Cosmic Queries: Pseudoscience

Put on your thinking caps, because in this episode Neil deGrasse Tyson and Leighann Lord answer fan questions about pseudoscience, from creationism to crystals to alternative medicine. Read more and listen to the full episode at http://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-pseudoscience

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, where I also serve as Director of Hayden Planetarium. We're here at StarTalk. I think of it as StarTalk After Hours, but in fact it's StarTalk Cosmic Queries. And I've got with me in studio, the one, the only Leanne Lord. Leanne!

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Hey, I like that, the one and only.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one and only Leanne Lord, especially since you spell your name L-E-I-G-H-A-N-N.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Thank you. I can't take credit for that, that's my parents. But thank you.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and I make a point of that because if you want to follow Leanne on Twitter, you gotta spell her name right.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's at LeanneLord, easy to find, easy to follow, once you get the letters right. It's great to have you on here.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so nice to be here.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you actually, you make a living as a professional comedian?

• 1:11Speaker 01

  I make a living as a professional comedian.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is awesome.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  That is crazy.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bringing laughter where it's needed most in the world.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. It's not rocket science, but you know, people need it.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I always, I always, I like following you, where you go around the country and the world.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been to the Middle East?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  I've been to the Middle East.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To the troops?

• 1:32Speaker 01

  I have.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is so Bob Hope of you.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Oh man.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my god.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  And they really are a great audience. I love doing it.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, very appreciative, and so it's great to have you here. So this Cosmic Queries segment, we're gonna talk about pseudoscience.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Pseudoscience.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Do we have, how many hours do we have for this topic?

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, right, right, right, right. So it's people, it's stuff that people think is science, but in fact, isn't. They want it to be science.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But science is actually knows quite well what it is, and how it works, and how the methods and tools apply. And so a big effort of people who are trying to, sort of, the debunkers out there, to try to show people what science is, and how we know what we know. And how we know what we don't know. All right, how?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  How do we know what we know?

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's how we know what we know, and how we know... That we don't know something, okay? That's just as important.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it is. Yes, it is. So, we've called questions from the internet. On the internet, we are StarTalkRadio.net. You can chat with us there. There's a blog, places to deposit your questions and comments. There's the archive of our past shows are there as well. Also, on Facebook, you can like us there, StarTalkRadio. That's easy to get to. And, of course, we're in the Twitter-verse, StarTalkRadio. I also tweet. If you have patience for my cosmic brain droppings, they're...

• 2:54Speaker 01

  They're brilliant, brilliant.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not related, they're just stuff that floats in and out of my head. And I happen to have a medium to put them. That's a repository for my brain dropping.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Your tweets make me stop and stare into space because I'm like, wait a minute.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not while you're driving.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Yeah, because I'm tweeting while driving. What? No.

• 3:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, these questions, I think these all came from Facebook. Is that correct?

• 3:20Speaker 01

  These look like they are all Facebook questions. Yes, they are.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and I haven't seen them before, so this will all be very fresh.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Good.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if I can't answer one, I'll say I can't answer it.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Okay, that's fair.

• 3:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, while I have a lot of thoughts to share about pseudoscience, there are people out there who do this professionally. So, this is just a service to our listeners. But there are books written by folks who, for example, Michael Shermer, who wrote Why People Believe Weird Things. The title very similar to that. Go find him on the... You can find... And in there, customers who bought that book also bought. So, if you look at the rest, there's a whole slew of ways you can sort of read up on this. So, let's see how well I can do for this.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Yes. All right, we have a... The first question here is from Benjamin Camacho Garcia.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look at you, Garcia.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Garcia, just put a little Spanish flair on it there. Now, he says, "We know all kinds of pseudoscience are garbage, but which one do you find more entertaining and which one would be the most dangerous to practice?"

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the one I think is most entertaining is the Ouija board.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Okay, we'll go in old school.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Old school, yeah, yeah, not.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  I didn't expect that.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't even have to plug that one in.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, this is the Ouija board where people gather around a table and you put your and and it's on your lap, I guess, if I remember how you do this. It's touching your knees. No, no.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  No, no, it's on a table.

