent) Quite well!

B: Ooh! Okay.

C: Yay! So, what does that mean? What does that mean?

S: Okay, so, just for a quick update, a few years ago, I and the SGU and actually, a couple other entities were sued by a physician called Edward Tobenick because of an article that I wrote on Science-Based Medicine, where I said that the treatments that he was giving and advertising were not adequately supported by evidence.

J: How dare you?

S: Yeah, something that I'm wont to do.

B: Were they pure energy entities?

(Evan and Cara laugh)

S: So he sued me. Now clearly, I was just expressing my professional opinion on Science-Based Medicine, so he had to concoct this theory that my article, my web post on Science-Based Medicine was commercial speech, and that I was interfering with his business, and it was unfair competition, et cetera. He also sued me for straight up libel and everything, but that's a really hard sell, in the US, because that pesky First Amendment, right?

E: (Chuckles) Yeah

C: Huh huh!

S: So, anyway, I won the case in Summary Judgement, which basically means the judge said, "Yeah, you have no chance of winning. As a matter of law - all the facts are in - as a matter of law, you can't possibly win." So, yeah.

J: And that's early on in the case, right? That's a judge, after hearing initial arguments, this wasn't after the whole thing happens. It's just the-

S: I would-

J: -first step.

S: I wouldn't say early on.

(Cara laughs)

S: I mean, it was just like after a year and a half, but it was before the court case. So, yeah, there was no court case with a jury or anything. It was just motions, and basically trading motions back and forth. It took a while to get to that point. We had to go through discovery, and it was a huge pain. Whatever, I actually won two big motions. I won an anti-SLAPP against the California plaintiff, and then I had the rest of the charges dropped based upon Summary Judgement. So, Tobenick, who's going through multiple lawyers on this case. They just working his way through, I guess, whatever, whoever will keep the case going. He appealed. And then, so that's been in the works for like, a year and a half now, the appeal. And then we asked for fees, based on the fact that he was taking the case beyond all reason. And we were awarded pretty substantial fees. Not our full cost of the case. About half of what we spent on the case, which was good. And he appealed that as well. He appealed the awarding of fees. So, today, we got the judgement from the, this is a federal case, right? So this is the Appealate Court for the 11th Circuit. And apparently, there are three judges, that decide the case. And the oral arguments were a couple of weeks ago. So this was a pretty quick turnaround for them. I think it was two or three weeks ago, it was oral arguments. And then they came down with a decision. So, a couple of good things: One, it was unanimous. So there was no dissenting opinion, about any of the judges. And, they sided with me on every single issue. So they didn't walk anything back, there were no caveats. It was just, "Yep, we affirm every one of the decisions of the lower court." They denied every appeal.

B: Awesome! So game over, right?

E: (Sounding uneasy) Well... no, no, no, not yet.

S: Pretty - well, okay. Sort of pretty much.

E: Well...

C: Can he do anything else?

S: Yeah, he can-

E: But he said it's only part one, so...

S: Well, yeah. First of all, I think he's probably not gonna fare well on the second appeal given how thoroughly he was slapped down on this one. So...

C: Is the second appeal for something different?

S: To clarify, there are two appeals. He appealed the Summary Judgement, and the anti-SLAPP decision. So basically, me winning the case.

C: I see.

S: And then, the second appeal was of the awarding of fees. So I won the appeal against the Summary Judgement and anti-SLAPP. So they stand. So I-

C: Yeah, so it's quite likely that he'll have to pay.

S: Yeah, so it's quite likely he's gonna fail on the fees.

E: Not only fail, but the judges will say-

B: I don't know why. Can't you just scale them back?

E: -give you more money!

B: Right!

C: I mean, they could...

S: Well, we're gonna add on all of the money for the appeals, you know.

E: Sure!

B: Oh, of course!

S: It's automatic for the-

J: (New York accent) Include the damages here!

S: -anti-SLAPP. But whatever, we're gonna try to get as much as we can back for the money that we're having to sink into this thing.

C: So for all intents and purposes, in terms of precedent, in terms of importance of this case, the most meaningful portion is over. Now, it's really just about functionality. Are we gonna be suffering financially because of the case, any more than The Skeptic's Guide, and you personally, Steve, already have?

S: Yeah, so, that's correct. It's an appellate court. They set pretty big precedent. The only place to go above them is the-

E: Supreme Court!

S: -Supreme Court. So, Tobenick is probably... he has - I'm not gonna guess what he will do. But I'll tell you a few things he can do. He can ask to have the case heard before the entire 11th Circuit.

B: Well, how many are there?

S: Not sure, but it's more than three, right? So he can say, "I want all the judges to decide." But they can turn him down for that. And he can appeal to the Supreme Court.

C: Which is crazy.

E: They take, yeah, I'd think that would be low probability at this point.

S: Yeah, low probability. I suspect low probability that they'll take the case, unless... there are elements of the case that the Supreme Court may decide to just quickly decide to... 'cause-

C: You said Supreme. Did you mean Appellate?

S: No, no. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court-

C: Oh, sorry

S: -may decide, yeah. So, the Circuit Courts, right, they set precedent for their circuit. They can disagree with each other, but in the elements of this case, they pretty much are all agreeing with each other. But the Supreme Court, they usually get involved when the Appellate Courts disagree with each other. So then they resolve the dispute. But they also might say, "Okay, we'll just make a decision on this case. That way, we set the precedent for everybody, rather than having to go Circuit by Circuit." You know what I mean?

B: Right.

C: Gotcha.

S: So, for example, one question that comes up is, "Does the state anti-SLAPP law apply on a federal case?" And now, several of the districts have ruled that they do. But the Supreme Court might want to set that as universal precedent, rather than going circuit by circuit.

B: Oh! You think that's important enough where they might do that?

S: I don't know. I'm not a legal scholar. But from what I understand, that's a possibility.

B: Okay.

C: Okay.

S: But again, probably not. But again, that's why they would do it, because there are elements of the case for which they want to make a decision, and clarify and establish universal precedent.

E: Yeah, they pretty much use you at that point.

C: That would be a decision they would be making.

S: Yeah!

C: There's nothing Tobenick can do.

S: He can ask for it.

C: Can he appeal the appeal?

E: No.

S: No.

E: Well...

C: I didn't think so.

E: No, he can't.

S: Well, except to say, "I'd like to appeal to all, the full judges," which-

C: Oh, so he can ask for that?

S: You can ask for it-

C: Gotcha.

S: .but they can turn him down. He's not guaranteed it. And then he could try to appeal to the Supreme Court, and they could turn him down. So he has no more guaranteed appeals.

C: And those are his only two real options at this point?

S: That's it. Then he's done done. And then he can sue me over something else, but this case would be done done. And then, in terms of the fees, we're pretty far along on that, but that could be another year, from where we are now.

C: And because the Appellate Court hasn't yet ruled on the fees, whether it's the total amount, or I'm sure they could change a lot of things, we haven't seen a dime from him yet.

S: Right, right.

J: Nope.

C: So everything's out of pocket, both for you personally, and for the SGU.

S: Yeah.

C: It's just such a bummer, 'cause it's one of those things where even when justice works in the American legal-

S: It's expensive

E: It'll break you!

C: -people get screwed! There's no justice for the poor, you know?

E: It's part of the strategy almost from the beginning. They want to try to force you into a corner, because they know a lot of people can't afford to go through the lengthy legal process, because it does bankrupt lots of people this way.

S: Yeah, so they cave.

C: Absolutely! And that's a manipulation of the justice system! That's not justice.

S: That's why we need anti-SLAPP laws. We need anti-SLAPP laws so that if you do get sued frivolously, as a way of suppressing your free speech, you could shut it down quickly, and get your fees covered-

B: Yes!

S: -so you can't be intimidated out of free speech 'cause even if you're right, it'll cost you a ridiculous amount of money to bring this to court.

E: That's right.

C: Absolutely.

E: I mean, geez, think about the heavy hands with endless pockets that could shut anybody up. It's scary!

J: Well, it shows you that corporations have an amazing amount of power just because they have the legal team and the money behind them. And the other thing about this was the emotional strain of this court case. I mean, I know what it did to me. I can only imagine how much harder it must have been for Steve. Like, there was a good six months where I was losing my mind over this. It was so painful to deal with, because the injustice was extraordinary.

C: Yeah, it seems like those few good times when we see these First Amendment cases, like a young teenager is suing their school because they told them they couldn't wear a T-shirt. You know, these basic free speech cases that kind of capture the attention of the media, it seems like more often than not, those people are on the prosecuting side, and they probably have pro bono attorneys. It just seems crazy that a 17-year-old, or a regular shmo could afford to go all the way to the Supreme Court, unless there was a group like the ACLU who was doing it pro bono because they knew that setting certain precedent would be important for future litigation. It's just, I don't know, it really bums me out, because I have so much faith in this system, because there's so many checks and balances, and that's why, obviously, this political climate has been really scary for a lot of people, 'cause the system itself is being tested. But when you see places where there's such obvious flaws, where such easy abuses can come through, it's disheartening for sure.

S: Let me read you just the one paragraph from the decision, 'cause I think this is sort of the critical legal aspect, is whether or not my article could be considered commercial speech, therefore subject to different regulation than if it was just private speech. Because we have memberships, and I advertise for my Teaching Company courses on the website. So, Tobenick had this funnel theory, that I was sort of funnelling visitors to the websites into these revenue-generating activity, and therefore every article I published is therefore commercial speech. This is what they said:

"To be sure, neither the placement of the articles next to revenue-generating advertising, nor the ability of the reader to pay for a website subscription would be sufficient in this case to show a liability-causing economic motivation for Dr. Novella's informative articles. Both advertising and subscriptions are typical features of newspapers, whether online or in print. But the Supreme Court has explained to that, if a newspaper's profit were determinative, all aspects of its operation, from the selection of news stories, to the choice of editorial position would be subject to regulation, if it could be established that they were conducted with the view

E: Right.

S:

toward increasing sales. Such a basis for regulation clearly would be incompatible with the First Amendment.

Hello! That's what-

E: Absolutely!

S: -we've been saying from the beginning.

E: Absolutely!

S: 'Cause newspapers sell subscriptions! They have advertisements.

C: Yeah, it's one or the other.

S: Therefore, every article in it would be, therefore, commercial speech, or if you sell a book for profit, the book itself is therefore commercial speech. So the Supreme Court has already decided, no, that's not the case. That would be incompatible with First Amendment free speech if you could so easily transform anything that's even incidentally associated with revenue generation into commercial speech. So his theory was really doomed from the beginning.

C: Yeah.

B: Right.

S: But he's continuing to pursue it, and that was also a large part of why I was awarded as many fees as I was, because he would not give up that theory, even when it was repeatedly slapped down. It's like no, here's the law. It's not commercial speech. Stop it. But he wouldn't give it up.

