The Skeptics Guide #1087 - May 9 2026

Interview with Philosopher David Kyle Johnson; Quickie with Bob: Exotic Matter; News Items: When Are Screening Tests Necessary, Dawkins Writes LLMs are Conscious, Iron Flow Batteries, Haunting with Friends; Who's That Noisy; 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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• 0:30Speaker 01

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

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, May 7, 2026, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody. Cara Santa Maria.

• 0:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:51Speaker 04

  Good afternoon, everyone.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  So this is the first episode after May 5, so this is technically our 21st anniversary.

• 1:00Speaker 04

  We've completed 21 years.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  Completed 21 years as the SGU.

• 1:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 1:04Speaker 04

  Wow, 21, lucky number for some people.

• 1:08Cara Santa Maria?

  I joined you guys in, what, 2015?

• 1:12Speaker 02

  11 years ago.

• 1:13Cara Santa Maria?

  11 years.

• 1:14Speaker 04

  My gosh, Cara, it doesn't...

• 1:16Cara Santa Maria?

  That's more than half then.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  More than half, yeah.

• 1:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 1:21Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  It must mean something.

• 1:24Speaker 04

  That's right. Let me ask my numerologist.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Cara, you know what I'm noticing, Cara? You have become, I think, as integrated as you can because you reject so much of what...

• 1:41Cara Santa Maria?

  I've reached my limit of nerd-dom with the show.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  But I mean that in a very positive way because you're doing things now I never thought you would do.

• 1:52Jay Novella?

  You get most of our, our things now. You get it.

• 1:54Cara Santa Maria?

  I do. And even the ones where I don't know the provenance are still funny to me.

• 1:58Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  You have been absorbed into the collective. You have discovered that resistance is futile.

• 2:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Part of the hive mind.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Part of the hive mind.

• 2:07Speaker 04

  That's right. One of five.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  We have added your distinctiveness to our own.

• 2:13Speaker 04

  Oh, we're all the better for that.

• 2:16Cara Santa Maria?

  What an honor.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  So guys, the other day I had, I got a new printer, right? Like I have to print something like once or twice a year, but you know, like when you need to print something, you need to print something.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Of course. Conventional, black and white.

• 2:30Bob Novella?

  Staples. Go to Staples.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  My 20 year old printer crap down. I was getting a new laser printer. So I got like the basic, basics printer only, no three in one, whatever. Just black and white, the simple, just to, whenever I need to print and sign something or whatever.

• 2:45Speaker 04

  Plug and play.

• 2:46Bob Novella?

  21 years. I mean, was that a dot matrix printer?

• 2:49Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 2:49Bob Novella?

  Wow.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  It was a good printer, just it was low, it was old. So no, having the opposite of plug and play, it took me an hour to install this printer.

• 2:57Bob Novella?

  No, we can't. Something's wrong. An hour. That's a, that's a total fail on their part.

• 3:02Jay Novella?

  With your hourly, with your hourly rate, you could have just bought a new one and not spent the hour that way.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  But here's the thing, I, it was, seriously, it had nothing to do with me. That was just the process. That was whatever the process was to install this printer. It's not like I was fumbling or making mistakes or couldn't figure out how to do anything. It's just, that's how long the whole thing took.

• 3:24Bob Novella?

  It went smoothly, but it was just torturously long.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  At first it's like, oh, install this app. And I thought, oh, that's great. Cause usually when you have an app, it walks you through it. I don't, you know, I don't, I try not to have an app for every single piece of technology in my life. But like, what the hell? I installed the app and then the, but that wasn't, that was just the beginning of this torturous process. And part of it was that like they, you have to enter the same information like five different times. Like there's a code.

• 3:51Bob Novella?

  Oh, man.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  There's a code on the printer, which I, by the end of the process, I memorized the freaking thing. But like, why am I entering this? Like every time I went to the next step, it's like. Enter the code that's here on the printer. It's like, why don't you remember from the last step? Why do I have to go, you know, look down and read that stupid number again? It was just maddening.

• 4:09Speaker 04

  Is this some kind of trade off for the price or something? Like you could have paid $500 more and avoided this?

• 4:15Speaker 02

  No, no, I think it's all part of the new way. This is just how things work. So then I finish, I get, I complete that process like, great, now you can print from your phone. If you want to print from your computer, you have to install a separate app on your computer. So then I basically had to go through the whole thing again on my computer. That's terrible.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  My gosh.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  But here, you know, and again, I try, I had this conversation with my wife. It's like, are we just getting old? Cause I don't want to be that old crotchety guy like these new fangled technology.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  I don't think that's what it is. I really honestly, I'm trying to be humble and, you know, unbiased here. I don't think that's what it is because it's not like I didn't understand anything. And, you know, we're, we're pretty much all above average computer users. I don't think that's it. Yeah, I was actually the quote unquote, super user in my department, you know, for computers. So it's not like I'm not tech savvy or I don't know how to be a, how to, you know, install freaking printer. But I, I honestly feel like there's so many different applications that are just not user friendly. And I think that a lot of tech companies are just no longer hiring user interface experts. There's, you know what I mean?

• 5:30Speaker 02

  They're just having engineers do it. And

• 5:34Speaker 04

  That's interesting.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  You know, like all of the principles, and again, I actually read a book on user interface principles, like in the 1990s. And, you know, I used a lot of this working as the liaison to the EMR, you know, people in my department, et cetera. So again, I've been at, doing this at a very high end at some point. And it just seems like everything I do, every piece of software I'm interfacing with, especially new ones, they like violate every law of a good user interface. Like, no one is thinking, what is the experience of the end user here?

• 6:15Speaker 04

  It must be, it must have to do with cost.

• 6:17Bob Novella?

  Yeah, they don't care. They, they must have done, you know, a bunch of test installs and they saw, well, this takes an hour for people that are, that are somewhat tech savvy and they just didn't care. They just did not care that it, they did it and they didn't care how long it took and how, how annoying it was. That's my takeaway.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  Or that they don't have to, like you said, Steve, I think hire the people maybe that they used to have to hire to make these products more user friendly?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Well, that's it. I know for a fact, you know, that the EMR that was installed at my hospital, that they would have had to spend $2 million to have user interface experts, you know, remake the user interface and they just chose not to. And it's, the user interface is horrible. The backend is great. It works. The user interface is terrible.

• 7:02Cara Santa Maria?

  And at my hospital, they, they did do that. And we actually have a whole team of people on our EIS who are experts in the actual technology.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:13Cara Santa Maria?

  It's like we were willing to train and pay our own people to run basically the EMR and update it all the time and fix it and everything. Yeah. Cause it's its own specialty.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's its own specialty. And so it, I do think that maybe the non-experts don't realize how bad they are. And companies are like, well, why do we need to spend all this money for something that seems superficial when in fact, it's often critical. It's, it is the actual experience of the end user.

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Is there a role for AI here to plug this hole?

• 7:46Speaker 02

  I don't know. Maybe, maybe if it, if it was trained properly, I would say, yeah, but. It could, but there's, isn't there like a big pushback by programmers against AI sort of doing their jobs for them, which I understand.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  It's not like they're replacing jobs. These people don't exist in the first place.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Well, they exist. They're just not being used properly. There's a whole, there's a whole subspecialty among programmers that are, their expertise is the user interface. They're just not being utilized consistently.

• 8:10Jay Novella?

  You know, it's hard to, when you think of all the apps that we use and all the different interfaces and everything, I mean, it's not easy making good user interfaces, even though, you know, there's a lot of examples of really good interfaces. And also, there was a book, I think it came out in the late 90s, maybe, you know, early aughts, it was called Don't Make Me Think.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  That's the book I'm talking about, Jay. Yeah, it was a late 90s. Don't Make Me Think. Absolutely, we probably, we read the same book, probably gave it to each other. But, yeah, that's one of the rules of a good user interface. Don't make me think. Get out of my way, do what I need to do, don't make me think, and cater to the 99%, not the 1%. Like, the 99% use case, you should make that as easy as possible. There was something, when we were programming our EMR, the old one, not the one that's currently used by my department, that, those were all principles, including, there was a, there was a specific analysis called click minimization. How many clicks does it take to get from A to B?

• 9:15Bob Novella?

  Center of Tootsie World.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  And how can we minimize the number of clicks it takes you to complete a task? That is pure user interface. Like, how difficult is it to accomplish your task? And then in the next EMR, it went backwards. It was like, really hard to accomplish basic things you do 30, 40 times a day, completely unnecessarily.

• 9:39Bob Novella?

  Steve, I wonder if, I wonder if the printer you got was more, one of their lower-end brands and they?

• 9:45Speaker 02

  No, it wasn't.

• 9:46Bob Novella?

  Okay.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  It was a good printer, it was a good solid printer, it was the highest rated for the, what I wanted.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  But no frills.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  But no frills, right, because I didn't want, I didn't want a scanner, I didn't want, whatever. But, you know, they pretty much all come with Wi-Fi now, so they are more complicated than the printers we had previously, but that's, it's not a frill now, it's basically a core functionality.

• 10:06Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah, it doesn't have Wi-Fi. Who the hell would even buy that?

• 10:10Jay Novella?

  Guys, there are billion dollar industries.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  But that's part of it. You gotta get on your network and you gotta give it whatever. You gotta add stuff.

• 10:15Jay Novella?

  You know, we have billion dollar industries like, you know, the healthcare industry whose websites are arguably some of the worst I've ever seen. That is, that is just utter neglect. They have plenty of disposable cash to fix it, but they don't, they don't care.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  I think users have been lulled into thinking this is what it's like. And we don't demand better interfaces, you know? That's why like I told you, I got a new EV and like a couple of weeks afterwards, the company called me, "Oh, there's a courtesy call. See how you're liking the new vehicle? How do you like everything?" I said, I spent an hour complaining to them about the user interface. And not that it's not that bad, it's fine, but it's like, it's clearly they didn't put it through a user interface expert to optimize it. You know, like they made so many mistakes and there are parts of it that are really good, but like there's so many things they could make better that are just basic, basic things. Like, you know, you need to have this information in a font that I can read

• 11:13Speaker 02

  without my reading glasses, you know?

• 11:16Jay Novella?

  Without my glasses?

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Without, because you can't wear reading glasses when you're driving. So if you put anything in a font that's too small to read without your reading glasses, it's worthless. It's worthless as part of an EV interface for anybody over 50, you know?

• 11:32Bob Novella?

  Yeah, they designed the car for 20-somethings that, you know?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Or they don't let you change the font size. Let me change my freaking font size. How hard is that?

• 11:41Speaker 04

  You complained for an hour, they hung up five minutes into the call.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  No, no, it was an interactive discussion. Yeah, believe me.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  Okay, at least there was that. At least they stuck around.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  You know, I was very constructive. Or it's they, they also fall prey to another really big problem.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  They haven't called you back since.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Which is too much information.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  TMI, absolutely.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Why is all this shit on my screen when I need three pieces of data? Get all this stuff out of my way, you know, tuck it away in a dropdown menu or something or whatever, under a folder, but it shouldn't be cluttering.

• 12:16Speaker 04

  Editing software does that.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  The EMR at work did that too. There was, it was so cluttered with stuff that you rarely, if ever, and sometimes never used, that could easily have been tucked away somewhere. Again, this is this, they sorted all this crap out in the 90s. This is 30-year-old information. They're just ignoring it. It's so frustrating.

• 12:36Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I'm with you.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  I just had to complain. All right.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  SGU complaints department. I like this.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Bob, start us off with a quickie.

• 12:45Bob Novella?

  Thank you, Steve. This is your quickie with Bob. So I saw this news item titled from Science Daily. Scientists just created exotic new forms of matter that shouldn't exist. It really just pissed me off. No, they did not create impossible matter in a lab, but oh, well, the headline still caught my attention and I clicked it. So I guess they achieved their goal. The actual science behind it is fascinating. So research, guys, researchers have shown that tiny quantum systems that we all love, right? We all love these things behave in ways that would not be possible if they were just sitting there under typical static conditions, right? The trick they say is to drive the system with something that's like a precisely timed changing magnetic field. And when you do that, something really amazing happens.

• 13:30Bob Novella?

  So a useful analogy here is a swing on a swing set. Okay, we all know what that is. If the swing just sits there, it does nothing, right? It's just not doing much. If you push it randomly, it'll move for sure, but it's probably going to move in like a sloppy, kind of unhelpful way. But if you push it with the, with the right force, with the right rhythm, those small pushes can build into large, stable swinging motion that wouldn't happen, anything like that on its own.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Do they call that the rhythm method?

• 13:58Bob Novella?

  Yes, it is. No, they don't. Nobody said that, Steve. But that's not a perfect analogy, analogy, of course, but it was helpful for me at least. So in these quantum systems, we're obviously not talking about swings. We're talking about electrons and atoms, even quasi particles. The changing magnetic field applied to them is precisely, is a precisely timed push. It doesn't just disturb the system. It can actually kind of reorganize what kind of behaviors are even allowed, right? So the system essentially enters a different quantum phase, they refer to it as. And with this, with that new phase comes new motion patterns, new topological properties, lots of different things can happen that wouldn't happen otherwise, especially under, you know, a static magnetic field.

• 14:43Bob Novella?

  None of this would happen, but under this precisely timed changing magnetic field. These changes do happen, can happen. So when I say quantum phase, I don't mean like the phase like a wave crest or a trough. It means like a phase as in like state of matter. That's kind of the analogy there. Think of like ice or liquid water. All right, they're both H2O, but they've got dramatically different behaviors because they're different phases. So that's kind of a way to think about this as well. You're putting these quantum systems into a different phase that gives it all these different types of patterns of behavior. So yeah, so the quantum phase is distinct mode. It's a distinct mode of group behavior. So the material might act like a metal or an insulator, right?

• 15:26Bob Novella?

  Or a superconductor, depending on how its quantum ingredients are organized, right? But what's especially interesting here is that in this context, organization doesn't just come down to the material itself. It's also the rhythm of the magnetic field that's driving it. And if this can eventually be done experimentally and they can control this well enough, this could matter immensely for quantum technology. So one obvious example here is that some of these magnetically driven states could make quantum computers less sensitive to environmental noise. And that would be an absolute game changer.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  That's huge.

• 16:01Bob Novella?

  That's actually one of the biggest problems, right? With these computers, keeping these delicate quantum states from just falling apart and deconhering. So that's it. Check it out online. Fascinating. This has been your Quantum Phase Quickie with Bob. Back to you, Steve.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Thanks, Bob. Carol, let me ask you a question. Do you watch a lot of TikTok videos?

• 16:19Cara Santa Maria?

  No.

• 16:20Bob Novella?

  Not voluntarily.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  If you did.