• 4:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did it when it's on a knee. You put it on a table. No, no, no, you've got a.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Well, you have the board and then you have your hands on the little device. Everybody has to touch the the pointer.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, right, right. Okay, that's one version of it. When I when I first did it, that that object on the board would move by gravity. So you the board would tilt and it would slide to the letters on the board. Okay, so here, this is like sort of group movement.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I think that's just it's a part. It's a fun party thing. It's like playing Twister.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Without the inappropriate contact.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without the inappropriate, yeah. And so I I kind of like the Ouija board. And of course, it's your. Uh, what they did was it turns out if you're blind, the Ouija board doesn't work very well for you.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  What are the odds?

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're you're influencing where the the puck lands on it because you can actually see it. And it turns out if you don't know how to spell well, you actually misspell the words while you the fascinating experiments you can do that just just summarily debunk the entire the entire process. Like, so, for example, are you communicating, are you channeling someone else's words through your ability to communicate through the Ouija board? And you find out they misspell the same words that you do.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Yes, love it.

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so so unless you your spelling profile exactly matches that of the dead person whose spirit you're channeling, you got this is not working. So Ouija board, I would say, was mine.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Is your is your most entertaining?

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  What about now? What about the most dangerous?

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the most dangerous. These are the ones where you think you have a cure for a medical ailment. And that would, this is on sort of the what they call alternative medicine. Uh, by the way, have you ever heard of alternative math? Of course not, because it doesn't exist. Have you ever heard of alternative physics? Of course not, because there's no such thing. Yet somehow we all want to believe that there's something called alternative medicine. There's either the stuff that works and the stuff that doesn't. The stuff that works, let's call medicine, and the stuff that doesn't, let's call that quackery. Let's just simply be honest about this, okay?

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Believe it or not, we have that in my profession, too, alternative comedy.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  It's called not funny.

• 6:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not funny. So, so that then it's dangerous. It's not dangerous to others, it's dangerous to yourself. Because you think there's a cure that someone claims is real, but has not undergone rigorous scientific testing. And then you forego treatment that you get through other means. And you end up dying sooner, or dying, or not getting, or becoming maimed, or crippled, because you didn't seek the attention that it required.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's where the danger comes in. So that's why I don't jump all over people who do, you know, their tarot card readings, and palm readings, and, you know, I, you know, I don't distract myself by people who want to believe that's real. But when the medicine steps in there, that's a problem.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening, you are listening, to StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries Hour. And I'm here with Leanne Lord, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and we'll continue after the break.

• 8:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your host. I'm an astrophysicist by day. And StarTalk Radio announcer by night.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, actually, an astrophysicist can be anything they want at night, because nobody's looking. Everyone else is asleep, we're awake, contemplating the cosmos. So, we've called questions from the internet, and these are all related to pseudoscience.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and Leanne, let me just ask you, do you, do you feel, do you, do you lean towards anything that you think might be pseudoscience?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I, I might have before I met you. But I, I think it's been,

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want to put you on the spot.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  I think it's been educated out of me.

• 8:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I like that phrase. To get something educated out of you. Oh, can we use that? We gotta use that.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Well, be my guest. Absolutely.

• 8:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my God. Get the pseudoscience educated out of you.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  There we go. That's why we do this.

• 8:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you got a question?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  I do. I do. It's actually almost maybe a follow.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are questions from listeners.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  These are questions from listeners.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our give back in a way to, we want to make sure you're a part of what we do here.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  And I love the interaction with fans. This is fantastic. Um, this is a question, a question from Brian Shields, and he wants to know sort of, uh, what spurred the use of items such as crystals in the realm of pseudoscience? I mean, were users attracted to their physical beauty? Or did they just assume that it had more enduring qualities?