C: So what would be an example of commercial speech? Would that be like if you taught a seminar to the public, and you were really slanderous throughout the seminar about somebody?

S: No, it has...

C: 'Cause you could actually prove that it was because you were getting paid for it?

S: Commercial speech has to propose a transaction. It has to primarily be about a commercial transaction, right? So, if I'm expressing my opinions in an opinion piece, the fact that there is commercial activity happening around it is not enough.

C: I can't even think of an example where there is-

S: For example, if I had written an article saying, "Don't go see Dr. Tobenick, because he doesn't know what he's doing. Come see me, and get treated for the same thing by me. I'll fix you."

C: Oh, I see.

S: Right?

C: And then you would be directly funnelling them-

S: Exactly.

C: -to get paid by those people.

S: And Tobenick essentially accused me of doing that, even though it's quite obvious there's nothing like that at all in the articles that I wrote. And I don't even treat the same diseases that he treats. It was really an absurd theory, in my opinion. And that's what it would have taken. I was actually proposing some kind of commercial transaction, which I wasn't.

B: Well, what if you worked for the President, and you were trying to sell the President's daughter's stuff?

S: Yeah.

B: -in some official-

C: You can't do that.

S: Oh yeah, no one would do that, Bob. You can't do that.

C: That's against the law anyway.

J: Yeah

(Cara laughs)

S: All right.

E: Well, there is that.

J: Great news.

S: You know, one more step.

E: Yes, yep.

J: Yep.

S: Couple more steps to go, but one more step.

B: Whew! Goddamn!

J: Yeah, that's the other thing that we don't know, until you get involved in a lawsuit, is it takes years!

S: Yeah.

C: Yeah, for like, the simplest thing.

B: And that's just it!

C: Well, congrats, everyone!

B: Yeah.

S: Thank you, thank you.

B: That's what makes it hurt so very much, is that this couldn't really be much more cut and dry. Really, it's, from day one, this was obvious, obvious! If there was any nuance or subtlety to it, he could probably double or triple all of this nonsense, just because there was a little bit of nuance to it.

C: I don't think it's about nuance, I really think it's about a lack of precedent. The whole point is trying to get these anti-SLAPP precedents in place.

B: Well, yes.

C: Because they don't exist, it wasn't cut and dry.

S: Well, here's the thing.

C: There has to be somebody that goes through all the bullshit so that the next person doesn't have to go through the bullshit.

S: Here's why it can take a long time: Because if you come up with, as the plaintiff, you come up with a novel theory, the court really wants to indulge you in that, right? They don't want to shoot it down. They want, "Okay, fine. You have your date in court." You have some theory about this should all work? "Go ahead, convince us." And that takes a long time! Then you get discovery. The process takes so long. And before the judge says, "Okay, you've had every chance in the world to explain your theory. I'm not buying it. Wrong." And then he appealed! And there's boom! Another two years tacked on to the whole process, because he decided to appeal. So that's all it takes, is just, you have some new point you want to make, and boom, you could tie things for years.

B: I don't know. I don't know how much I agree with that, because then-

S: Bob, I'm saying that's the way it is. I'm saying that's the way it is. I'm not saying that's the way it should be.

B: Okay, but then what hope could there possibly be for anti-SLAPP everywhere then? If that's the case-

J: Because the anti-SLAPP is doomed! From the beginning!

S: No, no, it's not. Because the anti-SLAPP is a law that specifically cuts through all of that. It says that before you get to do anything, you have to prove you have a case. And if you don't meet that minimal proof, then you lose, and you pay the other guy's fees. Boom.

B: Right.

S: That's it.

C: Yeah, because, it's bizarre that we don't have that yet. It's bizarre that it-

S: We don't have it at the federal level. There's a number of states that do have it like-

E: Right.

S: California does have it.

C: Yeah.

S: -and I used California's anti-SLAPP in order to get that portion of the case shut down a long time ago.

E: Damn right.

S: And there's guaranteed-

C: Yeah, 'cause he sued you in so many places.

S: Well, two states, yeah, California and Florida. So California did. Florida at the time didn't, but now it does. But we really need to get one in every state, and then there's the question of should we have a federal anti-SLAPP-

C: Yeah.

S: -which is interesting. It could convert all of these cases to federal cases, might be a good thing.

C: Well, it might be?

B: But Steve!

S: It could burden the federal courts.

B: But in the mean time, could we incorporate in one of these anti-SLAPP states?

S: So, the short answer is yes. Some people advise that you do incorporate in a state that has a good anti-SLAPP law, because then it would offer you the protection, and that also provides an incentive for the states to have good anti-SLAPP laws. For example, if Connecticut had a good anti-SLAPP law, we could say, "Hey! New York Times, incorporate over the border in Connecticut, and you'll be protected by our anti-SLAPP law." Screw New York! They don't have a good anti-SLAPP law.

C: And then New York would be like, "No! We need their revenue! That'd be a good sales tac.

S: "We'd better pass a good anti-SLAPP law." Yeah, so that's why-

E: That's how it works, yep.

S: It's critical. There could be a domino effect, because it's good for business.

C: Yeah.

S: Good for citizens, and it's good for business. And how often do you have a law that is both of those things?

C: Both, that's true.

S: Yeah.

C: The crazy thing is, I'm just wondering how many people from other countries, maybe not England, because we know that they have notoriously, like crap libel laws and First Amendment protections. They don't call it First Amendment there. At least historically.

S: They don't have a first amendment, yeah.

C: But in other countries who are listening, who are like, "How is this even continuing to go on if the judge already ruled that the lawsuit is frivolous?" We're like, "Yeah, exactly! That's the complicated part of all this."

S: That's the point of an anti-SLAPP is that it short-circuits the legal process. It bypasses a lot of the procedures, so that you can get to a much quicker and cheaper resolution. That's the whole point.

B: It's kind of like triage. It's like, "Don't even bother working on this guy. He's dead-

S: Yeah, exactly.

(Cara laughs)

B: -he'll be dead in ten minutes anyway."

C: (Laughing) That's horrible! Yeah.

E: Pass me one of them toe tags.

S: Well, that's how triage worked on MASH, right? Remember?

C: Yeah, exactly!

E: Everything I learned about triage, I learned from MASH.

S: Yeah.

C: Just write on their foreheads in lipstick.

(Laughter)

S: Yeah.

C: Wasn't that, that was Band of Brothers, but yeah.

S: Okay, let's move on to the news items.

News Items

Monkey Mirror Test (18:39)

• http://www.popsci.com/monkey-mirror-test-self-aware?dom=rss-default&src=syn

S: Cara, you're going to tell us about the monkey mirror test.

C: I am.

B: This is awesome.

E: I reflected on this quite a bit.

C: Yeah, you guys have heard of the mirror test, right?

B: Yeah.

J: Oh, yeah.

C: Is this a well-known thing? I know that coming up through the ranks in kind of psychology and neuroscience, we talked about the mirror test a lot and it's kind of always been a gold standard for scientists to say whether or not a species is self-aware. So the mirror test is pretty simple. Let's say there's an animal that a scientist is researching behaviorally. They will make a mark on the animal's face somewhere, generally on their forehead, maybe like with lipstick, speaking of.

S: Without them knowing, critically.

C: Without them knowing. Yeah, and that's the important part. They can't really feel that the mark has been made on them because that would moot everything. And then later, kind of in a disconnected way, they will show that animal its own reflection in a mirror. They're going to hold a mirror up to it. And if the animal can recognize, or at least this is the hypothesis, if they can recognize that it is their own reflection in the mirror and not some other member of their species, they'll reach up to their own face and kind of touch where the mark is or wipe the mark off or explore it somehow. They often will start by touching the mirror first, but organisms or species that do seem to pass the mirror test, many great apes do. There's some claims that like dolphins do and maybe elephants. There have been some kind of contentious claims about other species, but generally great apes, but not other primates tend to. And so for a lot of researchers over the years, and this is what always happens with science communication and oftentimes with science education, which is a bummer, is there's this cut and dry line that's drawn in the sand. Pass the mirror test, they're self-aware. If they don't pass the mirror test, they're probably not self-aware. Although many researchers argue this should be maybe a little more nuanced than that. Maybe there's other ways for animals to be self-aware. Maybe it's not about whether or not they can see themselves in the mirror, but whether or not they even understand the concept of a mirror or how a mirror works. So what happened here is that some researchers who published in PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, they published an article in January of this year called Spontaneous Expression of Mirror Self-Recognition in Monkeys After Learning Precise Visual Proprioceptive Association for Mirror Images. So their kind of point was maybe it should take a little longer for them to learn how. We're going to train them and see if they can develop mirror self-recognition later because generally speaking, monkeys don't often develop it. They were using rhesus monkeys and they've been shown not to really have good mirror self-recognition. There's another way to do a mirror test that I left out and this is how they did it. Instead of putting a mark on them without them knowing, they use like a laser pointer and they will point the laser pointer to something in the environment that the monkey can only see if they're looking in a mirror. So let's say they're sitting in a chair with a head restraint and the laser pointer is pointed like directly to their left on a wall that's behind them. So when they look in the mirror, they can see it but they can't turn their head to see it. So the idea is will they recognize that it's actually behind them, not in front of them because it's being reflected in the mirror. And they did. They trained these monkeys to do that. Eventually, they could pass the test with a lot of training. But, as many people would argue operant conditioning tests from the, what is it, the 20s, the 40s? I have no idea when Skinner was alive. But from way back when, you could train a pigeon to do almost anything so long as you reward them with food. How do we know that they're really self-aware and self-conscious? Well, what happened is that, and the interesting distinction with this article, which is why a lot of researchers are pointing to it, is that they over trained them. So even once they kind of proved that they could consistently recognize the laser pointer in the mirror, they continued to train them for another couple of weeks. And what they noticed was that in the monkeys that had been mirror test trained or mirror self-recognition trained versus the monkeys that weren't, the control monkeys, after the fact, when they were in their own enclosures where they had also included mirrors, the monkeys that were trained on mirror self-recognition used a mirror in an exploritative way, which they think really is proof that there was some self-recognition developed here and that really they just had to learn the function of a mirror.

S: Yeah, they look at their own junk.

C: Yeah, they would hold it up to their genitals because they couldn't see them from the direction of their face. So they might explore their bodies by holding a mirror up the same way we use a rear view mirror in the car, the same way a dentist uses a mirror in your mouth to get to places that you can't see with direct line of sight.

J: That is really cool.