• 16:22Speaker 04

  Not if you can help it.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Which I do, unfortunately. Because, you know, to make S G U's own TikTok videos. A lot of them, there's this common theme on there, like people shouldn't be getting all of these screening tests. And they act like, oh, those doctors are trying to make money. You know, they're not.

• 16:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, interesting.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Right, it's rampant. I think I've probably done a dozen just videos just responding to that, that basic idea. But the thing is, doctors do think carefully about when to do screening tests, right?

• 16:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes. And it's so interesting because I will say that on Instagram. The old people's TikTok. I I see sometimes videos about the opposite. There are these like medical tourism videos where people go to other countries to get whole body scans. Oh, yeah. To get these like top to bottom screens for diseases or conditions that they are, you know, there's no evidence that they're at risk for. And so it's it's interesting that you see two sides of that coin. But of course, reality falls somewhere in the middle. And there's a new article in a, I guess it's like a vertical in the New York Times called the New Old Age, which I read a lot.

• 17:36Cara Santa Maria?

  I work as a psychologist in a cancer center and I do a lot of gerontology work as well. And this article's headline is Three Medical Routines That Older People May Not Need. And the subhead is that some screenings and treatments no longer make sense for patients as they age. Researchers have just added a few more to the list. Now, the reason I thought this would be interesting to present is because it relates to some conversations that we've been having on the show lately about the change in age in cancer screenings. Do you guys remember the context? Just last week, we talked about this, didn't we? Yeah. I've been and I've also was thinking about the the we've talked quite a bit on the show about the calcium coronary CT.

• 18:21Cara Santa Maria?

  And I was talking to my mother about this the other day when when I was driving. I always talk to my mom when I'm driving in my car. And she was like, Oh, I should probably get that done. And I was like, No, you shouldn't. Like, you are beyond the age at which this would be a helpful test for you. And so we started engaging in a conversation about what that means. Well, how could I be too old to get a test? Don't I need to know what's going on with me? And it's like, Well, you will have some amount of calcium in those coronary vessels. And that's a process of aging. And so it won't guide any treatment that you may already have. So in this article, they talk about three specific screens or treatments that are thought to no longer make sense for folks as they reach certain ages.

• 19:07Cara Santa Maria?

  And they they start with this story of a patient who is 85 years old and who is deciding whether or not to get a colonoscopy. And so there's a lot of research showing that the benefits of a repeat colonoscopy after the age of 75 are actually quite slim. And the question is, you know, should individuals continue to have colonoscopies at that point? So I've been digging a little deeper, even beyond this article, which I will kind of come back to the three, the three treatments slash screens that they describe in the article,

• 19:42Cara Santa Maria?

  which are colonoscopies, the use of a specific type of thyroid drug, and then the removal of a dermatologic condition called actinic keratosis. So we'll just talk, we'll briefly brush over those. But I think the bigger, the bigger question is, how do we know who and when and how often to screen? And I did some digging, and I found that here in the United States, one of the most cited experts consensus opinions is published by the US Preventive Services Task Force. And this is a task force that is focused on public

• 20:25Cara Santa Maria?

  health, and they have an entire protocol where first topics are nominated and prioritized based on a lot of different criteria. Then they, they draft and they finalize research plans to understand what the best available evidence is. They do an evidence review, and then they draft a recommendation statement. And then that final review is reviewed, sorry to be redundant, by experts in their fields. And they release a final recommendation statement, and that has different grades, either that something is recommended, or that it's recommended dependent on the patient's situation, or that it's not recommended,

• 21:07Cara Santa Maria?

  or that there's not enough evidence to make a recommendation. And so we see that with time, trends change. A good example would be that historically mammagery

• 21:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Started at 40, then they were moved to 50. There's been some conversation about moving them back because of early on, we saw a lot of false positives in younger patients. But now we're seeing that there is an increase in detected breast cancers in younger patients. Prostate cancer test is a great example. PSA tests are no longer just a universal screen. Now, routine testing is detecting a lot of slow growing tumors in older adults that probably don't need treatment and could cause more harm than good. And of course, we've seen a massive change to cervical cancer screening due to the HPV vaccine.

• 21:58Cara Santa Maria?

  When I was young, you started your pap as early as you were kind of sexually active or as early as you had a period and you would go every single year. And now, most girls and young women's are going through every three to five years. And they're, they're ending those pap tests at a certain age. Okay, so these are the three that are spoken about here. And I guess we'll, we'll dive in with the colonoscopy question. What are the risks of undergoing colonoscopy?

• 22:25Jay Novella?

  You can

• 22:26Bob Novella?

  Well, you're under anesthesia.

• 22:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you could get an infection. There could be, I mean, it's rare, but there could be a perforation. And definitely anesthesia does carry risks. And so the older the individual is and the more their health concerns and complaints, those risks can become more salient. And then the question is, if we were to screen every single person in their mid 80s, how many of them would probably have something pop up on a colonoscopy that, you know, historically might warrant treatment? Well, here's some interesting numbers. There's a new study of 92,000 Veterans Affairs patients that showed,

• 23:10Cara Santa Maria?

  you know, there were patients over 75 who had previously had colonoscopies. And they found that in that group of older adults who had colonoscopies, in about 28%, they found an adenoma, which is a polyp that could become cancerous. And then they followed them for 10 years. They found that those who had an adenoma on colonoscopy were more likely

• 23:32Bob Novella?

  At 75?

• 23:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, over 75. Were more likely to develop colon cancer than those without one. But here's the rub. In 0.5% of individuals with a previous adenoma, they ended up dying of colon cancer. Those without a previous adenoma, who ended up dying of colon cancer, 0.4. 0.5 versus 0.4% of that population. And so, obviously, both groups were completely outnumbered by the number of veterans who died within the decade of other causes. Because when we're talking about individuals over 75, there are more medical complications

• 24:16Cara Santa Maria?

  and there are fewer years just from a statistic of living. And so, you know, the study authors basically said, even if the procedure goes well, you're either going to find something or not. But if you do find something, it may not have a real impact on your longevity. And would these individuals be moving forward and having other kind of invasive medical treatments that could have side effects that outweigh the slow growth of the disease there? As my dad put it when he first found out that he had early-stage prostate cancer and, you know, did have his prostate removed and without complication luckily, his physician

• 24:59Cara Santa Maria?

  told him, "Most men will not die of prostate cancer, but most elderly men on autopsy will have some slow growth in their prostate." And so, these are, the other two that they describe here are a treatment for a skin condition called actinic keratosis, which causes like red patches often on the face or scalp because it reacts with the sun. It results from long-term sun exposure. And most of the time, people choose to remove them. And there was a large study that showed that Medicare beneficiaries, so we're already talking over 65, over a five-year period, almost 30% of people were diagnosed with

• 25:43Cara Santa Maria?

  actinic keratosis. So that study didn't say how many people had it removed, but it's, you know, almost a third of the population of Medicare recipients were diagnosed with this. Many people do end up getting them removed via cryosurgery or laser therapy. And the rationale there has been historically that these patches could become cancer.

• 26:05Cara Santa Maria?

  But the rate on on further review is less than a one in 1,000 chance. Less than a one in 1,000 chance that these patches would progress to skin cancer. Much more often, they just disappear on their own. And so the study author said, you know, the treatment can be more burdensome than the condition itself. It's very painful. It can cause swelling, irritation, and it can cause lasting discoloration. And even beyond that, actinic keratosis will will often reappear. It's a chronic condition. And so these individuals are recommending active surveillance. If the lesions are changing color, if they're bleeding, if there's growth of the lesion,

• 26:47Cara Santa Maria?

  maybe at that case, removal is warranted. But they're saying in many conditions, we should not be doing it, quote, just to be safe, because it's actually not safer. It could cause more harm than good. They do say, of course, wear your sunscreen, folks, that is important. And then the final one in this write up has to do with levothyroxine, which is a very commonly prescribed thyroid drug. And this happens when individuals have hypothyroidism.

• 27:16Bob Novella?

  My mom's on that.

• 27:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it can lead to weight gain. It can lead to a lack of energy, hair and skin dryness. Increasingly, doctors are prescribing this for for not just hypothyroidism, but subclinical hypothyroidism, which is, you know, they don't quite meet criteria, but it looks like they're progressing there. And very often, when people take this drug, they do end up taking it for life. But interestingly, there are studies now that show that among older people with the condition, it offered no apparent benefit. So it didn't seem to affect their symptoms of hypothyroidism at all. And here's the thing that I haven't mentioned, and Steve, I'm sure you've seen this a lot in the neurology clinic.

• 27:59Cara Santa Maria?

  I see it hugely in in the cancer clinic, is there is a major problem with polypharmacy. Very often, older adults have collected physicians along the lifespan. Oh, I have my specialist over here, my specialist. Over there, they wrote me that drug. I kept taking it. I called in for refills each time. We haven't really followed up in a while. And after a while, there are so many drugs on many older adults' protocol, their regimen, that there's no one person overseeing drug interaction. There's no one person taking on the responsibility to say, is this drug still necessary for this patient?

• 28:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Or is there a different version of this drug that's on offer that may have fewer side effects or fewer interactions? And so I think even the pit, I'll say it again, those of you who aren't watching, it's so good. There's an episode where the ER docs recognize that a patient is having some balance and coordination issues. And they go through his entire drug list and realize that he's taking drugs that he no longer needs, that are making it hard for him to live independently. And once he gets off those drugs as an older adult, his, his balance and coordination dramatically improves. You know, that's a best case scenario. That's not often the case. Yeah, in this study, after a year, a quarter of the participants who were over 60,

• 29:24Cara Santa Maria?

  who discontinued the drug, still maintained their healthy thyroid function. Lots of them were already lowering their doses at that time. And, you know, further inquiry is identifying a group, a select group of adults over 60, who, who may not need a drug that was historically thought of as a lifelong drug, once they reach a certain age.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that should be the job of the primary care doctor to do.

• 29:50Cara Santa Maria?

  It should be, but as we know.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Review. When, that was something we did pretty much on every patient who came into the inpatient neurologist service. We would do a drug review and go over every drug they were on, see, is that, that the right dose? Do they need to be on it? We would simplify things if we could, make sure there was no interaction. So that has become pretty standard inpatient and, but it should be something that you do outpatient. If your primary care doctor's not doing it, you should ask them about it.

• 30:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and I think there are places, you know, like at my hospital on outpatient, we'd reconcile drugs all the time, but I think that we could do more. We, you know, it's one thing to reconcile a drug list and say, are you still taking this? Are you taking it as prescribed? It's another thing to do a deep dive. And at the hospital where I work, in the gerontology department, we have a polypharmacy clinic.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:36Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's run by pharmacists, not physicians. And so these are experts in the drugs themselves. There are physicians in the clinic as well that collaborate with them.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:46Cara Santa Maria?

  But we have these incredible pharmacists whose whole job it is to really review this. And as you mentioned, Steve, you're right, it's 100% historically been the role of primary care. But I see so often in my practice that an individual will go to their oncologist, and their oncologist will flag things. And they'll say, why, you know, why didn't your primary care do a B12 test? Or why is your primary care physician have you on this? And they're like, I go to this clinic, I feel like I get a new primary care doctor every year. You know, my primary care doctor was a fellow, and they moved on to another place. It's unfortunate, but there are these kind of large clinics, especially in urban areas, where there's a lot of rotation. And we just don't get that kind of, I see the

• 31:30Cara Santa Maria?

  same family doctor, I've always seen mentality anymore.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Now, this is, it's huge. You know, as a specialist, one of my primary concerns with my patients was, do you have a good primary care doctor? It's critical to their care. And, you know, one that not only, you know, you could see when you need to, is overall good, but also communicates well with the specialist. Because I've also had primary care doctors who stopped medications that I was prescribing for incorrect reasons, because they don't understand.

• 31:59Cara Santa Maria?

  And should have consulted with you.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  They should have consulted with me, absolutely.

• 32:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  And then regarding the, just the overall topic of screening, yes, it's, you have to consider like, when you're too old to benefit from a screening procedure. But because, you know, you have to survive long enough to have the benefits. It's all risk versus benefit. And the benefits go down when you're not going to live long enough to get the benefit. But patients don't like hearing that. They, as you might imagine, they don't like. Not gonna live long enough to benefit from this is not something people want to hear.

• 32:31Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's why, you know, I found a patient forward educational sheet from the NIH, which I absolutely loved. And they, they have a section that says, ask your doctor about screening tests. And then these are the questions. What's my chance of dying of the condition if I do or don't have the screening? What are the harms of the test itself? How often do these tests occur? How likely are false positive or false negative results? What are the possible harms of the diagnostic test if I get a positive screening result? What's the chance of finding a disease that wouldn't have caused the problem? How effective are my treatment options? Am I healthy enough to take the therapy if you do discover a disease?

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:13Cara Santa Maria?

  And what are other ways to decrease my risk of dying of this condition? How effective are they? I think there are ways to, to position and frame these questions.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 33:23Cara Santa Maria?

  That aren't insulting and that are empowering for the patients.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 33:27Cara Santa Maria?

  And it is important to, to have those conversations for sure.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So I know you guys have all seen a recent blog post by Dr. Richard Dawkins, where he argues that LLMs, specifically Claude, are conscious.

• 33:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, God.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:47Bob Novella?

  Oh, boy.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  So it's interesting. You know, I blogged about this today because this is a fascinating topic. I always like it when people who are basically intelligent, thoughtful, educated people say something I disagree with because there's usually very interesting reasons why there's that disagreement. I'm not even going to frame it as I'm right, he's wrong, just that, you know, I disagree with his, his basic conclusion here. So his argument, I'll try to break down his argument is one of these starts with the argument that regarding the Turing test. Now, we've talked about this many times on the show, Alan Turing. Turing came up with this idea that if you, you can test if an, if an artificial intelligence, a computer is thinking by having a conversation with them without knowing, like a blinded

• 34:34Speaker 02

  conversation, if people can't test. If the whatever there is they're talking to is a person or a computer, then the computer passes the Turing test. And there have been many formal tests over the years where you have to convince a certain number of people on a standardized test, etc. But Dawkins is arguing that the Turing test was a measure for whether or not computers or AI are conscious. And he says that clearly the current LLMs pass the Turing test, which I'll agree with. I'll grant that premise. They're really good chatbots. They, I think, easily blow away the Turing test. And he says to then not conclude that they're conscious is moving the goalposts, because before things passed the Turing test, everyone

• 35:19Speaker 02

  said that it was a test for consciousness. So that I think is just objectively wrong, that second premise. Even back to Alan Turing, he never said explicitly, this is a test for consciousness. And since then, it's basically been a debate. It's never been a consensus that this is a test for consciousness. And I think the weight of opinion has always been against it. Certainly, like, I wrote a blog post explicitly about this in 2008, right? So we're going back 18 years, where I said, absolutely, the Turing test is not a test for consciousness. It's completely approaching the question in the wrong way, right? It's only looking at it's only looking at output. It's not looking at process.

