The Skeptics Guide #1023 - Feb 15 2025

News Items: Demographics of Misinformation, The Toll of Fake Research, Dangerous Street Drugs, Nearby Habitable Zone Exoplanet, Reverse Engineering Alien TechnologyWho's That Noisy; Science Quiz; Your Questions and E-mails: Starlink Reentries; Science or Fiction

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Speaker 01

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

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, February 12th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:49Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Cara Santa Maria.

• 0:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Jay Novella.

• 0:52Bob Novella?

  Hey, guys.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:54Speaker 05

  Good evening, everyone.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  How's everyone doing? Getting ready for your fake holiday coming up in a couple days? You guys, did anybody do anything? Like, my wife and I deliberately don't do anything for Valentine's Day.

• 1:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah. Everything's just inflated and expensive.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:09Speaker 05

  The hallmark holidays, as I call them, are just, you know, consumer excuses for people to spend money on things they frankly, let's face it, don't need. And, and, and, and your love and appreciation for a person, I mean, you know, that should be celebrated every day, not on any one day.

• 1:26Cara Santa Maria?

  It should be, but the unfortunate thing is it's not often.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Yes, it's a good reminder to, like, take some time out for your significant other, but you can do it in a non-commercial way. And if you feel like they like getting flowers every now and then, this is the worst time. Get them flowers. Just do it at some other time of the year. Just make a point, a note of it, even if it's just a few weeks from now, anytime other than Valentine's Day, when the supplies are limited and prices are ridiculous.

• 1:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, or do something a little different. Like, you have you and your partner give to a charity, right? Make a, make a, make a Valentine's Day charitable donation, something like that, that you can celebrate together. That'd be nice.

• 2:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Or cook together instead of going out to dinner.

• 2:05Speaker 05

  Yes, agreed. Absolutely. Play, play a board game. Do, you know, just hang out. Enjoy each other's company.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  And do it every week, you know?

• 2:13Cara Santa Maria?

  That too.

• 2:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the Hallmark holidays, I don't know, have always kind of stuck in my craw that I've never quite understood them. And even though other members of my family, I don't know, they sort of live and die by the calendar on these things, you know, and they go, they go with the pageantry, they dress up, they do the whole thing. It just never appealed to me. This didn't.

• 2:34Cara Santa Maria?

  You're so right about like Mother's Day and Father's Day and like, are there siblings days?

• 2:39Speaker 05

  I'm sure there are, you know?

• 2:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. But can we still do like our birthdays? You okay with that?

• 2:46Speaker 05

  Okay. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not as, you know, Militant. I'm not as put off by birthdays and those kinds of celebrations.

• 2:53Cara Santa Maria?

  I feel like celebrate any day you want to celebrate. There's enough

• 2:57Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 2:57Cara Santa Maria?

  garbage in the world right now that if you can find a reason to celebrate, do it.

• 3:01Speaker 05

  Here, here. Oh, and happy birthday, Charles Darwin.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 3:05Speaker 05

  Born on this day, February 12.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Now Darwin Day, that's a real holiday.

• 3:08Speaker 05

  Now, that's a holiday worth celebrating. I'm gonna buy you all a, I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy you all a Finch card.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Or a fossil. I'd rather have a fossil rather than a card.

• 3:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, but those are expensive.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  I'd rather have a $300 thing instead of a $2 thing. Sure. No, you know, come on, there are fossils that are literally one or $2. They're like a low quality trial, right? There's like literally millions and millions of those. You could get them anywhere.

• 3:35Speaker 05

  Well, then it wouldn't be much of a gift then, would it?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  It's just, it's the idea. It's the, it's the, you know, it's the, the thought, you know, here's a little fossil to celebrate Darwin Day.

• 3:43Speaker 05

  Well, and, and, and someday, you know, you would think that, you know, give someone a penny on a day and, you know, big deal, no, no big deal. But there is going to come a day soon, maybe, in which you get a penny. It's like, oh, wow, I remember these because these don't exist anymore.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  I've been hearing that my whole life, that they're getting rid of the penny.

• 4:01Speaker 05

  Well, you know, it was made news last week that I guess the president is going to say, no more penny production because.

• 4:07Cara Santa Maria?

  No, but I read that the Mint stopped making pennies like three years ago.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  We wouldn't even be able to

• 4:12Cara Santa Maria?

  No, I think they did.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  to detect it for like 20 years. That's how many freaking pennies there are.

• 4:16Cara Santa Maria?

  I know, but let me look.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  About 3.2 billion pennies were manufactured in the 2024 fiscal year.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  There you go, right?

• 4:23Cara Santa Maria?

  JK then.

• 4:24Speaker 05

  And that's down from 5.3 billion from just a few years ago. So they're, they're phasing it out.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  It's down. They're, they're, they're going down a little bit.

• 4:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, okay, they're phasing them out. Gotcha.

• 4:33Speaker 05

  I was speaking with someone and we were talking about, he, he was concerned about the inflationary effect of the removal of the penny from the system, which is not something I'd really thought about before.

• 4:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Do people even use cash? Not to mention.

• 4:45Bob Novella?

  I know, right?

• 4:47Speaker 05

  Yes, they do, Kara. They do, they do use cash. I still see people, you know, mostly, let's say, um, um, older types of people that reach into their wallet and pull out the greenbacks and jingle in their pocket for that change.

• 5:01Bob Novella?

  Yeah, if my, if our mom's got some cash in her wallet, she just automatically pulls it out. Like, ma, save that. You can use your credit card. Save them cash for tips. You know, that's, it's, it's so weird. Cause I used to, I remember I used to have a nice little skull bank in my room. I would come home every day and fill that up with some, with some coins.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  A skull bank. Did you just say a skull bank?

• 5:23Bob Novella?

  Yeah, skull bank. You got a problem with that?

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Do you really, Bob, is that literally like a piggy bank skull? Or you just call it, like, when you save money, you call it the skull bank?

• 5:31Bob Novella?

  Oh, no. It's, it's a, it's a plastic hollow receptacle resembling a skull that is meant for money. After, after a year or two, I'd have like, you know, 150 bucks of, of change.

• 5:43Speaker 05

  Ooh, that's a lot of bones.

• 5:44Bob Novella?

  But for the, for the past 10 years or, or more, it's like, I've, I've got no change in my pocket at the end of the day. It's like, none. It's, it's so rare to have anything.

• 5:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I never have change. I hate it when I get to a meter and it doesn't have like any way to pay, except with change. I'm like, I guess I'm not parking here.

• 6:01Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right.

• 6:02Speaker 05

  Well, Kara, you remember payphones, right? Well, you were still alive on payphones.

• 6:06Cara Santa Maria?

  I took a picture of one the other day.

• 6:08Speaker 05

  Oh, cool.

• 6:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there was one like when I was on a walk and I was like, ooh, relic.

• 6:14Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't think the phone, I think somebody had cut the cord to the phone.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  You know, some people's parents wouldn't let the kids go out unless they had pocket change. So they could make that emergency phone call from the payphone if they had to.

• 6:26Cara Santa Maria?

  And I came from the era, you know, I was born in 1983. So when I was a teenager or even a preteen out on my own, I had a pager. I fell right in that demographic. So before cell phones, we had pagers and our parents could page us and tell us to call home.

• 6:44Speaker 05

  That's high tech for way, way more. Yeah. You know what the pager was when we were growing up? It's our, our mother at the door yelling our name into the, into the air saying, get home for dinner. Oh, boy. But speaking of Steve's retirement.

• 6:58Cara Santa Maria?

  What?

• 6:59Speaker 05

  That was smooth, huh?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  That's coming up.

• 7:04Speaker 05

  Yes. What do you think about when, when you think about retirement, Steve? Like, how does it turn over in your head?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  So it's 95% very positive. I am, I'm a guy, I definitely want, I'm looking forward to working full time for the S G U. Looking forward to being on my own schedule. You know what I mean? Like, the biggest thing is like, if I could sleep just as long as I want to in the morning, that is, that would be wonderful. But at the same time, you know, I've been spending the last 30 years keeping all these plates spinning, you know, basically maintaining, you know, all my clinical skills and knowledge and board certifications and licensure and everything. That's, that's, you know, be nice to not have to worry about all that, but I have all these pretty highly developed skills that I will no longer be

• 7:52Speaker 02

  using. And yeah, it's, it's a little sad, you know? It had to happen sometime, obviously.

• 7:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Do you think you'll consult or anything?

• 7:59Speaker 02

  No. Because either you maintain everything or you don't.

• 8:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  You see, you have to shut, you really shut, shut it down, basically.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  I mean, I'll probably, I, I will get licensed for another year just because I've already met all my requirements for doing that. But in a year, I won't have met my requirements for, to continue my license. So I'm not going to get 30 CME credits over the next year if I'm not, you know, working at Yale and doing what I'm doing. So that's part of the benefit is not having to maintain everything.

• 8:28Speaker 05

  You're going to lose access to all your, all the publications and things?

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Speaker 05

  Well, that'd be a little sad, too, right?

• 8:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, when you're not with the institution anymore.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I'll be retiring from Yale. I literally have to turn in my ID. I'll lose access to everything.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  The key to the washroom, too.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  But I'm looking forward to the transition. It's not like, you know, like every patient is now asking me about it. But I tell them, I'm not really retiring, just retiring from patient care. I'll still be doing, you know.

• 8:58Speaker 05

  I'm not really retiring, I'm just retiring from you.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  From you. But the, uh, all of my, I'm still gonna be teaching, right? I'm just gonna be teaching in a different venue. And all of my medical and clinical knowledge will still be put to use writing and promoting science-based medicine and all that, just not in direct patient care. So, you know, it's, it's better than just retiring entirely.

• 9:20Speaker 05

  Sure, and having absolutely nothing to do at that point. That would be awful.

• 9:25Cara Santa Maria?

  You think?

• 9:25Speaker 05

  I can't imagine.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Well, I've had a lot of people talk to me about their retirement. And it's, it's, you know, about 50/50. Some people are like, it's wonderful, you're gonna love it. Other people are like, I am bored out of my skull. Oh, my God, you will not be bored.

• 9:37Cara Santa Maria?

  That's like a prison of their own making.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  That, absolutely, absolutely. I will not be bored. I'm not worried. I think I will be in the, this is wonderful category, because I'm still gonna be working exactly as much as I want to. You know what I mean? I have plenty, plenty to do.

• 9:51Speaker 05

  I think before, I think before long, Steve, you'll be crafting your own sword.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 9:58Speaker 05

  You're gonna become a swordsmith.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Maybe. We'll open up, I have room for one more hobby I can add. We'll see.

• 10:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Love it. You know how much room you have for hobbies.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  You have any ideas about that? No, I don't know. I'll think about it. Jay and I took a bladesmithing class, that was fun.

• 10:15Speaker 05

  Right, see?

• 10:15Speaker 02

  I'm ready to do that again, I loved it.

• 10:17Speaker 05

  And a pesto making class, right?

• 10:19Speaker 02

  I took a pesto making class.

• 10:21Speaker 05

  And, and glass blowing? Oh, yeah, you're, you're good. You, you know, you'll find plenty of things to do and learn.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Well, let's get on with the show. We're gonna go right into some news items. And actually, I'm starting off. Uh, there was a new meta-analysis for, you know, looking at the demographics of who is most susceptible to misinformation.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  And they were specifically looking at a one particular research paradigm, which is the news headline paradigm, where you show somebody a news headline. It's either real or fake and they have it's a forced choice. They have to say if they think it's real or they think it's fake.

• 11:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, how good would we be at that game?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  We would be very good based upon the the results of this. But we'll just say that. But let's go over. There's some interesting details here worth digging into. First of all, this is a this is a meta analysis. They looked at 256,337 unique choices made by over 11,000 participants across 31 experiments. So that's a pretty sizable meta analysis. So first of all, just looking across all of that, people did better than chance. So that was good.

• 11:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, that's promising.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  They were correct. They correctly identified true headlines 68.51% of the time. And false headlines 67.24% of the time. So about two thirds of the time, more or less, they were able to correctly guess whether a headline was true or false. That's, you know, that's pretty bad, actually, if you think about it. You know, if a third of the time you really don't you falsely believe that something is true or you think it's false. So better than chance, but you know, not that great.

• 12:12Speaker 05

  Not great.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  And so then, of course, the more interesting thing is they're delving down into what factors predicted it. So let me go over a few of them. So one factor they looked at was education level. How do you think that predicted whether people were able to identify true or false headlines?