C: It's super cool. And also an interesting point mentioned in the Popular Science article, I can't remember if it's mentioned in the publication, the scientific publication, was that there's good reason to think that the mirror test is bound by culture and bound by understanding of a mirror because children, very young children don't pass the mirror test, right? When they're like two years old, they often don't pass and they develop that skill. But children in certain parts of the East won't pass the mirror test at the age of six and that's because they're not exposed to mirrors. And so it's not that they don't have self-awareness by six. I don't think anybody would argue that a six-year-old doesn't have a sense of self-concept or self-awareness. It's that they don't know what a mirror does. So you have to teach them that a mirror is a reflection of themselves before. Of course, we can teach them that quickly with language, but you can't do that with monkeys. So it's pretty interesting. I have a question about Killer though. I'm interested to know, Steve, if maybe you have insight into this. Because it's always a given when I read these articles. They always say, just like how your dog looks in the mirror and thinks it's another dog. They always say that. Dogs don't pass the mirror test. They look in the mirror. They think it's another dog. When Killer looks in the mirror, it's like he's not seeing anything. He doesn't react. It's almost like the mirror is part of just an extension of the wall because I've tried to hold him up to the mirror and kind of train him and point to things and have him react. It's like he can't see a mirror. What is that about?

S: Maybe he's nearsighted.

B: Is he a vampire dog? Maybe there's no reflection.

C: I know. Isn't that weird?

E: Clearly.

S: You just have to be very cautious. And this is, I think, the lesson of this article. Be cautious about inferring what's going on in the mind of somebody else.

C: Yes, based on the behavior.

S: So this whole process reminds me of the neurological exam. And I teach this every day. It's very challenging often to interpret the neurological exam. So like with the mirror test, we give patients a series of tests. Do this. Touch your left ear with your right thumb. Say this. Whatever. And those are all designed to try to isolate some kind of neurological function so we can see if it's working or not. But you never fully isolate any neurological function, right?

C: Yeah, you have to correlate it with imaging and with other things.

S: Well, it's not even that. Just in the exam itself, you have to correlate it with other parts of the exam. You have to triangulate. It's like, okay, so if I do these four or five things, the piece that consistently gives the patient the most trouble is anything to do with language processing. So that's probably where their problem is. But each task may also involve vision or attention or working memory, right? All these other things are involved with any of the tasks.

C: Yeah, and they may be culturally bound. They may rely on certain senses that may be our adult that have nothing to do with the brain.

S: Right. So yeah, with these monkeys, I mean, you don't know. So saying that an animal either has or doesn't have a sense of self is a really abstract idea. And I would be very cautious about inferring that they don't. I mean, I think it's a lot easier to say that they do.

J: Would you say they're on a spectrum though, Steve?

C: You have to.

S: Well, first of all, I think most people think that animals—yeah, but is there a threshold though? So I would say—this is interesting. I wrote about this recently because Daniel Dennett wrote an essay—actually wrote a book about consciousness. But he was talking about human-level consciousness, this idea that we can be in our own heads, we have a sense of who we are, and we can think about ourselves and our future and how we feel a fully integrated sense of self. How did that evolve? And what are the antecedents? What led up to that? And do animals have it and to what degree? So while I think just sort of the vague concept of consciousness is a continuum from insects up to people. But the sense of self that's the kind of thing that may—there's a threshold effect, you know. And until you get to a certain threshold, you may not have it at all because that's how the brain works is that some subsystems in the brain may be on or off. Like for example, you can't be awake unless you have 40 percent of your cortex working, right? If you have 39 percent of your cortex, you can't achieve that threshold of wakefulness. Wakefulness is a threshold phenomenon. Maybe having a sense of self is also a kind of threshold phenomenon. And so it may not be just a pure continuum, but we don't know because we can't read the minds of other animals.

C: That's the problem. There's no construct validation.

S: Yeah, exactly.

C: You'll never know unless an animal can tell you. So you have to infer based on behavior, which has always been a problem in behavioral psychology. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't still pursue it. It doesn't mean that we don't get really great insights.

S: It's just really slow.

C: And that's why I think that researchers and then science journalists by proxy just have to be really, really careful with the language that they use. Like this shows that the monkey is capable of recognizing itself in a mirror. Then this shows that the monkey is capable of using that mirror recognition further to explore other aspects of their body, which shows some higher order processing. Sure. Nobody would argue with that. Does it mean that they have the capability of like what Maslow called self-actualization? I don't know. Are they contemplating their own death? I don't know. Those kinds of questions are interesting.

S: Well, having a sense of self and having a sense of time are two different things.

C: That's true.

S: Being able to think about yourself in the future, you could have a sense of self without being able to think what's going to happen to me tomorrow.

C: Yeah, because some elephants might seem to have a contemplation of death, but they might not have as much reflection that we might quantify. And like dogs, that is a good example of a dog. Every time I come home, it's like I've been gone for a month.

S: Yeah, right.

C: He's always so excited to see me, whether I've been gone for five minutes or five hours.

E: I know that. My dogs, oh man, they jump on me like I was in Afghanistan on the mission for two years and coming back, you see those videos.

C: You see those videos and it's funny because they break your heart and you're like, oh, that dog, he's missed him so much. And then you realize he doesn't know how long he's been gone.

E: I know, I know.

B: You guys know that there isn't one non-mammal that's passed the mirror test?

E: A non-mammal?

C: You're right. I was like, dolphins, derp. Mammals can't live in the ocean.

B: Can you guess?

C: There's one. Oh, it was magpies.

B: Yeah, magpie. Yeah, good.

C: But yeah, that would make sense, right? We've seen a lot of like really advanced.

S: But they have really good problem solving. So are they just doing really good problem solving?

E: Yeah, are they tricking us?

S: There's so many ways you could break it down.

C: And they're really good.

B: Think about that tiny brain. They've got the tiniest brain. What the hell?

C: Yeah, but their brains are so different than mammalian brains.

B: That's it. That's it. It's organized differently.

Immigration and Crime (30:22)

• http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/immigration-and-crime/

S: All right, we're gonna talk about immigration and crime. This is obviously a very hot topic political issue, but there is a very specific empirical question at its core, and that's all I really want to talk about. Often, I will become interested in trying to answer one very narrow empirical question. Like, a little while ago, in a discussion, it came up, what was the effect on unemployment of raising the minimum wage? And you might think that there's a really objective answer out there, but honestly, I could not convince myself that I knew what the bottom line answer to that question was. I'm sure that people are gonna email me, and tell me they know the answer. But you're probably cherry-picking.

C: They're probably convincing themselves.

E: And it's always more complex than you think.

S: And because it's economics, basically, you could talk to a liberal economist and they have one answer. You talk to a conservative economist, they have a different answer. And that's basically where you end up. And it's hard to find an objective answer to that question. But anyway, this question is, do immigrants commit more crimes than native-born citizens? And I'm gonna restrict this to the United States, 'cause it's a tough enough question without trying to answer it for different countries. And you can break down immigrants into legal and illegal immigrants. Interestingly, I know a lot of people want to use "undocumented" immigrant as sort of the politically correct term, but a lot of the literature just says legal versus illegal 'cause it's a little bit more technically correct. So I'm just gonna use that terminology non-judgmentally. That's just what's in the technical literature. So, and by the way, what's interesting about this is when I wrote about it and posted on Facebook, so many people thought they had to be so clever by saying, "Well, if they come into the country illegally, then by definition, then they've committed a crime. So it's a hundred percent." It's like, okay, first of all, coming into the country illegally is actually not a criminal offence. It's a civil offence. Did you know that?

C: Mm-mm (Negative)

E: Ah!

S: Yeah, so, in a way, they haven't committed a crime. They've just committed a civil offence, because it's not... in any case, whatever you think about that-

C: But they can be prosecuted, right?

S: No, they just get deported.

C: Oh, you're right. That's just the default. They don't even get a day in court.

S: Yeah.

C: They just get deported.

S: They just get deported. So, anyway, but obviously, we're not counting that, 'cause that's kind of pointless. The whole point is, are they a menace? Are the immigrants here, either legal or illegal, are they in any way a burden or a menace, are they committing more crimes than people who were born here?

C: Yes, do we have to protect our borders because it is unsafe for immigrants to come into this country? That's really the question.

S: This is a really hard question to answer. The short answer is, it's really hard. Any sociological question, where you're asking, "What's happening out there in the real world?" Don't expect an easy answer. It's gonna be very difficult. One thing I was surprised about, when I really dug through the data, is that we don't have ironclad statistics on people in prison. And I'm like, "Why the hell not?"

C: Yeah, we-

S: Why wouldn't we know-

C: -we intake them!

S: Yeah, we intake them!

C: We have their fingerprints!

S: Why wouldn't we know-

E: There has to be an inventory, essentially, right? I mean...

C: It's like, the one thing we should have an inventory for.

E: Yeah, we must!

S: You would think this would be just a database.

E: A central hub of data for it, right.

S: But apparently, a lot of the studies had to basically ask the inmates if they're native-born or not.

E: Oh wow.

S: And it was self-report.

C: That's so dumb.

S: I was shocked. Really? We're going on self report for somebody that obviously went through the court system? How do we not know everything about them? I don't get it. But anyway. I guess they're just not keeping it in a database. But there are databases, but the databases are imperfect, or it's only certain counties, or it's only federal versus state. And every way you slice it up differently, you get different answers, and they don't agree with each other. And so you-

E: It's a quagmire, basically.

S: It's a quagmire. I read through a very good summary from a few years ago that went through basically every single study, what it showed, and what the flaws in the study were. And there wasn't a single study without a significant flaw. Which means that you need to really triangulate. You need to say, "Okay, well where-

E: What's the overlap?

S: Yeah, where's the overlap?

C: A meta-analysis, yeah.

S: Yeah, where are things pointing? Are they triangulating in any certain direction? So, here's a couple of bottom lines that I found: If you just look at prison populations, you get some mixed data, but it does appear that overall, especially if you, here's one key: If you further break it down by demographic, immigrants commit fewer crimes, or are less represented in the prison population, than native-borns of the same demographics, right? So, in other words, if you compare the same socioeconomic status, the same race, but native-born versus immigrant, some studies show that the immigrants are way, like an order of magnitude fewer crimes.

E: I wonder if age has anything to do with that?

S: Age-

C: (Inaudible) demographics do.

S: Exactly. The age does, because there's this huge peak in age around sixteen, eighteen, and then it trails way off. So, yeah, there's also lead time. Maybe they're just not here long enough to work through the system. So there's all kinds of different controls that you can do as well. So-

C: Is that weighted for population? Like, obviously, to say there are less immigrants in prison than there are-

S: Yeah, it's per hundred thousand, yeah. It's, yeah, it's the rate. It's not number of individuals, it's-

C: Good, 'cause there's obviously way less immigrants than there are native-born people in America. Okay.

E: That's right.

C: Just making sure.

S: Yeah, it's like they're X percent of the population, and they're X percent of the prison population. Therefore they're committing, per capita, fewer or more crimes. So, at the end of the day, I would say, we don't really have a definitive answer, but the weight of the evidence seems to be, if anything, towards maybe a little bit fewer crimes. But this really long review, basically their conclusion was, "We can't conclude from the evidence that they're committing more crimes."