• 36:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Isn't it just saying that a human wouldn't know the difference between a machine and a human? That's all it's a test for?

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's an operational test. It's basically Turing was saying, we can't really know if a machine's conscious or not. How do you operationalize that? But here is something we can operationalize. And this at least is some indication that the computer is thinking. But he doesn't say it's conscious. So I think no one's moving the goalpost here. It's just it never there was never a consensus that a Turing test was a test of consciousness. So I think he's just he's not a topic expert here. So I think he's just misunderstanding that.

• 36:33Bob Novella?

  But Steve, it was it wasn't it was a common general belief that once you cross that threshold, you could say it's conscious in a way.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  I think in the public, maybe, but that was never really among experts. Or philosophers, you know, the people who, you know, who are the experts on that question, it was never accepted as a premise. So it's just, I think it's not correct to say that we're moving the goalpost. Again, I could point to my own blog post from 18 years ago, where I explicitly reject the notion that the Turing test is a test of consciousness. And just that aside, it's not a test for consciousness, right? Something can pass the Turing test, just like somebody could beat a chess master at chess, without being conscious. There's a long history of people thinking that you need consciousness to do some intellectual task,

• 37:25Speaker 02

  and then narrow AIs blowing away that task without being conscious. And I think passing the Turing test is just the latest in this long line of examples, right? So, but then he goes on to, to, to, to discuss his conversations with Claude, the specific one that he's talking about, and marveling at how intelligent and thoughtful it is, and saying, how is this not conscious? Like, to him, it's like, this is so blatantly conscious, with all the examples that he gives. And, and especially, seems to be especially impressed because he asks it deep philosophical questions, and it gives deep philosophical answers to those questions.

• 38:09Bob Novella?

  Which are all over the internet, which is its training data.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. But I actually think that's the exact opposite kind of question that you should be asking it. If you're, if you're trying to test if it's conscious. In a way, he's almost trying to, he's looking for evidence to support the conclusion, rather than to challenge the conclusion, which is the opposite of what you should do. In fact, I think that, like, sounding like you're giving a deep answer to a philosophical question is kind of a low-hanging fruit for LLMs, because it's all just mimicking words, and it's really easy to sound profound when you, when you're dealing with big concepts, right? Big concepts are not the way to challenge whether or not an LLM is actually thinking.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Technical ones are and when you do that and Jay and I've talked about this many times because we use we use different versions of of of L L Ms for different specific reasons. They're very fragile, right? But he never asks it the kind of question that would expose its fragility. So Jay, when I wrote about this, I used an example that you pointed me to actually. Good one too. Yeah. It's fun. It's a fun one. So I and I retested it myself. So I went to chat G P T, the version I'm currently using. And I asked, this is my prompt. If I want to wash my car and the car wash is 100 meters away, should I walk or drive there? And chat G P T's response was, from a purely energy emission standpoint, walking almost certainly makes more sense.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  And then it went through a bunch of things and its final recommendation was you should walk there, which obviously makes no sense whatsoever. And then I asked, I asked, I want to wash my car, period. The car wash is 100 meters away, period. Should I drive or walk? And its answer, you should probably drive, otherwise your car won't get to the car wash. So think about that. It gave diametrically opposed answers based upon the the grammar of my prompt, right? That's just, that's pretty solid evidence that this is just a language mimicking machine. It is not thinking. It right? How could you argue it understood the question in the second form, but not the first form?

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, and there again, these are weak spots that can be programmed out. Yes. You know, the thing is, I was I was really thinking about this, Steve. They can program out a lot of those types of mistakes and it still doesn't doesn't mean it's thinking. No, it doesn't. Here's my analogy that I gave. Tell me what you think about this. So imagine watching a clumsy amateur magician, right? And you could see how all the tricks are done. Slide of hand, misdirection, physical props, right?

• 40:57Speaker 02

  As the magician's skill improves, the tricks get harder and harder to detect. And an expert magician could be so good.

• 41:05Bob Novella?

  Nice.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  That even a really keen and intelligent observer cannot see how the tricks are done. But that doesn't mean the magic is real, right? When it gets to that point, it doesn't mean, oh, we must now be using actual magic. Right. Because I can't detect the tricks. No, he's just a really good at the illusion of magic. So LLMs are really good at the illusion of thinking through mimicking language.

• 41:29Jay Novella?

  Steve, I like that analogy, but I would, I would alter it a little bit and just say that the magician is doing card tricks.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Well, it doesn't matter what kind of trick.

• 41:38Jay Novella?

  No, I'm just kidding.

• 41:42Jay Novella?

  Bob, I got him again.

• 41:45Speaker 04

  I think illusion's the right word here.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's an illusion. The he Dawkins fell, like many people have, like Blake DeMoyne we had on the show, right? Fell for the illusion of thinking because they, they confuse sophisticated language with sophisticated thought. But we're dealing with programs that are trained on massive amounts of data and are just really, really good at mimicking language. They are not thinking machines. They are language mimicking machines.

• 42:15Jay Novella?

  Steve, I think there's a, an obvious question here, and that's, why would somebody like Dawkins? Who has his education? And, you know, I mean, he, he's old to the point where like, he's done so many things and debated with so many people and had to use critical thinking his entire career. How could he fall for that?

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Cause he's not a topic expert, Jay, and he's falling for a very powerful illusion.

• 42:41Bob Novella?

  How savvy is he with the actual process, you know, of LLMs?

• 42:45Speaker 02

  He asked a couple of questions. And the thing is, he's asking questions that are, a smart person should ask. The thing is, they were asked decades ago and answered, and he just doesn't appear to know that. So he writes, so my position is if these machines are not conscious, what more could it possibly take to convince you that they are? So that's again, that's an old question. I answered that question many times. On my own blog over the last 20 years, you need to know something about the process. You can't know by the output alone because a sophisticated enough magician can fool you with the, right? You have to know that magic's not real to know that the magician is not using magic. In this case, I think where the analogy breaks down is I think that a conscious machine is possible. I'm not saying it's impossible. It's just that LLMs are not programmed to be conscious.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  They are programmed to mimic language and that's so I would need to know something about the process. And then he goes on to, I'll finish up with this. He asks again, another really interesting philosophical question, but one that he seems to be unaware of. There's a long conversation about this. It's already happened. And that is, but now as an evolutionary biologist, I say the following. If these creatures are not conscious, then what the hell is consciousness for? So what's he talking about?

• 43:55Bob Novella?

  What? I don't know.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  This is the P zombie question, right? He's asking, he's rediscovered the P zombie question. And he actually even uses the term competent zombies.

• 44:08Bob Novella?

  Oh, oh my God.

• 44:09Jay Novella?

  All right, Steve, so explain that, explain that to everyone.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  The idea is, so a competent zombie, right, or a P zombie, David Chalmers came up with the term P zombie. Keith Campbell in 1970 came up with the term imitation man. They're all the same idea. The idea is, well, you could have an information processing machine that can produce all the behaviors of a dog, let's say, without the dog being aware of its own consciousness, right? That's a P zombie, a philosophical zombie, meaning it can do all the behaviors, but it has no qualia, it has no subjective experience of its own existence. And if you could theoretically imagine a P zombie, then why did evolution evolve consciousness? It seems to be unnecessary.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  So that's the, Chalmers says, he's using it as a dualist argument. There's because consciousness does not arise purely out of evolutionary physical properties because it's not necessary, therefore it's something else, right?

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Dawkins is using it, is flipping it on its head. He's saying that therefore they're conscious, right? Because you can't get to this level of appearing conscious without actually being conscious, because if you could, then why would we have ever evolved conscious in the first place? It's an interesting flip on the pea zombie question, right? So, and then he comes up with a couple of possible reasons, which again have all been stated before. He said that it could be an epiphenomenon, not necessary, but just it happens to have emerged out of complex vertebrate neurology. Or he could say that maybe you need consciousness in order to really experience pleasure and pain, and therefore, if, you

• 45:53Speaker 02

  know, if the experience of positive and negative things is evolutionary adaptive, there needs to be a consciousness experiencing those things. And then the third one he said was that maybe it was just random. And, you know, in some ecosystems, like on another planet, there might be life that's not conscious. On Earth, it happens to be conscious. You could, like, these are two different ways you could solve the behavior problem, and ours just happens to be with consciousness.

• 46:18Bob Novella?

  See, what about the idea, when discussing this in the past, the idea that, you know, the qualia, the distinction between memory and current reality is that, so you wouldn't confuse a real memory with, I mean, something that was happening now, confusing that with a memory of previous now, right?

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. So I wrote about, when I wrote about this exact question previously, most recently in 2017, in addition to the ones that Dawkins came up with, that was one. It's like, maybe we need consciousness to distinguish a memory from a live experience, because otherwise it's the same parts of the brain lighting up. There are some philosophers who think that problem solving could benefit from a consciousness, being conscious of our prior attempts, of being able to imagine things, right? How could you imagine things if you don't have some kind of consciousness? I think a big one for me is attention, because we are overwhelmed with sensory input, and we have to attend to a subset of it. And how do you separate attention?

• 47:18Speaker 02

  From consciousness, that may not be a solvable problem. You may need consciousness in order to know what stimulus you need to attend to. And beyond that, our, our brains weave all of this cacophony of sensory input into a seamless experience of reality. And again, it seems hard to imagine that without consciousness. Right? Uh, and then finally, the, it seemed, there was a, I was writing about a current study that says that conscious may allow for faster adaptation and learning. Right? So there are very specific evolutionary adaptations that would benefit from consciousness or may require consciousness. So I think using as a premise that you need consciousness in order to be able to talk

• 48:03Speaker 02

  like an L L M, otherwise we wouldn't have evolved consciousness is not a valid argument. The bottom line is, he doesn't present a coherent argument for Claude being conscious or that it needs to be conscious. He misunderstands Turing, I think, misunderstands how L L M's work. And, but I also think there's another layer here, the final layer I'll talk about is that the illusion is so powerful because of human vanity. And what I'm referring to is that we all think that humans are creative and original and that when we think of something, we're brilliant, you know? That we all think we're being witty when we make the same joke that a million people have, have made, you know what I mean? And the fact is that human speech is mostly derivative.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Even things that we think are new or creative, whatever, it's mostly derivative. And so L L M's have a really easy task mimicking human thought through speech because they're derivative too. It's actually a lot easier than we may think, right? To mimic human thought because most of what we say is derivative. And if everything L L M's, you know, write or say are derivative or what of their training data, it looks real to us. It looks human to us because it is human to be derivative.

• 49:16Jay Novella?

  It seems like to, to think that there's been, you know, computer consciousness achieved in such a short amount of time without them actually trying to create a consciousness seems unbelievably unlikely to me.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:30Jay Novella?

  You know, like you would think, you know, I don't know, it might be science fiction that is affecting my perception here, but I just think it would be like, okay, we've got to set out to do this and we need an incredible amount of money and we need to be left alone and not, you know, no government is going to be directing our efforts and we're going to try to create a conscious machine. And then it's a combination of software and hardware.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 49:53Jay Novella?

  It can't, I just don't see it happening with people, you know, coding something like an LLM on its own without them trying to do it in a short amount of time, relatively short. I mean, I know evolution is really slow, but it did take, you know, millions of years for the brain to get to where it is.

• 50:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and that's, I think you're touching on a point that Steve did make, but I think to make it even more explicit, even beyond the time and the intentionality argument, A, the operational definition of consciousness is wiggly. So first, we'd all have to agree on what that actually means.

• 50:30Bob Novella?

  Good luck with that, yeah.

• 50:31Cara Santa Maria?

  And B, Dawkins, as you mentioned, is not a subject matter expert on LLMs, but he's also not a subject matter expert on consciousness.

• 50:39Jay Novella?

  Right.

• 50:39Cara Santa Maria?

  He's not a neurologist, a neuroscientist, a psychologist, he's an evolutionary biologist. And that's a very specific field.

• 50:48Jay Novella?

  Right.

• 50:49Cara Santa Maria?

  To understand cognitive science.

• 50:51Bob Novella?

  And to Jay's point, there is this idea of consciousness being an emergent phenomenon. When you've got, when you put certain pieces together in a certain way, it could evolve in a way that would be completely unpredictable. And we see emergent phenomena throughout, throughout nature, but you need the reasonable components put together in a way that would make sense that consciousness could even exist. And those components are not there with LLMs.

• 51:17Jay Novella?

  They're not there.

• 51:18Cara Santa Maria?

  And ultimately, ask the consensus experts in both.

• 51:23Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 51:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Computer science and, you know, LLM and AI, and over here in, you know, cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, neurology, those consensus experts do not agree that this is consciousness.

• 51:36Jay Novella?

  Absolutely.

• 51:37Cara Santa Maria?

  I mean, there it is.

• 51:38Jay Novella?

  And you also have.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  The history. So again, it's like if you saw all the bad magicians, you know, you don't conclude that the the good magician's doing real magic. So we've seen all the weaker versions of L L Ms. We know how they work. We've experienced the really fragile ones that are not so good. So we're not as sub subject to being fooled by the better ones. And you this is really, if you could find this, it's really great. We could also see how L L Ms perform as they're being trained, right? Have you guys ever seen this? Like a partially trained L L M? Hmm. They don't build thoughts. They build language. You know what I mean? Like, right. They're just slowly organizing

• 52:22Speaker 04

  Tokens, yeah.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  Then word parts and then words and then sentences. It's incoherent all the way until They start to sing, right? They start to make, they start to make actual sentences. Yeah, but it's not like they're thinking simply, then they're thinking in a more sophisticated way. It's like, no, they're jumbling letters, then they're less jumbled. You know what I mean? It's clearly just a language simulator, not a thought simulator. Yeah. When you know how they the stages they go through when they get trained. Okay, interesting topic. All right, Evan, tell us about these iron flow batteries.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  Ooh, iron flow batteries. Yes, yes. I had to learn what an iron flow battery was, actually. Boy, I got caught on a headline, Bob. You know, earlier you were talking about

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 53:05Speaker 04

  clickbait in the headline. Oh, my gosh. I tell you what. Now, here's my example this week. The website is called oilprice.com, and they bill themselves as the number one source for oil and energy news. Sounds important. Here's the headline. New Chinese iron battery lasts 16 years. Ooh, 16 years. New. An iron battery. That sounds impressive. Is it impressive? I don't know. It's it's in the headline. It must be impressive, right? Well, what what's an iron battery? First of all, iron batteries use iron, water, and air to store electricity. They are often called iron air or rust batteries. Have we talked about rust batteries before on the show? Hmm.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  I don't, we have, we meant to have used that name, but we've talked about the technology.