• 12:32Speaker 05

  I think it more education.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 12:34Speaker 05

  It had a positive impact.

• 12:36Bob Novella?

  Probably really wouldn't kick in though until higher education, really higher education.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  So across these studies, it had zero impact.

• 12:44Cara Santa Maria?

  No.

• 12:45Speaker 05

  That's not good.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  The educational level alone conveyed essentially no benefit.

• 12:51Bob Novella?

  What about PhD level?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  So what you're thinking of, Bob, is belief in pseudoscience, which is that's separate. It's not this paradigm. I that was my I remembered that as well. I actually wrote about that, that. Education level doesn't protect against believing in pseudoscience until you get to the PhD level.

• 13:10Bob Novella?

  That's why I thought this might be similar.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, but this, at least in this paradigm, in these studies, I don't know how, how the range of education level was, but they, the education level had no measurable impact.

• 13:23Bob Novella?

  Across the board, alright.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  So, what does that mean?

• 13:25Bob Novella?

  You gotta be, you gotta listen to this show and be a skeptic.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, to me, that's a failure of the educational system.

• 13:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. What does that say about our education system?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  It means we're not teaching the skills necessary to tell fake from true headlines. So, there were some strong predictors, though. One of the biggest was having an analytical thinking style, which is why I think we would do well, because that's what we do, right? We do analysis. So analytical thinking means that you go through and you look at the evidence, the logic, the source of the information, like you do an analysis, as opposed to the intuitive thinking style, which is like, this feels fake. My gut is telling me. Yeah. Again, not to criticize that, that's not a bad thing to listen to, but it should just be a starting point, not a conclusion. Right?

• 14:16Speaker 02

  It kinda gives you a head start on your analysis, but, or tells you maybe how much of an analysis you have to do, but you shouldn't just rely on your gut, because that's just heuristic thinking, you know, then that's easy to manipulate.

• 14:30Cara Santa Maria?

  And some people's heuristics are more reflective of reality. Yeah, exactly.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or they're just not perfect. They're never perfect. They're just shortcuts.

• 14:37Cara Santa Maria?

  They're never perfect, but heuristics build on previous analysis, and so if you're never analyzing, then that's not very good.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  And that comes up a lot, the analytical versus intuitive thinking style. Analytical thinking style also correlates with lower belief in conspiracy theories, lower belief in pseudoscience.

• 14:55Bob Novella?

  I'll figure.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Lower belief in paranormal, this stuff. So, yeah, so it does correlate with a lot of those things. And it is something that can be taught. It is a skill, whereas people, some people are just naturally more analytical versus intuitive, or vice versa, but it is absolutely a skill that can be taught. So, that's the thing, I think, that's not being taught. In public schools that we

• 15:15Bob Novella?

  Oh, absolutely not.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Older age, what do you think?

• 15:19Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 15:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, what do you mean by older age? What's the cutoff?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't, you know, they, I don't know how they broke it down, but just

• 15:25Cara Santa Maria?

  My guess is that it's bimodal. I could be wrong, but that the very young and the very old are struggling more. But it could be that older is actually better for using analytic styles.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Older is better.

• 15:36Cara Santa Maria?

  The better you are at it.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Pretty much continued throughout the, the age groups that they looked at, older was better. They also looked at not just how accurate they were, but if there was a true headline bias or a false headline bias. And the older age was associated with higher overall discrimination, but also with a false headline bias. So they tended to think that headlines were false.

• 16:01Bob Novella?

  Good. That's a good knee jerk right there.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's actually not, so in one of the point, I'm kind of jumping to one of the limitations of this study, which is interesting, I thought about it and then it was, it was listed in the, by the authors as a limitation. Is in these studies, in this paradigm, there's generally 50/50 true and false headlines. But that's not necessarily reality, right? What, if reality may be, may be have a different mix. And therefore a, a false or true bias may be helpful or harmful, depending on how well it matches reality. Here they just did 50/50, which was artificial. But anyway, so yeah, the older we got, the more, the more cynical I guess we get because we get, tend to have a net of false headline bias, but overall more accurate, higher discrimination.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  They also looked at self-identified political party. Self-identified Democrat and self-identified Republican. What effect do you think that had?

• 16:54Bob Novella?

  Well, I mean, we know what, you know, one party leans more towards, you know, a reality bias than the other, right?

• 17:00Speaker 05

  Depends on the subject, but, um.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  So I'll just say what you're all thinking.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Self-identified Democrats had a greater accuracy and self-identified Republicans was, was associated with a lower accuracy overall. But also the Democrats had a greater false bias and Republicans had a greater truth bias.

• 17:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Democrats again tended to be more cynical about the headlines, more negative, whereas Republicans tended to be more trusting about the headlines.

• 17:32Speaker 05

  Safer to be more skeptical about it.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  They also were more accurate on the, on deciding what was true than on, on determining what was false. But it goes along with the truth bias, right? You're going to pick up more of the true ones if that's what you say. If you said 100% were true, you would have 100% truth accuracy and 0% false accuracy. Right? But this, so yeah, truth bias goes along with a higher truth accuracy. So this is a complicated question. We're not saying, and this study is not saying, and this research is not saying that Democrats are smarter than Republicans, or Republicans are gullible, or anything like that. You know, exploring why exactly this is, is very complicated. There is a couple of theories out there.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  You know, one is that Republicans may already be self-selecting for some cognitive features, like intuitive thinking style. So.

• 18:23Cara Santa Maria?

  So being Republican may mean that you, like by definition, are more intuitive as a thinker.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  There's also different relationships with authority, which may be playing, playing a role.

• 18:33Cara Santa Maria?

  And what about exposure to news as it is?

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Then the other one is the information ecosystems that they're living in. Yeah. Is, is the, at least in this country, are Democratic-leaning or liberal-leaning news outlets, do they have a different style or strategy than Republican or conservative-leaning news outlets? Certainly feels that way, but then again, exploring exactly why that is was not part of these studies, but that's interesting to think about. But when I, when I blogged about this, like, a lot of people reacted, "You're just saying Republicans are stupid." It's like, that's not, first of all, I'm not saying anything. I'm reporting on it with a systematic review found, looking at 31 different studies. This is the data, but the, no, but no one is saying that. Like, if you read these studies, nobody is saying that.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  It's, it has to do with just like the information ecosystems and maybe cognitive style, things like that. You also have to look at other demographics, like, is there an age difference or income, whatever? There's all kinds of other demographic differences that could be playing a role here. But I still haven't mentioned the single biggest predictor.

• 19:38Cara Santa Maria?

  So it's not, oh, is it SES?

• 19:40Speaker 02

  So, the, and this one correlated with, mainly with accepting false headlines is true. So this is the predictor of a lower accuracy, but specifically accepting false headlines. And you voted for it? Nope.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 19:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Um.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  What haven't we touched on?

• 20:00Cara Santa Maria?

  We've touched on age, we've touched on...

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Nothing.

• 20:03Cara Santa Maria?

  We haven't touched on race or gender.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Neither of those. It was familiarity. If people had heard it before, that was...

• 20:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, right, yeah, we know that.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  By far the strongest predictor. Yeah, so familiarity bias. So, yeah, I've heard that, therefore it must be true. Think about that, we all do that, right?

• 20:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  So, what does that... That's actually pretty scary, because that means if you lie repeatedly, people will believe it.

• 20:29Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 20:30Cara Santa Maria?

  No, that's true. We see that happen.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  I know. This is the echo chamber effect, too. So, if you have a news echo chamber, like, you're only consuming a few sources of ideologically-aligned news, the familiarity bias is going to be massive. And I think that's when things get elevated from propaganda to gaslighting, right? To, you're living in a different reality.

• 20:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  And this is what we're experiencing, let's face it. Like, there are people who are living in different realities because of partly... It's not just that they're being exposed to false news or misinformation, it's also which news they're being exposed to. You could have a propaganda outlet with a massive influence on your audience without ever lying or saying anything that's not true. If you just... There's so many events and facts and things out there, all you have to do is just have a massive filter. Just really select only the news that reinforces certain narratives. They're all true, it's all real news, it's just a very biased selection of the news.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  And that familiarity bias kicks in, and that creates your view of reality. And that literature is pretty well-established as well.

• 21:53Speaker 05

  It's very comfortable for a lot of people.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's very comfortable, yeah, to reinforce what you already believe or what you want to believe. We know that as well. That's separately researched that shows that. So what does all this mean? You know, I think individually is the easy thing to say, you know, consume various outlets of news. Don't rely on anything narrow. Specifically, look for sources that are neutral or even may go against your preconceived notions, you know, to challenge yourself. It doesn't mean you have to consume propaganda, but you know, you should try to consume a range of reasonable sources of information. Don't stick yourself into an echo chamber. Learn analytical thinking, right, which means listen to the skeptics at the universe. Seriously, you have to learn skeptical, critical thinking, media savvy,

• 22:40Speaker 02

  and scientific literacy. Those skills are critical, you know, in the world today. On a societal level, this is where it gets tricky, right? We've had this conversation before because nothing seems to work or be feasible. You know, it's like, we live now in the Wild West of misinformation and I don't know what's going to change it. You know, we sort of, that's, that's just the new reality.

• 23:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Improved education.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  I mean, that, that's dealing with the misinformation, but I just mean,

• 23:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, right.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  There's no guardrails anymore. There's no editorial policy. There's no fairness doctrine. Those things are gone. I don't see that they're going to come back anytime soon.

• 23:16Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I, I have a different interpretation as to what this means and what's going to happen. And it's, I could boil it down to two words.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. We're F.

• 23:25Bob Novella?

  No, that's a good, that's a good one. My two words are Morlock and Eloi.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  The Morlock and the Eloi?

• 23:32Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 23:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Is that the time machine?

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, time machine.

• 23:36Bob Novella?

  Yeah, human society evolves into two classes of people, the underground Morlock and the naive angelic kind of Eloi on the, on the surface. And what, the Morlock eat them?

• 23:47Jay Novella?

  Yeah, yep.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  So, interesting, you know, the research is, I think, very informative in terms of, you know, the phenomenon, what we do about it is more complicated. All right, Jay, you're gonna talk about something a little bit similar. Fake research and what kind of toll that's having on real research.

• 24:08Jay Novella?

  I didn't really realize to what depth all of this is and how serious it is. And, you know, the basic concept here is that researchers rely on the integrity of existing published studies, and they'll reference them to create new studies, right? So they'll take the existing knowledge, they'll make sure they're fully aware of it, and then they'll study something else that's based off of those earlier studies. You know, when a scientific field advances, you know, new technologies, you know, new treatments and everything, this is always born on research that was using previous research as a building block or a stepping stone. This works for the majority of sciences that are legitimate, right?

• 24:48Jay Novella?

  You know, scientists are constantly referring to pre-existing literature. But today, you know, I'm gonna make you guys aware that there is, there has been this growing issue in the scientific community that's threatening the basic core of, especially medical research, you know, over the past decade, a shadow industry has emerged, right? Now, it sounds creepy, but that's a good way to put it. And this freaking industry is churning out fake academic papers and peer-reviewed studies. These are called paper mills. They profit in many different ways when they do this, but they, you know, they profit by flooding journals with fraudulent studies, undermining legitimate discoveries. They stall the progress in critical fields like cancer research and medicine. So, what's the scope of the problem?

• 25:32Jay Novella?

  So there are estimates out there that suggest that fake studies number in the hundreds of thousands. There are retractions of these fake studies, but this is a slow and inconsistent and pretty rare occurrence. There's been over 55,000 papers withdrawn, and the experts suspect that there's a much, much larger number that goes undetected. In some fields, particularly oncology and genetics...

• 25:58Jay Novella?

  These fraudulent studies have become a very serious major roadblock to new scientific discoveries. My god, that is so depressing. So how do they get published? Academic publishing operates on the peer review system. So what does that mean? That means that somebody will publish a study into a journal, right? The journal is 99% is based on the field of science that they're working in. And then there are experts who evaluate the submitted papers before they're accepted. And this process, at its best, it should filter out unreliable research, but that's not how it actually happens. Reviewers, the vast majority of them are volunteers, right? So they have limited time. And they frequently have to assume that

• 26:42Jay Novella?

  the submitted research was meant to be legitimate, right? It might not be-

• 26:47Cara Santa Maria?

  But it was done in good faith.

• 26:48Jay Novella?

  It's done in good faith, exactly.