E: Right.

C: Sure.

S: Right.

C: That's a safer thing to safe.

S: Yeah, so they made the negative, "So we can't say they're committing more crimes. We can't really say anything for sure, but there certainly isn't a big signal here that's saying they're committing more crime than the native-born." And some people interpret the data as, "They're probably committing fewer." And then, the responses are interesting, because basically, if you want to believe negative things about immigrants, you can say, "Well, they're just not reporting crimes, because they don't want to get," whatever, they don't want to get deported, or they don't want to be cut off by...

E: ICE.

C: ICE.

S: Yeah, they don't want to be caught up by ICE. I can say, "Okay, but they try to control that in the data, and they look at lots of different kinds of crime. So, they can't," you know? But people were so willing to cherry-pick to make the outcome whatever they wanted to for political reasons, it's very interesting. Now the thing that triggered my recent deep dive into this was a recent study, which looked at the data in a different way, which is great. The more different ways you can look at the data, the, I think, better answer we can come to. They said, "All right, we're not gonna look at individuals. We're gonna look at cities. We're gonna ask the question, 'Do cities that have more immigrants'" - and most of these studies did not distinguish legal from illegal. It was just, "Were you born in the United States? Or were you not born in the United States?" You know, not really discriminating how you got here.

E: Citizen versus non-citizen?

S: No, just, "Were you born in the US or not born in the US?"

E: Okay.

S: Because you could be not born in the US and a citizen.

E: I understand, that's why I wanted to clarify that.

S: So yeah, it was not citizenship, it was just where were you born, basically. And then, they said, "All right, do cities that have more immigrants have more or less crime than cities that have fewer immigrants." And the reason they did this was 'cause some people argue, "Well, even if the immigrants themselves are not getting caught for crimes as much as the native-born, maybe 'cause they're not committing as many, or maybe because, whatever, they're hiding better, or under-reporting, but because they are a strain on the city's resources, overall, the conditions will deteriorate, and that will be reflected in more overall crime in the city. So they looked at a data set for forty years of data, up through 2010. And what they found was a pretty consistent negative correlation, meaning that cities with more immigrants had fewer crimes, it had less crime. So that kind of supports that end of the spectrum. And they said the results were very solid. And it was a huge data set. And they looked at both violent and property crime. So it was not just, they looked at, let's see, violent, property, and also drug-related crimes, and things like that, from 1970 to 2010. So that was interesting.

B: Huh!

S: So, yeah, very interesting. So, again, this is an area that still needs more study. It's amazing - ah, it's not amazing - it's predictable how political it is. But it is a very empirical question. You think we should be able to answer this question. But because it's sociological, and real-world type of question, it's actually very difficult, but-

E: Hard to tie down.

S: -here's the thing: With all the evidence that exists, you cannot say that illegal immigrants are criminals, right? That they're committing more crimes than the native population, that they're importing crime. Right? They actually are no different than the native-born. And by some ways of looking at the data, they actually commit less crimes, you know.

C: And that is typically the political argument for minimizing.

S: That's one. It's one. Now, there's one more question that has been addressed in research as well. Another study, which asked a very interesting question: Okay, so, illegal aliens are, it looks like they commit fewer crimes overall than native-borns. Why is that? Is it because we're deporting the criminals? Or is it because they're self-selected? Or there was some other variable? Is it because of lead time or something else? And what they found was that you cannot explain the decrease because of deportation. So it's not that we're deporting the immigrants who are criminals. And they said that the best interpretation of the data is that they're self-selecting. Obviously, this is not universal. People come here to sell drugs, you know? But a lot of the immigrants who come here are self-selected for wanting to work, and improve their family, and better their life, and they're just not criminals. It's not a random sampling of the population. It's actually a less criminal sampling of the population, 'cause for whatever reason-

B: Imagine that. Imaging that.

S: -motivates them to come here. Yeah.

B: What if more people just embraced that possibility, and believed it! Just believed it.

J: Well, that's the problem, Bob.

E: It's one aspect of it, Bob, too. There are other socioeconomic factors at play, but we're talking about specifically criminality in this particular example.

B: Yeah, but I think if you put out a poll question asking that, most people would say, "No way!" And they wouldn't believe it. They wouldn't believe it.

J: And Bob, it takes a long time to change perception. I mean, think about how many years it takes for peoples' perceptions to change over social issues like this. I mean, think about homosexuality, as an example.

B: Well, I just had to hear and read about this study, and now I believe it. It didn't take me long.

J: Yeah, but that's-

C: But you're a skeptic.

J: -you, you're a trained skeptic. And you've trained yourself to be able to change your opinion with evidence. The average person, they're basing their feelings and their thoughts on their emotions, and on what they want.

B: We should get our voices out there and train other people, maybe do a podcast or something.

(Cara laughs)

S: Yeah, so listen, (Evan laughs) half the reason why I wanted to talk about this: One, it's just an interesting empirical question, and it's a good exercise in how complicated sociological data can be. So if you just forget about all of the political implications, just try to answer that question, it's really interesting. But the other part is, because I wrote about it on my blog, in the comments, if you read through the comments on my blog, on Neurologica, you will be rewarded with a stunning example of motivated reasoning.

E: (Excited) Oh!

(Cara chuckles)

S: Let me direct you-

E: No surprise.

S: -specifically-

B: Please do. This should be good.

S: -to the comments by Michael Egnore. You guys remember Dr. Egnore.

B: Ohhh!

J: Of course!

E: He likes you, Steve.

S: He is the creationist neurosurgeon who blogs for the Discovery Institute, who, we have been crossing blog swords over the years. And he occasionally shows up in the comments to my blog, which is fine.

E: He likes you.

S: I would show up the comments in his blog, but the Discovery Institute blog has no comments. So, (Evan snickers) for whatever reason. Anyway, I mean, you have to read them. In my opinion, he just outs himself as a full blown bigot. I mean, it's just amazing. At one point, he's lecturing me about the cultural heritage of Italians. And it's just hilarious!

(Laughter)

E: Eh! Pastvasule!

B: Was he dissing Italians?

J: What was he trying to tell ya, Steve?

C: Uh oh! The brothers are getting angry!

S: Yeah, right?

E: You guys should put a hit out on him!

S: A lot of people made the point that - and this has been made in the literatures as well - in some studies are like, what's interesting is that there is this belief that immigrants are criminals more than the native population for 200 years, and it's never been true! In fact, I found a study from 1933 that said, "Nope, they're no more criminal than native-born." In 1933! But anyway, the question is, why does the belief persist so strongly if it's just not empirically true. And read the comments, and you'll find out. So he has a very interesting narrative, Dr. Egnore. His narrative is that America was just fine when it was all WASPS, right? White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. And WASP culture is American culture. (Cara gasps) (Evan sighs) Right? Which he laid it out for us! Like, what is WASP culture? Well, I'll tell you! It's his summary of quote-unquote "WASP culture" is, "A strong work ethic, respect for law, belief in freedom of religion and speech, acceptance of Christian ethics, loyalty to family and country, among other things." To which I responded-

E: That's not-

S: "Loyalty to family? Are you effing kidding me? That's WASP culture and not Italian culture?" 'Cause he was saying-

E: Any of-

S: -that Italians, after they immigrate, they didn't come with that culture. When they immigrated, they adopted, they assimilated and adopted WASP culture, right?

C: Wait, I just still don't understand the distinction. Okay, White Anglo-Saxon - Italians are white. I'm so confused.

S: Yeah, but we're Catholic, though, man. We're not-

E: Yeah, it's the Anglo-Saxon.

S: -also, if you go south enough, we get pretty brown, you know?

C: No, I agree.

E: You get all Mediterranean on us.

C: So he's making a distinction between Mediteraneans and Europeans, really.

S: Well, see, Western versus Eastern European. So that's why, in one of my comments to my, that sounds like gangs of New York level bigotry right there. I mean, that's old school! (Laughter)

J: Right?

S: That is old-school!

J: It's so old-school.

E: Throwin' rocks at people comin' off the boats!

J: It's actually entertaining-

E: Oh gosh!

J: -and borderline fascinating, like wow! How could you be born within the last fifty to sixty years, and be walkin' around with that attitude?

S: Right.

B: And what about the meat balls?

S: (Cracks up) Right.

J: Oh, forget it, Bob. If he doesn't think we care about each other, he won't get the meat balls. (Cara laughs)

S: So his point is that we can't allow these Muslims into the country because they just will not assimilate into WASP culture.

C: Oh no.

S: They're fundamentally un-American.

E: Yeah, the Jews didn't exactly assimilate into WASP culture either, and you know, they seem to be okay.

C: Did he say anything about black people? Or did he just ignore that whole [inaudible].

S: Nah, I couldn't get anything about him. I tried to egg him on a little bit, but yeah, he had his narrative. (Cara laughs)

B: Egnore! Egg Egnore!

E: Egnore!

S: Yeah, so, but it was fascinating though. And he basically said he doesn't want legal immigration. He thinks that legal immigration.

B: Wow!

S: -is a-

J: Oh man!

S: -quote-unquote-

E: That's just ridiculous

S: -"scourge." It's a scourge.

C: He knows that America's only like, three hundred years old, right?

S: Yeah, right?

C: Like, in terms of what we consider "modern" society. Obviously, native Americans have been here for a long time.

S: Yeah.

C: But that's what always drives me crazy, when people talk about quote, "real" Americans. And it's like, real Americans ain't any of us!

S: Right.

B: (Chuckles) Right

C: If you're a native American, sure. But people just ignore, they really rewrite history to think that this was a land for the taking. Nobody lived on it. And the British are really just the original Americans.

S: Right.

E: (Very mild British accent) I say.

C: It's insane!

S: And then the Islamaphobia is just epic in his comments.

J: Yeah, but it's epic everywhere, Steve. I mean it's-

S: Yeah.

C: Islamaphobia, it's like, acceptable to be as overtly Islamaphobic now as it was during Jim Crow to be overtly racist.

S: Right.

C: It's just, it's crazy how, and people can, I don't know, they kind of convince themselves that it's not about race, and it's not about heritage. And you're like, "How could it not be?" I mean, I'm against Islam in the sense that I'm against Christianity. I'm-

S: Well, yeah, nobody wants Sharia law in the US.

C: Exactly! For me, it's about-

S: Sure.

C: -religion. It's not about people. It's never about people.

S: So I said, I made the point. I said, "You know, there are moderate Muslims. I happen to know some. I have-

C: Absolutely!