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What an awesome question. That's a great question. So, so what we have found in the history of cultures is that civilizations tended to gather together and cherish, that might overstate what it actually is in some cases, but establish a higher level of curiosity for some things over other things. So it's a curiosity factor because it's different. And by the way, there's a famous quote from Isaac Newton. And he imagines himself sitting at the water's edge. And as the waves come upon the shore, he says, "I feel like a child on the shore,

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  picking up one pebble over another just because it looks slightly more interesting than the rest. Yet the ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me." So there he is, humbled by the fact that he knows there's a lot more to discover. But there he is, nonetheless, curious about the little things that are in his arms' reach. One pebble being shinier than the next. So over history, what we've done is you pick up shiny things. You pick up.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  I love that deeply scientific explanation.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shiny things.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Pick up shiny things.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We wear shiny things. Jewelry is typically shiny. You yourself are wearing shiny things, okay? So I'm not talking about only ancient civilizations. I'm talking about modern life. So we find silver, gold. It goes to high luster. We like these things. We collect them. They are different from other things you find in nature. We also, uh, crystals are the world's first transparent solid things.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think about that.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just did the head cock.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the dog that just heard the high pitched.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  The world's first solid transparent thing.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, normally you think of solid, it's solid, nothing goes through it. And now I've got a solid thing that light can pass through. That's an awesome thought.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  That is pretty cool.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there it is in nature. There's quartz. Quartz crystal is transparent to visible light. Now, take that fact and say, well, can you do anything with it? Do you realize this even worked its way into early ideas of the cosmos? So, before we knew that Earth went around the sun and this sort of thing, it was like the sun goes around the Earth and everything goes around the Earth because Earth is the center of the entire universe. Well, we know there are different distances because some move faster on the sky than others. But what holds them up there? What keeps them there? So guess what held them there? Something has to hold them there and completely surround the Earth, but you have to be able to see through it to see the planets that are farther away than they are.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This was the birth of the crystalline spheres.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crystal, not because crystal is a special form of mineral, crystal because the damn thing is transparent. And you can see through it to the rest of the cosmos. And so there was the crystalline spheres out there. So, crystals were valued simply because they were different. And they were transparent. And we always, it's a, it's a natural part of human curiosity to pick up that which is different and bring it home.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Wow, mom and dad aren't always happy about that. I don't know, honey, a little transparent.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's, in fact, when, if you want to think about it in another kind of way, those are the seeds of the birth of science. The fact that we are curious about some things that are different than others. If you look at the, I think it's the Inuit, whatever is the culture that, that frequented the shores of Greenland.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as we know, Greenland is mostly glacier, at least for now. There is the Cape York meteorite, which is currently the largest meteorite in captivity. And

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Being held against its will, everybody.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is at the American Museum of Natural History in our meteorite hall. That meteorite was cherished by the local peoples. And in fact, meteorites have been, iron meteorites have been the entire source of metal for civilizations that did not otherwise have access to iron ores beneath Earth's surface. So Native American tribes, the Inuits, I think Eskimo is not the proper term these days, but the terms that described the coastal peoples who fished for food and lived

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in these, in the Arctic regions. The metal that's in those cultures, in almost every case, is metal carved off of rocks that they did not, that rocks that didn't match anything else in their environment. And those were iron meteorites that were exposed on the surface that had been there for tens of thousands, possibly in some cases, millions of years.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Hmm, so something different.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a long answer, man.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  No, that's great.

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Do you want another question?

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, the meteorite would not have been there for millions of years because continental drift would have redistributed where everything is. So if you found a meteorite in the ground, it would have fallen within the last tens of thousands of years, typically.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 14:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  So you just footnote it yourself.

• 14:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay, thank you, yes.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Caveat. Okay, I have a question.

• 14:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  And this might be a little controversial. And this is from Richard Conant.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And again, the theme is pseudoscience.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  And the theme is, oh, this is definitely pseudoscience. And it begins with, Mr. Tyson, is there hope for America when 46% believe in creationism?

• 15:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, we gonna edit that out?

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, no, that's fine. There is hope for America if forty-seven percent believe in creationism, provided that that forty-seven percent doesn't require that the other fifty-three percent believe it as well.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Aye, there's the rub, sir.