• 26:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 26:50Jay Novella?

  So they don't have the time or the bandwidth to vet these papers with fraud on their minds, right? They have to do it this particular way because it would become massively time consuming, which does that, those man hours don't exist. So also, some publishers who want to make money above all else, choose reviewers that are more likely to approve submissions. Accepted studies get, you know, get charged, right? So if they accept a study to the paper, they're going to make a lot of money off of the person submitting it because they have to pay publication fees, which can be very pricey. It's all part of the cost of, of doing research. So at its worst, some paper mills create fake peer reviews, which that is insidious right there. These are entirely fabricated experts who approve

• 27:32Jay Novella?

  these fraudulent studies, right? So it's not real people who are not, and these fake people are approving fake studies. And then others infiltrate editorial boards, or bribe journal staff. You know, the result is a steady influx of fake research, and it's making its way into all of these different scientific databases, which what, what does that do? It completely waters down the quality of the information that's in there. And that's the least of the problem, because it has disinformation in it, right? Miss or disinformation, depending on your perspective, but that, that wrong information- Well, make future researchers do studies that are based off of the wrong information.

• 28:13Jay Novella?

  The consequences of this fraudulent research is absolutely extensive and it goes beyond the particular study themselves. So the the false data, like I said, it can mislead scientists. It can influence new clinical trials that would never have been take, never have taken place. It can delay the development of life-saving treatments. I mean, this list just goes on about what these fake studies can do.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  I can't remember if we spoke about this, but the one great example of how fake studies can distort research was Alzheimer's disease. Did we talk about this real, real huge controversy over this?

• 28:47Jay Novella?

  No, go ahead, Steve.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Fraud in Alzheimer's research. So basically, there was this one researcher who was literally faking these blots, right? Faking data in order to to get good results, you know, on their study. And they were allegedly supporting the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease. You know, whether or not these amyloid plaques are driving the disease in Alzheimer's and therefore we should treat them as a way of addressing, you know, slowing down or stopping Alzheimer's. So for 15 years, for a significant amount of time, this person was cranking out fake research and really distorting the research in the direction of the amyloid hypothesis

• 29:31Speaker 02

  and distorting the field of Alzheimer's research for over a decade. It was massively, massive negative effect on the research. Really a real scandal. And because of-

• 29:44Cara Santa Maria?

  And all just for their career?

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically.

• 29:46Cara Santa Maria?

  This one researcher's career, as if that's more important than, you know, hundreds of thousands of patients.

• 29:51Jay Novella?

  Because of these circumstances, lots of scientists, you know, have abandoned their fields. For example, Jennifer Byrne, who's an Australian researcher, she specializes in cancer genetics. She discovered that the the genes that she had been studying for decades were being misrepresented in fraudulent papers going back to 2017. So she closed her lab and she was unable to justify continuing her research because of all of that polluted- Misinformation, you know, that that's happening more and more frequently. It's happening right now. There are people who are doing research based off of false information. They don't even know it.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  So I do have to, let me just say one thing, though. This is all true, but one thing that researchers do often is before you set up a whole lab to study something and do a grant and everything, you replicate the findings that you are basing your research on. That's one of the main reasons that replication gets done. People are doing it before they then build on it in their own research. That's what you should be doing because that's one way to minimize the negative impact of fraudulent research. If you can't replicate it, then don't build from there. But there's only so much that you can do that, right? I mean, it's to some extent, you are relying on good faith, you know, publication of research.

• 31:10Jay Novella?

  So there's been pushback, though, which is good. Like, so because of how serious this is, researchers and publishers have developed some new tools, right? You'd think that they'd be using AI and I'm sure if they're not right now, they will be. But they're using new tools to detect the fraudulent work. They have automated screening systems. One of them is called Problematic Paper Screener. And it analyzes huge databases to flag whatever, you know, there's a lot of like keywords that they have and they and concepts and things like that, which are considered to be suspicious studies. And some journals started collaborating to share the fraud that they've detected and fraud techniques that they've detected.

• 31:54Jay Novella?

  And then, you know, there's there's independent watchdogs like Retraction Watch, you know, they track and expose retracted studies. But the problem is the field is growing very fast and, you know, it's always harder to keep up with the fraudsters. In every field or whatever, wherever you look at them, they're harder to keep up with than we can. And I'm really hoping that AI can.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Just gonna say that.

• 32:18Jay Novella?

  You know, AI.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  This is a perfect job for AI.

• 32:21Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  And because they could do just that, they could look for patterns that would predict fraudulent research, at least then that the papers can be flagged and then screened by a person, you know? I mean, there's no reason why we shouldn't be like using that and really developing good fraud detecting AI tools. Think about it this way, you could make, you could write a whole fake paper with AI.

• 32:44Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  So if you submitted submitted this and paid to play throwaway rag journal to to beef up your, you know, your credentials.

• 32:52Speaker 05

  Oh, sure. I mean, gee whiz, we've seen, we've seen non AI generated, you know, written papers that have made it past the pro that have gotten past the gatekeepers.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, that's been studied, right? Yeah, we do that famous study where they submitted to hundreds of these, you know, online pay to play journals and like half of them published blatantly fraudulent paper.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  Right.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  But half didn't, you half screened it out. They said, no, this this doesn't, this doesn't work. So there was good quality journals out there. And the higher quality journals didn't publish it. I mean, to some extent, you could have predicted like some of the ones that would not have fallen for it. Uh, but there's just so many now because it, you know, part of it, it's like, again, this is the digital revolution. This is like social media that the bar has been lowered, the bar for entry. You can set up a virtual publication business all online, all digital. And without much investment, like you don't need a brick and mortar infrastructure. So that opens the floodgates to to, you know, fly by night fraudulent operations.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  Um, it it makes it, it opens the floodgates to legitimate publication too. But, you know, this is the price you pay for for lowering that, you know, bar to entry. Is that it lets everything, good, bad, fraudulent, all the crap, it lets it all in. And the literature is an entity, right? That that's the thing you have to realize. It's just like, we talk about the media or whatever, but the literature, like the scientific literature, you know, in each field is like a living organism, you know what I mean? It is a dynamic thing unto itself.

• 34:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Dynamic thing that is produced by people.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's produced by people and but it has patterns within it. It tells a story. And, you know, we base our scientific understanding on the story that the literature is telling us. And it's, it's easy to distort that either by just bad practice, by naivete, in it by unintended consequences, just some systemic problems in the publication process or biases in the publication process, or deliberate fraud, right?

• 35:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  And we have to get better at minimizing all of those things. It's so it's starting to get to like really concerning levels, you know?

• 35:10Cara Santa Maria?

  It is, yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  All right.

• 35:12Bob Novella?

  Lots of things are at concerning levels.

• 35:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes, they are.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  One of them.

• 35:17Cara Santa Maria?

  I was waiting for that.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Is dangerous street drugs.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  This is, this is a PSA, be a part of our show.

• 35:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yes. Welcome to the more you know. So have, have any of you heard of nidazines?

• 35:30Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 35:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Have you heard that term?

• 35:32Bob Novella?

  No, I have not.

• 35:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Nidazine, also known as.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  And nidazines.

• 35:35Cara Santa Maria?

  There you go. Also known as benzamidazole opioids. These are synthetic opioids that have a specific structure, a benzamidazole structure. Sometimes they're called opioid new psychoactive substances, opioid NPS. They've got a couple other group names, depending on, you know, who you ask, the organization that's looking into them, the country where they're being used. But these drugs have been around since like the 50s. They were first synthesized, actually, by a pharmaceutical company in, I think it was Switzerland. But they were deemed to not be usable because they are incredibly potent and there's, you

• 36:20Cara Santa Maria?

  know, just a strong risk of respiratory depression and because of that, death. So this is a group of synthetic opioids that are not legally used as medicine, pretty much anywhere in the world, but are making its way into the street drug culture. They bind the mu opioid receptor and there's still some argumentation about their potency. I've read like different claims from different sources of literature and that's because I think the jury's still out on this, but they can be up to several hundred times more potent than morphine. Some people claim that they're stronger than fentanyl. Other places say that their potency might be around the same as fentanyl.

• 37:06Cara Santa Maria?

  And to be clear, fentanyl is also a synthetic opioid. Most synthetic opioids can be kind of put into two different classes, like the fentanyl type opioids and then the nidazine classes. And I'm talking about the nidazines, not the fentanyls. Both are synthetic opioids. Does that make sense? Yep. So, there is a really interesting article online, it was written by Philip Berry, who's a research fellow at King's College, London, and he is somebody who has researched sort of the UK drug trade for many, many years, really the international narcotics industry, but he's looked at UK specifically, working for the UK Home Office as a consultant. And he also specializes in the Afghan drug trade.

• 37:51Cara Santa Maria?

  The reason that that becomes a part of this conversation is that only very recently, there have been some changes to the Afghanistan culture, if you guys remember. And there have been some real crackdowns on opium poppy growth and distribution out of Afghanistan. And when the opium market changes in a country that was sourcing much of the heroin around the world, people find drugs elsewhere. So heroin produced from opium poppies is apparently a pretty intensive process. I mean, this doesn't surprise me. It's a very, very old process. I didn't realize as I was digging into this, that in some cases, it's like 17-plus steps

• 38:36Cara Santa Maria?

  to go from the actual plant to the produced heroin. Whereas, when making synthetic opioids, these can be synthesized in a lab with as few as four steps. Significantly less labor-intensive, in many cases significantly cheaper and easier to produce, and also significantly stronger. Not only are they stronger, there's another reason that they may be preferred in the global drug trade. And what do you think that might be? We're trying to make money off a product here. Yeah, more profitable. More profitable, yes. It also means smaller bulk. So we can move more product.

• 39:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, more easily. Less is more when moving drug products. You can hide them more easily. And then you can later cut them into like a lower quality heroin or a lower quality drug. And that is what we're starting to see based on some toxicology reports coming out of multiple countries. This article skews very UK, but we've seen this, we've seen this in the US and we've seen this in a lot of other European countries as well. That during fatal drug overdoses, during investigation of those deaths, nitizines were found in the toxicology reports, but very often it wasn't just nitizines. It was nitizines mixed with other medications.

• 39:59Cara Santa Maria?

  And Steve, I know that you've probably seen this when you've been doing acute care in clinic. I've definitely seen this when I'm in the hospital, that when somebody comes in with a really complicated tox screen. I think that there's an assumption that like, whoa, that person's doing a lot of drugs. But very often that person might have only taken one substance and that substance happened to have a lot of things in it that they didn't know about. And that is the real risk when we're talking about synthesized street drugs in illicit laboratories. Because whether they're being sold as brand name drugs that were then released back to the street counterfeit drugs, or they're being pill pressed as a new formulation, we don't know what's in them.

• 40:44Cara Santa Maria?

  And when you don't know what's in the drug, you don't know what kind of a tolerance you have. You don't know what your, what a lethal dose looks like. You don't know what an effective dose looks like and a lethal dose. And you don't, you don't know where those curves cross, which is really important to know when it comes to drug toxicology. So there have been, I'm seeing a, a statistic here that more than 400 deaths plus more non fatal overdoses were linked to nitizines in the UK between 2023 and June 2023 and January 2025. But the author says this is likely, likely an underestimate, just because these drugs are so new. We may not even be looking for them and we may not be reporting on them.

• 41:25Cara Santa Maria?

  And what we have seen across the board, and I don't want to get sort of too in the weeds about the UK drug trade versus the US drug trade, but there are specific sources, Afghanistan being one, Turkish drug trade being another, that historically bring heroin into the UK. We often in the US get our drugs from China or from Mexican cartels or from Mexican cartels via China. A lot of these drugs are being synthesized in China and although there have been some crackdowns, there haven't been really many, if any at all, in Mexico.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  So you're saying we need more crack?

• 42:02Cara Santa Maria?

  No, I'm not saying that. We can talk about solutions to this problem in a minute. Crack is not one of them.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Or crackdowns, I guess.

• 42:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes, crackdowns, crackdowns. That is what I said. The synthetic opioids can be made relatively easily using precursor chemicals that are generally speaking, uncontrolled and actually not illegal. So there are places in the world where you can buy all of the ingredients that you need to make these synthetic opioids and you can make them relatively cheaply and easily, which is, which is dangerous. Also, just a cursory look at like the Wikipedia article for the list of benzamidazole opioids, the nidogens, is I can't even count how many are on this list. There are so many variations. So when legislation, when drug laws try to catch up with these and say, okay, we got to ban this or we're going to make this Schedule

• 42:52Cara Santa Maria?