S: -very good friends and colleagues, for example, who are Muslim. You would never freakin' know it." I mean, other than, if you know them, obviously, you know what their religion is. But other than where they worship, they're just regular people!" I mean, it's ridiculous. And his response to that was, "To the extent that they're moderate, they're not good Muslims. And to the extent that they're-

C: Oh, that's - ugh!

S: Yeah, so either-

C: It's such a shitty argument.

E: And he makes that determination? He's insane.

S: Yeah. So it's like, they're not real Muslims-

J: Absolutely.

S: That's the No True Scotsman fallacy, right. They're not real Muslims. Real Muslims are all these horrible things. And if they're not those horrible things, they're not a real Muslim.

J: Well he's rejecting the information. That's what that is.

S: Oh, rejecting the information? He basically said, "If the studies show that immigrants commit fewer crimes, the study's wrong." Period!

C: Yeah.

S: He just flat out rejects it, because he doesn't like the results.

C: And you said this guy is a neurosurgeon. People pay him to operate on their brains.

B: Well, Carson operated on brains too.

C: I know! It scares me so much!

S: Being a good surgeon is largely about having technical expertise.

C: Yeah, that's true. I mean, even a physician, we've talked about this on the show. Many, many physicians are not trained in the sciences. You can be pre-med in school, and get a minimal education in sort of scientific reasoning, and mostly focus on sort of the A and P aspect of biology, and not really have a good understanding of the scientific method.

S: Yeah, you could be a technically proficient professional, but not a critical thinker, obviously.

Human Embryo Editing (49:55)

• http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/us-panel-gives-yellow-light-human-embryo-editing?utm_source=sciencemagazine&utm_medium=facebook-text&utm_campaign=yellowlight-11109

S: All right, Jay, I understand we're going to start editing people, making designer babies, crispering up all these babies. What's going on?

B: About damn time.

J: Well, all right. So before we get into the details, I'm going to ask you guys some questions. I want our audience to ask themselves these questions and get a few answers set in your head before we get into the discussion. I think you might be surprised. Do you think editing the DNA of embryos is a good or bad idea?

S: Sure.

C: Good.

B: Good.

J: Answer the question to yourself, please.

E: Oh, I'm sorry.

J: This is more for when we talk about it. You can compare your preconception to after you hear the news item.

C: Or to our post-conception.

J: Right. All right. Do you think it's inevitable-

S: Oh yeah.

J: -that we're going to editing DNA?

E: To yourself. To yourself.

J: Steve, you're actually behaving like my four-year-old son. How extensive do you think that you need to be editing?

S: I want cookies.

E: Good night, Uncle Bob.

J: All right. So now that you have a little idea where we're going with this, I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Before I researched this and really thought about it, I thought that it was inevitable that we are going to be significantly editing humans. Editing their DNA. I thought we would be doing the whole designer baby thing. Of course, not just changing the color of their eyes, but doing things like removing potential disease, vectors, and all sorts of huge benefits of this.

B: Wait. You're talking germline? Germline or not germline?

J: Germline. Yeah. So let's get into it. So a report was published from an international committee organized by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, also known as the NAS, and the National Academy of Medicine in Washington, D.C. The report concluded that clinical trials on editing the DNA of human embryos, also known as germline editing, to prevent various diseases could potentially be allowable in the future. So the report went on to say that this would only happen in rare circumstances and there would be a great deal of safeguards put in place, things like that. The report actually said, and I quote, only for compelling reasons and under strict oversight. So examples of this would be if, for example, couples had a life-threatening genetic disease and if gene editing of the embryo's DNA was the only legitimate option that they had to improve the health of their future child. Eric Lander of the Board Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts said they've closed the door to the vast majority of germline applications and left it open for a very small, well-defined subset that's not unreasonable in my opinion. So Eric agreed with this idea that there could be limited editing of the DNA in embryos for very specific and very serious reasons. But the other side of the coin says that there are those who strongly talk out against germline editing and some have called for a moratorium on clinical embryo editing. You know, when I say moratorium, they're saying like, no, we're going to all agree we're not doing this. Marcy Darnofsky said in response to the report, we're very disappointed with the report. It's really a pretty dramatic shift from the existing and widespread agreement globally that human germline editing should be prohibited. This person feels that the conclusions that the report states open the door for future germline editing. And when I say future, I mean looser restrictions and that slippery slope idea where eventually anything would be okay. So this is an example of the fact that there's a growing debate in the scientific community over this. I mean, they're really starting to get into it because the technology is here with CRISPR.

E: It should be addressed. I agree with that. It does need to be discussed without question.

J: Oh, absolutely. And this is what's wonderful about science is the scientists and the extended community get into very serious conversations about the ethics and what's in humanity's best interest. Now, I personally thought it was inevitable and unavoidable and a part of our human evolution that we were going to do this. And not saying that I completely agree with it, I just thought it was going to happen. I thought it was just one of those things similar to the singularity, like eventually it's going to happen. And at some point in some time in the future, we're going to start doing these types of things. But there are people that feel that the technology should be ethically off limits and actually in many countries other than outside of the US, it's banned. And the real game changer here was CRISPR. Like I said, CRISPR comes up a lot on the show because it has amazing potential and we're seeing advancements already being made with it. Back in 2015, a group of researchers in China reported that they had some success in repairing a gene using CRISPR that caused disease in a human embryo. Now, they never intended and absolutely did not use the embryos. In fact, they used defective embryos just to make sure that the point was there that they're not going to use them. But after they announced their findings, many people fear that the whole Gattaca designer baby dystopian future thing was around the corner. In fact, that study was one of the main reasons why in 2015 the NAS summit actually took place. And that summit concluded that further germline editing is a bad idea until more research was done and then they also wanted to do safety investigation and impact on society as well. So, here's the circumstance that they're saying and I'll go into more detail now. Like here's a real world example of this potentially could be when we would use the germline editing. Let's say that there are two potential parents or wannabe parents that both have the markers for cystic fibrosis and germline editing was the only thing that they could use to produce a healthy baby. You know, even after things like being able to do in vitro fertilization or even aborting unhealthy fetuses until they get a healthy fetus. Again, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with abortion here. I'm just saying that that's how serious the scientists in the community are saying it should be, how restrictive the use of germline editing should be.

S: But Jay, you could also do gene sorting. So, you're not changing the genes. You're just guaranteeing that you're going to get – like everyone has two copies of the same gene, two alleles. And if you have – if one is good and one is bad, you just say we want to make sure that the kid gets the good one.

J: Right.

C: So, let's say Huntington's is a better example because that's a dominant thing. So, even if you did gene sorting, you couldn't not have a baby with Huntington's depending on if you're both heterozygous, I guess you could. But if one of you is homozygous, you're screwed.

J: So, I ask you guys – like let's put the question to the table here now. So, the report was saying that they're very much against germline editing being used for the mundane things like physical traits and stuff like eye color, height, superpowers like flight and the ability to control time.

C: They explicitly said we don't want flying babies.

E: And to bend metal.

C: That is beyond the pale.

J: And they don't want people meddling with the past. I agree with that.

C: Meddling with the past?

J: Yeah, like time travel.

C: Oh, yeah, yeah. God, the scientists will come up with some cool stuff later on.

S: We need a moratorium on time travel to the end of the universe. Because if it doesn't incorporate all of time, then it's pointless, right?

C: Yeah, all space and time.

J: So, I thought about it. So, now I'm sitting there and I'm really thinking, how do I feel about this now? I do understand why they want to limit people literally dialing in what they want their kid to be like. Because I can think of a lot of reasons why that would be bad.

S: So, Jay, we have to point out that the primary objection is that once the gene editing is done, it can get passed on. So, basically, it gets into the human population.

J: Without a doubt, yeah.

S: So, it's not self-contained. It's not just something you're doing to your child. You are introducing that genetic information into the human population. No way you're going to really be able to track that for too long.

C: Yeah, in the lab, usually when you do things like this, which we don't do with humans, but you mentioned that one case. Like you said, with the humans, they were defective embryos. Or if you're using mice, you might alter their genomes so that they were sterile.

S: Sterile, yeah.

C: Yeah, it's very common.

S: But this is what I predict is going to happen is that – and this is following along what I've predicted previously is that they'll pick the low-hanging fruit first. So, they'll say, OK, for horrible genetic diseases, we will allow either gene sorting or gene editing so that you can correct those horrible genetic diseases. If you could prove it's entirely safe. So, we'll get that. We'll cross that threshold. Huntington's disease, sure. We can make that go away. Tay-Sachs, whatever. The most horrible genetic diseases and we'll edit them away. And then once they do that for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, at some point, we will have been doing that to so many babies curing so many genetic diseases that the safety will be proven. Then the safety objections will kind of fade away, which means that the threshold for what will allow will go – get lower and lower. Then it will be more not so horrible diseases. And then what about genetic predisposition to diseases? What about just atherosclerosis or those alleles that increase your risk for Alzheimer's disease? How low are we going to go? I don't really see an end to that once it really proves that it's safe and effective and maybe there shouldn't be. So, but was that going to be 100 years from now, 200 years from now? 200 years from now? It's hard to say because it will take generations because it's like you need to know that people live their life without becoming horrible monsters, right? I mean, scientists will be confident about that. But I mean, we're talking about convincing the public. It's kind of like test tube babies, you know?

C: More like GMO foods. Like people still think–

E: That's what I was thinking about.

C: They think we're going to incorporate fish genes into our own DNA. Yeah, from eating a tomato.

S: It will take a couple of generations for it to become accepted and people will realize it's not Frankenstein's monster and then the objections will fade away.

B: Well, what about this? What about this? Instead of doing – is there anything that you can do with germline editing that you just simply can't do to an embryo that's already set?

C: What do you mean?

B: So instead of doing germline editing, you just fix a baby. You directly edit their genes without doing any germline editing.

C: Why is that? But that's still going to–

S: No, I know what Bob is saying. Bob is saying you wait for a later stage and then you edit the stem cells that are going to make the liver or whatever or the brain. But you don't edit the cells that are going to make the sperm or the eggs.

B: Right. Exactly.

S: So their kids don't get the edited gene but it will be enough of it in their body.

C: But so many of these catastrophic disorder – I mean tell me if I'm wrong, Steve. But so many of these catastrophic disorders, if you were only going to target like a certain organ system, they're just so widespread that like if your lung has cystic fibrosis turned off but your liver and your esophagus still has the blueprint for cystic fibrosis, I think you would still get cystic fibrosis. It might be a different version of the disease. But I don't know if you could pinpoint every somatic cell and none of the germ cells.

S: Well, it depends. Like obviously for things like in the brain, you could just target the brain. You don't really need to do anything else. So it's really disease by disease like how plausible is it to do the somatic cells, enough of them that you'll – and again, for some of them, it's just that you're not making something. You just need enough of yourselves to be making it and you're fine. It doesn't even have to be every somatic cell.