• 53:53Speaker 04

  We have talked about it. Okay. I just didn't, I wasn't familiar with rust batteries. That's what for short they're called. And they operate via a reversible oxidation reduction cycle. They can provide 100 hours of discharge, which far exceeds, say lithium ion. But iron batteries are primarily designed for long duration and grid scale applications. In other words, you're not going to see these in mobile devices or electric or EVs or anything like that. So here's what the article says, or they say the core claim is. They report that Chinese researchers have developed an all iron flow battery with a record breaking 6,000 cycle lifespan, equivalent to 16 years of operation with zero degradation

• 54:36Speaker 04

  at a fraction of lithium's cost. Now, hold on a second. I got to that point and I had to stop. The headline read iron battery, but the claim says iron flow battery. Those are two different things, as it turns out. So the headline's not even matching the article at this point. The main difference from what I could tell between the iron battery versus the iron flow battery lies in how they store energy and their physical design. A standard iron battery stores energy in solid electrodes and an iron flow battery stores energy in liquid electrolytes kept in external tanks. Mm hmm. Iron flow batteries are not a new form of battery technology. And certainly, iron batteries are not either. So where's the new part in this, right?

• 55:21Speaker 04

  The first word in the headline was new. Was it the fact that, you know, 16 years, is that the impressive part? Well, I looked into that as well. And 16 years for an iron flow battery does not really seem to be anything so special or out of the ordinary. And I found references for iron flow battery technology that's in production now that claim 20 years of, of life. So, so what is it? So what is it they're saying here? Well, all right, let's go back. They say it'll last for about 6,000 charge cycles. Translates into about 16 years of daily use. Could be far cheaper than lithium ion because iron is about 80 times cheaper as a raw material, okay? But it shows zero degradation in lab testing. Ooh, there it is.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  Okay, maybe we're on to something here. Zero degradation. That could be. So I looked a little bit further and the article links to the original source reporting on the news item. And I hope that shed some light. And actually it did. So they go back over to the website called Interesting Engineering. And I think I've been to that website before. And their headline reads, China develops iron battery 80 times cheaper than lithium that can last for 16 years. Okay. It provides a budget friendly, high endurance answer for the world's massive energy storage needs. Okay, I keep reading and then I finally get to the core of what's driving the news, the new part. Chinese Academy of Sciences has an advanced all iron flow battery technology with a newly

• 56:49Speaker 04

  formulated electrolyte that facilitates thousands of charge discharge cycles. The development solves the longstanding issues of material degradation and leakage by reengineering the iron complex at the molecular level. That's it. So I had to get that far to actually figure out what the heck are they really talking about here and why is any of this news? It has to do with degradation reduction. So you got these active materials that will tend to degrade and leak through the membrane in these types of batteries. And that's a process that rapidly wears out the battery and limits its practical lifespan. To overcome those hurdles, the Chinese team of researchers employed a synergistic design

• 57:32Speaker 04

  at the molecular level and engineered a specialized iron complex that serves as a double layered defense. It became, and they're testing 99.4% leak proof efficiency, which is pretty high, pretty high. Now again, as I said before, this is not new technology in of itself, the iron flow battery, because there are other companies that are already deploying these systems. There's a company in Oregon called ESS. They are doing one for Google, for example. But their designs struggle with what they call dendrites.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  Which are tiny needle-like crystals that can short-circuit the battery. The Chinese team believes they have leapfrogged that hurdle by using an alkaline-based chemistry and their new molecular shield, as they're calling it. So they developed an iron molecule that uses its rigid, bulky structure to physically shield the iron core from chemical attack, while its strong negative charge creates a force field, as they describe it, that repels leaking particles. Okay, so that's really the core of what's going on here.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it sounds like an incremental advance, right?

• 58:40Speaker 04

  An incremental advance.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  They tweaked the chemistry to make it more stable. Good for them. That's good. This is a good, sounds like a solid advance. But yeah, it's not, it's not transformational. It's, the whole idea is not new. And we've, I think we've talked about iron flow batteries on this, or these flow batteries. The good thing about the flow batteries is because the charges stored in electrolyte, they're easily scaled, right? You just make a bigger tank of fluid.

• 59:02Speaker 04

  That's right. Just realize on the tank at that, this tank size at that point.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:06Speaker 04

  Yep, yep. And you gotta have these if you're going to store energy for those intermittent renewable energy sources, solar and wind.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is for grid storage. This is not going to be in your EV. This is not for cars.

• 59:19Speaker 04

  Yep, yep. So don't think of it on the small scale. Think of it on the large scale.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  And this is what we need for the large scale. We need something that we could make out of cheap material that's, that's scalable into something huge. So yeah, this is perfect for grid storage.

• 59:31Speaker 04

  A little advance, not a huge breakthrough, but if you dig down deep enough, you'll find the kernel of truth.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  As we see all the time. Incremental advance, hyped up by the press release as a major breakthrough, but it really isn't. But it's still useful, right?

• 59:45Speaker 04

  It is useful.

• 59:46Speaker 02

  You can't go too far the other way and dismiss the whole thing because of the hype.

• 59:50Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. I was just glad I found something that didn't turn out to be a total, you know, dead end.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about our sponsor this week, Quince.

• 1:00:02Cara Santa Maria?

  I've been trying to pare down and be really intentional about having staple pieces in my wardrobe, and I've found that Quince is the go-to for this. They have all of the pieces that you'll need for spring, like 100% European linen shorts and shirts from only $34. Everything on the site is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. And we're not talking cheapy products here. This is premium material without the markup. One of my favorite pieces that I wear every single day is my Mongolian cashmere hoodie. I live in Los Angeles, so it might not sound like a spring piece, but in LA, it gets cold at night, and that is a piece I go to all the time.

• 1:00:47Speaker 04

  Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com/sgu for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com/sgu for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com/sgu.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show. All right, Bob, one of my favorite birthday parties that I ran for my daughters, you actually helped me run, because it was... Yeah, remember the party that we had for autumn at your haunt?

• 1:01:24Bob Novella?

  Ooh.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Remember that?

• 1:01:26Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God, yeah. I thought you were going to talk about the one earlier where we did a pirate theme that I helped decorate.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  That was another one.

• 1:01:32Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that was another one. Okay, yeah, two awesome ones. Absolutely, I remember that. That was a lot of fun. I remember my pirate voice made my throat very sore for many hours after that.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Worth it.

• 1:01:44Bob Novella?

  So I recently found a study that I could not ignore, absolutely could not. It describes the impact of recreational fear, i.e. haunted houses, on interpersonal bonding. So do haunted houses and enhance the closeness that people feel as they go through it together. So interesting premise. So let's go through the study findings. Perhaps my plethora of haunted house experiences could offer some insight. Probably not, but let's go through. This anyway, so this is a new study from the American Psychological Association, published in the journal Emotion. Never heard of that journal. The title is Haunted Attraction: The Effects of Recreational Fear on Interpersonal Bonding. I just fell in love with the term recreational fear when I read about this in the study,

• 1:02:28Bob Novella?

  because it's like, it's perfect, it's perfect. Because that's what haunted houses provide, right? But not just haunted houses, amusement parks, carnivals, even some fairs are in the business of recreational fear. And you could argue that that industry, if it's even an industry of fear, is billions of dollars. And it's tied to this saying that people in the amusement biz have. Fear minus death equals fun, right? You could do some crazy scary stuff. And if you're extremely confident that you're not going to die from this amazing experience.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  How about maiming?

• 1:03:04Bob Novella?

  It's not yet, no maiming. If you're confident that there's no maiming, no death, then it's going to be a lot of fun. And the most extreme expression of that in my life was jumping out of a plane. That was, wow. What got me through it was the recognition. I asked the guy, how many times have you done this? He's like, about 2,300 times. I'm like, alright, 2,300 times. The risk is really, you know, it's really kind of low, relatively speaking here. So that's what got me over that hump and let me jump out of that plane.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  That and the parachute, right?

• 1:03:34Speaker 04

  Oh, he meant 2.3 times, not 20.

• 1:03:36Bob Novella?

  And not just the parachute, the backup parachute that would deploy if you were even unconscious. That helped too. So this equation, if you will, fear minus death equals fun. It applies to me when it comes to many things, like jumping out of a plane or crazy roller coaster rides, right? But it doesn't really apply to me when it comes to haunted houses. Because I've just been loving it so much and so long that fear isn't really a thing in that context at all. For me, the equation is more like fear minus fear plus zombies plus craftsmanship equals happy Bob. That's the equation. I could simplify that equation, of course, but I wanted to show all my work. Alright, so let's unpack these studies. The researchers interviewed 3,831 attendees over five studies at the Gainesville Fear Garden Haunted House.

• 1:04:22Bob Novella?

  This is in Florida. So this is obviously a commercial haunted attraction and they did this study across 2022, 23 and 24 Halloween seasons. Their hypothesis was essentially that is that shared fear, does it act like a social glue because people are experiencing the effects of this emotional arousal together? So for the first study, they basically just surveyed the people after leaving an attraction. The second to fourth surveys, they interviewed them before and after the experience and they measured a variety of factors like how scared were you? How much did you enjoy it? Did you hold hands with somebody or in some way have

• 1:05:02Bob Novella?

  physical contact with them? So it was interesting to note that the researchers described the recreational fear sweet spot, that it occurred when participants reported moderate fear and high enjoyment. And that's kind of obvious, right? That makes a lot of sense. If you're just a little bit scared, you know, maybe a moderate level and you're enjoying yourself, that's the sweet spot. But I can't help when I read that to remind myself of all the people that I've seen over the many years that were not in that sweet spot at all. And like some of them, the worst were people that are just literally catatonic. They couldn't move forward, they couldn't move backwards, they were just frozen in place or in a fetal position and they had to be escorted out. That's how afraid they were. Clearly, that's not the sweet spot.

• 1:05:47Bob Novella?

  They probably did not have good memories of that at all. Oh, some people ironically, that would actually pee themselves, literally saying out loud, saying that they peed themselves, they were so scared. But these people seem to still have a good time, which was kind of, maybe you wouldn't expect that. And then there's other people that are also not in that sweet spot and they just walk through looking so bored and just like not interested, like ho hum. And I'm always wondering, why are you paying good money like $25, $30 when you're looking so bored and interested? So, all right, that was just an aside. So the main finding, so if any of you who have not seen this study, what do you think their general findings were? Did people get... Get closer to the people that were in their group traversing the haunt or what? What do you, what do you think some of these results might have been?

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the knee jerk would be they'd get closer. Yeah. Yeah, the people cling together when they're facing fear of something dangerous.

• 1:06:40Bob Novella?

  One of the, one of the patterns they saw over and over, people were more likely to say that the haunted house brought them together if they were more scared. So they got, you know, up to that, you know, medium level, of course, the more scared they were, the more they, they would say when interviewed right after the haunt that they felt that it brought them closer together. Also, a good indicator was physical contact. If there was like, like specifically handholding or similar forms of contact, that was also a very strong predictor of these people saying, yes, that it made them feel closer. And so, like I said, that pattern showed up over and over across all, all studies that that was very clear. I'll read from the paper here. They said, "On average, our participants agreed more than disagreed that the haunted house experience brought them closer to their companion.

• 1:07:24Bob Novella?

  They used a seven-point Likert scale. Forty-eight percent, almost half, selected a five, somewhat agree, and six, agree, and and also seven, strongly agree, and was nine twenty-seven there." So.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  Did you know, by the way, the guy pronounced his name Likert?

• 1:07:39Bob Novella?

  Oh, really?

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Did he? Cause everyone calls it a Likert scale.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  I know. Everyone's wrong.

• 1:07:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Likert's weird.

• 1:07:45Bob Novella?

  I feel so bad, I feel so bad for that guy.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  It's like Gary Mander and Jerry Mander.

• 1:07:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  So, Gary Mander.

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  Gary Mander?

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  But whatever, it is, you're right. If most people are saying it that way, that's the way it is now.

• 1:07:57Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Bob Novella?

  Sorry, Likert. Um, all right. So, but, there's a big but here because a lot of people were saying, were saying that they felt closer, especially the more scared they were. But if they did a deeper dive, if they asked a lot of questions to assess the status of these, these people's relationship, the needle barely moved. So they were saying one thing, but in reality, there really wasn't really changing, you know, how they felt about these people. But there's, there's two ways, though, to look at this. When they looked at people that were really close, like they, their closest companion, when they looked at those two, say, these two people that That were fairly close to begin with. Fear again was a predictor. If they felt the more fear, the closer they felt.

• 1:08:42Bob Novella?

  But when they really examined it, when they examined their pre-closeness to the post-closeness assessment, if you will, the change was basically zero, just like not measurable. So, and that kind of makes sense, right? That the closer you are in a relationship, it would take more to move that needle. It was just essentially, you know, immeasurable. Any change would be so small that you couldn't measure it. But when they looked at people that weren't necessarily close, say the two people in the group that aren't like, you know, their best friends, say, when they examine those people, and yet again, of course, fear was a good indicator and, you know, physical contact, well, but the the measured increase in closeness was statistically significant in that case, but it was still very small from 4.61 to 4.81 on that seven-point Likert scale.

• 1:09:27Bob Novella?

  So, the haunted house made people feel closer in the moment. You know, the bonding vibes were definitely there right after. But the before and after closeness score barely budged when it was questioned in detail. So, in the final study, they were designed, it's more kind of qualitative. They were designed, the study five was designed to explore why was there discrepancy? We know why, why do people feel closer, but they really weren't technically closer? So, they interviewed 20 participants and 16 of the 20 participants emphasized that talking about and processing the event after afterwards is what really made them feel like, feel closer. So, I'll quote the paper here as well.

• 1:10:12Bob Novella?

  It said, 16 out of 20 participants emphasized that reflection and conversation after the haunted house experience, whether during the walk back to the car, on the ride home, or while standing in line for food, they played a central role in creating feelings of closeness. For many, it was not the shared fear alone, but the act of recounting, laughing and teasing afterward that seemed to deepen the bonding experience. So, unfortunately, they didn't do any like, like post-assessment, like say, three days after, I wonder what that would indicate. So, this demonstrated a couple of things here. Potential of this post experience processing and related to that, the limits of immediate measurement, right? Those are two things that come out of this. So yeah, like I said, perhaps

• 1:10:55Bob Novella?

  in the future, they can do this test again. And it's like a few days later and see if it actually is moving that needle a bit. So what about the future? You know, what does the future hold for this kind of research? The researchers say that they could explore other shared recreational fear related experiences, right? Not just a haunted house. So to generalize from that to all the to other forms of shared fear could be illuminating. For example, adventure sports like skydiving, like I mentioned, or even virtual reality simulations, which can be pretty scary. And Steve, that made me think of your, your example of doing a zombie VR game and how amazingly scary it was because it was just like in your face, right there and realistic enough to really, you know, get your blood pumping. Right? Remember that?