  One, or you know, this is no longer going to be legal, manufacturers just change one component of the drug and now it no longer fits into that classification and they can sell it legally until regulators catch up with them again. So it's, it's a pretty dangerous game that we're seeing across many, many countries where the illicit drug trade favors opiates and especially favors opiates that are strong, that are cheap and that don't take up very much space. So I mentioned one of the reasons was because of some of the crackdown, or not the crackdowns, but the, basically the changes to the legislation and just to the general culture. In Afghanistan around, um, around opium poppy, uh, farming.

• 43:36Cara Santa Maria?

  But we've also seen some changes in the culture in China, which has sort of throttled a little bit of the production there. So now we're seeing more coming up through Mexico. So even though nittazines have been slower to catch on here in the United States than they have in parts of Europe, there is a chance that we're going to be seeing a big wave coming through the United States soon, especially given the US history with opiate misuse. We know that the reason that we had the opiate crisis to begin with is because of a market that was flooded with legally prescribed opiate medication. And then when people could no longer get the drugs, they would turn to other forms of opiates on the

• 44:21Cara Santa Maria?

  street like fentanyl. We also know that there's been a demographic change in opiate users. So it's not really chic to use IV drugs. Now, people still do it, but we do see that those people are tending to get older and that younger generations want oral drugs. They don't want to inject opiates. These very, very, very potent drugs can be taken orally. So the route of administration is easier and it sadly is a little bit more, um, welcome by a younger group of user, which can be very dangerous. But one of the things that I'm really curious about is what we do about this. How do we approach this? What are some

• 45:03Cara Santa Maria?

  of the ways, especially here in the US where we know that we've already had a synthetic drug crisis using the opioid, uh, fentanyl. Um, gosh, 75,000 deaths in 2023 alone. And did you know this? Primary cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 49.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:20Speaker 05

  Oh, my gosh.

• 45:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Primary cause of death. So we already know that there's a susceptibility here to this as a, as a, as a crisis. And when these new kind of nittazines come in, uh, or continue to come in, because they already are here. It's only a matter of time before they're here in larger numbers. We see something that's kind of scary that happens. So let's say some- Somebody was taking a prescribed opiate that's a very specific potency. They develop a tolerance for it and they need more to feel the same pain relief or the same euphoria that they had before, or just to stave off withdrawal symptoms at this point. So they take something that is either a larger quantity of the same drug or it's a stronger drug in a lower quantity. And they continue to take that.

• 46:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Steve, I'm sure you've seen this. I've seen this many times. There are patients who, because of their opioid use, I see it in cancer a lot because they have to take large quantities of opiates. They're walking and talking and seem clear headed on a dose that would knock most people out.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, they get tolerant.

• 46:22Cara Santa Maria?

  People can build up a tolerance, right? Well, what happens when you build up a tolerance to a certain type of opiate? And then you turn around and take a whole new opiate that you think is the same, but it's chemically different. You're going to take it in a dosage that may be really dangerous for you. You're probably not going to start slow. And that's where we see a lot of these deaths. We see them in people who think that they can handle the dosage that they're about to take, but their body is naive to it.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Or they're just getting a much higher dose than they think they are.

• 46:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, or you're right, or it's significantly stronger than what they think they're taking. They think that they're taking oxy, but they're really taking fentanyl. Or they're really taking these nidosines, and that's really, really dangerous. So it's a huge issue. And I guess, you know, as we know, the drug war, as we have waged it over the past, what would you say now, 50 years, has not really been working. There are some lessons that can be learned, but anybody have any kind of ideas? I have a few.

• 47:20Bob Novella?

  Well, I mean, education is.

• 47:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Education's important, right? I don't think most people have even heard of nidosines. I think more and more, the education that what you think you are taking might not be what you're taking because there are, in this article specifically, but I've seen it cited in a couple of reports by the CDC and a couple, like a larger report by the OAS. The OAS C I C A D, the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, from the Organization of American States, they put out an informational bulletin last. Last year on the emergence of nitazines in the Americas. And what I'm seeing is that people think they're taking like a benzodiazepine. Like they think that they're taking Xanax that they bought on the street, but it's cut with nitazines. And so they don't even know they're taking the drug that they're.

• 48:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's really scary, right? It's really scary. So drug testing, having access to be able to legally test the drugs that somebody is about to imbibe into their body to get a report that says, this is the drug that you actually think you're taking. Or this drug is this percent, this, this percent, that.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  So you buy a kit to test your drug?

• 48:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And we also see these sort of kits becoming more and more available. Well, we see them in safe use spaces, of course, but we also see them becoming available as community pop ups in regions where a lot of street drug use is common, like at, you know, dance parties, things like that, or in tent cities around, around different large populations. And so making these things more available and understanding the harm reduction approach, I think is a really, really important one. And just, yeah, becoming aware. But it's always hard to outrun the drug manufacturers because they do seem to be one step ahead of the, of the legislation and the, the law enforcement.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Part of the problem is that we're no longer cooperating with China on drug enforcement.

• 49:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Nope. Yep. It's, it's a big part of the problem because there was, there was, it was sort of a free for all. So most of these nitazine problems started in 2019. It's funny, they were first developed in like the 1950s, but they, we really didn't start seeing them flood the market until 2019. And at that time, there were some really good negotiations with China about reducing or, or increasing, I guess, some of the, the crackdowns there on the precursors. But since then, you know, obviously because of the geopolitics right now, those relationships are pretty fraught and it's becoming more and more difficult. So we may, we may not even see a lot of imports from China directly

• 49:51Cara Santa Maria?

  due to tariffs on other products that are mostly going to be used to smuggle these drugs in. But those tariffs don't exist between China and Mexico. And so this researcher, who is an expert in the international drug trade, was basically saying, we're just going to be continuing to get these drugs through, through Mexican cartels, who are probably getting them from China anyway.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Huh. All right. Thanks, Cara. Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about our sponsor this week, Stash.

• 50:21Jay Novella?

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• 51:04Jay Novella?

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• 51:38Speaker 02

  All right, let's get back to the show. Bob, tell us about this nearby, potentially habitable, habitable exoplanet.

• 51:47Bob Novella?

  Habitable. Surely, surely. This is a recent paper that has confirmed the existence of an exoplanet only 20 light years away. This is a super Earth, but it's even more special. It's within the star's habitable zone, and it's brawny as hell, weighing in at a whopping almost six Earth masses. That is beefy. This was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. How cool is that? But it gets better. This gets even better, but then, towards the end, it gets a little worse. So, let's go over that. Let's go over now what we know about this solar system. This is, the star is HD. 20794. Never even heard of this. 20 light years away. I'd never heard of it. I've looked

• 52:30Bob Novella?

  at the nearby stars before. And I don't know, the name, maybe because the name is just so damn lame. That's, that's probably it. But this star now, we know now presides over a multi-planet super earth system. Bravo and brava to all the people, all the scientists and technicians and everybody who spent years, literally a few years doing data analysis to tease out this data because it was, it was at the edge of detectability. And they, they worked on it and worked on it. They found something very, very cool, very special.

• 53:01Speaker 05

  Did they say which method they used to detect the exoplanet?

• 53:04Bob Novella?

  Yeah, this was radial, radial velocity. But it was right at, right at the edge of detectability. So this star, I'll start with the star. This is a GHV star. Our sun is a G2V. And I was like, you know, I didn't kind of know what those mean, but I dove in a little bit. The G is essentially a yellow star around 5,700 Kelvin. That's essentially what that means. The V, I didn't know this, means that it's on the main sequence, which, which means a few things. It means it's fusing hydrogen in its core, which is nice. And that means that it's going to be stable for a really long time. So that's really good. That's where you want to, that's where you want to evolve on a V star.

• 53:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, the many billion year life star.

• 53:44Bob Novella?

  Oh, yes. Right. Yes.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Orange is probably optimal, but yeah, yellow is acceptable.

• 53:48Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yellow's good. I'm happy with yellow. So this star, it's just, the star is very similar to the sun, except it's a G8 and the sun is a G2. The lower the number, the hotter the star. So this star is slightly cooler, dimmer and smaller than our sun. So now that I've given you a little bit more information, let's sum up now. Not only have they found a super earth in its habitable zone and only 20 light years away, but the star itself is also very, very sun-like. Steve, Jay, Evan, what kind of D and D roll is that? Is that an 18? That's an amazing, it's an amazing find to find it, to find it that close. And, and I mean, there could be liquid water on this, all over this planet. It's, it's pretty, it's pretty amazing. I was pretty excited by this. So a couple more

• 54:31Bob Novella?

  comparisons though with the star. The metallicity of the star is is low. That's not great for some reasons. That means that it has fewer heavy elements than the sun. Which is a bummer. If you're evolving on a planet, you want a lot of heavy metals. Having low metallicity of the star, I assume that that's going to translate to the planet itself. That's not great. If you develop complex life, you're not going to have good resources. Even your belt is out in some, in some, you know, your asteroid belt might not even be able to find too much stuff. But it's, the other thing is that this, this star is six to 10 billion years old. So this, this is an old boy. This is, our sun is what, four and a half, 4.6 billion years? So if there's a life on this, that it could have developed, it could have a billion years

• 55:17Bob Novella?

  or more evolution than, than any life on the earth. So who knows what's possible there? You know, that's a lot of assumptions right there, but it's nice, it's, it's cool to think that billion, you know, a few billion years more of evolution could potentially do.

• 55:30Speaker 05

  Bob, does the age tie into that number, that G8 number versus the G2 number? In other words, because it's older and it's causing fewer, you know, less, less metallic?

• 55:39Speaker 02

  The lighter mass stars have a longer lifespan.

• 55:42Bob Novella?

  Yes, they do. Yeah. Because the, the giants burn through it like, like, like there's no tomorrow.

• 55:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 55:47Bob Novella?

  So then you've got really, really much lower mass stars like brown dwarfs and stuff that, and that last like ridiculous amounts of time. All right. So let's look at the planets. There's three planets, they think, there's at least three. They're pretty confident about three. There could be a few more for sure. So these are, these are named B, C, and D, right? Because they just give the sun, you know, the sun's designation, right? So, so, so B and C are, they're, they're beefy too. They're 2.1 and, and three earth masses, but they are too close to the, to the star. So it's pretty hot. It's going to be probably pretty hot there. Oh, and you know, unless of course they're tidally locked, then it might, there could be potentially a ring of, you know,

• 56:30Bob Novella?

  temperate climate around it. Who knows? But we basically know very little about those guys. Let's see. And we don't know a lot about the other one either. The D, D is the one that, that we're talking about here. This is 5.82 earth masses. It's got a 647 day orbit. And it's in, and it's in the habitable zone mostly, which is really, really cool. So like I said, the planet has about six Earth masses at about 1.8 Earth diameters. So this seems to be pretty dense, right? Uh, that's, you know, you're shoving six Earth masses and it's, it's not even, it's not even probably twice, you know, the diameter of the Earth.

• 57:09Speaker 05

  Can we assume higher gravity based on that?

• 57:11Speaker 02

  The surface gravity would be about twice that of Earth.

• 57:14Bob Novella?

  Twice, about two. Yeah, I did some calculations on it. It'd be, it'd be about two. So, yeah.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Which means you would never, never get off the surface of that world with chemical rockets.

• 57:22Bob Novella?

  Well, I did, I did some research on that specifically, as you might imagine. And as far as I can tell, it's, it's at the edge of possibility. It's, it's maybe potentially possible because it's right at the edge. It's, it's only, um, you would only need to go only a little bit faster than the, the fastest, uh, theoretical speed a chemical rocket could attain to, to achieve escape velocity. So it's right at the edge, right at the edge. Um, so, uh, yeah, either way, even if they can get off with a chemical rocket, this would take technology that we don't even, that we couldn't, we couldn't muster today ourselves. So, yeah, they're, they're gonna have a very, very hard time getting off of that planet, if at all, assuming of course there's complex life.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  But also meaning if we ever wanted to land on that planet, we wouldn't be able to get back off again.

• 58:09Bob Novella?

  Right, yeah. We'd send, yeah, we'd just be all probes and we'd have to do some virtual, virtual telepresence, uh, if we wanted to pretend like we're on it. So there's not a lot of other findings about this planet that they can really talk about now. It's, you know, there's still, there's still need to do some more investigations and, and things. But, uh, but it's the implications that I find so fascinating. So what do you think? What are some of the major implications of this finding that we could do? What sticks out in your head?