Mission to Europa (1:02:00)

• http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nasa-europa-jupiter-aliens-find-rover-saturn-report-science-goals-humanity-a7578161.html

S: Evan, I understand that NASA is seriously considering a mission to Europa.

E: Seriously considering it, not just a lunar reconnaissance mission but actually a lander mission.

C: Yay, finally.

E: Finally.

J: Awesome.

B: Yeah, but it's not going that deep.

C: It doesn't matter.

E: It doesn't need to.

B: It does.

C: This has been a fight from within NASA for ages.

E: It has been. But we're here. I mean I don't think we've had anything kind of like this since the Viking program going to Mars. I think that this is what we're going to equate this one to because NASA received their science report on the Europa lander concept just a few days ago. I'll just read you some of the highlights from their own news brief on this. A report on the potential science value of a lander on the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa has been delivered to NASA and the agency is now engaging the broader science community to open a discussion about its findings. It's actually a pretty cool thing to read. I started reading it. It's 250 pages long. I haven't nearly gotten through all of it, but I skimmed it for a lot of little details and things. It's very cool, very easy to read, and you find it at NASA's website. So a little history on this. In early 2016, in response to a congressional directive, NASA's Planetary Science Division began a pre-phase A study to assess the science value and engineering design of a future Europa lander mission. Now NASA routinely conducts these kinds of studies. They're known as science definition team reports or SDT reports. And long before the beginning of any mission to gain an understanding of the challenges, feasibility and science value of any given potential mission. In June of 2016, NASA convened a 21 member team of scientists for the SDT. And since then, they deliberated and now have their notes ready and they've handed them over to NASA just the other day. The report lists three science goals for the mission. The primary goal is to search for evidence of life on Europa. Yay. The other goals are to assess the habitability of Europa by directly analyzing material from the surface and to characterize the surface and subsurface to support future robotic exploration of Europa and its ocean. And then the report also describes some of the instruments that are going to be expected to perform measurements in support of all of these goals. The Europa flyby mission, which is in development right now, is scheduled for launch, not exactly, but sometime in the early 2020s. And they think a lander mission realistically probably would be about maybe 2030 or 2031. So it's not like we're going to be talking about this again. Any data coming back anytime really soon. And you know how these things kind of get pushed and dates around. So it is a little bit far off, but it's proceeding and it's proceeding in earnest. And we have scientists working on it. They've given us their report and a step in the right direction for what I think is a very, very important, if not I mean, my gosh, to find life on another planet or moon is just I mean, how much bigger in science does it get than that?

S: Evan, this is the real meaning of the phrase, drill, baby, drill.

E: I agree.

S: Drill in Europa. I want to get those little Europans. We have to find out what life is like there.

C: It's so much more realistic, right, to do a lander near a plume. Like we already have access to the deep ocean, or at least we think we do. So it makes more sense to go that route.

E: I like the part, as part of the report, if you go and read the report, chapter two is about the historical context, searching for signs of life in our solar system. And of course, the thing that they're paralleling it closest to are the Viking missions to Mars back in the 1970s and how much we learned from that and any mistakes that were also made, which we'll look to obviously not learn from those mistakes. And when you look back at the video of that time, and certainly Carl Sagan was very heavily involved with those missions, you kind of get a sense that this is kind of the next generation of those Carl Sagan disciples in a way, sort of carrying on that same spirit in a sense with this one. And they made, in the report, actually specifically said that in regards to Carl Sagan. And I like the fact that they made that prominent in this report. And they're kind of using it as their mantra. It's important to know. And if we have the ability to, we have almost a duty to go out and find the life if it's there.

S: I agree. Go to Europa.

E: Definitely.

S: That's our best chance, I think, in our lifetime of finding extraterrestrial life.

B: That should be our main damn goal in space exploration, right there.

S: Yeah, that definitely should be a high priority.

B: Come on. Highest.

Who's That Noisy (1:07:10)

• Answer to last week: Tornado Siren

S: All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.

J: Yeah, last week, guys, I played this noisy. [plays Noisy]

E: It almost has a Doppler shift quality to it.

C: I like it. It's very dark.

E: You know, that high-pitched.

J: It's menacing.

C: Yeah, it's like a Doppler shift in a minor key.

E: A Doppler shift of a British police car going by.

C: It does have a little bit of a European siren vibe to it.

J: Yeah, it's like a drunk British police car.

E: Yeah, okay.

C: Or like a funeral dirge by a British police car.

J: Any guesses, though, guys?

E: Yeah, that was my guess.

C: I don't know.

J: Okay. So would you believe if I told you that that is a tornado warning signal?

E: Okay, I believe you.

C: Yeah, but is it somebody driving by a tornado warning signal?

J: No, not at all. It doesn't have anything to do with the Doppler effect. So this was sent in by a listener named Harlan. Harlan wrote, he said, the sounds are intended to sound disconcerting and off because they are meant to alert the citizens to impending natural disasters. If you are interested in potentially airing this, I can do further research, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

C: Where is it?

J: So this is a tornado warning signal in Chicago.

C: Gotcha. Because the tornado warnings where I grew up, where I heard them all the time growing up because Dallas gets hit by tornadoes a lot or that DFW area, they have a vibe to that, but they don't have that weird minor key untuned piano tone. I don't know if that's a regular thing.

E: It's a Chicago thing.

C: It's a Chicago thing.

J: From what I found, it's a lot of people from Chicago wrote in and said it, so they've all heard it. No emails from really anyone else saying that they've heard that.

C: From Tornado Alley.

J: Yeah. But wait, actually, I'm wrong. I did get a couple of emails from people that were, I think, outside of Chicago.

E: But they used to live there.

C: Yeah.

J: So the winner from last week is Nate Hahn, and he said today's noisy is the Chicago tornado siren.

E: Hahn!

J: A notable guest. This is from a listener named Nick Campbell. Nick said, I work at a chemical company that produces titanium dioxide and titanium tetrachloride. This week's noisy is the major alarm that sounds when there is some sort of accident or chemical release.

E: Oh, my gosh.

J: For example, a crack in piping caused by chlorine gas to be released. Employees must report indoors to the nearest rally point shelter.

E: I hope that never happens.

J: Yeah.

E: Maybe just a drill, but that's it. Oh, gosh.

J: It's a weird sound. It's kind of spooky in a sense, but I think it's meant to just catch your attention.

B: I want to hear it again.

C: And Evan, I think we always hope that something we have to do a drill on doesn't actually happen.

E: Well, okay. [Jay plays Noisy]

B: Damn, man. That's kind of creepy.

C: I think it's kind of beautiful.

B: You should have played that at the Haunted Corn Maze, Jay.

J: Yeah, that would have worked.

E: Yeah, but people from Chicago would go running.

J: So thank you all.

C: Where's the nearest checkpoint?

J: Thank you all for sending me in your guesses. What the heck is this? [plays Noisy] That was sent in by Bob Wagner. What is that?

C: That sounds an awful lot like a theremin being played down to its lowest tone. That is a very theremin vibe to me.

J: It does, and that's not correct.

C: Dang it.

J: That's your one hint, Cara. I expect you to win next week.

C: Right.

J: All right. So if you have an idea what that sound is I just played or if you heard something awesome this past week, email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org. Don't email me @INFO because I'm not looking for who's that noise is there. I might not see it. I might miss it. Don't email me to anything else other than WTN@theskepticsguide.org. Good luck.

Questions and Emails

Question #1: Momentum in Sports (1:11:32)

Reply to numerous e-mails about hindsight bias and momentum in sports.

S: Okay. We're going to do one email, but this is actually going to be a bunch of emails. As predicted, I got a lot of responses about our discussion on the Super Bowl from last week. For a bunch of reasons, I knew this was going to be a hot topic. One, because when I blogged about it, it sparked a lot of comments. But also, whenever we talk about something that has to do with statistics, it's just really hard for people to wrap their minds around, including us. It's just not intuitive. We talked about the Monty Hall problem. That always sparks a huge discussion. This was sort of in our opening banter last week. It wasn't really a formal item. So there definitely is a lot of nuance. I think a lot of people weren't sure exactly what my point was. So let me go over it again and then I'm going to go a little bit deeper. So again, there's a really important empirical question here. That is, is there momentum in sports? Do teams do better because they're doing better? Or is it really a drunken walk? Is it really just randomness? There's sort of an answer for sports in general, but there's also an answer for each individual professional sport. So this came up last week because of the Super Bowl win. I wanted to make a couple of points about it and they are distinct points. So I do think some people got confused over what elements of the point I was making at a time. So one is hindsight bias. Hindsight bias means that we interpret the significance of events or the cause of events once we know what the outcome is. So, for example, and I used as an example of hindsight bias the election, the recent election. When Trump won, then people looked back and said, oh, that's because the Democrats are out of touch and Trump was tapping into this, etc. But if Hillary had won, they would have said, oh, that's because Trump had these characteristics and the demographics are going against the Republicans now. They would have fit the explanation to the outcome once they know what the outcome is. And that is both in kind and in magnitude. A big effect has to have a big cause. But the narrative can flip. Some emailers pointed out supporting that position that the narrative flipped on election night. The pundits were all – when it looked like Hillary was going to win, they were talking about how the Republican Party is crashing and the demographics are going against them. And then when it looked like Trump was going to win, they talked about how out of touch the Democrats were. You know what I mean? So they literally flipped their narrative in the course of a few hours to fit the facts as they were evolving. A lot of people thought that that means that these factors aren't real and that's not the point at all. All of the factors that people might point out may be legitimate. It's a question of emphasis, right? It's saying this was the cause of the outcome when in fact all of these things may have been in play regardless of what the outcome was. And the other aspect of this is that the outcome may have been very narrow, especially if it's a binary outcome. One person wins or the other person wins or one team wins. The binary outcome, if one side edges out the other, then the narrative all becomes about how they were dominant and inevitable and all the factors in that one direction rather than saying, OK, there were factors in both directions and this one side eked out a victory. That's hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is shifting your narrative and your explanations once you know the outcome rather than looking at the whole picture and also taking into account that the outcome may have been quirky or narrow or whatever.

E: The football term also, well for sports fans, is called Monday morning quarterback. That's when everyone talks about the games from the prior Sunday and like, oh, yeah, of course I knew this was going to happen.

C: They should have done this. If I were...