• 15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the problem is not what people believe. This is a free country. Believe what you want. I will not tell you what to believe. What I will say to you is that if you want your belief, which is not based on objective truths, it's based on what are generally known as as revealed truths. There's some sacred document that someone has truth revealed to them through whatever forces that you recognize in your religion. And there are many of these. There's Joseph Smith's documents and there's the Quran. There are all these revealed truths. If those truths conflict with objectively verifiable truths and you want to teach that

• 16:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  as science, that's the beginning of the end of the technological foundation of your culture. I just alert you of the consequences of this. I will not tell you what to think or how to think it. I just want to say if you do this, then that's what happens.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  You have been warned.

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have been warned.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Proceed at your peril.

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you've been warned. And by the way, there's no tradition of atheists or scientists knocking down the Sunday School door, telling the preacher, "That might not necessarily be true." No, there's no one trying to change church religious curriculum. It's not happening. So to have religious communities try to alter a science curriculum to meet their needs, that's a profound imbalance of what the historical relationship has been between religious communities and scientific communities over the centuries. So the problem is not the... That's not the problem. The problem is when people want to learn science, think

• 17:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that creationism is science, they have been removed from the frontier of cosmic discovery.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Wow, very nicely done. I like that. I like that. And I, you know what, I think this might actually lead into, and maybe you've already answered this in a way, but I wanted to ask it anyway, and this is from Brandon, Brandon Rogers. He said, what should people be doing more often in order to combat the rapid spread of pseudoscience? And he suggests take more classes on skepticism?

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's an excellent question. So, we always assumed in the sort of educated scientific community, that if you learn science and you learn the laws of physics, that you won't be susceptible to the pseudoscience. That is kind of a, kind of an inoculation against it. And largely, that's true. If you're scientifically literate, it is a kind of a vaccine against those who would exploit your ignorance of natural law for their own gain. All right. You know what I'll do after the break? I'll give you my recipe for fighting pseudoscience. You're still sticking around, I presume?

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 18:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. All right. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. We'll be right back.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Joining me as my co-host for this StarTalk Cosmic Queries Hour is LeAnn Lord. LeAnn, great to have you.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Oh, great to be here.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Professional comedian. Do you say comedian or comedian?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Whatever you want to say, as long as I'm getting paid to show up.

• 18:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Getting paid.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  I'm good.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so comedienne is the feminized version of comedian.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  It's pretty. I don't mind it. My feminism doesn't extend to being offended by that.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's actually a pretty word.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  It is. I'll take it.

• 19:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So where did we leave off in the last segment? Well, there was a question about...

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Well, we were talking about pseudoscience and what can we be doing to sort of combat that? And is there something, I guess, in the toolbox?

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the toolbox, exactly. So first, science literacy, just as a state of mind, is quite the vaccine against those who speak pseudoscientific ways. And you listen to them and you just, you immediately notice where the arguments fail. And then you just walk the other way. There's an old saying, "If an argument lasts more than five minutes, then both sides are wrong."

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Ooh. Congress hasn't heard this.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they, well, they argue for much longer than five minutes, which means both sides are wrong. So, so you've got this. So here, I think in addition to just learning how science works, is there's an awesome Wiki page, an awesome Wiki page on, on, what's it called? It's, it's Ways That Your Cognition Can Fail.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Cognitive failures, maybe just a Google search on cognitive failures is a whole list. Okay? And you read it and you say, "My gosh."

• 20:29Speaker 01

  I'm an idiot.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The human brain is not good at taking data. The human brain is awful at interpreting what it experiences. But we've known this since second grade. We all played telephone, didn't we?

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yes, we did.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To take two or three people before the story was completely warped and distorted.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  And you're being kind.

• 20:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what happened is information goes in one ear, and when it came out your mouth, it was different. So this, our susceptibility as humans to cognitive failure is extraordinary. So I think, once you know you're susceptible, and you read the list of ways you can be susceptible, I think that could take care of most of these, most of these, the attraction that people might have to what is ultimately a false pseudoscience.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'll give you a quick example. You know, the people say, I have a lucky number. Comes up every time.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in fact, when I won the lottery last week, I knew it when I bought the ticket. Okay, so, so you could say, well, that's the, I'm the special, that's the, I'm special error.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  But I am special.

