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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe - Podcast 58 - 8/30/2006
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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, LLC - dedicated to promoting critical thinking, reason, and the public understanding of science through online and other media. The first episode of the SGU podcast went online on May 4th, 2005. It soon became a popular science/skeptical podcast, and remains one of the most popular science podcasts on iTunes.
SGU Podcasting Awards: SGU on XM: You can listen to the SGU on America's Talk XM 166 every Saturday night from 8-9pm Eastern.
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Podcast
58
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August 30, 2006
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Interview with Kimball Atwood, MD; News Items: Pope and ID, Hitler and Stalin Possessed, Pluto not a planet, Kabbalah; Your E-mails: Archaeological conspiracies, Skeptical Soldier, Abiogenesis Pseudoscience; Science or Fiction; Skeptical Puzzle
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Segment: News Items
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Segment: Questions and E-mails
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Archeological Conspiracies
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I got into a discussion with my brother on the subject of strange archaeological finds. He made the statement that there are so many of these stories around that some "must be true". At this point my critical thinking alarm went off and I told him that making a blanket statement like that was to be close minded to the possibility that these things have plausible explanations or are outright hoaxes. He seems to subscribe to the 'evil scientists concealing the truth' theory.
Is there any good solid evidence of any of these stories being true? (i.e. modern artifacts found in solid rock, etc. ).
Thanks,
Chris Hampton
USA, Atlanta, GA
Gullible article on "out of place artifacts" http://www.atlantisrising.com/issue5/ar5topten.html
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Deployed Skeptic
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To all
Love the show, not much in the way of entertainment in Afghanistan so there is lots of time to think and listen to the 50 podcasts I stuck on my ipod. I think I am the first ever listener of your show during a mid-air refuel of a C-17. Add that one to your stats. :) Keep up the good work and I look forward to future episodes (if I can ever download them).
Captain M Forman
Special Operations
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Abiogenesis pseudoscience?
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Steve,
On the last podcast you all were discussing the hypothesis for an abiogenic origin for petroleum. After a really good overview (from Perry, was it?) Rebecca mentioned that pseudoscience can invade any field, and that was the general consensus. I would quibble that abiogenic-originated petroleum is not a psedoscience.
It may very well be wrong, but what is pseudoscience about that? It's based on the very real evidence that some of the molecules in petroleum can be created without a biological component to the process. As one of you stated, it looks like the available and observable evidence would not support the amount of petroleum we see, and that largely the hypothesis doesn't fit as well as the hypothesis (hence now probably theory) for the biological origin of petroleum.
I suppose that conspiracy theories have surrounded it, so it trips the "pseudoscience trigger" in you, but a perfectly reasonable hypothesis that does not require anything magical that happens to be disproven, is not pseudoscience. In fact, it's the best kind of science, it's a hypothesis that is testable (or at least disprovable through observation).
Matt Dick
Chicago
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Segment: Interview
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Segment: Science or Fiction [ Click Here to Show the Answers ]
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Question #1  Science
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Oxford physicists propose resurrecting the ether to explain current mysteries about the structure of the cosmos
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Question #2 Science
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Scientists have bred a strain of permanently happy mice to use in depression research.
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Question #3  Fiction
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Researchers at the University of Montreal claim to have found the "God spot" - the single location in the human brain responsible for religious belief.
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Segment: Skeptical Puzzle
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Puzzle
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Last week's Puzzle:
A man, a chemist, a pastor by trade
In search of a cure he thought he had made
For the prevention and cure of scurvy, he wrote
His newest discovery he had hoped to gloat
The public's belief in this product was fast
Dermatitis and rheumatism would be things of the past.
As time passed on, and the ills still remained
The product itself would garnish new fame
Still the pharmacies sold it, it would become a tradition
People bought it by the hundreds, the thousands, and millions
For that man long ago we must give our thanks,
While he tinkered with elements, currents, and plants
And though he did not rid the world of rickets or piles
To billions of people, we attribute their smiles.
Who was he and what was his discovery?
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