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June 10, 2008 - Skeptoid
16:03
Skeptoid #104: Yet More Winning Listener Feedback

Another visit to the endless well of listeners comments and criticisms. 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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Straw Men and Sacred Cows 00:06:48
Since we cover so many diverse topics on Skeptoid, busting myths and crazy beliefs from all corners of the human experience, we end up stepping on a lot of toes and tipping lots of sacred cows.
And sometimes a few listeners don't always appreciate that I provide that service.
So today we're going to read a few of their feedback emails.
And I might even respond.
That's coming up right now on Skeptoid.
Hi, I'm Alex Goldman.
You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that.
I'm doing something else now.
I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed.
On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems and I try to solve them.
Some massive and life-altering, and some so minuscule it'll boggle your mind.
No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you.
That's HyperFixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia.
Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Yet more winning listener feedback.
It hasn't been that long, but already I'm collecting a pile of listener feedback that's too good to ignore.
I want to start by diving straight into one that's a perfect example of the straw man argument.
As you recall, a straw man argument is when the arguer creates an exaggerated caricature of his opponent's statements, reframing them into something he didn't say and is a horrible argument that falls apart by itself.
People, if you want to take issue with anything I say, great.
I invite it.
But if you want to take issue with straw man arguments that I didn't say, I'm going to throw it right back in your face.
Recently, we talked about the Stanford prison experiment, and I pointed out a number of concerns that other researchers have expressed about Philip Zimbardo's methods and conclusions.
This must have hit Chris from New Zealand pretty hard, because he responded by attacking an imaginary position that I never even remotely alluded to and don't remotely agree with.
Sorry, Brian, but I thought this was a particularly poor episode.
Was it your intention to argue that people are not a product of their environment?
Or perhaps that poor African Americans are genetically programmed to commit crime on a larger scale than their rich white counterparts?
At the end of the episode, you drew an implicit false dichotomy where either people can be a product of their society or they can be responsible for their own actions, as if there is no gray area.
Trying to argue that people's actions cannot be influenced by their environment in a very real and shocking way is a tough line to tow.
Nazi Germany taught us a lot about what people are capable of if fed the right propaganda in the right circumstances.
Chris, I suggest doing your own podcast because listening to someone else's is clearly not your strength.
Most reasonable people agree that nature and nurture are both factors in behavior.
I think so, and Zimbardo thinks so too.
I wish I knew what you thought.
Next time, try expressing some thoughts of your own instead of making straw men out of mine.
It's no surprise that the young earth creationism debate continues going nowhere fast.
Here's a fair sample of high-quality information from Ryan from Williamston, Michigan.
Fact.
Carbon dating cannot be proven to provide the proper age of a rock.
Fact.
Anybody can make a fossil with water and a microwave.
Hello, son.
Fact.
Fence posts have been dug up that are petrified in a few years.
Fact.
Babies are squeezed through the birth canal of all animals to expel the embryonic fluid from the lungs.
You did go to high school, right?
Fact.
You saw with your own two eyes that we evolved from a rock millions of years ago.
Those are some fine facts, Ryan.
I'd address them, but I really don't know where to start.
I think I'll let the folks on the SkepTalk email discussion list handle this one.
Initials JNC from Charlotte, North Carolina took issue with my recommendation to ask a medical doctor about vitamin supplementation in the episode about vitamin C megadosing.
Both of my doctors strongly recommended vitamins and fish oil.
The primary care doc gave me a link to his website to order them.
The surgeon sold monthly packs of a mix he designed which cost $65 per month, and if you get a year's supply, $50 per month.
I guess my point is that if some MDs are supplementing their income with vitamins, they may not be unbiased.
This is very true.
Medical doctors are as human as anyone else, and a few of them do throw their ethics to the wind and sell quack remedies on the side.
This is why I was so explicit in the episode when I said to be sure not to ask someone who's in the business of selling these products.
And while we're on the subject of medical quackery, I received a fairly typical email from Initials E.K. in Seattle, Washington, who has, like most people, had a positive experience with his chiropractor.
He said, I do agree that a lot of the metaphysical junk some chiropractors share with their clients is utter bunk, and I can't say I have seen any reason to believe that regular spinal adjustments can improve my digestive health, nor that vertebra number XX directly corresponds to the health of my genitals, as the poster in one chiropractor's office tells me.
However, I can say I've found no finer solution for back or neck pain than a chiropractor.
When plagued by back or neck pain, nothing gets me feeling well faster than a visit to one of them.
Like I said, when chiropractors give useful back pain treatment, they're simply performing conventional, albeit unlicensed, physical therapy.