• 21:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's a good example. Take a thousand people, give them a coin, heads and tails coin, tell them flip, flip the coin. Uh, anyone who's got heads, they remain standing, tails, you sit down, alright? That's about how many left? Five hundred left, because I started with a thousand.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's what they call a fair coin, fifty fifty, right? So you do it again for who remains, alright, it's five hundred left, flip a coin, two fifty are standing. And you keep doing this, and then a hundred and twenty-five are standing, and then sixty are standing, thirty, fifteen, eight.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  I'm impressed by your division skills on, on, on this one.

• 22:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two, and then there's one person who flipped heads ten consecutive times, and that person wins, alright? Who does the press go to? Does it go to all the losers? No, they all go to that person. And they say, how do you feel about this? That person will likely say, you know, I felt the heads' energy about halfway through, so I knew I was gonna win.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they say, wow, he had, he had this power of knowledge. Did they ask the other people who had exactly the same feeling?

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because we're not interested in losers, we're only interested in the winner, so.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Different and shiny.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every, every time you do this experiment, somebody's gonna basically flip heads ten consecutive times. Have you ever flipped heads ten consecutive times in your life? No, alright, but if you did that experiment about a thousand times?

• 23:01Speaker 01

  I'd be the person?

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chances are, you would, in those thousand times, chances are you'd flip heads ten consecutive times.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  I know what I'm doing for the rest of the day.

• 23:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's always gonna be a winner here, but that doesn't mean the person who won is special. But you're that person, you think somehow the gods were on your side. So, so that's one example of a, of a, of a way to missink information that's laid bare right in front of you. So, you study that page, so every science class should come along with, here's how the brain fails you. And this was, this will double, this will double down on the vaccine that being scientifically literate can do for you.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  So that double whammy there, that's a good start for you.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, and then you, then you see it in others, and you, you have the urge to try to fix it. Then they'll, then they'll tell two people and

• 23:49Speaker 01

  And so on and so on.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could wipe, you could wipe this out in a week.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 23:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it doesn't take higher learning to see the susceptibility of the human mind. And by the way, scientists are also susceptible to this. It's just that we know we're susceptible.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we invent methods and tools to reduce our susceptibility because we're honest with ourselves about it. That is what science is. That's what the scientific method is. Scientific method is not hypothesis, test, blah, blah, blah. It can be that, but that's not what it is at its heart. At its heart is do whatever it takes to not fool yourself into thinking that one thing is true when another thing is true.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  This is also very good relationship advice, everybody. I'm, this says, this is multiple uses here.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Just, can I add?

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, go for it.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  A question to this, um, the, trying to figure out how the brain fails.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  What age do we start this?

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, let's do that when we come back.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From our break, you're listening to StarTalk Radio. Neil deGrasse Tyson will be right back.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are back at StarTalk after hours. I think of it as that, but it's really StarTalk Cosmic Queries. And I'm getting helped out here by my co-host, Leanne Lord. Leanne.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your awesome question reader.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Thank you. No pressure.

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Questions from the internet. These, I think, were from Facebook. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. And we, you, you handed me a question, right? When we had no time to answer it, what was it just before the break?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Well, my question is, you were talking about the ways to sort of inoculate yourself against pseudoscience. And, and you were saying that we should study how the brain fails. You know, if you, if you've got that, you've got half the battle. And my question to that is, well, at what age do we start introducing this?

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, in utero.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Oh. Wow. Okay. So the little baby Einstein case, this is how your brain's going to fail you. It's not even here yet.

• 26:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Here's how it's going to fail.

• 26:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, here's, in my experience, in my experience, interacting with kids.

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kids are not susceptible to pseudoscience. The pseudoscience that they that that they ever talk about is because they hear adults mentioning it. Alright, kids are just simply naturally curious about the natural world and they ask natural questions about the natural world. And then the adult says, oh, the the moon is in the wrong house and the Jupiter is aligned with Mars and and they hear this. But left to themselves as kids curious about their environment, they are the least susceptible to pseudoscientific thinking or to mystical thinking or to magical thinking. And what I have found is, now this is not a formal study, it's just my sort of walks through life. When puberty sets in and and life gets really complicated.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  That's it ruins us all.