S: Or 20-20 hindsight. But there was an entirely separate point that I was making that really just applied to the football, not to the election, and that is that the perception of momentum in sports is largely an illusion because if you look at the data and I didn't have time to delve into the data last week, but that's partly what I want to talk about now. Psychologists have been asking this question, is there momentum in sports? Psychologists break it down into two sub-questions. One is what psychologists call psychological momentum and there's no question that psychological momentum exists. All that means is that what's happening in a competition affects the psychology of the athlete, their mood, everything. That does change as they do well or as they do poorly. And so there's no question that psychological momentum exists. The question is, does psychological momentum actually affect the outcome of the game? So, again, a lot of the e-mailers were basically justifying psychological momentum and were not really addressing the point, which was, yeah, sure, but does psychological momentum have a measurable impact on the outcome or not? And so let's look at the data there. Again, I don't think we have a 100 percent definitive answer and you'll see why in a moment, but I do think that we have a pretty good answer. So one, if we go sport by sport, let's start with basketball. And there the momentum question comes down to shooting baskets in a row, right? If you make a basket, are you more likely to make a basket on the next throw? Or if you miss, are you more likely to miss on the next throw than if you had made one? Does that confidence or getting in the groove or whatever make it more likely for you to keep the streak going, either good or bad? So that's called the hot hands effect, right? We've talked about this on the show before. Now, for 20 years, the research showed that there is no hot hands effect, that when statisticians crunch the numbers, they don't see any effect there. However, there was a paper a couple of years ago by statisticians, and this tells you how counterintuitive statistics can be. They said, oh, you know what? All of the statisticians have been doing it wrong, and they've been making this subtle error in how they're breaking down the numbers. And when you fix the error, it turns out there is a slight hot hands effect that then comes out of the data. So I look to see if there was any response to that to see if a consensus has emerged or if this is still debatable. I couldn't really find anything that would tell me that there is a consensus here. But even if we assume that they're correct, we're still talking about a small effect. And so there is still this massive disconnect between the perception of momentum and the reality. If you look at football, essentially the data does not show a big momentum effect. Again, the conclusion is stated more in the negative, not like there is no effect, but the data does not show that there is an effect. Or if there is an effect, again, it's tiny. In baseball, I think the data is probably the best in baseball. There really is no momentum effect in baseball. And for example, researchers looked at the frequency of perfect games and no hitters. Now, because you're dealing with kind of an isolated pitcher versus batter battle, the statistics in baseball may be a little bit more pure than in other sports in a way, if you know what I mean. And so there's lots of – baseball is a game that just generates a lot of statistics. And what researchers do is they modeled based upon batting averages, average batting averages. They modeled if – in computer simulations, how – so in one, for example, they ran 2,000 simulations of baseball between 1876 and 2009. They said there should be 243 no hitters over this course of time.

E: And?

S: And then they looked at the actual baseball record in that time period. And they found that there were 250 single pitcher no hitters. And so that was off by less than – it was off by less than 4%. That's damn close. What that tells you is there's basically no hot hands effect in baseball. There's no momentum.

C: Yeah, that's probably not a significant difference.

S: Yeah, it's just not. It's just not. Even if it were statistically significant, it's a tiny effect.

C: It's so small.

S: But it's whatever. It's insignificant in terms of the magnitude of the effect size. So if you look at all the data, there basically is either a small or no momentum in professional sports, actual outcome of the game momentum. There's psychological momentum but not outcome of the game momentum. Now having said that, people are like, yeah, but what about this and what about that? It's like, OK, but there are these other effects. Sure, yeah, injuries play a role. Some coaches are better at making adjustments. Yeah, the Falcons made stupid calls late in the game. There's no question. All of those things are true. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there's this other thing, this other intangible thing, psychological momentum that has an effect on the outcome of the game. Now this doesn't mean – again, some people objected to the idea that this doesn't mean that professional athletes or robots are immune to psychology. Again, they have psychological momentum. It just doesn't affect their performance measurably. There are – psychologists have speculations about why that might be including the fact that they may – that the psychological effects may have a lot to do with confidence and professional athletes may just have such a high baseline confidence that they're just not – they're not knocked off that confidence easily. The other thing, which I think we talked briefly about, Cara, I think you brought up briefly last week, is that when you get really good, when you hyper-train at a physical activity, it becomes very subconscious.

C: Yeah, it's like automated.

S: Yeah, it's automated.

C: If you're a concert pianist, like it's going to take a lot to make it so that you actually pause in the middle of a – you could actually play on even if you get distracted by something. It would take a big deal to make you screw up.

S: Exactly.

B: That's a really interesting effect. Steve, remember we – I remember years and years ago we figured out how to solve Rubik's cubes. So we kind of – you have these algorithms of twists and turns that you do to get it – to get the colors to match. We didn't touch it for 20 years. Then when I picked it up again, I realized that I could almost solve it still. I could solve the first two rows. So I would try to do what I remembered. When I try to remember the precise moves that I made, when I tried to analyze it, I stopped myself. I couldn't figure it out. I had to do it completely unconsciously. When I tried to understand every move I made, it fell apart. It's like paralysis analysis, right? So it was so cool. You have something so internalized that you can't vet it. It's just like it is what it is. You can't dissect it.

S: Just let it take over. Let's go on with science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:23:07)

Item #1: A new study supports the hypothesis that comprehending a word that relates to motor function involves the relevant part of the motor cortex, and not just language cortex. Item #2: Using MRI scans, researchers have been able to predict which high-risk infants will go on to develop autism with 90% accuracy as young as 3 months of age. Item #3: Engineers have developed brain electrodes that are 1000 times more flexible than previous electrodes, allowing for a stable connection that does not form scar tissue.

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

S: Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. These are three news items, but there is a theme to the news items. Cara, I think you're going to like it.

C: Yay.

S: The theme is the brain.

J: Go brain.

E: She's going to go last.

C: Undo stress.

S: Yeah. Cara might be going last this week. Okay. Here we go. Item number one, a new study supports the hypothesis that comprehending a word that relates to motor function involves the relevant part of the motor cortex, not just the language cortex. Item number two, using MRI scans, researchers have been able to predict which high-risk infants will go on to develop autism with 90% accuracy as young as three months of age. Item number three, engineers have developed brain electrodes that are 1,000 times more flexible than previous electrodes, allowing for a stable connection that does not form scar tissue. Bob, go first.

B: All right. We've got this first one here. Let's see. A new study supports the hypothesis that comprehending a word that relates to motor function involves the relevant part. Wow. Interesting. So – but I'm not sure if I'm buying that. Kind of – yeah, interesting. Let's look at the second one here. The high-risk infants will go into develop autism 90% accuracy. Yeah. All right. I kind of see that because we know – that doesn't surprise me. As we all know, it's not related to vaccines and that's got a strong genetic component probably. So it doesn't surprise me that they could potentially see it very young. Okay. That's good. I'm buying that one. Let's see. You've got these brain electrodes, 1,000 times more flexible, stable connection, no scar tissue. That's fantastic. Wow. That would be so, so nice. These – they all seem kind of plausible to me. But – so I'm going to say that I just – I don't think the motor cortex is going to be significantly involved in dealing with word understanding. So I'm going to say that that's fiction.

S: Okay, Jay.

J: So this one about the motor cortex comprehending the word, that to me seems so blatantly not true. But it's fascinating if it is true. I mean, what would be actually happening there? The motor cortex is communicating probably to the language cortex I would imagine. I don't know. I mean, you just think that they wouldn't be mixing like that. Okay. Next one, the MRI scans. These researchers were able to predict which high-risk infants will go on to develop autism. So my – of course, I'm looking at this saying, well, what are high-risk infants?

S: They're at high risk for developing autism obviously.

J: I didn't know that people were high risk for developing autism or not. I didn't know that that existed. But okay. Yeah. So what Bob said was using the MRI scan, you could see that there might be structures in the brain that would point to it. Okay. That's interesting and seems plausible. Then this last one, the one about engineers developing brain electrodes. I absolutely believe that. No reason to think they didn't do it. I mean a thousand times more flexible than previous electrodes. Yes. I could see that. I could see that with new materials. They came up with something. So it's between the first one and the second one. There's just something about that first one that seems so damn obvious, right Bob? Like the motor cortex is perceiving. It's comprehending the word.

E: You mean the one Bob chose is fiction?

J: Well, it says that it involves the relevant part of the motor cortex and not just the language. What the hell is going on there? All right. I agree with Bob. That was fiction.

S: Okay. Evan.

E: Okay. The motor function involves the relevant part of the motor cortex, not just the language cortex. If they're saying it, it passes through sort of the motor cortex and almost sort of on its way, like a pathway to the language cortex is the two are linked somehow. The next one, MRI scans to predict with high risk infants will go on to develop autism. 90% accuracy. Ooh, as young as three months of age using MRI scans at three months of age. How developed is a brain at three months? It's hard for me. I don't know. Cara might know. Wouldn't that be kind of early? In other words, the brain's still doing... I don't know how much change goes on. It must be significant that you're reading something at three months of age, but come six months, comes 12 months, the same MRI scan may come up with something different. I don't know about this one. The brain electrode's 1,000 times more flexible than previous electrodes. I have no problem with that. Stable connection does not form scar tissue. Okay. I suppose so. I'll buck the trend. I'll say the MRI scans, 90% accuracy, three months of age. I think that one's the fiction. I think that's too young.

S: And Cara?

C: I mean, my first instinct is to say that the brain electrodes is the fiction, just off the bat. There's a hypothesis that comprehending a word that relates to motor function involves the motor cortex, not just the language cortex, and a new study supports that. Absolutely. I would never in a heartbeat flinch at that. Association is so important in the brain. Nothing is like truly, truly focal. Yes, we've got Broca's area and Wernicke's area, and we do have studies that show damage destroy Broca's area. You can't physically talk, but those things are very close together. Broca's area is frontal, but it's a little lower. Motor cortex is kind of a strip that's just right above it, and then you have some language stuff that's happening kind of in the temporal area. I get the question here is that it's comprehension versus motor speech, because speech is involved in the motor cortex. Talking requires the motor cortex. They're just so intimately related that I absolutely think that that would show up also in the motor cortex, the comprehension side of things. I also think that the autism one is quite reasonable. I don't know if 90% accuracy is right. It's hard for me to point to that, but I think that researchers have developed markers of autism. I can't remember what, but something about brain size, maybe a certain area of the brain is supposed to be bigger. We definitely know there's a mirror neuron situation. There are some physical markers. You're right. Three months is young, Evan. Then engineers have developed brain electrodes that are a thousand times more flexible. That, to me, is crazy. A thousand times. That's three orders of magnitude more flexible. Electrodes are already really flexible in the brain. You can get them down into places when you're doing these Parkinson's surgeries. You can get them down into the areas that you want them to. Not forming scar tissue has nothing to do with how flexible the electrodes are. This is why I don't get this one. Scar tissue happens in the brain. If we could figure out how not to form scar tissue in the central nervous system, we could solve a lot of problems with connecting severed axons and nerve tracts, which is a huge problem with losing motor control. I don't know. This one just seems weird. It doesn't even really make sense to me. Because of that, I'm going to go with that. If I'm wrong, don't hate me.

S: All right. Good. You guys are covering all your bases, which is awesome.

C: Now I'm scared because I'm on an island.