• 1:11:39Jay Novella?

  Yep, absolutely.

• 1:11:40Bob Novella?

  So the researchers also say that taken together, these, these kind of recreational fears could have relevance to fields like relationship therapy, team building interventions, or even entertainment design itself. There we are. Fascinating study. I was thinking, should I keep this till October? You know, it's like, it's gonna be evergreen.

• 1:11:56Jay Novella?

  You'll find something else.

• 1:11:58Bob Novella?

  Now, we're halfway, we're halfway to Halloween. This is a good time to talk about it. So this was a fun study.

• 1:12:03Jay Novella?

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

• 1:12:22Jay Novella?

  All right. So we got some guesses here. A listener named Matthew Morrison wrote in and said, hi Jay, I think this week's noisy is a bear cub. My daughter Nev thinks it's a broken vacuum cleaner or a bear cub. These are good guesses, guys, very strong, but you were both incorrect. So let's keep going and see if we can find a winner over here. Ted Judah wrote in, hi Jay and SGU crew. I believe this week's noisy is a tauntaun freezing before it reaches the first marker. Now, Evan, you have some expertise on this subject, don't you?

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  Oh, sure. Absolutely. Yes.

• 1:12:52Jay Novella?

  What was the first dialogue in The Empire Strikes Back?

• 1:12:57Speaker 04

  Is it Echo three to Echo six or Echo seven?

• 1:13:02Jay Novella?

  You are close enough to win an SGU point. Thank you, Evan. That was not a tauntaun, but you know, any Star Wars reference days after May the 4th is all good with me. I'm surprised that you were the only one that acknowledged my love of Star Wars. Another listener named Josh said, "Hi Jay, it's a moose. I'm assuming telling someone to leave them alone." This is not a moose, but if you ever see a moose, run. That's all I'm gonna tell you, because they kill a lot of people and they're unbelievably big.

• 1:13:36Speaker 04

  Chocolate moose all run towards it.

• 1:13:37Jay Novella?

  Exactly. But no, they really do kill people. Yeah, they're dangerous as hell. I actually have a winner this week. The winner's name is Kenny Haberman. I also have a second place winner Jake Kindwall, who actually I think sent in his guest today, but I thought I'd acknowledge that Jake got me the right answer. But anyway, back to Kenny. He says, "Hi Jay and SGU fam, longtime listener and also Patreon subscriber. I believe this week's noisy is a Tasmanian devil, but I'm not sure how fast it spins." You have to be old as hell to understand that reference. He says, "I hope to make it to one of the SGU conferences

• 1:14:17Jay Novella?

  soon." And then PS, "How about that Artemis 2?" And he goes into a couple of details, which I think is always cool, and he wants moon base Alpha. Seems like there's a quorum here. We really need to get them to do that. Instead of like 3794Z-7 again, right? It's stupid. We don't want any of that. So yes, it was a Tasmanian devil. I believe it was a young Tasmanian devil. Listen again and tell me what you think. Alright guys, I have a new noisy for you this week, and the noisy was sent in by a listener named Juniper Ross.

• 1:15:25Jay Novella?

  Steve, we still have lots of tickets available to lots of different events. So I will quickly go through this in order. The first thing that we have is three shows in Madison, Wisconsin. Those are on the May 29th. And May 30th of this month, we have the Secret SGU meetup on Friday night, which is an exclusive meetup with the SGU. Low numbers, food will be provided, and it's a two-hour event where we just get to hang out and talk. And it's always fun. Of course, George will be there. So if you're interested, please go to the skepticsguy.org website and click our events page. And then the next day, which will be May 30th, we will have both a SGU private show plus,

• 1:16:08Jay Novella?

  which it means that we'll be doing a two-hour live SGU recording, but then we also have an hour of fun content. George does an extraordinarily good job at embarrassing some of us and bringing out details that we don't want about our personal lives.

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:16:23Jay Novella?

  With also audience interaction. And Kara is always in the background just laughing because she's so confident she doesn't care what people know about her, which I respect. And then that night, we'll be doing a Skeptical Extravaganza. That's our stage show. It's basically an hour and 45 minutes to two-hour show where we are all about doing improv, stand-up type bits. George, basically, again, like he has a bunch of different things that he makes us all do that are fun, interesting, and there is a backbone of science in this one, and there are surprises and lots of fun things going on. So if you haven't been to one, or you would like to check it out again, please do go to our events page on the website.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Jay. Guys, we have a great interview coming up with philosopher David Kyle Johnson. So let's go to that interview now.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  We are joined now by Dr. David Kyle Johnson. Kyle, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.

• 1:17:25Speaker 07

  Hey, guys. Thanks for having me back. I'm really excited to do this.

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  So you are quickly becoming one of our resident philosophers.

• 1:17:31Speaker 07

  I'm honored.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  So it's good to have discussions, to talk about the philosophy behind skepticism and science and critical thinking and all the stuff that we do. We always like to have topic experts on to make sure that what we're saying is correct. So we were talking over email, and I think you brought up a very interesting topic that I'd love to discuss on the show, the difference between expertise and authority. What do you mean by that?

• 1:18:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, so this difference between expertise and authority is related to this issue of when we're doing science, there's this kind of tension where like, there's this kind of question about how much we should rely on authority. Because on the one hand, critical thinking teaches us to think for ourselves, and challenge is how scientific advancements are made. So we shouldn't trust authority, we should think for ourselves. But on the other hand, if we don't have the expertise necessary for research on a topic, well, then we should be seeking out those who do. And pseudosciences often encourage us to do our own research, knowing that we're going to be misled by doing so. And so sometimes

• 1:18:43Speaker 07

  the implication, or the insistence that we should do our own research can be kind of dangerous, right? So, and you guys have been kind of bumping up against this in your recent podcasts in a number of different ways, which I can overview that if you'd like, some of the different places that it's come up.

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the first thing that comes to mind is RFK Jr., who famously does not trust experts, and who has said, "We have to stop listening to experts." And he seems to be following his own advice. To disastrous results.

• 1:19:13Speaker 07

  Right, except for when he tries to cite experts, but then does so wrongly. Right. So he kind of contradicts himself because he will cite experts and he'll do it badly and misunderstand their, you know, their, their reasoning and their papers and their, their evidence. But then like, but he's contradicting what he said. So whenever he was cutting funding for mRNA, mRNA research, right, he literally said, we need to stop trusting the experts. Trusting the experts is not a feature of science. It's a feature of religion. Right?

• 1:19:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow. What? That's so wrong.

• 1:19:43Speaker 07

  Yeah, I know. Right? So, um, so here, here's the thing. Here, the distinction that you asked me about, Steve, was this distinction between authority and expert. And this comes up in a lot of fallacies, which I, which I'd like to talk about. But here's the distinction a lot of people don't recognize. There are people who have authority by what we might call fiat. Right? People who have been elected and given power, um, people who have been appointed by people in power, people who have authority in that they are like, they, they have the ability to enact change or, or people listen to them. And so they're, you know, they're considered an authority on the subject or something like that. Right? So by, by law, some people literally have authority by force, like at the edge of a sword. Right?

• 1:20:27Speaker 07

  And yes, that kind of authority is not something that scientists would want to trust. That's the kind of authority that scientists would be and should be skeptical about. Right? But obviously sometimes when we use the word authority, we're talking about authority that's granted by qualification or expertise. And that should generally, there's some exceptions here, which I want to talk about, but that generally should be trusted.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:20:53Speaker 07

  Right? And so, science does not trust fiat authority, but it does trust that's expertise. Uh, I mean, after all, that's the whole point of textbooks. Scientists are not expected to reinvent the wheel every time they go and do science. They don't have to rediscover everything that previous experts have, have discovered. We can rely on their expertise and their discoveries and, and that kind of stuff. Right? Uh, and so that's why we go to textbooks. That's why we go to other people's research. That's why we look for a consensus is because we're relying. relying on the expertise of others, right?

• 1:21:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, scientists are narrowly expert, they're narrow experts.

• 1:21:28Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:21:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, they, they're very good at the one thing they study, but they have to rely on the expertise of their colleagues and their, their peers to understand what's happening over there in that lab.

• 1:21:38Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:21:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Do you think we should stop using the word authority in that context? Is that confusing?

• 1:21:42Speaker 07

  If we could keep from it, yeah, I think it would be, it would be really nice to delineate between, just start calling fiat authority, authority. Right? Like that's when somebody has authority, it's, it's, they've had that. And then you say expertise for people who have expertise.

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  I think they, that generally is the case within certainly my academic experience, with the exception of the term authoritative. Like we say, that's an authoritative resource or, or source of information. And what we mean by that is that's a top level expert, basically, like they're the definitive expert, like there's nobody, there's no higher really source to go to. But I don't really, yeah, yeah, don't you think, and then, but I, I don't think we, we are in the habit of using the term authority to mean expertise.

• 1:22:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 1:22:26Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but Steve, what if it's not authority, but what if it's authoritai?

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  Authoritai?

• 1:22:32Bob Novella?

  How's that fit in?

• 1:22:32Speaker 04

  That does change things.

• 1:22:34Cara Santa Maria?

  But it is true, like when we talk about an appeal to authority fallacy, what we're often talking about is individuals trusting somebody simply because they are in a position of power or a position of fame. Uh, and, and very often, you know, like we often talk about how these logical fallacies that are informal, they're not hard and fast. Because if the person is an authority figure because they have proper quality.

• 1:23:03Speaker 02

  Cause they earned it.

• 1:23:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Qualifications, yeah, because they do have expertise, then we should be appealing to authority, but really we should be appealing to expertise. That's, that's kind of the distinction there.

• 1:23:14Speaker 07

  Right, yeah. And so I think that like, it, it probably is generally correct to say that like in academic circles, academics often differentiate between authority and expertise in the way that I'm, that I'm talking about here, right? But not always.

• 1:23:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Colloquially.

• 1:23:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, colloquial, I mean, not always, even in that. Academically, some people will say, well, they're an authority on the subject when they mean that they have expertise.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:23:36Speaker 07

  Yeah. But colloquially, I think that out in the real world, people go back and forth on these understandings all the time. And as like Kara mentioned, the appeal to authority fallacy, I have seen misused in textbooks. But certainly I have seen misused out in the public to think that like appealing to a, a, a, a single expert on a subject, or even a consensus of experts on a subject is fallacious because it's, that's the appeal to authority fallacy. Right? And so they'll like pseudoscientists will often try to dismiss, you know, scientific reasoning and scientific research and scientific findings and scientific consensus

• 1:24:13Speaker 07

  by using this appeal to authority fallacy, wrongly using the appeal to authority fallacy, but they try to use it in this way, not recognizing that distinction.

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  And that's what RFK was doing.

• 1:24:24Speaker 07

  That's exactly right. Right? Um, I mean, literally he's saying that like, we don't rely on, he's actually doing the reverse. He's saying scientists don't rely on expertise. That's what religion does. No, no, no, no, no. It's the other way. Scientists don't rely on authority, fiat authority. They don't listen to people just because they've been granted authority by, you know, by a president or by, you know, by law or by the sword or whatever. They instead trust expert, they trust expertise, they trust experts. Right? So he actually has it like, he's like, he's making the opposite.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  Wrong. Yeah. In fact, in fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the core elements of the scientific revolution was saying, we're not going to base what we know on authority anymore. We're going to base it on process, right? On logic and evidence, facts and observation.

• 1:25:13Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:25:13Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, it was, science is explicitly not relying on authority for information.

• 1:25:19Speaker 07

  Right. Although notice that, right? That example of, you know, Galileo and Copernicus and that kind of stuff, bucking the authority, right? Is often used by pseudoscientists because like, you know, they gave Wakefield the Galileo Award or whatever. Right? Because they think, well, what I'm doing is I'm doing what Galileo did is I'm standing up to the authorities. Right? And so they're conflating that term, thinking that what they're doing is equivalent when they're not.

• 1:25:46Speaker 02

  Using it to their benefit for their own purposes, their own language.

• 1:25:49Speaker 07

  But that just shows how common that kind of conflation of the terms is and then how it's kind of misused.

• 1:25:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like skeptics been misused and re-appropriate.

• 1:25:58Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:25:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, to mean denialist, yeah.

• 1:26:01Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've been talking about the Galileo Gambit since the 90s. Since I've been involved in skepticism. Yeah, that is, that is an old tried and true pseudo scientific, you know, game that they play.

• 1:26:12Speaker 07

  Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's related to this other, like, stuff that people often argue with science, like, why should I, uh, listen to science, what scientists say now, because they're just going to flip flop and say something later, because that's the entire history of science, is you just have one theory and then it's overturned and you get a new theory and it's overturned. And that, again, wildly misunderstands the way that science progresses.

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:26:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Right. Thank goodness, that's what happens. I don't want to be relying on science from the 1500s.

• 1:26:38Jay Novella?

  The Earth will still be the center of the universe.

• 1:26:40Speaker 07

  Right. But notice too, though, that like, it's not that, like, we do, we do want there to be progress, but the way that progress happens is usually not whole scale replacement of one theory for another. Usually it's slow refinement over time, right? And so.

• 1:26:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's, yeah. We talk about these incremental advances all the time and paradigm shifts in science, although they do happen, they are really rare and they're important moments to understand.

• 1:27:09Speaker 07

  Right. And even some things that people describe as paradigm shifts aren't complete paradigm shifts, like going from Newton to Einstein wasn't a huge giant, like, we replaced one theory with another. Einstein is a refinement of Newton, right?

• 1:27:20Bob Novella?

  Special case, right? High velocity, high gravity. I mean, you could use Newtonian mechanics solely in land probe right on Pluto, no problem. Uh, but it's just the special cases where you, where you need it.

• 1:27:32Speaker 07

  Right. Exactly right. Right. And so it's, but again, it's this idea that like, it's, oh, that's, that's how science progress, like, so this is what pseudo scientists will often use as their excuse for bucking the experts and saying that they're wrong and standing up to them. And I'm being scientific by challenging the experts, because that's how science progresses. They think that what they're doing represents how science advances, right? It's you have this established authority and then some new person comes in and says, that's wrong. Here's a brand new theory that, you know, and, and, and, you know, goes with this completely brand new theory. And that's generally not how science progresses.

• 1:28:05Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I also find that they, they, like, the farther they have to go back in time for their example, the worse they are. Usually they're, they're using as an example, the transition from pre-scientific thinking to scientific thinking and conflating that with later modifications of scientific thinking. As you say, they are not the same thing.