• 58:36Speaker 02

  We have to look at the atmosphere.

• 58:38Bob Novella?

  Yeah, and it's all about the biosignatures, I think.

• 58:41Speaker 05

  Methane.

• 58:42Bob Novella?

  Yes, we're on the cusp of being able to do more than ever with with remote biosignature detection. If you want to look at another planet and see any biosignatures, this guy is almost the perfect trifecta, right? It's really close because the closer you are, the much, much easier it's going to be to detect any biosignatures. We found some promising exoplanets, and they're like, you know, 100 light years away or 1,000 light years away. Good luck. I mean, you know, maybe we could do something, but it's so much easier to, you know, to observe these, obviously, when it's so much closer. So that's great. It's also, it seems to be a rocky super earth. So it's much better, much higher chances, I think, of finding life or any biosignatures than if it were a Jupiter-like planet, right?

• 59:23Bob Novella?

  A giant, gas giant. And of course, of course, it's in the habitable zone of the star, at least for a good chunk of its elliptical orbit. It's in the habitable zone. And that could be potentially problematic. I'll touch upon that towards the end. All right. Now, detecting these signatures, these biosignatures, will likely involve waiting for it to pass in front of the star. I think we've mentioned this a few times on the show. The different gases in the atmosphere will absorb different wavelengths of light coming through from the star, right? And then these absences, these, these lines of these wavelengths that are absorbed by the gas would be like fingerprints in the stars, in the star's spectrum. So then you could see, oh, it's got, you know, it's got these gases. And the gases that we would love to see would be anything like oxygen, ozone, methane, nitrous oxide, all of which

• 1:00:06Bob Novella?

  are obviously specifically associated with life on Earth. If we found those, oh, my God, this would be crazy. It would be amazing discovery of the millennia. If some alien is looking at our atmosphere, the wavelengths that those gases absorb that I mentioned would be subtracted from the sun's light. What do you think can detect these gases? What's out there right now that could, that should start looking very soon for some of these fingerprints?

• 1:00:30Speaker 05

  James Webb.

• 1:00:32Bob Novella?

  James Webb. Yep, James Webb can find some of them. And there's also a bunch of future telescopes that are on the horizon, like the ELT, Extremely Large Telescope. They're going to be able to detect a lot of those as well. And there's more. So, wow, the next, the next 10 years is going to be fascinating. I hope They really zoom in on this planet. Um, let's see. And there's also, don't forget, there's also the idea that this planet would be fantastic for direct imaging. I mean, actually looking at the planet and imaging it and not inferring it from from some, from transiting or radial velocity or anything like that. In that scenario, they use something like a chronograph or starshade to block out all that intense glare from the star. So they can directly observe and image the planet.

• 1:01:14Bob Novella?

  And they could also analyze the reflected light for bioscience as well. Um, so that's another potential option we may see in the future. Um, all right. So here's a cool question. What are some of the ramifications of life on such a massive Earth-like planet? Like what would, what would some of the things that would really stand out for life living there, evolving there? And one of course is that

• 1:01:34Speaker 05

  It'd be short.

• 1:01:35Bob Novella?

  The stronger gravity, the gravity is like twice Earth's, right? So that means that the, the atmosphere could potentially be extra stable, lasting for billions of years. Um, right? Cause we, we've lost the lightest gases on Earth, just like drift off into space because it's, the gravity's not strong enough to hold on to them. But the problem then though becomes if the gravity is too strong, it could lead to, it could lead to something like a super thick atmosphere. And then you could have a potentially runaway greenhouse effect. This big planet could have a lot more internal heat than the Earth. And we know that, you know, plate tectonics and things like that, uh, you know, subduction zones and all that can, and volcanoes can help stabilize the, the climate as well. Volcanoes could even potentially replenish an atmosphere if it's lost.

• 1:02:19Bob Novella?

  But then again, if there's too much volcanic activity, like that would not be good either. So it's kind of a balance. Let's see. One other, one other thing I found is that the oceans on such a planet could be many times deeper than our oceans. In fact, if the surface is uninhabitable, you could potentially have, you know, the oceans, you know, imagine a 50 mile deep ocean swarming with, swarming with life.

• 1:02:40Speaker 05

  Wow, under two gravity, two times gravity pressure? Oh my gosh.

• 1:02:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, can you imagine going under 50 miles of water? What that, what that pressure would be like? Damn. All right. So obviously I'm not trying to get too excited here, but it's so much fun to speculate, isn't it? I gotta reinforce, we don't know a lot about. This planet, especially regarding its atmosphere. Does it have an atmosphere? We don't know. If it has a thick atmosphere, it could be more like Venus. Hot, uninhabitable, nasty as hell. It could potentially have a ridiculously large atmosphere. And in that case, it could resemble even Neptune more than Earth. So it might not even be, you know, really like a rocky planet that you would recognize. It could be very Neptune like. That would be kind of, kind of annoying.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, because super Earths basically blend into sub Neptunes.

• 1:03:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah, exactly. Let's see, it could have no atmosphere and it could be barren like Mars. You know, very, very little or no, or no atmosphere. That could be a bummer. We could find that out. It's like, oh, oh, well. And then, of course, it could have a moderate atmosphere. It could be Earth, Earth like. It could be an ocean world. That, of course, is what we're, what we're all hoping for. And even if it had the perfect atmosphere, it could be doomed. Why? Because there's no magnetosphere.

• 1:03:51Speaker 05

  Ah, there you go.

• 1:03:52Bob Novella?

  Right, the churning.

• 1:03:53Speaker 05

  Bombarded with all kinds of stuff and you're dead.

• 1:03:55Bob Novella?

  Yep, that, you know, the churning of the iron in the Earth's core creates a, you know, geodynimo protecting our planet. Mars doesn't have a robust magnetosphere. And so the solar wind just eroded the, its atmosphere over millions of years. Ah, no atmosphere, just because you don't have a magnetosphere. That would stink. That's, so that's a possibility as well. The only other thing, I'll, I'll end with this. The only other thing that is potentially a deal killer here is that it's, it's orbit has been shown to be within the, the habitable zone, the Goldilocks zone. But it looks like it's not in it for the entirety of its orbit because its orbit is elliptical. You know, it seems much more elliptical than the Earth. Elliptical is bad for a planet with life.

• 1:04:37Bob Novella?

  The Earth has an elliptical planet, but it's only slightly, barely elliptical. It's, it's, it's nearly circular. And that's great for a stable, for a stable climate. That's wonderful. You start getting, you know, you know, in elliptical orbit, then you're, you're really hot. At one year, the other, the other, the other side of the year, you're, you're, everything's freezing. So it's just like crap. You know what? It's going to be pretty tough for something to evolve there. Unless, of course, it's all, you know, oceanic and could potentially get away from it. But who, so if that's, if that orbit. It is too elliptical. It's like, damn, there's going to be probably very little hope for any, you know, any liquid water on its surface for any great period of time. So, uh, all right. So I'm, I'm done here. This is just like so much interesting speculation,

• 1:05:20Bob Novella?

  but it's just speculation. We got to wait for the real scientists to do their work and hopefully we can take a, take a real good assessment of its atmosphere, maybe even directly image it and try to answer some of these questions.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Bob.

• 1:05:32Bob Novella?

  All right, man.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  All right, Evan. I understand we are reverse, reverse engineering alien technology. How's that going?

• 1:05:40Speaker 05

  Oh my gosh, Steve. We are so close to having this figured out that you can invest, you can actually make an investment based on that premise. Can you believe it?

• 1:05:50Cara Santa Maria?

  What?

• 1:05:51Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, no, let me tell you about it. It's called an ETF. You know what an ETF is? An exchange traded fund. Uh, we probably, many of us have them in our retirement accounts or our stock portfolios or what have you, but that's a type of fund that's traded on stock exchanges, but they hold a diversified portfolio of assets. So you trade the fund instead of a single stock, for example, and there's lots of advantages to doing this type of trading. And among those is that, you know, you can have ETFs for different asset classes, including equities, bonds, commodities like gold or oil, or even niche

• 1:06:33Speaker 05

  sectors, such as technology and healthcare. I'm not sure it can get more niche than this because there's been a new filing with the United States SEC, that's the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a group of investors called Total Capital. Their new ETF that they are looking to enact, that they applied for it, is called the UFO Disclosure AI Powered ETF with a focus on reverse engineered alien technology. The idea behind this group of stocks that would be in this fund is that in the near future, The United States government and perhaps other governments around the world will soon be disclosing all they know about captured or recovered alien technology.

• 1:07:16Speaker 05

  And the tech companies in this fund represent the leaders in those fields that will successfully figure out the secrets on how extraterrestrial vehicles, you know, zip around the solar system, the galaxy, wherever they come from, and also how they seem to defy the laws of physics when they are captured in dribs and drabs on video while buzzing around Earth's atmosphere. And that is what I call niche. It will invest at least 80% of their net assets in a basket of companies that Tuttle Capital, and I quote, "believe have potential exposure to advanced or reverse engineered alien technology spurred by disclosures about UFOs and alleged advanced technologies."

• 1:07:59Speaker 05

  That's direct from their registration statement. Companies in here will include aerospace groups and defense contractors and other companies that are, this is them, rumored to work with classified technology potentially leading to groundbreaking advancements. The chief executive officer of a company, his name is Matthew Tuttle, Tuttle Capital, and he said that he's been interested in UFOs for a long time. He said, "I'm a trader, but I look at UFOs and I say that they're using a power source that is light years beyond anything we have. If our government has this technology and its release, that will be a game changer."

• 1:08:39Speaker 05

  The ETF is going to short other companies that are threatened or could be made obsolete because any alien level technology that's discovered, right, is going to blow away whatever mundane Earth-based technology that we have. Now, they do warn, as these are speculative things, you know, and I'll get to that in just a second, on the level of speculation here, in that, you know, the risks go along with these kinds of investments. For example, the governments may choose to not reveal all the secrets about the alien technology that they've either captured or recovered or what have you. They say that government confirmation or denial of advanced alien tech is uncertain and rumored breakthroughs may never materialize.

• 1:09:24Speaker 05

  This entire theme is highly speculative and subject to rumor cycles. Okay. So I have a couple of thoughts on this. Just a couple?

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  My big question is, and I'm sure this is where you're going, is, is this fraud?

• 1:09:36Speaker 05

  Right. Yes, that was definitely one of my, one of my big questions. The, is this on the edge of being fraudulent? And, you know, because I don't know, the chances of this playing out the way that they are describing, I think approach is implausible. To say that UFOs and UAP's disclosures by governments will amount to anything more than simply the declassification of classified information, right? Just telling you what they know and what they have. And saying that you're going to discern, you're going to be able to discern technological information as a result of that, that is reckless at best, at best. What, this data is going to include blueprints of alien ships or the specs of a propulsion

• 1:10:19Speaker 05

  system that, you know, has been conceived by otherworldly beings? Or what, medical, medical devices that the aliens supposedly use on the people that they've abducted over the years? This is science fiction and it is fantasy.

• 1:10:32Cara Santa Maria?

  But does it matter if they believe it for fraud?

• 1:10:35Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:10:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, it has to be intentional, right? Hard to prove.

• 1:10:41Speaker 05

  Hard to prove, it would be, but I don't know that you couldn't make a case for it.

• 1:10:45Cara Santa Maria?

  That any reasonable person would know that, yeah.

• 1:10:50Speaker 05

  What you're doing is you're, you're, you're drawing in potential investors here who are, who do not have a certain level of either sophistication or experience in these kinds of investments. It's one thing if you're, if, if you know about the, if you know how to invest and you decide that you want to take a chance or a risk on this based on the fundamentals of the companies that are involved in the ETF, that's one thing. However, you're going to have a whole groups of people who are going to just see US, UFO and reverse alien engineered tech, and that's going to be it for them. That will be the entire basis on which they're going to want to throw their money in there. And I think you are miss, to a certain degree, misleading people with the, with these promises

• 1:11:29Speaker 05

  that frankly have so little chance of ever material, of materializing based on what they're telling.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  It's complicated though, because the companies sound legit.

• 1:11:39Speaker 05

  They are legit.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  It's just like aerospace companies or technology companies and they may do fine. You know, I mean, the investment may not necessarily be a money loser. But the hook is, these are the companies that are going to benefit from reverse engineering alien technology and we're going to short companies whose products are going to be rendered obsolete by reverse engineering.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Alien technology and the whole concept is, I think it goes beyond speculative. As you're saying, there's, and I, there's speculation and then there's science fiction. Right. There's fantasy.

