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May 20, 2008 - Skeptoid
15:50
Skeptoid #101: Things I'm Wrong About

A look back correcting some of the facts and figures that Skeptoid has gotten wrong. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Correcting Past Devon Errors 00:05:26
This is a podcast about finding the truth behind urban legends and other strange beliefs.
And it wouldn't have much credibility if it didn't actually find the truth.
Even if that truth is that we just don't know.
Well, I don't always get everything right.
And so today, as we do every so often, is another episode dedicated entirely to correcting errors from past shows.
That's coming up right now on Skeptoid.
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You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Things I'm wrong about.
Now that there are 100 episodes of the Skeptoid podcast, I have had 100 chances to get something wrong.
And I've succeeded in many cases getting the odd factor figure wrong, saying something backwards, looking at a map upside down, or just being an idiot.
And since I do try to follow the scientific method here, at least in as minimally abbreviated a way as practical in a 10-minute podcast, the responsible thing for me to do is to report corrections and improvements to the information presented.
I have to start with the one error that I got the most grief for.
Skeptoid number 31 was about the 1855 incident in Devon, England, where a 100-mile-long set of footprints was found in the snow one morning, ostensibly laid by the devil himself.
Devon is a county in southwestern England.
However, when I recorded the episode, I said southeastern England, even though I was literally staring at a map while I spoke the words.
No idea why, just one of the unaccountable brain farts.
Probably the E in England threw me and I said southeastern even as I was thinking southwestern.
Anyway, I must have heard from a hundred listeners, many of whom said things like, if I did so little research that I didn't even know where Devon was, how could they trust the accuracy of anything else I said?
But I also caught additional flack.
Among the stories dating from 1855 were that the trail of footprints spanned a two-mile stretch of water at one point.
Now I had looked over Devon pretty thoroughly using Google Earth to get a sense of the terrain, having never been there myself, and I couldn't find any lakes or rivers that looked like they might possibly offer a two-mile stretch.
Nevertheless, I repeated the claim as it was reported, and, as I should have expected, listeners blamed me for the error.
If I knew so little about Devon, how could they trust the accuracy of anything else I said?
One newspaper report suggested raccoons among a list of possible culprits.
There are no raccoons in England, but I was merely repeating the newspaper report.
And as before, listeners blamed me.
If I knew so little about the fauna in England, how could they trust the accuracy of anything else I said?
I usually spend a few weeks researching each skeptoid topic, split among several episodes at a time, until I have enough notes on one to expand it into a full episode.
Once I have enough, I cut it off, trying to keep each episode to around 10 minutes or about 1500 words.
Sometimes I have to leave out important information that I simply have to choose to cut.
Sometimes I miss things because I have enough and need to stop researching.
This is what happened in Skeptoid number 40 when I addressed the question of Zaina, the Russian 19th century wild woman suspected of being part Neanderthal.
Much of this research was done online, bookmarking and digesting everything I could find on the topic.
I reported in the episode that Zaina's skull had never been found, only that of her son Quit, and at the time, no DNA research had been done on it.
Unbeknownst to me, five months before my episode, National Geographic aired an episode of Is It Real, where they actually did find Zayna's skull and did DNA tests on both of them.
The results confirmed what I reported, that there was no non-human ancestry found in Zayna or Quit.
I guess five months was not long enough for the info to propagate to the internet very deeply, so I didn't find it.
Anyway, this illustrates one risk of doing internet research.
The Pill Discoloration Myth 00:02:25
I did make a good solid error in my discussion of the Kanoki foot pads in Skeptoid number 83, the detoxification myth.
Kanoki foot pads are adhesive pads that you stick to the bottom of your feet, and they turn dark brown.
Kanoki claims that this discoloration is caused by toxins that are sucked out of your body through your feet, which is of course medically impossible.
In the episode, I opined that they changed color because they are damp and adhesive, and this loosens and removes dead dirty skin cells.
In my research, I missed the real reason.
The active ingredient in Kanoki foot pads is powdered wood vinegar.
When it's dried, it forms a colorless powder.
In its normal liquid state, it's dark brown or black.
Contact with perspiration from your foot reconstitutes the acetic acid in the wood vinegar, and the dark liquid stains the pad.
Presto, science in action, and no magical transport of mysterious toxins through non-permeable skin is needed to explain the effect.
There is also an error of omission in the detoxification episode that's caused me plenty of trouble.
Alternative practitioners also sell pills that flush long rubbery snakes out of your bowels.
They claim that these snakes are made of accumulated toxins, and that everyone has them inside them, and they call them mucoid plaque.
In fact, the pills are what create these rubbery bowel castings.
So it's no surprise that whenever you take such a cleansing pill, your body will excrete a long rubbery snake.
I described the process by which these pills create the castings.