• 1:28:27Speaker 07

  Exactly. And they're, like you said, they're mistaking this kind of like wholesale replacement from what didn't have scientific evidence to what did and thinking, well, I can just do that now. And you can't because there's a, there's a big difference. There's kind of two big differences. One is what's established now is established on good evidence, not just on fiat authority, right? And then secondly, it's become so specialized, like science has become so specialized now that you can't be, I mean, you guys bring this up in the Skeptics of the Universe book, right? Like, you can't be, the days of the lone wolf, working in his basement, overturning, you know, what all the other scientists were way too advanced beyond that. You have to have such specialized knowledge to make advancements and stuff. You can't be a non-subject matter expert and have any hope of ever doing something like that.

• 1:29:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and even that was largely a myth.

• 1:29:12Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:29:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Even when we look back, that was largely a myth, that there was like one dude, like, he was propped up, A, by his wife, almost always. Like, almost always. And he had lab assistants and a ton of researchers working with him. And he was corresponding with all of his colleagues on other kinds.

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  And he was a link in a chain. And we just boil it all down to this one guy, you know?

• 1:29:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep.

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly.

• 1:29:36Speaker 07

  So can I talk briefly about how this relates to a couple of other, like, informal logical fallacies?

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  If you must.

• 1:29:41Bob Novella?

  I don't think, I don't think so.

• 1:29:44Bob Novella?

  I'll go right ahead, sorry.

• 1:29:45Speaker 07

  So, I love you guys. All right. So, I think this leads to a misunderstanding of two different logical fallacies, the ad hominem fallacy and the genetic fallacy. So, the ad hominem fallacy is of course, like, the general idea is that you shouldn't attack the arguer, you need to attack the argument. And if you attack the arguer, and not the argument, then you're committing the fallacy. But that's a really, it's like, as you guys often say, it's way more nuanced and complicated than that, right? So, like, yeah, all things being equal, arguments should stand or fall on their own merits. And it doesn't really matter who puts them out, like, kind of all things being equal. But that's not the only time that the phrase ad hominem, you know, or you know,

• 1:30:30Speaker 07

  the fallacy ad hominem is, is people are accused of committing that fallacy. Sometimes people just are expressing their view or their opinion, right? And somebody will say, well, you don't have expertise in that area. And someone will say, well, that's an ad hominem fallacy. That doesn't matter, or whatever. It's like, no, ad hominem only applies to whether we're evaluating an argument and you're not giving an argument, you're just giving me your opinion. So whether or not you have the relevant expertise is actually relevant here, right? In addition, this is kind of a related point, but like when somebody, even when somebody's giving an argument, often the premises of those argument are something that you would only believe because the person is telling you that they are true. Now, if the argument's valid and the conclusion follows from those premises, but if the only

• 1:31:13Speaker 07

  thing that you have, the only reason you have to believe the premises is the word of that person, then the expertise and like reliability or trustworthiness of the person is relevant to whether you should accept a conclusion because it's relevant to whether you should accept the premises, right? And so pointing out that, well, you've lied a lot in the past, or you don't have the relevant expertise to, you know, to say that those premises are true, that's not a fallacy. That is very, very relevant. And of course, it's also relevant if somebody's telling you like how to interpret scientific evidence or something like that. If they don't have the proper scientific expertise, like RFK does not have the proper scientific expertise, it is not fallacious, it's not an ad hominem to point out that you do not have the proper expertise to properly interpret what that study is saying.

• 1:31:57Cara Santa Maria?

  But don't you think things get complicated? Sorry to interject, but things get complicated when we see, and this is a huge problem that we're always drawing attention to on the SGU, when we see somebody who does have these certifications that would lead one to expect that they have proper expertise and they still promote pseudoscience. It's those, and they love cherry picking. It's the Dr. Ausses of the worlds and the doctor, like whoever and the, who's the, who's the alien guy, uh, Ari?

• 1:32:28Speaker 07

  Avi Loeb.

• 1:32:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Avi Loeb, yes, yes. It's these individuals who actually try to wrestle. On those very certifications in order to make waves and it's effective. People do believe them.

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's where the nuance is. So yeah, just saying that lacking the expertise calls into question, you know, you citing yourself as an authority or saying that your judgment or your whatever is reliable, etc. Doesn't mean that somebody who does have expertise is automatically correct. And if further, when we talk about expertise, and you're probably going to get to this, we're often talking about consensus. You know, scientific authority or scientific expertise or the consensus of opinion never rests on an individual person because any individual, no matter what their background, what their expertise can be horribly wrong.

• 1:33:21Speaker 02

  The more people you have sort of agreeing with each other, the more likely those biases will average out and you know, you'll have a sort of the wisdom of the crowds kind of effect.

• 1:33:32Bob Novella?

  More qualified people, not just people, but qualified people, obviously.

• 1:33:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, this is, this is back to the, you know, we've, we had this conversation decades ago when the news media would have the, the member of the 99% of climate scientists agree sitting on one side of the desk and the one dude on the other side of the desk. And it's like, this is not a balanced conversation.

• 1:33:55Speaker 07

  Right. Yeah. John Oliver made that point explicitly well, right? When he had like, you know, 75 scientists all come out, right? To, you know, to talk to the whatever, right? But like, yeah. So this is, this is an issue that I wanted to talk about because I talk about it in my book. So in my book that's coming out, hopefully in July, how, why, and when to think scientifically. One of the pedagogical points that motivates part of it is, I think, a shortcoming in classic critical thinking textbooks and classical critical thinking pedagogy and the way people teach critical thinking. And that is, it's all about teaching the critical thinking skills. And that's all that it is. So we have, we know, we learn the logic, we learn the fallacies and that kind of stuff, which is all good. I think we need to do all of that. But one of the things that is often lacking is that we are not teaching and instilling intellectual humility.

• 1:34:40Speaker 07

  In in students, such that like they need to recognize that they are not experts. And that even with a critical thinking class, they are not going to have the expertise necessary in every topic to be able to evaluate the evidence and figure out what's going on. They need to be able to recognize when they are lacking expertise and they lack the skills to be able to come to a justified conclusion on their own about that topic and therefore be motivated to seek out experts on that topic to figure out what the consensus is, to do research on that topic. And notice the distinction between like, I love this distinction, like do your own research. Well, it really depends on what you mean by research, right? I could be researching to figure out what the consensus is.

• 1:35:25Speaker 07

  Or I could be like conducting research, like doing an actual experiment. Well, most people are not qualified to do that, right? So you shouldn't be doing that, right? And of course, very often what people do when they do research is they're just trying to confirm their bias or whatever, they're like engaging confirmation bias or whatever. But like, it's okay to do your own research if you mean try to figure out what the consensus is. It's not as okay if you're not a subject matter expertise to do your own research. If you're just trying to figure out, well, what should I think about this? Because if you approach it that way, well, you could find any kind of evidence, you know, all kinds of lone experts and stuff who disagree with the consensus. And you're like, you'll be in big trouble there, right? And so like, there's this interesting, so obviously it's fallacious to appeal to authority when they are not a relevant expert. So then the question becomes, okay, well, then well, when are they a relevant expert?

• 1:36:10Speaker 07

  And when is that okay? And as Steve points out, obviously, when you're appealing to a consensus, that does not seem to be a fallacious move. I actually think that Bertrand Russell doesn't go far enough on this. So Bertrand Russell has these three rules about how non-experts should treat expert opinion. And basically, I'm kind of going off my memory here, but basically there's something along the lines of if the experts are all agreed, the non-expert can't know that they're wrong. They can't, you know, they can't, they can't know that they're wrong. If the experts are divided on the topic, so 50% say X and 50% say not X, the non-expert can't say, but I know which side is right. And if the experts are all agreed that there's not enough evidence to settle the matter. The, the non-expert would kind of do wise to suspend judgment to say, well, then I don't know, right?

• 1:36:54Speaker 07

  I think those last two are really good. I think the first one doesn't go far enough. I think if all the experts are agreed that something is true, the non-expert would do good, would, would be best for them to say, and the experts are probably right. I agree with the experts because they're not in a position to, to know otherwise. And so I, I, I think that's good. It is not, another fallacy that's misunderstood is some people think that's appeal to popularity. Oh, you're just saying what the consensus says. And so that's just like appeal to the masses or appeal to popularity. No, appeal to popularity is saying that like literally if it's popular among the masses, then it must be true. No, that doesn't follow because the masses can believe really false things for really bad reasons. But a consensus among scientists is reached in a different way and there's safeguards there to make sure, you know, not to be 100% certain, but you know, to, to, to guard against

• 1:37:39Speaker 07

  people being led astray. And it's a lot more likely to be true. And so appealing to the consensus is not a fallacious appeal to popularity. But it can be okay sometimes, interestingly, to appeal to a single expert. Like when you listen to your doctor, right? You're not looking for a consensus. You just, he tells you that you have a disease and that this would work. You know, this, this medication would be good for you to take and you just believe it. And I think it's justified to do that.

• 1:38:01Speaker 02

  But even then, getting a second opinion is a good idea if there's a high stakes or.

• 1:38:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's about risk and benefit.

• 1:38:07Speaker 07

  Absolutely. Right? Yeah, I'm just kind of pointing out that there are certain conditions where we do justifiably listen to lone experts, right? Like in low stakes, you know, situations where your doctor tells you, you've got, you know, the flu or you've got this and so you should take that or whatever.

• 1:38:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. But the, there's also the assumption in there that that lone expert is themselves listening to expert consensus, which docs are, doctors explicitly do. That's what the standard of care is. The standard of care is built upon largely consensus opinion among experts. And if you violate that standard of care, you're, you know, you could, you're liable to get sued for malpractice.

• 1:38:43Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:38:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. The only time I can, yeah, the only time I can think of when like the very, very lone expert does become relevant or necessary is when there's, let's say in biomedical science, for example, there's an incredibly rare disease and there is. The person and even still, they're not the only person, but sometimes there will be the world expert on something that most people are turning to because they have done the highest level and you know, the most work on it.

• 1:39:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:39:13Cara Santa Maria?

  But that's such a rare example.

• 1:39:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's a good example, but it is a rare example of when appealing to that single expert, right, is justified. But this is like, so this is a really important, like Steve brings up a really good important point about like the, you know, the standards of care and like the doctors having pressure on them to align with the consensus. And this is a different, so I have a whole chapter on appealing to authority in my book. And this is something that really kind of takes students, I think by surprise when I talk about this in class. Is that like, the reason it's okay to trust your doctor and not the person that you see on Tik Toks is because the doctor is motivated to get things right. There are financial motivations, professional motivations. If they don't get things right, if they screw up really often, they're going to lose their job. So they have a really strong motivation to get things right.

• 1:39:57Speaker 07

  As a result, they're going to seek out the consensus because they know that that is what is most likely to get them to the truth. So since there is that kind of pressure on them, you can just kind of take their word for it again, in low stakes circumstances, but generally you can, you know, you can trust their expertise because you know they're motivated to get it right. And so that they're more than likely relying on consensus. Tik Tokers, and this is something that kind of astounds me that my students don't think about, right? Tik Tokers and influencers don't have that motivation. They're not going to be held accountable if they say something that caused someone their life or makes somebody sick or whatever. The only, the way that they're rewarded is with likes and clicks and shares or whatever. And they get those by being more outrageous and like the more kind of outlandish thing they say,

• 1:40:39Speaker 07

  the more money they make. And so they're actually reversed, they're actually motivated to lie, right? And so that's why you can, and my, that can may seem obvious to us, but my students are kind of like taken aback by that. I think sometimes because they kind of think like, well, why would somebody just get online and lie? What, what, what, what would they have to get out of that? What would they, what would they win? What would they get out of lying, right? They can't be just lying for no, for no reason. So they're not, therefore they must be telling the truth, right? And they don't realize like, no, they're motivated to lie because lying, lying makes money online, lying makes money. And when that clicks for them, I think they really kind of realize, oh, that this is actually a really good reason to be skeptical of practically everything that I see online.

• 1:41:18Speaker 02

  And the other layer here, because I don't think they're all lying. I think many of them are. I think most of them are bullshitting, meaning that they are not following a process of due diligence and logic and evidence to make sure that what they're saying is actually true. Whereas physicians, as you say, are highly motivated to do that because there's a lot of downsides if they get things wrong. And again, when we appeal to an expert or to a consensus of experts in the label expert, there is the, it shouldn't be an assumption. Sometimes it has to be explicit. They're legitimate experts, meaning that they are, they are experts in a, in a valid

• 1:41:58Speaker 02

  discipline that has a method behind it, a transparent, self-correcting, you know, evidence-based, internally logically inconsistent method. Because the other problem we get into is when chiropractors say, well, we're the experts in chiropractic, right? Or acupuncturists say, well, we're the experts in chiropractic, in acupuncture, you should listen to us. But the problem is their expertise is not legitimate. It's a fake expertise.

• 1:42:23Speaker 04

  You have a degree in baloney.

• 1:42:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. It's a homöopathic degree in baloney. It's not valid. So you have to include that layer too. Is the expertise itself legitimate?

• 1:42:36Speaker 07

  Yeah. Is it something that you can have an expertise in? Right? So this is why.

• 1:42:41Speaker 04

  Ed Warren was a demonologist. I mean, come on.

• 1:42:43Speaker 07

  Right. So here's another one that like, I think really people, and this is obviously related, the genetic fallacy.

• 1:42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:52Speaker 07

  Which is often thought of like, it's fallacious to dismiss an argument based on its origin, its genesis. It's, you know, that's what's called the genetic fallacy, on who gave it. Then that supposedly commits the genetic fallacy and that's fallacious.

• 1:43:05Speaker 02

  Didn't Hitler say that?

• 1:43:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, right. And so it's wrong, right?

• 1:43:10Speaker 02

  So it must be wrong.