S: All right. Well.

E: Only for a few minutes.

S: Since we're all over the place, I guess we could take these in order. Number one, a new study supports the hypothesis that comprehending a word that relates to motor function involves a relevant part of the motor cortex and not just language cortex. Bob and Jay think this one is the fiction. Evan and Cara think this one is science. And this one is science. All right, guys. Cara's right. It's exactly right. Never doubt the whole networking thing in the brain. This is cool. Now I said supports the hypothesis. So it certainly doesn't prove it. But the prediction that was made by the hypothesis was supported by the study. What they did is very cool. They used transcranial magnetic stimulation.

B: I love that.

S: They used that to inhibit the functioning of the motor cortex.

B: Oooh. That's scary.

S: While they gave the subjects a task, the task was to tell if a series of letters formed a word or didn't form a word. Now some of the words were related to physical tasks involving the upper extremity and some were not. So the hypothesis was if the motor cortex is at all involved in understanding and processing the language, when we inhibit the motor cortex, it'll affect the motor words but not the non-motor words.

C: Cool.

S: And that's what they found.

B: That is intense.

S: That's exactly what they found.

C: I love these weird magnetic stimulation knockout studies. They're so cool.

S: It's fascinating.

E: It's great that they can even come up with that study.

S: It's clever. Yeah, it's clever.

C: It's very clever.

E: Yeah, very clever.

J: What the hell is going on there though, Steve? That's crazy.

S: I know. Well, it's crazy because you're not a neurologist.

C: It's crazy but it's so not crazy.

S: It is not. So the thing is you have to get away from this simplistic module conception of how the brain works where this piece of the brain does this one thing. The brain is so massively networked. Yeah, there are modules but those modules are networked. Even, Cara, like Broca's area, the recent fMRI study is showing that, oh my god, there's language processing happening with speech that's like not in sync with the Broca's area. So there's something more complicated going on. The language area of your brain, Wernicke's area, that's sort of the lexicon, right? That's where you –

C: It's the word salad area.

S: Yeah, when it's damaged, you get word salad because that's the part of the brain that translates ideas into words and words into ideas, right? If the idea is an image, how does Wernicke's area understand the concept of an image? Well, because it recruits and networks with the image center of your brain. So how does Wernicke's area know about a physical concept? Well, it has to involve those parts of the brain that involve that physical concept. So that kind of totally makes sense when you think about it that way.

C: Yeah, you could do a very similar study where you knock out visual perception.

S: Visual, yeah, although it would be harder to do this exact test because you have to see the words.

C: Yeah, you have to do it auditorily.

S: Yeah, whatever, something.

C: Instead of the visual words, yeah.

S: But what's also interesting, what I found really fascinating about this, think about it because you have to – this gets back to the Daniel Dennett book about how we evolve language and consciousness and all that stuff. There's this theory of embodied cognition, which we've talked about on the show before. So this kind of supports the embodied cognition notion. Maybe the toehold we had in language was using our hands to communicate physically, very simple physical concepts of action or physical relationships. Then as we – as our language area developed, it evolved out of these physical ideas, which were literally embodied in our physical selves and the physical world. Then that sort of – we bootstrapped language and consciousness out of that. So we think in terms of these embodied concepts. For example, if you say that somebody is above somebody else, you could mean that they are just hierarchically above them, that they're in charge of them. But we still use a physical term that has a physical analogy to it, being physically above somebody or your mood is down. We have all of these really purely abstract concepts that we understand through some kind of physical analogy. It may be partly that that's because that's exactly how our language evolved. It evolved out of communicating physical relationships. So it would make absolute sense that our language area would understand these concepts by networking with the relevant part of the brain that is either involved in that either motor action or sensory input. That was the hypothesis and this study supports it.

C: I think the coolest part of the study is how they did it.

S: Yeah. That's also uber cool.

C: So cool. Yeah.

S: All right. Let's go on to number two. Using MRI scans, researchers have been able to predict with high-risk infants which high-risk infants will go on to develop autism with 90 percent accuracy as young as three months of age. Evan, you think this one is the fiction. The rest of you think this one is science. This one is the fiction. Good job, Evan.

E: It is the fiction. Whoa.

S: It is.

E: Three months seems awfully young.

S: That's the key. Three months is awfully young.

C: What is it? Please tell me it's like six months or nine months.

S: Twelve.

C: Ah, crap.

S: So they did the MRI scans on six-month-old, 12-month-old and 24-month-old children. They're high-risk, Jay, because they have an older sibling with autism. So that statistically puts them at higher risk. What they found was that they could predict with 90 percent accuracy by the 12-month-old because what they were looking for is the change in the brain from six months to 12 months. The brains of children who went on to develop autism, the cortex grew much faster between six and 12 months than the neurotypical children did, which is interesting.

C: So it is a bigger brain.

S: It's bigger, yeah. So they grew faster. But of course, if you have to compare six months to 12 months, you can't make that comparison until 12 months. Now there are other studies which show that from clinical criteria, you can highly predict which infants are going to go on to develop autism by six months. That's currently the earliest that I've found. So three months would be really early. I would not be surprised if we eventually get there. We might eventually get there, but that would have been pushing the envelope significantly, especially with something just anatomical like an MRI scan because the brain is kind of young at that age. It is sort of more of the later development where we see it because it doesn't really manifest until age two or whatever because even though the early signs may be there, it really comes out when the cortex really develops.

C: If you're doing an MRI scan on a three-month-old, do you put them to sleep? Because it's not fMRI, right? It's just imaging.

S: This is just a straight-up MRI. Yeah, children are usually done under anesthesia.

C: Yeah, I figured. Because I've seen in some clinics, they have a kid – it's really cute, like a fake MRI that they teach kids to lay in before they have to do the real fMRI. But you have to be old enough to understand how to practice. So that's more for toddlers.

S: You can't move, so you can't do it on somebody's body. All right, all of this means that engineers have developed brain electrodes that are 1,000 times more flexible than previous electrodes, allowing for a stable connection that does not form scar tissue is science. This is cool.

C: Oh, my god. Explain this to me, Steve. I'm so confused.

E: It must be all that scar tissue.

S: Yeah, these are ultra-flexible probes, and the technology is called, Bob, you're going to like this, nano-electronic thread or NET.

B: I like it.

S: These are ultra – very, very tiny and ultra-flexible. They say they are more than 1,000 times more flexible than previous probes or electrodes. Now, the reason why the hyper-flexibility is so important, Cara, is because these are tiny electrodes. They're designed to record from a single neuron.

B: Whoa.

C: Gotcha.

S: Now, when you get down to that level, when you get down to that level, the normal pulsations of the brain will move the electrode so that the relationship isn't stable. The relationship with scar tissue is that when the electrodes move, it activates the glial cells, which forms the scar tissue. Now, in their studies, these electrodes, because they're so flexible, were able to maintain a consistent relationship to the neuron, so they didn't shift over time. Over the months of the study, they did not form any scar tissue. Now, previously, these really single neuron electrodes would last hours. They don't last a long time.

C: Well, usually people – I mean, this is in an animal or in a human?

S: Animal.

C: Okay. Yeah, because usually when you're patch clamping, when you're just doing one neuron, you're doing it in vitro. It's so much easier. Doing it in an animal is really hard to do, as it is.

S: Yeah. So yeah, they're in the animal testing phase.

C: Okay.

S: So this is awesome. This is what we need.

C: This is insane.

S: This is what I've been waiting for.

C: This is mind-blowing.

S: This is what we need to get the mental control of robots. We talked about recently the locked-in patients. This is what we need for the locked-in patients.

C: So you can understand why the MRI scan seems way more reasonable.

S: Yes. That's why I included this one.

C: This one is mind-blowing.

S: That's why I include this one because it's mind-blowing. That's what it is. It's exactly what we need. So I'm hoping this really pans out.

B: 20 years. Where could this specific development lead to besides mind control? Could you have one of these attached to every neuron?

S: Well, that's a lot.

B: Yes.

C: That would be crazy.

S: I mean, eventually, this is like-

B: Self-replicating, auto-navigating.

S: Extrapolate is the matrix, right? That's the extrapolation from this.

B: I like it.

S: You have a complete interface with your organic brain. Again, no theoretical reason why that can't work. It's just a technological question at this point in time. It's purely technological, yeah.

C: Well, there are reasons why the matrix can't work but not the core foundation of the matrix. You wouldn't have any muscle tone if you were in the matrix.

S: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

B: Classic reply to that is, yeah, absolutely.

S: That part was not plausible. But the fact that you are interfacing with the computer seamlessly so that you're in a virtual reality that's indistinguishable from reality, that's plausible.

C: Absolutely. And that you would lose your- I mean, we're close to that even with a headset. Yeah.

J: How much can we pay to get this right now, Steve?

S: Nothing.

E: Oh, it's free? Great.

C: If you're a mouse.

S: He's become an experimental rodent.

C: Free for rodents.

S: All very, very cool stuff. Good solo win this week, Evan. Good job.

E: Yeah.

C: Evan.

E: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks.

B: This one sucks so hard.

C: I'm with you guys.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:42:27)

"Ineffective therapies are always harmful. The greatest danger lies in the risk that a still treatable disease (is) not really being treated at an early stage, by first trying an alternative therapy. In the worst case, this can lead to the death of the patient. This is more common than you might think." - The Association Against Quackery, The Netherlands, established 1881, considered to be the oldest continually running skeptical organization in the world.

S: All right, Evan, give us a quote.

E: "Ineffective therapies are always harmful. The greatest danger lies in the risk that a still-treatable disease is not really being treated at an early stage by first trying an alternative therapy. In the worst case, this can lead to the death of the patient. This is more common than you might think." And that is from the website at the Association Against Quackery, which is in the Netherlands. This society was established in 1881. It is considered to be the oldest continually running skeptical organization in the world.

C: That's awesome.

E: And they specialize on quackery, alternative medicine, and a lot of the things we touch upon on this very show.

S: Yep. They're a good group.

E: 1881. I love that. I love that an organization has been around continuously for the better part of, what, 130-plus years.

S: Yeah. That's longer than us. They were formed in 1996.

E: Yeah.

S: That's more than 100 years more than us.

E: Yeah. We have a little ways to catch up.

S: Absolutely.

E: If they started a podcast in 1881, oh, man.

S: We'd never catch up.

E: I think we have more podcasts than them, so I think we're okay. We're doing our part.

S: All right. Thanks, Evan. Thank you all for joining me this week.

C: Thanks, Doc.

E: Thanks, Steve.

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at theskepticsguide.org, where you will find the show notes as well as links to our blogs, videos, online forum, and other content. You can send us feedback or questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. Also, please consider supporting the SGU by visiting the store page on our website, where you will find merchandise, premium content, and subscription information. Our listeners are what make SGU possible.

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