• 26:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does he like me? Does he not like me? Will I have money for this? Will I be hurt? Will I do well on my test? Will I, all of a sudden, life descends on you and you realize you're not actually in control of the things that are going on in your life. And so there's a susceptibility to that which asserts it can bring control to your life outside of your own initiative to do so. These are rub these crystals and you'll heal yourself. Read your horoscope and it'll make your day better. Walk this way, talk this way, chant this way. And all of a sudden, you believe that now the world is not just you and you're in control of yourself, that there are these forces that you get to blame when things don't go well in your life.

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I would say the critical phase is basically middle school. When hormones start kicking in and they're susceptible to thinking that they are not in control of their destiny.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Okay, and they are looking at these crutches.

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, exactly. They're they're emotional intellectual crutches of life. Shed the crutches, walk on your own power, become scientifically literate. Oh, that'd be a make an awesome poster.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  It would, it would. All I can say is, dude, where were you when I was 12?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Where were you, sir? Wow, that's great. Okay.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what else you got?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  All right, I have a question from Ed Travis. And wow, Ed, really? Ed says, "My wife wants a machine that can translate dreams into physical images. How impossible is this?"

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's awesome. That sounds like something that would show up on the movie, on the Fox series Fringe.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're always like reading minds and making the mind do things. I, uh, why not?

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Really?

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think that neuroscience is in its infancy today.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think that is one of the most fertile scientific frontiers that currently exists. Neuroscience, you know, we know the brain, you know, we're a sack of chemistry is what we are as humans.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  A sack of chemistry.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A conscious sack of chemistry.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  You are a walking t-shirt slogan manufacturer, sir.

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, humans, we're conscious sacks of chemistry. We know we are because that's why medicine works, all right? You put chemicals in you and it changes what you think, how you feel, how alert you are. What do you think caffeine is? It's influencing your alert state as landlord holds up their cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Okay, so I noticed Dunkin' Donuts not Starbucks. Is you're on a budget now?

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Wow, yeah, because what I'm making here is StarTalk. Finance my higher coffee desire.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll have to cover you on the next cup of coffee. So I think that's a brilliant idea and a brilliant suggestion. And I would put that as a sort of science fictiony, but still within reach.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Still within reach.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What would be great is if it was a live image of what your dream was. And then, well, maybe you wouldn't want that, actually.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  So you have the dream and then wake up and see the dream.

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you could, or others can watch you dream in real time.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  That sounds a little invasive.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a little invasive, so maybe not.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Maybe not.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe not. Okay, let's pull back on that one. But, but maybe you can, you can put it in your library of dreams and relive them by just popping in the disk.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. So, uh, brain activity is simply chemicals. And chemical interactions among, uh, neurons. And given that, you, uh, once we know what a certain kind of chemical interaction means, in terms of an image, in terms of words, in terms of faces, you just draw it up, have a little machine that draws it. Uh, that would be the cool future of neuroscience. When we come back, more of StarTalk Radio.

• 30:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio's Cosmic Queries. Leanne Lord is my official question reader.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And today's topic is pseudoscience, and we've got questions from our, from our listener base.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You call it a fan base. I don't think of them as, they're listeners.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Okay, listener base.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, if they're a fan, you know, if they're listeners. Maybe they are fans, but I think of them as listeners.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  They're listeners. They are partners in education.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. Yeah. How to buro- bureaucracize the answer.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Um, now, I, I, I kinda, if you don't mind, I want to backtrack just a little bit. You were very kind in, in, in saying, you know, when you thought, uh, sort of, we should be educating kids about, uh, inoculating themselves against pseudoscience. Uh, but you said that, that, you know, little kids, in your experience,

• 31:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Uh, don't really engage in magical thinking.