They contain primarily bentonite and psyllium, used to make mucilage polymer.
These pills literally rubberize your bowel contents, which then comes out in one big piece.
Well, apparently not all of these pills contain bentonite and psyllium, so I got a barrage of emails from believers calling me a liar and charging that I'm on the payroll of big pharma trying to keep people sick by making stuff up about these miraculous natural cleansing systems.
My mistake.
The other popular formulation in these pills is guar gum and pectin.
Swallow some guar gum and pectin and then see what comes out of your bowels.
Ethanol Burning Mistake 00:07:54
Guess what?
It's a big rubbery snake.
In a world that can feel overwhelming, spreading thoughtful, evidence-based content is one of the best ways to make a positive impact.
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It's an easy ask.
Just send a quick message to your station's programming director.
By helping to bring the Skeptoid files to the airwaves, you'll help promote the essential skills we all need to tell fact from fiction.
Just go to your local station's website, find the programming director's email address, or just their general email address.
You can even use the telephone.
I know that might sound crazy.
It's an old legacy device that allows real-time voice communication.
I know that's weird, but hey, it's an option.
The world can feel chaotic, but you're not powerless.
When you promote critical thinking, you can help your community tell fact from fiction.
And that's how we shape a better future.
In uncertain times, spreading good ideas can make you feel helpful, not helpless.
Let's stand up for reason, truth, and understanding.
Together.
Get them to air the Skeptoid files from Skeptoid Media, available on the PRX Exchange, and they'll know what that is.
Probably the biggest error I've made for which there's no excuse was my characterization of the carbon cycle when burning ethanol in Skeptoid number 51.
Per unit of volume, burning ethanol produces slightly less carbon than burning gasoline.
No surprise since it has lower energy content.
But per calorie of energy, burning ethanol produces slightly more carbon dioxide than gasoline does because you have to burn half again as much of it to drive your car the same distance.
But the alternative fuel people say that's okay because, as they rightly point out, the ethanol came from corn or sugar or some other crop that took the carbon out of the air to begin with, so it's actually a zero-sum gain.
Although I omitted this obviously very important qualification, my point still stands.
When you take the complete fuel cycle into account, including driving the international harvesters and delivering the ethanol by truck since it can't go through pipelines, driving a car with ethanol still puts more fossil fuel-derived carbon into the atmosphere than driving a gasoline car.
In Skeptoid number 44 about remote viewing, I described how James Randy got two kids, Steve Shaw and Mike Edwards, to fool some researchers at Washington University into thinking they had psychic powers by doing simple magic tricks.
I reported that Randy taught the tricks to Shaw and Edwards.
Not correct.
One day I got an email from Banachek, the stage name of Steve Shaw, now a successful stage mentalist and all-around cool dude.
Banachek informed me that he and Mike Edwards developed all their own deceptions to fool the researchers.
Randy did not teach them the tricks.
I enjoyed emailing with him but had to break it off in disgust when he refused to divulge the secret of Pen ⁇ Teller's bullet catch trick, which Banichek himself devised for them.
Skeptoid number 97 discussed the face on Mars, in which I stated that the latest, highest resolution image came from the Mars Global Surveyor in 1991, with a resolution of 6 feet per pixel.
I was informed that there is an even later and better picture from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, HiRISE, with a resolution of 30 centimeters per pixel, from April 2007.
There's a link to that image on the transcript page for this episode.
To me, the image looks exactly like the one I posted from Global Surveyor.
Maybe it is, and maybe that constitutes a second error from the same episode.
The harder I look, the worse it gets.
Errors compounding errors.
It's a wonder anyone ever listens to me anymore.
In Skeptoid number 95 about self-employment business opportunities, I glibly mentioned Starbucks as a franchise company.
It's the kind of thing that seems so obvious that I never even thought twice about it and so didn't even bother to verify it.
And due to Murphy's Law, that's just the occasion where you'll end up being wrong.
Starbucks is not a franchise, just a ridiculously successful company.
This is actually kind of interesting because of all the facts I've ever discussed on the show, this is one of the most obvious, and I got it wrong.
A lot of facts are really obscure and really hard to find.
One example that springs to mind was when I searched the birth and death certificates for the Navajo Nation in search of the Hopi Indian named Little Chief Greenleaf.
That was some obscure research.
And yet what do I get wrong?
Something obvious about Starbucks.
If anything, this should underscore the advice I give all the time.
Don't take my word for anything.
When something comes from me, you can be assured that it was generally well researched.
But that doesn't make anything infallible.
Words coming out of my mouth on a podcast comprise no better than anecdotal information.
You can use this anecdotal information to suggest a direction for you to research further, if you're truly interested in a subject.
But always assume that I could be wrong about anything.
If you want to follow a truly skeptical process, you should find out the facts for yourself.
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I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
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