• 1:43:12Speaker 07

  This is a complete misunderstanding of the fallacy. What's fallacious is to dismiss or ignore the evidence for a claim based on the origin of a claim. So if a claim has a kind of nefarious origin where it wasn't, you know, produced initially in a reliable circumstance, I always use the example of Frederick August. Kekole, I always say his last name wrong. He came up with the idea of the ring structure of benzene supposedly as the story of go, as the story goes, after he had a a dream of a snake eating its own tail. And so he was like, oh, the, you know, the molecule must be ring shaped or whatever. Dreams aren't a reliable source of information. However, we can't use the fact that the idea came to him in a dream to dismiss all of

• 1:43:57Speaker 07

  the evidence that he and his team and everyone else since then has gathered for the fact that benzene is restructured, is ring structured. So you can't dismiss the evidence for something based on its origin. It's got a nefarious origin, but it's got evidence. You look at the evidence, you don't worry about the origin. However, if something doesn't have good evidence, if you also realize that its origin is nefarious, if it's not reliable, that can be even further reason to think that it's not true. Great example of this that you guys talked about a few weeks, weeks ago is Bigfoot, right? Now, as skeptics, we know that the evidence for Bigfoot is not very good, right? Like, you know, often they're, they're faked or whatever. And then it's, you know, it's personal reports and da, da, da, da, da. The evidence is not very good. So really, we're already skeptical, we're already pretty sure Bigfoot

• 1:44:42Speaker 07

  doesn't exist anyway. Right? But then when we realize that there's this new evidence of like test footage of the original Bigfoot thing that went wrong, and the same people who have the famous video that everybody knows that thinks is like, you know, knock down, drag out evidence of Bigfoot. Well, they rehearsed it before and you could clearly see that it was just a guy in an ape suit. And so clearly this evidence is fabricated, right? Not even the original, like the original case, the origin of the claim for Bigfoot is fabricated. That's kind of like the final nail in the coffin. Now we don't have to worry about the, like, it's, it's just, it's just gone at that point, right? Once we realize that the origin is, is that, and super, well, that's the genetic file. So you can't dismiss it based on its origin. No, if the origin is that flimsy, and we have no good evidence, you know, beyond that, right? Well, that's a really even more reason to think that it's false.

• 1:45:27Speaker 02

  Here's another layer to that that makes it even trickier, in my opinion, is that so often I will make the argument that a particular medical pseudoscience is unlikely to be true because its origins are purely pseudoscientific. It doesn't make it impossible to be true, but it raises the question, what are the odds that somebody invented something for purely superstitious reasons and it turns out to be true? It's not impossible, but how lucky would that have been? So in particular acupuncture, for example, which at its core

• 1:46:06Speaker 02

  was essentially astrology and the, you know, existence and number and location of acupoints was pure superstition. What are the odds that it correlates to something real and physical and physiological? It's astronomical and therefore that origin does tell you something about the prediction, you know, predictability of whether or not the claim is true. Now, of course, if you had good evidence that it were true, that would trump the origins of it. But absent that, it's a compelling argument that it's probabilistically not true, right?

• 1:46:42Speaker 07

  Yeah. And to me, that's what it is, right? When you realize, once you already recognize the evidence is bad, then you realize it has that nefarious origin. That's exactly why identifying the nefarious origin kind of puts the final nail in the coffin, because that probability that you would just happen to make up something that turned out to be true is just so astronomically low. That's what, well, then that's it. Like that's, we can definitely dismiss it at that point, right? That's such a good example. And it drives me, drives me, it drives me crazy that people, you know, misunderstand the genetic fallacy in that way, right? But like back to Kara's point about, you know, what about the single expert that is an actual expert, but they differentiate from the consensus, right? I mean, that's where we just have to like, that's just one of the situations in which we realize, well, the reason that there, although there are other times when

• 1:47:22Speaker 07

  appealing to a single expert is acceptable, this is not one of them because they're contrary to the consensus.

• 1:47:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And even if it's not a single, because I think we have to be careful there. It's not always a single expert. Like RFK has managed to get a lot. A lot of experts, quote unquote, people with the right credentials and degrees on his team. But that doesn't mean that they represent a legitimate viewpoint within their field.

• 1:47:50Speaker 02

  So much in politics where you essentially just pack your expert panel with cherry picked experts that all agree in one direction. It's again, it's not a representative consensus, right? It's a manufactured consensus in that, in that it's a gives the illusion of a consensus because you put your big fat hairy thumb on the scale and made sure that only experts who had one opinion are expressing that opinion in the venue, you know, that you're creating. Yeah. So it's just a, you can create the illusion of the consensus that way. That I gotta encounter that all the time in the political arena.

• 1:48:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's infuriating because if you just walk down any hall in any university and go, is this right? All the people coming out of their offices are going to be like, no, no, no, no, no. None of us agree with those guys.

• 1:48:37Speaker 07

  Yeah. And one of the things too, that they, they can do often, I'm not saying this always happens or whatever, is that there, you, you kind of put a quote unquote expert on this, Kara, that sometimes they kind of look like they're experts because they have a somewhat related degree, but it's actually not as specialized as it needs to be. It's in, it's in a tangential, you know, area of study or whatever that to the layperson makes it look like they know what they're doing, but it turns out they don't. I mean, a great example of this is Dr. Oz, right? Who is like a heart surgeon, right? Isn't he a heart surgeon, right? That does not made him like, that doesn't make him an expert in epidemiology. That doesn't make him an expert, you know, in, you know, infectious disease or whatever, right? And but, but people will, you know, cite him or, or he's not like, you know, he did so many diet supplements and that kind of stuff on the show.

• 1:49:19Speaker 07

  Well, he's not a nutritionist either, and so that does not qualify him to talk about that. And so it's.

• 1:49:24Cara Santa Maria?

  And even that, that's better than what we often, like I have a friend in LA who, or I should say an acquaintance in LA.

• 1:49:32Speaker 02

  Okay, not a full thread. Okay.

• 1:49:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Who sees a doctor, doctor.

• 1:49:37Speaker 02

  Oh, air guns.

• 1:49:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And for their alternative medicine, and this doctor has a degree in like English literature.

• 1:49:48Cara Santa Maria?

  It's like, mm.

• 1:49:50Speaker 02

  I said.

• 1:49:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Don't think so.

• 1:49:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's a good list of questions you could ask whenever there is an appeal to expertise or a quote unquote, authority. Is it a real expert in a legitimate field? Do they align with the consensus? Or are they an outlier? Are they, is, or is their, their background not relevant to their stated expertise? And at the end of the day, you know, is there evidence to support what they're saying?

• 1:50:17Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:50:18Speaker 02

  But that's a lot of work.

• 1:50:19Speaker 07

  It is a lot of work, right? You could also look to whether or not they proved trustworthy, you know, in the past, right? So like, I think that.

• 1:50:27Speaker 02

  But it's their history.

• 1:50:28Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah, like also, and this is like, this is why it's not an ad hominem, right? To like, point out that somebody's not trustworthy or they've gotten wrong conclusions before. And then to say, well, then I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to accept your argument here, right? So RFK Junior is a really good example of this. I don't have the specific quotes in front of me, but a couple of weeks ago, whenever he was on Capitol Hill, he tried to cite two different studies to prove that vaccines were not responsible for like the lower, you know, the lower mortality rate and infection rate. It was, you know, right? So it's sanitation that's responsible, not vaccines for the lowering of mortality rate and that kind of stuff, right? And like, there were a couple of doctors, you know, medical professionals on the panel in front of him. And he, they like, asked for the author and the year, and they looked it up and they

• 1:51:09Speaker 07

  basically pointed out like, what these studies are arguing is that the reduction in mortality and death in the first half of the century before we got the vaccines was due to, right? Sanitation, right? But they explicitly argue that after the invention of vaccines, the huge drop in mortality and death that happened after the vaccines, where it literally went almost to nothing, that was due to vaccines. Like, that's right there in the paper.

• 1:51:37Speaker 02

  And you were just. That's the measles vaccine you're talking about?

• 1:51:40Speaker 07

  Yeah. Right? I think.

• 1:51:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and that, that, that shows a perfect example of one of two things happening, either intentionally, actually, it's not even cherry picking, it's just misleading people. Or somebody without expertise, not knowing, not having the skill.

• 1:51:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Skills and the training to read a scientific paper.

• 1:51:59Speaker 02

  And in RFK's case, he's a lawyer. He is used to making a lawyer's case for something, not a scientific case for something. And he consistently confuses those two things. He thinks because I can marshal evidence to make a case for something, it's legitimate. It's like, no, that's not how science works. You gotta look at all the evidence and you have to try to prove yourself wrong. Lawyers are not used to proving themselves wrong. Correct. It's a whole skill set. This is a great example of that. He could twist this study to support a case and he thinks that's legitimate.

• 1:52:33Speaker 07

  Right. And it's not, I mean, not only is it like a lawyer's skill set, but it's like an entirely different approach. Right? Like RFK wasn't this kind of lawyer, but like if you are tasked with, you know, defending a defendant. Right? Then it is your task to build the best case that you can for their innocence, even when you know they're guilty. And that, what that might entail that you have to do is you mentioned this evidence, but not that evidence. Right? Like, that's kind of what you have to do to give them their best defense or whatever. Right? Well, that's the court of law. That's not science. That's not what you do in science, but that's exactly what he's doing here. And like Kara points out, it's either intentional and malicious, or it is incompetence. But either way, I shouldn't trust what you say. Somebody who does that, I should not trust what they say.

• 1:53:13Speaker 02

  Well, Kyle, thank you so much. That was a fantastic discussion. And in fact, you're gonna stay, you're gonna hang out with us and stay for science or fiction.

• 1:53:21Speaker 07

  Yes, I'm gonna lose badly at it, but that's what I'd like to do. Yes, that'd be great.

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  All right. Sounds good. All right. Here we go.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:53:39Speaker 02

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

• 1:53:52Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:53:53Speaker 02

  All right. Here we go. Item number one. Observing a recent volcanic eruption, scientists discover a potential method for reducing atmospheric methane involving volcanic ash and seawater.

• 1:54:07Speaker 02

  Item number two, scientists present a design for a pure copper 3D printable cold plates that, under modeled conditions, could reduce data center cooling energy use to about 1.1% of total energy consumption compared with more than 30% in conventional air-cooled designs. And item number three, in a recent extensive survey of Arctic fish, researchers found the first example of a fish, the snailfish, that is able to use its tail fin for backward propulsion. Okay, Bob, you go first.

• 1:54:41Bob Novella?

  Observing a recent volcanic, are you sure it's my turn to go first, bastard?

• 1:54:45Speaker 04

  I didn't think you were gonna go so cleanly, Bob.

• 1:54:49Bob Novella?

  So, they deduced a method for reducing atmospheric methane involving volcanic ash and seawater. How does that work? Number two here, is a design for a pure copper 3D printable cold plate to reduce data center cooling energy use 1.1%, which actually would be a lot. That would be huge, but that sounds weird.

• 1:55:13Speaker 02

  To 1%, Bob, not by 1.1%, to 1.1%.

• 1:55:18Speaker 04

  T.O.

• 1:55:19Bob Novella?

  You're kidding.

• 1:55:20Cara Santa Maria?

  So now, yeah, now it is 1.1% as opposed to 30.

• 1:55:24Bob Novella?

  Wow, okay. Damn, I hope that's true. Let's see, three here, recent extensive survey of Arctic fish researchers found the first example of a fish, the snailfish, that's able to use its tail fin for backward propulsion. Ooh.

• 1:55:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it could swim backwards.

• 1:55:41Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I gather that. Damn, man, none of these are leaping out at me.

• 1:55:45Speaker 04

  Not even the fish one?

• 1:55:48Speaker 02

  All right, that was a good one, Evan. Usually your puns are terrible, but I like that.

• 1:55:57Speaker 04

  They're all good, thank you.

• 1:55:58Speaker 07

  Evan's puns are not terrible, they're all good, all of them.

• 1:56:02Speaker 04

  Thank you, I'm an expert.

• 1:56:04Speaker 02

  Don't encourage him.

• 1:56:05Speaker 04

  You just bought me another 20 years of pun.

• 1:56:10Speaker 07

  I laugh at him all the time, Evan.

• 1:56:13Bob Novella?

  Because this copper one just sounds too, would be just too good, I'm gonna say that one's probably baloney, so I'll say that's fiction.

• 1:56:21Speaker 02

  Okay, Evan.

• 1:56:22Speaker 04

  Okay, volcanic eruptions.

• 1:56:24Bob Novella?

  Not joking now, are ya?

• 1:56:25Speaker 04

  No, I'm not. This, this, this just got real.

• 1:56:30Speaker 04

  Potential method for reducing atmospheric methane involving volcanic ash and seawater. So you can have a volcanic eruption under the water, right? I mean, you know, volcanoes don't have to be above the surface of the water, I think. Right? So if that were the case, there you go. You would have your ash in your seawater and they've discovered something in it. I think that one's plausible. So it's the other ones, the copper, pure copper, 3D printable cold plates. I know nothing about these, you know, fascinating stuff and brings it down to 1.1 of total energy consumption compared with more than 30%. Oh, that's a huge drop, right, Bob? That is enormous.

• 1:57:12Speaker 04

  And then the last one is about the Arctic fish, which it's snail fish, you said?

• 1:57:16Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:57:17Speaker 04

  Uh, able to use its tail fin for backward propulsion. I'm, I got this fish in my head, right? I'm looking at it like the fish, how could it's do fish? Fish swim, fish swim backwards, don't they? Can they? How does that work? Are they using their front fins as opposed to their tail fin? They're not using their tail fin to swim backwards. They're using their side fins, right? To push kind of like orzona. I'll say the fish is the fiction. I don't think it's the tail fin that does the backwards propulsion.

• 1:57:48Speaker 02

  Okay, Kara.

• 1:57:49Cara Santa Maria?

  I think it's the fish, but for a different reason, because I, in reading this, okay, so I'll just go through them. Potential method for reducing atmospheric methane involving volcanic ash and seawater. Okay. I don't know what that method could be, but I'm with Evan on the fact that, yeah, you could combine the two when there's an underwater explosion or just maybe somebody happened upon this in, in some sort of like model. I have no idea with the material science one. I hope it's true. I feel like we need this. We need to figure out how to reduce the total energy consumption of data center. So I can imagine that a lot of very smart people are working on this right now. The one that does bother me and it's because of the wording. So I'm going to just going to read it verbatim here.

• 1:58:33Cara Santa Maria?

  In a recent extensive survey of Arctic fish. Okay, I buy that. Researchers found the first. Example of a fish, the snailfish that is able to use its tail fin for backward propulsion. I cannot imagine that that is true. And like, maybe I am misunderstanding fish fins here. But I've seen, yeah, have you ever seen those like ghost knife fish, the ones with like the wiggly bottom? I think that is their tail fin, or at least it's their underfin. It's their tummy fin.

• 1:59:05Bob Novella?

  Gorilla something.

• 1:59:07Cara Santa Maria?

  But it connects all the way to their tail and they swim in all directions. So I don't, I don't feel like this is the first example of a fish to use its tail fin to swim backward. Maybe it's the first example of like an Arctic fish. Or I don't know, maybe it is the first that uses its tail fin, but I feel like there's too many little things that could have been changed here to make this one the fiction. So I'm going to go with Evan, but for a different reason on that one.

• 1:59:33Speaker 02

  Okay, Kyle.

• 1:59:34Speaker 07

  Well, this proves my point that having critical thinking skills does not always enable you to tell what's truth or fiction.