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, or they're not susceptible to pseudoscience.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  They're not susceptible.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  And I, I, I don't know about that, you know, cause I mean, listen, kids have, um, magical blankets, they have imaginary friends.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  No, but no parent wants their kid to have an imaginary friend. You know, it's cause you said most of this comes from the parents, and I'm so, and, and there's stuff like that that doesn't.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I, so I would, I would put a line in the sand between, What people do that is, that is the expression of their imagination, maybe gone a little too far. Okay. And things that you do that you think are actually controlling your behavior and conduct. If you think there's a monster under the bed. Mm hmm. You could actually check for that. You're just too afraid to. All right? Okay. Is that pseudoscience or is it, you don't really in control of your imagination at that point? I can tell you that adults don't worry about monsters under the bed. Unless they've been imbibing something really strong. So I am not worried about the monster under the child's bed influencing them as an adult.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is, th- this childhood thinking about fairies and kingdoms and, and, and, and the, the kiss of the prince and all of this. This is, if you put a child out in the middle of the street and you say, I mean, put, put them out in the open. And say, what do you believe is affecting your life right now? They're not, they're not gonna say the fairies. They're not gonna say the monster under the bed. You take an adult who is susceptible to pseudoscience. They're gonna give a list of things that they will assert is in control of their life or influencing their life. That, that they cannot influence.

• 33:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and so that it's a different kind of thing. So I agree. You have kids with great imagination and it's fun and it's the seeds of so much fantasy and, and literature. Stephen King. Yeah, Stephen King, if you wanna get bloody, but, but Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. If that's not an LSD trip, I don't know what is. And it's, it's Pinocchio, his nose grows. These are fantasy stories and kids love to have fun and to play. But what I'm saying is I'm, we don't need to stop them from thinking about a monster under the bed. Because that doesn't carry into. Into adolescence.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  None of that carries into adolescence.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't step on the crack, you break your parents' back. That doesn't, it stops. I don't need to stop that with, with other efforts. It stops itself because they simply outgrow it.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm talking about stuff that adults don't even outgrow.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that list of tho- those things, you don't find in children.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kids don't, are not afraid of black cats. They wanna pet the kitty. Until an adult says, "That's a black cat." "That's bad."

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they gotta be told by someone who's older and not as wise to be afraid of the black cat.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Well, um, I, I.

• 34:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got any more questions? How many que-?

• 34:48Speaker 01

  I do.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got a whole sheet there.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  I do, I do have another question.

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go for it.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  I do, okay. Um, alright, here's, this is from Bora Vai. And, uh, they wanna know, "I used to watch the TV show Ancient Aliens. And at one point, they've stated that Bigfoot may be a prisoner from outer space. Much like how England used to send prisoners to Australia. Do you think we would eventually send prisoners into space?" Wow, that was a long way around against that.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm thinking Bigfoot.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Wow, really?

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ancient aliens.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Wow, that's a long way around.

• 35:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so first, it'd be kinda cool if Bigfoot, if, if some powerful a- alien civilization said, "Earth, there's a good place to send our criminals. Let's send Bigfoot there." I wonder what crime did Bigfoot commit?

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Stole a candy bar.

• 35:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, one of, uh, uh, who's it? Mitch Hedberg, uh, the late comedian Mitch Hedberg. You know what he said of Bigfoot? He said, "You know what's even scarier than Bigfoot? Would be if Bigfoot is actually out of focus."

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every picture we have of Bigfoot, it's a fuzzy photo.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Oh, that's hilarious.

• 35:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If he's actually out of focus, that would be really scary. So, yeah, I would hope Earth is not some prison colony for misbehaved aliens from another planet.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Though it would explain a lot.

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would like to believe that, I believe in the future of neuroscience, and I think if you go far enough in the future, we would find a way to cure people who are career criminals so that we would not need prisons for them at all.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Therefore, we wouldn't need to look for a planet upon which we're to send them. And, you know, the historical analogy here is England sending their prisoners

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to Australia, an isolated continent island in the middle of the, you know, southern hemisphere, Pacific.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  But now, isn't that the slippery slope, Doctor?

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it is.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Because if we start correcting criminal behavior, what else are we?

• 36:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is a crime in one generation versus another? You're absolutely right. That's a whole other show.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  It is.

• 36:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leah, thanks for being on StarTalk.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me back.

• 36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After hours. This is StarTalk.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  After hours.

• 37:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Cosmic Query segment. So, you are listening to, you've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I bid you farewell, and as always, to keep looking up.