• 1:12:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  This is just really made up nonsense. This is the kind of thing I could see a judge going either way on it. If it came before then.

• 1:12:18Cara Santa Maria?

  It's so sad.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  But the other question, I, and this is something I just don't know. Like if you fully disclose, it's like, hey, if you want to invest in reverse engineering alien technology, these would be the companies you would invest in. We could make that happen for you if you want, if that's something you want to do. You know what I mean? Not making any specific claims, just saying, this is what it is. That might not be fraudulent, maybe scummy, you know? It may not be a good investing idea, but it may not be fraud. I don't know. It's complicated.

• 1:12:49Speaker 05

  It's, in a way, it's also a slap to these companies that, that will be ultimately invested in, you know? You're kind of, you're, you're kind of slapping this UFO label on them that, that they don't deserve, they didn't ask for. And they're not, they're not individually promoting their companies as having anything to do with, with these things. It's sort of a stain upon them, if you ask me. And I don't, I don't even know if these companies really, how they, how they would feel about it. I suppose bottom line is bottom line and dollars are dollars. So that ultimately rules the day. But I don't know, would you, I wouldn't want the taint of this kind of stuff on my company.

• 1:13:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, does an individual company have any legal recourse for what funds they're included in?

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  I mean, if they're traded on the, on the stock market, anybody could put together any collection, you know, of openly traded stocks they want, call it whatever. And there you go, you know?

• 1:13:37Cara Santa Maria?

  But if you were trading, let's say, healthcare stocks and then you made claims about the companies that were fraudulent claims about the companies without their knowledge.

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  That's, yeah, if you're making fraudulent claims, then that's fraud, right? But if you can, you can do this without making claims.

• 1:13:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  Just saying, this is sort of the theme of these stocks and

• 1:13:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  invest at your own risk. We're not making any claims. We're just making it available for anybody who wants it. You know, that's the kind of coy way of doing it.

• 1:14:08Speaker 05

  It is very coy. It's very, it's very slick. And the number of assumptions here they're they're making in their in these kinds of statements, you know, when they're talking, that's that's really astounding, you know, UFOs are real intelligent beings that brought their technology to earth, you know, government has captured and retrieved distinctly otherworldly technology. That's a lot to to have to choke down and and, you know, swallow without, you know, without regurgitating or getting sick by it. Yeah.

• 1:14:35Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:14:36Jay Novella?

  But I've seen, you know, decisions where judges basically determine that some entity, some person, whatever, is a quote unquote menace to the investing public. You know, they may decide that that's what this represents, even if it's not outright fraud. I don't know.

• 1:14:52Speaker 05

  The S and and before we close, the SEC has granted permission and approved applications of funds that do have similar sorts of names to them. In other words, there's one called UFO Procure Space ETF. That's been approved. However, they're not making claims that about the alien technology and disclose and government disclosures and that things are being repressed. It's simply a basket, a basket of companies in this particular and they just, you know, their aerospace and other things. They just happen to call it, you know, UFO. Something like that is much, much easier to to accept than than what this other ETF is trying to do.

• 1:15:29Jay Novella?

  All right. Thanks, Evan. Jay, it's who's that noisy time? All right, guys. Last week I played this noisy.

• 1:15:48Speaker 05

  That is two goo geese arguing back and forth, one saying, yes, I am. The other saying, no, I'm not. Yes, I am. No, I'm not. Yes, I am. No, I'm not.

• 1:15:58Jay Novella?

  So listener named Johann Lund said, Hello, Jay. It sounds like someone is trying to turn off a big old rusty tap. Thank you and the rest of of the SGU rogues for everything that you do. So, you know, I, when I read this guess, I'm like, what? I don't see it. And then as I listen to it, I totally hear it. So I get I get why you picked that. It's not correct, but that was a fun guess. Anthony Kelly wrote in, "Hey there, I think it's ice or dry ice falling down some kind of pipe or shaft." I've heard ice do that. I haven't heard it make that kind of noise. I've heard it make like a, like, it has like a very aluminum type of sound. I can't think of a better way to describe it. At my home, when like the ice falls down, uh, in, you know, in the, uh, what do you

• 1:16:42Jay Novella?

  call it? The downspouts, they, it doesn't, it doesn't have like a high pitched thing. It's like a rattly kind of noise. But thank you for the guess. Another listener named Adam Price said, "My six-year-old son, Sam says, 'Robot monkeys at the zoo.'" That is probably one of the best guesses we've had all year. Now that Sam says that, I want to see these monkeys right now. Another listener named Darren Hawley wrote in, "I'm pretty sure that's a sandhill crane, probably recorded at a zoo based on the resonant sound." That is not correct, but you are moving in the right direction. I have a close guess here. Michael Blaney wrote in, "Hi, Jay. It almost sounds like two birds having a rap battle. Definitely seems like people in the background. So I'm,

• 1:17:27Jay Novella?

  I'm guessing, uh, just two birds answering each other at some kind of bird park." That's a very good, close guess. Not correct, but very good. The winner for this week is Bob Whiteman, and Bob wrote, "This week's noisy is a couple of flamingos talking with each other. My daughter Eleanor11 and Madeline9 recognize this immediately from our many visits to the San Francisco Zoo."

• 1:17:48Speaker 05

  There you go. See, I said the same, basically the same thing. Two birds having it out.

• 1:17:51Jay Novella?

  So these, these are actually two flamingos at the Key West Butterfly Sanctuary. They're called Rhett and Scarlett, right? Guess where that's from? And, um, apparently they were talking about something that we can't comprehend.

• 1:18:06Cara Santa Maria?

  They both made the same.

• 1:18:10Speaker 05

  We both said it.

• 1:18:11Jay Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:18:12Speaker 05

  You'll hear it, isn't it?

• 1:18:14Jay Novella?

  You heard it again.

• 1:18:24Jay Novella?

  Yeah, that's an argument, I guess. Alright, guys, I have a new noisy for you this week. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Aaron Johnson.

• 1:18:34Speaker 07

  [Inaudible] Today we have to the border in Afghanistan, near Hamter, the Afghani OCC border area. We have to the rugged longer bearing, out during the people 35, one to the Balkan.

• 1:18:47Jay Novella?

  Whoa. The hell, man?

• 1:18:50Speaker 05

  Something's not quite right there.

• 1:18:53Jay Novella?

  If you guys think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, you gotta email me at [email protected]. Steve, we've had several people become patrons in the last few weeks with our request for people to please seriously consider becoming a patron now because Steve is coming to the STU full-time, and we really could use your support to help make this a smooth transition and to get us into creating the new content that we've been working on. I'm hoping like within a month, we're going to be able to tell you guys what we have planned. I'm very excited about it. I mean, it's going to be a very different phase for the STU when Steve does this because we're going to really,

• 1:19:36Jay Novella?

  we're going to create a lot more content. So if you want to support us, please consider it because we really could use the support at this time. If you also would like to know everything that the STU does, you could join our mailing list. Just go to theskepticsguy.org. You can sign up there. We give you an email about everything that we've done the previous week. You can also give our show a rating on whatever podcast player you're using. We have Nauticon 2025. We have tickets to purchase to come to this conference, spend a lot of time with some great people. There's lots of socializing. We have a lot of things to entertain everyone. And of course, we're in the wonderful city of White Plains, New York,

• 1:20:17Jay Novella?

  not far from New York City, pretty far from Boston, so you won't be going there. But we had a wonderful time last time. I'm really hoping that you guys consider coming. It's going to be a great show. You can go to nauticoncon.com for more information.

• 1:20:33Speaker 05

  Thank you, Jay.

• 1:20:35Speaker 02

  Evan, you have a science quiz for us this week.

• 1:20:37Speaker 05

  I do have a science quiz for you. I had actually prepared this a little while ago, you know, closer to the beginning of the year, but we're only getting around to it now. So there's a particular theme to this quiz and it has to do with, well, years. Years is the main theme that runs through this. So.

• 1:20:58Bob Novella?

  Years or years?

• 1:20:59Speaker 05

  Y E A R S. Years. So first of all, I'd like to wish you all a happy new year. Oh, wait, that's an old note. When is it too late to wish someone a happy new year?

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  I'd say like mid, mid, mid-January.

• 1:21:13Bob Novella?

  Yeah, January, yeah.

• 1:21:14Speaker 05

  Even, even if your first interaction with that person isn't until, say, the first week of February.

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, February is definitely past the due date on that. Yeah.

• 1:21:21Speaker 05

  All right.

• 1:21:22Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but yeah, then that's when you say something like, so how's your new year going?

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:21:26Speaker 05

  I see. Yes.

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  It's like, how, how late in the day can you say to somebody, have a good day or have a nice day?

• 1:21:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, when does it switch to good evening? Yeah.

• 1:21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. But when you have to switch at some point, good evening is obvious or, you know, but like if it's two in the afternoon.

• 1:21:44Speaker 05

  Good afternoon.

• 1:21:45Speaker 02

  But you're saying like, not as a greeting, as like, more like when you're leaving, like have a nice day.

• 1:21:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you say like, have a good rest of your day.

• 1:21:51Speaker 02

  Have a good rest of the day. At some point you switch over to have a good rest of the day. When does that happen?

• 1:21:57Speaker 05

  There's no official, it's whatever you feel like, I suppose. Yeah, no, no rhyme or reason. Go, go with your gut. So, good morning, everyone. And here's.

• 1:22:09Speaker 05

  Okay, I've got five questions for you. They are science questions. And again, the theme is years. Let's dig right into it. Question number one. In what year did the first direct observation of gravitational waves take place?

• 1:22:27Speaker 05

  And it's multiple choice, so I'm going to give you the choices. Was it A, 2015, B, 2017, or C, 2019? We drew random lots backstage, which we actually didn't do. I did it myself and I came up with J. You'll give us your answer first.

• 1:22:49Jay Novella?

  15.

• 1:22:50Speaker 05

  Okay, Kara?

• 1:22:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I feel like I've lost a lot of time because of COVID, but I do think it was probably a decade ago now. So I'm going to say 15.

• 1:22:59Speaker 05

  Steve?

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was thinking 15 as well.

• 1:23:02Speaker 05

  And Bob?

• 1:23:03Bob Novella?

  That's so funny. You guys think it's 2015? Well, it is.

• 1:23:09Speaker 05

  Which is why Bob went last on this category because you are all correct. 2015.

• 1:23:13Bob Novella?

  Kind of pissed you all got it right.

• 1:23:15Speaker 05

  The first direct observation of gravitational waves was made in September 2015, when a signal generated by the merger of two black holes was received by the LIGO Gravitational Wave Detectors in Livingston, Louisiana and in Hanford, Washington.

• 1:23:30Bob Novella?

  What a day that was.

• 1:23:31Speaker 05

  Bob, I know, it was a big deal for you.

• 1:23:33Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it was big, big for all of astronomy. Astrophysics is immense. A new, brand new window into space. It's like, damn, multi-message astronomy. Hello?

• 1:23:43Speaker 05

  I am so happy you're all off to a great start. Let's move on to the second question. Who is credited with having discovered the nucleus of an atom? Hmm, was it, and it's a multiple choice, A, B, C. A, 1897 by J.J. Thompson, B, 1911 by Ernest Rutherford, or C, 1932 by Werner Heisenberg? And we will start with Kara.

• 1:24:15Cara Santa Maria?

  I think I remember Rutherford. The date, I don't remember at all, so I'm going to just go with my gut and say it was Rutherford.

• 1:24:21Speaker 05

  Rutherford, 1911, says Kara. Steve?

• 1:24:24Speaker 02

  Ernest.

• 1:24:25Speaker 05

  Ernest Rutherford? You sound pretty confident there.

• 1:24:28Cara Santa Maria?

  That's good.

• 1:24:29Speaker 05

  Bob, how about you?

• 1:24:31Bob Novella?

  I believe he liked calling himself Ernie a lot of people.

• 1:24:34Speaker 05

  To his friends. Jay, how about you?

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm going to go with Steve.

• 1:24:41Cara Santa Maria?

  You mean Kara? The fuck?

• 1:24:45Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go with Kara, of course.

• 1:24:47Bob Novella?

  The Rutherford atom.