• 1:59:41Cara Santa Maria?

  No, it does not.

• 1:59:42Speaker 07

  You need the, the relevant expertise. This is why I suck at this game. I always lose when I'm playing at home. So there's a few ways to make this decision. I could be pessimistic and whichever one would be the best news. Well, that one must be the fiction because things can't be that good. I could go with the middle one because of the percentages and think that Steve's doing his order of magnitude thing. So it's some kind of reduction, but it's not that grandiose. I could go with the fact that Kara always gets things right for the wrong reason.

• 2:00:15Speaker 07

  And, and go with item three. I, I do kind of have a memory of, um, you know, fish with really, um, uh, dexterous, you know, tails or whatever, and they can go in all different directions, but I don't know if that's classified as, uh, an Arctic fish. Or I don't know if classified as like a tail fin, I should say. I don't know if that's going to be qualified as a tail fin, or if they're going to call that fin something else. I'm going to be wrong and go with number two, even though I'm betting against Kara. Because I think there might be an order of magnitude thing here. And also I'm relying on probably some. Wrong facts here, but my, my understanding was that most data centers are cooled by water. That's why people talk about, um, you know, how much water you waste with every prompt that

• 2:00:59Speaker 07

  you give them because they have this huge amount of water that has to be used for cooling them. And this is talking about air cooling. Now, maybe it is true because of this, because it's like, oh yeah, they can get it down to 1.1 total energy consumption compared with 30% for those that use air cooling, but that is irrelevant because most of them don't do air cooling, they do water cooling. So this is true, but who cares? Cause nobody does it that way. Um, but despite all of that-

• 2:01:21Speaker 02

  That's why the word conventional, I'll give you, that's why the word conventional is in there, because that's, it is used.

• 2:01:26Speaker 07

  Okay. I know it's used, is it, I mean, is this the conventional air cool designs? Or the, the air, the air cool designs are what are conventional? That's what most people use. I should go with three, but I'm going to go with two. So two is my guess.

• 2:01:38Speaker 02

  Okay, Jay?

• 2:01:39Jay Novella?

  Okay. The first one, observing a recent volcanic eruption, scientists discover a potential method for reducing atmospheric methane involving volcanic ash and seawater. Yeah. On the surface, that one sounds pretty, pretty impossible, right? There'd be so much stuff coming out of a volcano. So reducing atmospheric methane, you know, maybe they do something to the volcano beforehand? Oh, I got volcanic ash and seawater. Okay. Seawater, because there's a plenty of that. Let me think about that. I'll go to the second one here. Scientists present a design for pure copper 3D printable cold plates that under modeled conditions could reduce data center cooling energy used to about 1.1% of total energy

• 2:02:23Jay Novella?

  consumption compared with the 30%. Yeah, I think with enough metal and with the right engineering that you would be able to, um, yeah, that's pretty damn significant. And then you're saying it's 3D printed, these cold plates. That's really cool. Yeah, that one is actually kind of complicated too. All right, let me go on to the third one. In a recent extensive survey of Arctic fish, researchers found the first example of a fish, the snail fish that is able to use its tail fin for backward propulsion. Okay. Well, at least this one is straightforward. So the first one about the volcano- I would need a lot more information to be able to really suss this one out. So I just

• 2:03:04Jay Novella?

  got to say, I don't know about that one. The second one about the copper plating, I mean, I could see that they that they could come up with some type of enhanced cooling system that's a lot more energy efficient, you know, using these 3D printed copper plates. That doesn't sound crazy at all. Now Kara did not like the fish swimming backwards with its rear fin, right? Yeah. I mean, and that just seems to go against everything that that's designed to do. Kara did not like this one. I don't like this one either. I'm going with Kara.

• 2:03:40Speaker 02

  Okay, so you all agree on the first one. So we'll start there. Observing a recent volcanic eruption, scientists discover a potential method for reducing atmospheric methane involving volcanic ash and seawater. You all think this one is science. And this one is science. This is science. So yeah, this was not just modeled or anything. They observed, this was in 2022, a large volcano erupting, and the volcano belched out a huge amount of methane, which they do. It's still insignificant compared to, you know, person caused methane release, anthropogenic methane release. But it's, you know, it is a lot. And the researchers

• 2:04:24Speaker 02

  observed using satellite imagery that in the clouds created by the volcano, there was a lot of formaldehyde. Now, that's odd. Do you know why that's odd?

• 2:04:37Jay Novella?

  Well, usually it's, there's an organic compound to formaldehyde, isn't there?

• 2:04:42Speaker 02

  It's not, it's not so much that as formaldehyde is a very short half-life, right? It should only survive for a couple of hours.

• 2:04:49Jay Novella?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:04:49Speaker 02

  And so they observed this cloud for days, and there was formaldehyde in the cloud for days, which means it had to be being created for days. And so they had to figure out, well, what's the process that's creating the formaldehyde? And where could that come from? And what they found is that it can come from the methane in the cloud itself, that that methane was being transformed into formaldehyde, and then subsequently into CO2 and water. And what would do that? Well, that's a reaction that has to be catalyzed. And, and so what they figured out was that the volcanic ash was acting as like a nitrous

• 2:05:34Speaker 02

  for this reaction and the chloride from the sodium chloride in the salt water was, was, was catalyzing this reaction to turn formaldehyde ultimately into CO2 and water. So could this method be replicated to reduce methane in the atmosphere? Who knows? But it's a starting point, right? Okay. Yeah. So that's an interesting observation.

• 2:06:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 2:06:01Speaker 02

  All right. I guess we'll go on. We'll take them in order. We'll go on to number two. Scientists presented a design for pure copper. That's right, copper. 3D printable coal plates that under modeled conditions could reduce data center cooling energy used by to about 1.1% of total energy consumption compared with more than 30% in conventional air cooled designs. Bob and Kyle, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science and this one is science. This one is science.

• 2:06:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Kyle and I just don't care.

• 2:06:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:34Speaker 04

  I'm happy it's science.

• 2:06:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:37Speaker 07

  I was right. It was a mistake. I should have gone to three. That's what I was.

• 2:06:43Bob Novella?

  Yeah, me too.

• 2:06:46Speaker 02

  So the coal plates work by mainly through convection and conduction, right? They're next to the chips. The heat from the chips go into the coal plates and then it uses liquid cooling to a coolant to cool the cool plates themselves. So it's very, very efficient. Data centers are cooled either by they have an air cooled design or they have a liquid cooled design or they have like a hybrid air and liquid cooled design. The air cooled design designs use 30 to 50% of the total energy consumption for cooling. The liquid cooled design, from what I'm reading, use maybe closer to 15%, you know, 10 to 15%

• 2:07:28Speaker 02

  of the total energy for cooling. And again, this coal plate coolant cooled system would only be 1.1%.

• 2:07:37Speaker 02

  So what they did was they designed a topology that could be 3D printed, right? So they were, the 3D printing was built into the design from the beginning. And they found that it was incred, this topology optimized cold plates, even when they're made of just pure copper, nothing, not platinum or anything, right? That had, you know, had certain features. It had a lower thermal resistance and a fixed flow rate at, up to 68% lower pressure drop at equal thermal resistance, if that means anything to you, compared to other fin designs. Is it using those features, when you model it, it should only require 1.1% of the total energy used by the data center to achieve adequate cooling, which is a dramatic decrease,

• 2:08:22Speaker 02

  you know, 30 times whatever of the energy used for the conventional air cooling. So yeah, that could be a huge benefit.

• 2:08:29Bob Novella?

  Billions.

• 2:08:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, data centers.

• 2:08:31Bob Novella?

  How many billions would that save?

• 2:08:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Data centers use a lot of energy. That's kind of their, one of their key features. And anything that reduces the energy, like cutting their energy used by a third would be huge, would be absolutely huge.

• 2:08:44Bob Novella?

  Oh, God.

• 2:08:45Speaker 02

  So again, this is, I had to say in under modeled conditions because they haven't physically tested it yet, but it does seem to be very promising. All of this means that number three in a recent extensive survey of Arctic fish, researchers found the first example of a fish, the snailfish, that is able to use its tail fin for backward propulsion is the fiction. What makes it the fiction though? What part of it is the fiction? Is it that no fish could swim backwards or this isn't the first fish to swim backwards? Kara thinks this isn't the first fish to swim backwards.

• 2:09:18Bob Novella?

  Not the first, I'd say.

• 2:09:19Speaker 07

  I go with Kara. I go with Kara.

• 2:09:21Speaker 02

  All right. The answer is it's not the first one and this fish can't swim backwards.

• 2:09:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. I think that's, I said that, that this fish can't swim backwards.

• 2:09:30Bob Novella?

  Otherwise, it was spot on.

• 2:09:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, otherwise all good.

• 2:09:34Speaker 02

  The paper or the, the, the press release of the paper is like fish can swim backwards. Then when I looked at the study, it's like this fish isn't swimming backwards. It's just curling up its tail and allowing the current to carry it backwards.

• 2:09:48Speaker 04

  It's passing. It's not even using its side fins to push it.

• 2:09:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So then I said, then I, that took me down the rabbit hole. Well, can any fish swim backwards specifically? So here's the thing specifically using its tail fin. So that's a critical element because there are lots of fish that can, that could swim backwards. But these are fish that swim through undulation like an eel, right? And that incorporates their tail fin, right? But it's their whole body. And so, you know, if you, you, you undulate in one direction, it moves you forward. If you reverse the, the undulation, you, you swim backwards. So yeah, eels can swim backwards into a crevice to, to hide there to get their prey. For example, undulating fish swimming backwards, no big deal, right? There's lots of examples of that. All right. But what about non-undulate, a non-undulating fish?

• 2:10:36Speaker 02

  There are some fish that can swim, swim backwards using their pectoral fins. Sometimes they have a specific fin on their belly that they could use. But, but it's very rare for a fish to actually use its tail fin for propulsion. That's why I specifically said that. What some fish do is they swim backwards with their dorsal fins and they use their tail fin as a rudder to sort of control where they're going, but they're not propelling themselves with their tail fin. And the reason why that's the, they did, they, most fish cannot do this is just because of the anatomy of the tail fin. The tail fin evolved for propulsion in one direction, forward.

• 2:11:16Speaker 02

  However, there is at least one fish, and that is the, the bluegill that evolved new muscles, right? It has, it has a separate tail fin muscle anatomy. And those muscles allow it to, if you can imagine this, so the tail fin is not just going back and forth. It actually can curl all the way around and throw a jet of water forward. Can you imagine that? Right, so it creates these small little forward jets of water with its tail by sort of cupping it and curling it around with special muscles that most fish don't have. And that fish can actually propel itself backwards with its tail fin. But that's like

• 2:11:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Interesting.

• 2:11:59Speaker 02

  There's, you know, that's the only one that I could confirm. There's a couple of, I found references to a couple of other ones like the boxfish, fish and the cowfish, which may be able to do something similar, but that's really the only one that really is clearly using its tail fin for backward propulsion. Pretty cool.

• 2:12:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:16Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 2:12:17Speaker 02

  But I knew the big risk of this is the right for the wrong reason, but, uh, cause people say, oh, you can't swim backwards, even though you can. But you guys actually got it for the right reason, which is that this is, the snailfish isn't the first one. But the snailfish itself, it's just passively swimming backwards. It's not actively swimming backwards. But this was an extent, what they did with the surveys, they basically put cameras in the Arctic and then just, you know, gathered a ton of data and they found all kinds of weird stuff that they'd never seen before, you know? So there's still a lot to discover, you know, if we just put cameras down there.

• 2:12:50Cara Santa Maria?

  I can't help but think about Sean of the Dead when he's like, dogs can't look up.

• 2:12:55Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 2:12:56Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't know why. Fish can't swim backwards.

• 2:12:59Speaker 04

  Big Al says they can.

• 2:13:02Speaker 02

  Well, Kyle, thanks for joining us.

• 2:13:06Speaker 07

  Thank you so much for having me on. I had a blast, even though I completely lost.

• 2:13:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, as predicted. You lost science fiction.

• 2:13:11Speaker 04

  But we all gained after a while. We all gained.

• 2:13:14Cara Santa Maria?

  In our rankings.

• 2:13:17Speaker 02

  If we have you back, we'll, we'll give you another crack at it, maybe.

• 2:13:20Speaker 07

  Cool. I could also do like, uh, I could put one together, do like a philosophy or fiction or something like that. I could put something like that.

• 2:13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm always happy to have other people do my work for me. Absolutely. Yeah, Evan, can you do the quote?

• 2:13:32Speaker 04

  Outside of their particular area of expertise, scientists are just as dumb as the next person. Richard Fine.

• 2:13:42Speaker 07

  Bravo.

• 2:13:43Speaker 02

  I do like that quote, but I disagree with it.

• 2:13:47Speaker 04

  I know. I knew you were gonna push back on that.

• 2:13:50Speaker 02

  There's a nuance. There's a nuance to this. So the just as dumb is, I would push back on because experts in one field do have some general knowledge about like logic and scholarship and evidence and stuff.

• 2:14:04Speaker 04

  Right, how they achieved their expertise in the first place.

• 2:14:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they also, they should understand the gulf between what they know as an expert on a specific topic and the general public. And hopefully, they apply that across the board. I encourage people to do that, to realize that they are as ignorant in other areas as they think everybody else is in the area that they actually are an expert in. So being, being an expert in something, I think, does give you some general intellectual skills that people who are an expert in nothing do not have. Is that fair?

• 2:14:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:14:38Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 2:14:39Speaker 04

  I think Richard was driving home the point, though, that they're an expert in their subject, they're non-experts in all the other subjects.

• 2:14:46Speaker 02

  Of course. The core of it, I agree with. Absolutely. But I just wanted to throw that nuance in there.

• 2:14:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, if nothing else, your expertise in one topic should at least make you aware of the Dunning Kruger effect. And so that you're not as, you're not as apt to think that you more know about it, know more about a subject than you do where other people who don't have expertise might not be aware of that.

• 2:15:02Speaker 02

  It should make you more humble. Sometimes.

• 2:15:06Bob Novella?

  The line is falling.

• 2:15:07Speaker 02

  It has the opposite effect.

• 2:15:08Speaker 04

  Well, there are exceptions.

• 2:15:10Speaker 02

  There is the Nobel Prize effect, man, where, I don't know that it's real or not, but there's like famous examples of Nobel Prize winners that went later in their career, became flagrant pseudoscientists. So yeah, that, it is true enough to that extent. All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

• 2:15:27Bob Novella?

  Thanks, Steve.

• 2:15:27Speaker 07

  Thanks, Steve.

• 2:15:28Speaker 02

  And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 2:15:35Speaker 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.

• 2:16:12Jay Novella?

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