• 1:24:49Speaker 05

  So Jay, you're changing your answer to go with Kara instead of Steve. Is that correct?

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  Yes, please.

• 1:24:54Speaker 05

  Everybody is correct. 1911, Ernest Rutherford. Yep. I'll give you a little background on the others through, uh, J.J. Thompson, 1897. Through his experiments with cathode ray tubes in 1897, J.J. Thompson's findings proved that atoms are not indivisible and contain even smaller particles like electrons. So nope, not the, not discovering the nucleus. Uh, Heisenberg, 1932, developed a model for a nucleus composed of protons and neutrons. But no, in 1911, it was Rutherford and his experiment involved firing alpha particles at a thin sheet of gold foil, observing that most particles passed through, but a small number were deflected at large angles, leading him to conclude that the positive charge of

• 1:25:38Speaker 05

  an atom is concentrated in a tiny, dense center called the nucleus.

• 1:25:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Some previous, some other theories. What was it? The, uh, the nuclear pudding model?

• 1:25:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, the pudding.

• 1:25:50Speaker 05

  Oh, interesting. I hadn't heard that in a long time.

• 1:25:53Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, the electrons were embedded in a more of a diffuse positive pudding. But yeah, he proved it was all at the metal, all at the center.

• 1:26:01Bob Novella?

  Big, that was big, man. I was like, whoa.

• 1:26:03Speaker 05

  Very cool.

• 1:26:04Bob Novella?

  That's a new layer of the onion.

• 1:26:06Speaker 05

  Third question for you. Great job so far, guys. Number three. Which one of these journal articles do not belong to Albert Einstein? Is it A, 1902, on X-rays? Was it B, 1905, on a heuristic point of view concerning the production and transformation of light? Or is it C, 1915, the field equations of gravitation? And Steve, we'll begin with you.

• 1:26:37Speaker 02

  X-rays.

• 1:26:38Speaker 05

  Moving on to Bob.

• 1:26:40Bob Novella?

  Yeah, X-rays just leap out. I believe it was Renkin who discovered them.

• 1:26:45Speaker 05

  Jay?

• 1:26:46Speaker 02

  Goddamn, I don't know.

• 1:26:48Speaker 05

  X-rays, 1902. Transformation of light, 1905. Field equations of gravitation, 1915.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  1915.

• 1:26:57Speaker 05

  Okay. And Kara?

• 1:27:01Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm going to go with the guys and say X-rays.

• 1:27:03Speaker 05

  If anyone said B, 1905, transformation of light, you'd be incorrect. It is in fact the X-rays one, 1902 on X-rays. That journal article did not belong to Albert Einstein. The other two were his. But for a bonus point, who did in 1902 write the journal article on X-rays?

• 1:27:23Bob Novella?

  Was it Renkin?

• 1:27:24Speaker 05

  Nope, nope.

• 1:27:26Bob Novella?

  No, huh?

• 1:27:27Speaker 02

  Uh, let's see, who else might have done it? It wasn't like Marie Curie.

• 1:27:30Speaker 05

  Yes, Marie Curie.

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:27:31Bob Novella?

  Really nice. She was awesome. My God.

• 1:27:36Speaker 05

  All right, moving on, the fourth question. Ivan Pavlov's dog experiment is a classic study in psychology that demonstrated the concept of classical conditioning, which posits that behaviors can be learned through the association of different stimuli. Pavlov's dog experiment was published in what year? Was it A, 1897? B, 1910? Or C, 1922? And Bob, you'll start.

• 1:28:05Bob Novella?

  Let's go with 1910. I don't know.

• 1:28:08Speaker 05

  Jay?

• 1:28:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, 1910.

• 1:28:10Speaker 05

  Kara?

• 1:28:12Cara Santa Maria?

  1897.

• 1:28:14Speaker 05

  And Steve?

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  Hmm. I was gonna say 1922, but Kara's guess bothers me.

• 1:28:22Speaker 05

  See what you do to us every week.

• 1:28:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Welcome to our world.

• 1:28:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:28:27Speaker 02

  I'll stick with my original guess and say 1922.

• 1:28:29Speaker 05

  All right, 1922. The year in fact was 1897. Kara?

• 1:28:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Who's studying for her licensing exam?

• 1:28:37Bob Novella?

  I know, it probably gave me pause.

• 1:28:41Bob Novella?

  Oh, God, I was so close to picking that. I don't know why.

• 1:28:44Cara Santa Maria?

  A long time ago.

• 1:28:45Speaker 05

  What did we learn? Yes.

• 1:28:49Bob Novella?

  Good job.

• 1:28:49Speaker 05

  Kara, you've gotten everyone correct, okay? So there's no pressure on you to get this last one correct. Number five, the last one. Louis Pasteur published his germ theory in 1861. What was considered the main prevailing theory of disease at the time that germ theory of disease was published? Was it A, spontaneous generation theory? Was it B, miasma theory?

• 1:29:21Speaker 05

  Or was it C, the humors theory? And we will start with Jay.

• 1:29:27Speaker 02

  I think it was the The humors.

• 1:29:29Speaker 05

  Okay, Kara.

• 1:29:31Cara Santa Maria?

  I tried to answer it in my head before you gave the options and in my head I said my asthma. So I'm just gonna stick with that. But like my time.

• 1:29:40Speaker 05

  It's an uncomfortable feeling. Steve, what do you think?

• 1:29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I also thought my asthma before the choices came. I mean, all of those things were in play in the 1800s. But I think specifically for infections, it was my asthma.

• 1:29:54Speaker 05

  And Bob.

• 1:29:55Bob Novella?

  Yeah, absolutely. My asthma.

• 1:29:57Speaker 05

  The correct answer is my asthma theory. Well done, Kara. You swept the entire.

• 1:30:04Cara Santa Maria?

  What do I win?

• 1:30:05Speaker 05

  Perfect. Well, I mean, the accolades and the prestige and.

• 1:30:11Cara Santa Maria?

  I'll take it.

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  The admiration of your fellow rogues.

• 1:30:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes, thank you.

• 1:30:15Bob Novella?

  Like she didn't have it before.

• 1:30:17Speaker 05

  All right, so my asthma theory. This theory prevalent before the germ theory believed diseases spread through bad air or noxious vapors from decaying matter, leading to practices like poor sanitation being linked to disease, but not understanding the actual microbial cause. The other two, there was spontaneous generation theory, which I really wasn't all that familiar with. This theory now discredited.

• 1:30:41Bob Novella?

  Life.

• 1:30:42Speaker 05

  You know it? Yeah, proposed that living organisms could arise from nonliving matter like maggots appearing on decaying meat. No, you would remember that, Bob. And of course, the humorous theory, Jay, which I would have, which I think I would have also guessed if this was posited to me. So I would be with you there, Jay, humorous theory. That passed out of favor, actually, in the 1600s, but it was based on the belief that the human body was composed of four humors, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. So there you have it. A science quiz. The theme is years and I hope you enjoyed it.

• 1:31:13Speaker 02

  Thank you, Evan.

• 1:31:14Speaker 05

  You're welcome.

• 1:31:15Speaker 02

  Quick email. This email comes from Big Woller, who says he's from Menlo Park, California, SETI Institute, NASA Ames Research Center.

• 1:31:24Speaker 05

  Anyone can claim that.

• 1:31:25Speaker 02

  And Bill writes, among other things, one of the items of last week's Science or Fiction was space junk. Just before I heard that, I read that four to five Starlink satellites deorbit every day. That's nuts. I hope they are deorbited purposefully. And he gives a link. So I checked it out and it seems that that claim is correct. That seems to be the case.

• 1:31:50Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  Four to five deorbits. At least recently, that hasn't been at that level for too long, but. That's the plan, right? But going forward, that probably, yeah, that, so this is, this is, the older satellites are now de-orbiting and being replaced by newer ones. There have been 500 de-orbits so far of Starlink satellites. Of course, there are thousands in orbit. So I think the goal is to, what, to get up to 20,000?

• 1:32:22Cara Santa Maria?

  How big are they?

• 1:32:23Bob Novella?

  Fifty, 50,000 by 2030.

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  50,000 by 2030.

• 1:32:26Bob Novella?

  More, additional 50,000.

• 1:32:28Speaker 05

  Are they the size of a bus, or a little smaller?

• 1:32:31Speaker 02

  They are, well, I know how much they weigh. 30 kilograms. Each Starlink satellite produces about 30 kilograms of aluminum oxide when they, when they de-orbit. So they must weigh more than that. Although, yeah, it's combining with oxygen, so that might be adding weight to it, but.

• 1:32:48Cara Santa Maria?

  And they're burning up on the way in?

• 1:32:49Speaker 02

  They're burning up. Yeah, they burn up entirely in the atmosphere. So the concern is that as each one enters the atmosphere, it's, the, the, it's producing this waste product, like aluminum oxide, which could eat away at the ozone layer. So there was a recent study which found that there's, there has been an eightfold increase in these compounds between 2016 and 2022. And this is going to increase significantly, you know, as more and more of these satellites de-orbit. So this is a, this is a new paradigm, right? This is not just, you know, sending up satellites. This is sending up tens of thousands of satellites on a, on a rotational basis, right? That, with, that are going to have to be replaced on a regular interval. Five of these are

• 1:33:34Speaker 02

  de-orbiting every day. So that is going to be putting a, a large amount of aluminum oxide and other substances into the atmosphere. This has been characterized by one NOAA scientist as a, as an experiment in atmospheric chemistry.

• 1:33:52Speaker 05

  So fun. So does that mean we have to launch things into the atmosphere to compensate? Or is that not going to work?

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  Well, I think we have to think about what these satellites are made of. And, you know, what the full life cycle of them is, you know, what happens at the end of their life cycle.

• 1:34:08Bob Novella?

  Yeah, the key is we need to study this to see, you know, what, you know, what it could be doing to the chemistry of the upper atmosphere. And what a huge increase in the next five years could potentially mean. And that's, yeah, that's seems like common sense, but, you know, common sense is in short supply these days.

• 1:34:25Speaker 05

  So it erodes ozone.

• 1:34:28Speaker 02

  It can eat away at the ozone. Yeah. Well, that's the concern now, maybe does other stuff too. I mean, again, it needs to be.

• 1:34:34Bob Novella?

  Cloud formations could be impacted potentially at the end things, of course, that we have no idea. Well, you know, what could happen unless we take a deeper look.

• 1:34:44Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:34:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, it's worth definitely worth more, more investigation.

• 1:34:48Speaker 02

  But it's not, but nothing is pausing while it's being investigated.

• 1:34:51Bob Novella?

  Right, I know.

• 1:34:52Speaker 05

  It's full steam ahead, yeah.

• 1:34:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right, guys, let's go on with science or fiction.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  It's time for science or fiction.

• 1:35:11Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items, one facts, two real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Are you guys just regular news items this week? You guys ready?

• 1:35:23Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:23Speaker 05

  Ready.

• 1:35:24Speaker 02

  All right, here we go. Item number one, biologists have engineered a bacteria that can continuously deliver drugs into the intestine and demonstrated its effectiveness in treating chronic inflammation and obesity. All right, number two, in a recent study, adults were able to learn absolute pitch after eight weeks of training to a greater than 90% accuracy. And our number three astronomers announced the detection of a super high energy cosmogenic neutrino that is the most energetic elementary particle ever detected at 120 peta electron volts.

• 1:36:02Bob Novella?

  Oh, baby, that's a lot of volts.

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  Bob, is I hearing you volunteer to go first?

• 1:36:07Bob Novella?

  Fuck.

• 1:36:09Bob Novella?

  As I said, I was like, no, pull the words back. All right. Continuous delivery of drugs um into the intestine. Continuous. How do we interpret that? Does that mean that it's creating the drug itself? And that it will continue to deliver that drug as long as it's alive?

• 1:36:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically. Yep.

• 1:36:27Bob Novella?

  That's um, poof. That's pretty intense. But then, then when you listed the other two, they seemed even less likely. Let's see. Absolute pitch. My understanding is that absolute pitch was something that it's kind of, kind of innate, and not necessarily trainable, especially by such a high percentage. Uh, but who knows? The one that's getting me, though, is this um, super high energy, cosmogenic. The hell, cosmogenic. Neutrino. Super high energy. Cosm. I mean, they found a new neutrino? Is it, or was it just a regular neutrino that was much higher energy? I mean, these guys, these neutrinos don't pack much of a wild. I mean, they don't

• 1:37:11Bob Novella?

  interact hardly at all with anything. They're, they can go through light year, literally, light years of lead before interacting with anything. Yeah. So I'll say neutrinos fiction.

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  Okay, Jay.

• 1:37:25Jay Novella?

  Okay, the first one, uh, bi- biologist that engineered the bacteria to continuously deliver drugs. I think that one is science. I don't think that, uh, they worked out all the kinks yet, but I, I mean, bacteria are amazing factories that can make lots of different chemicals. So I don't, I don't think there's any problem with that. All right. This one about the perfect pitch. I am highly sus- suspect of that. And I think the reason is, is because adults, um, you lose your ability to have perfect pitch, pitch as you get older. So I'm not too sure about that one. Uh, and this last one here, astronomers announced the detection of super high energy cosmogenic neutrino that is the most energetic. Yeah, I mean, the, the, the second one here definitely is the one I know the most about. And I, I

• 1:38:09Jay Novella?

  seriously don't think that, even with eight weeks of training, that you can get that, that high of an accuracy. No way.

• 1:38:16Speaker 02

  Okay, Kara.

• 1:38:17Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't like any of them. Bob, like, I'm struggling the way that you were. The la- the, the one about the neutrinos, I have no idea, but I was like, sure, sure. And then Bob was like, no, that's impossible. And that makes me uncomfortable. The perfect pitch, I'm assuming absolute pitch is the same as perfect pitch?

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:35Cara Santa Maria?

  This one really rubs me the wrong way, but that's why I think it might be science. Because it's like, oh, we all thought and look, we turned it on its ear. So I'm going to say that that one is science, but then the engineered bacteria that can just keep delivering drugs. What does that mean? It continuously delivers drugs?

• 1:38:53Speaker 02

  It can, yeah, it can, you know, deliver a steady dose of.

• 1:38:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, there we go. Okay, that's the important thing. Yeah, the steady dose. That bothers me a lot. I could see them dumping a bunch of drug, but they would have to be metabolizing the drug somehow in order for it to then be released at a steady dose, which I don't get. And bacteria are always multiplying. They have really short lives. So I don't know, that one really bothers me. I like, I've seen bacterial infusions to treat like C. diff. Ruhhh. And obesity, I don't know. I'm going to say that that one's the fiction, the drug one.

• 1:39:30Speaker 02

  Ooh, all spread out.

• 1:39:31Speaker 05

  Crumbs.

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  Up to you, Evan.

• 1:39:34Speaker 05

  Well, let me break this tie.

• 1:39:38Speaker 05

  Help. Kara.

• 1:39:41Cara Santa Maria?

  None of us did.

• 1:39:41Speaker 05

  Kara, you made excellent. I, I, I was saying, oh, the, the bacteria one sounds, yeah, that's good science. It's cool. And, but then you said the things you said, and I'm like, oh, crumbs now, I don't know. Um, but, you know, just that they engineered the bacteria to deliver the drug. I mean, what we're talking about, it doesn't matter if it's in a mouse versus a person. You know, I mean, at what, at what stage is this? The fact that you engineered this bacteria that can do it, I don't know if it necessarily means that there's a straight line to, you know, using this for people. It could, I don't know, more of like a proof of concept kind of thing? I don't know.

• 1:40:21Speaker 05

  The one about pitch, I, is the one I probably know the least about or have read the least about. I didn't know about this 90% threshold with pitch. So that's, yeah, just kind of new to me. But the neutrino one. I learned everything I needed to know about neutrinos from that documentary called 2012. Remember that movie? In which, you know, they discovered that neutrinos were actually interacting with the core of the earth and destabilizing everything. Oh my god. You know, it's like over the top insanity. So, uh, that was the one that I had initially pegged as the fiction. I didn't know that there was a range of different types of these neutrinos and stuff.

• 1:41:06Speaker 05

  So I think I'm gonna go with Bob. I'll say the neutrino is the fiction, but you know, I will not at all be surprised if Kara winds up being correct.

• 1:41:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Or Jay.

• 1:41:15Speaker 05

  Well, or Jay. Yeah, for that matter, right, because I know the least, I've heard the least about that one.

• 1:41:21Speaker 02

  So yeah, it's interesting, you guys all went with the field that you know the most about.

• 1:41:26Speaker 05

  Well, you know, at least some familiar.

• 1:41:28Speaker 02

  All right, well, I guess we should take them in order since you guys are all spread out. Biologists have engineered a bacteria that can continuously deliver drugs into the intestine and demonstrated its effectiveness in treating chronic inflammation and obesity. Kara, you think this one is a fiction. The boys think this one is science. And this one is science. Sorry Kara.

• 1:41:49Speaker 05

  Amazing.

• 1:41:50Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so they used, they used a bacteria phage to do the genetic engineering of different kinds of gut bacteria that already live in the gut. And they engineered them to produce protein-based drugs. So they're producing the drug, they're not just releasing it. They're, they're, it's protein-based, right? And this was a study in mice, it was not in humans. And, and they showed clinical improvement in both chronic inflammation and obesity. So that this definitely has potential. You engineer your gut bacteria to produce your protein-based drugs. Problem with protein-based drugs is that it's hard to get them past the stomach, you know, because the stomach has enzymes and, you know, the duodenum, the upper part of

• 1:42:32Speaker 02

  the, of the gut that's meant to digest proteins. So they get digested, but if you have the lower part of the gut, you're already past that point. And so enough of the, of the protein can get absorbed. So it's just another delivery system for protein-based drugs rather than having to get an injection or an infusion. And this also, yeah, just get your one, you know, one dose of bacteria and it will last for a while, right? They'll just continuously release the drug that you need. So this could develop into another drug delivery system. Very cool. Let's go to number two. In a recent study, adults were able to learn absolute pitch after eight weeks of training to a greater than 90% accuracy. Jay, you think this one

• 1:43:14Speaker 02

  is a fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. Perhaps the key word here is "adults." Is that the key word?

• 1:43:23Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 1:43:24Speaker 02

  Jay, was that what you were keyed in on?

• 1:43:27Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so, young people have a much higher ability and chance to learn this skill. But as your hearing degrades as you get older, I also think that your brain changes to the point where you can't sense perfect pitch anymore.

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  That's what they used to think, until this study. This one is science. This was surprising. So they were testing that assumption that you'd lose the ability, that it's basically mostly genetic and innate, and that you especially lose it as older, as you get older. So they specifically tested this in adults, and this was just an online training exercise over, you know, the eight-week period, but it was fairly intense. It was 24 hours of training on average, and the adult subjects were able to learn how to identify the absolute pitch greater than 90% accuracy, which kind of turns the prior beliefs on its head, as Kara

• 1:44:26Speaker 02

  was saying. Pretty cool. It's good to know. But this kind of fits generally with cognitive research that with enough training, most people could learn anything. It's only a matter of how much training, not if you could learn it. You know what I mean? Anything learnable, you could do it if you put enough hours into it. Which means astronomers announced the detection of a super-high-energy cosmogenic neutrino that is the most energetic elementary particle ever detected at 120 peta-electron volts is the fiction, but there's only one little part of this that's the fiction. What do you think that little part is?

• 1:45:02Bob Novella?

  It's the energy.

• 1:45:03Speaker 05

  It's not a neutrino.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  What do you mean? The number?

• 1:45:06Bob Novella?

  The 120, yeah, because I think the highest cosmic ray energy is higher than 120.

• 1:45:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the 120 is correct. So the only thing that's fiction is it's not the most energetic elementary particle ever detected.

• 1:45:20Bob Novella?

  Ah.

• 1:45:20Speaker 02

  So they did detect the highest energy neutrino. They think it may be a cosmogenic. They're not sure. They need more research to know if it's cosmogenic.

• 1:45:29Bob Novella?

  How are they defining cosmogenic?

• 1:45:30Speaker 02

  Basically, it's generated by cosmic rays, by interactions with cosmic rays. So the question is...

• 1:45:36Bob Novella?

  That makes sense.

• 1:45:37Speaker 02

  Is it high ener... is it produced as a super high energy neutrino because it's coming from like a supermassive black hole? Or is it given that high energy because it's interacting with the cosmic ray? So they don't know because they only have one, they only detected one. So we need to detect more of these so we could start to get some statistics on it, etc. And then they could figure out if it's, if it fits with the cosmogenic model or not.

• 1:46:01Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:02Speaker 02

  But, but it's not even close to being the most energetic particle ever detected, which was a cosmic ray.

• 1:46:09Bob Novella?

  Yeah. That's like, that little cosmic ray, which is like, I think, a proton, right? Essentially, a proton.

• 1:46:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:16Bob Novella?

  Hits you with the force of a, of a fastball.

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  So, so this neutrino was 120 peta electron volts, which is 20 times more energetic than the previously most energetic neutrino. But the most energetic particle cosmic ray was 320,000 peta electron volts. So basically more than a thousand times as...

• 1:46:44Bob Novella?

  Why the hell didn't they...

• 1:46:45Speaker 02

  As, as energetic.

• 1:46:46Bob Novella?

  That's weird.

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  And that particle, Bob, you know, was dubbed, it was dubbed...

• 1:46:50Bob Novella?

  The oh my god particle?

• 1:46:51Speaker 02

  The oh my god particle. Yeah.

• 1:46:53Bob Novella?

  (laughing)

• 1:46:54Speaker 02

  This is the oh my god particle.

• 1:46:55Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that, that thing is like...

• 1:46:57Speaker 05

  Duck particle. Duck!

• 1:46:59Bob Novella?

  That thing was intense. But Steve, I'm looking at an article here, recent article, that says the neutrino was 220 peta electron volts. It makes sense. I think it, it might be... Created by interaction with the cosmic ray because, um, I mean, we've detected neutrinos from supernova and they're, they're not anywhere near that. And since

• 1:47:17Speaker 02

  Also Bob, I think that the discrepancy, so the 120 pet electron volts was the energy of the muon that they actually detected, but they infer from that the energy of the neutrino that created the muon, that was probably the 220.

• 1:47:35Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:47:36Bob Novella?

  So they didn't even directly interact with the, with the neutrino. It was the muon.

• 1:47:39Speaker 02

  The muon that was produced by the neutrino interacting with the massive underground saltwater thing that they.

• 1:47:44Bob Novella?

  Cool, man.

• 1:47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:45Bob Novella?

  Wow. I didn't think neutrinos can get that energetic.

• 1:47:48Speaker 05

  You got all, you got all that, Kara?

• 1:47:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Sure.

• 1:47:53Speaker 02

  Trust us, Kara. It's cool. All right.

• 1:47:56Speaker 05

  And you're being bombarded by a bunch of these things. Trillions.

• 1:47:59Bob Novella?

  Not that powerful though, but yes.

• 1:48:00Speaker 05

  No, not that.

• 1:48:02Speaker 02

  Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:48:03Speaker 05

  One of the problems with anecdotes is that they tend to be provided by the satisfied customers, not the unsatisfied or dead ones. Written by Robert Carroll from the book Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed.

• 1:48:22Speaker 02

  The survivor bias.

• 1:48:23Speaker 05

  Yup.

• 1:48:24Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:48:24Speaker 05

  Yup.

• 1:48:25Speaker 02

  Dead men tell no tales.

• 1:48:28Speaker 05

  True as it ever was.

• 1:48:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Very important. That's one of the many reasons that anecdotal evidence is completely unreliable. I like what, so one of our other skeptical colleagues, Barry Bernstein, who unfortunately is no longer with us, summed it up really nicely. He said, anecdotes tell you what you want to be true, not what actually is true. That's true. The anecdotes are just full of confirmation bias. That they are confirmation bias machines.

• 1:48:56Speaker 05

  That was one of my very first lessons of skepticism back in the nineties.

• 1:49:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:00Speaker 05

  I'm like, boy, I never thought of that before. It was like eye opening.

• 1:49:04Speaker 02

  It's okay to use them to generate hypotheses, but not to test hypotheses, right? You can make an observation and go, hmm, I wonder what caused that. But you can't use just the fact that you happen to observe something or hear about something or whatever as evidence that something is true or not true. That's confirmation bias. All right. Thank you, Evan.

• 1:49:26Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  And thank you all for joining me this week.

• 1:49:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Thanks, Steve.

• 1:49:29Speaker 05

  Thanks, Doctor.

• 1:49:30Speaker 02

  And until next week, this is your skeptic's guide to the universe.

• 1:49:37Speaker 02

  Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to [email protected]. And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/skepticsguide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

• 1:50:14Speaker 02

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