If it's working for you, I suggest going to a DPT, doctor of physical therapy, and getting the same treatment legally from a licensed and trained professional, rather than from someone who learned anatomy at a magic school.
If you're going to call yourself a chiropractor, give chiropractic treatment.
If you want to give useful physical therapy instead, great.
But don't call it chiropractic, because that's not what chiropractic is.
Stand Up for Reason Together 00:02:24
Mike from Brisbane, Australia, chimed in with the doomsayer's perspective on the episode about peak oil production.
Peak oil is going to teach the ignorant a harsh lesson.
I cannot believe that our modern society, with all our knowledge, can think we can continue to consume and destroy our planet without repercussions.
Even if peak oil didn't collapse modern society, as I know it will, another finite resource will.
Maybe if more politicians had a science background, they would see that we live on an agar plate, and we are behaving just like bacteria, consuming and multiplying with impunity.
Wake up, sheeple.
Then again, don't worry, keep sleeping.
It's too late in the game anyway.
It's nice that we have one person on Earth who's not a sheeple and who's qualified to berate the rest of us.
A round of applause for Mike, the only person smart enough and courageous enough to dare to point out that the Earth is a single finite Petri dish, already partially eaten, and not an ecosystem.
In a world that can feel overwhelming, spreading thoughtful, evidence-based content is one of the best ways to make a positive impact.
Ask your local public radio station to air the Skeptoid Files, a 30-minute radio-friendly version of Skeptoid that pairs two related episodes promoting real science, true history, and critical thinking.
And in these challenging times for public media, we're offering these broadcasts for free to radio stations, available on the PRX Exchange or directly from Skeptoid Media.
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.
Skepticism in Chaotic Times 00:06:48
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.
The episode Debunking Quack Detoxification Myths became the new all-time feedback winner, burying me under pit toilets and outhouses full of excreted toxic bull crap.
Nearly all of it followed the same familiar themes, that medical care is more expensive than alternative care, and that buying clunky hardware and untested drugs is a natural alternative to letting your kidneys and liver simply do their job.
Senor Lopez from Kansas advocates that price is a better decision maker than efficacy.
I'm not sure if you've looked at how much money doctors charge, but it is not a practical amount to pay without the aid of insurance.
Some of us have to rely on natural cures and hope that they are not ripping us off.
Raylin from the USA also agrees that the wisest choice for people who cannot afford conventional health care is to give what little money they do have to practitioners selling useless alternative snake oil.
Unfortunately, not everyone has medical insurance or the money to pay for medical treatment.
Most of us who use alternative medicines are the ones stuck out in the cold by our own country that has outpriced medical care.
Most of us suffer through our medical issues and try to survive.
I'd like to know the percentage of deaths in this country from major catastrophic illnesses that are the poor in this country.
Carla from Atlanta, Georgia feels that only practitioners who agree with her self-diagnosis are following proper science.
I was miserable and medical doctors trained in the best schools claimed nothing was wrong until one day I fell so ill that I was hospitalized.
All of the sudden, I was diagnosed by one of them with what I had claimed was wrong all along.
A natural practitioner finally got me back on my feet and I've never felt better.
Thus, it is fair to say that the medical practices of textbook medicine are flawed.
Leslie, also from Atlanta, defends detoxification products, but rather than giving any information that supports them, instead she only makes conspiratorial, anti-corporate attacks against big pharma.
Has Western medicine brainwashed you this much?
How about the greedy, money-hungry drug companies?
They are making money off of you, advertising their pills on TV and telling us to ask our doctor if so-and-so is right for you, without even telling us what the drug is for.
Drugs are the second biggest business in the U.S., brainwashing Americans that they will make their lives better, when in fact, the side effects are much more numerous than the benefits of any of the meds.
Maybe you should be skeptical about that harsh reality.
That's a relief.
I was worried we'd go a full episode without anyone cornering me and charging that I need to be skeptical of the skeptics.
Kristen from Texas follows the same pattern as Leslie, mistaking her own conspiracy theories and hostility toward medical doctors as support for detoxification.
What medical doctors will do that a naturopathic doctor won't is spend five minutes with you and prescribe something for your symptoms that they are being paid by a drug company to use, without considering anything about your mental health, fitness, lifestyle, and the body's power to heal itself.
And then you come back into their office with a new sickness, which is really just side effects of that drug they gave you.
So they give you a new medication to treat the side effects of the other side effects.
It's a never-ending cycle.
Medications are dangerous chemicals.
Good point, Kristen.
An untested, unapproved, unregulated detoxification drug is a much safer chemical than one that is tested, approved, and regulated.
Well argued.
Let's close with a final example of failing to put in sufficient intellectual effort before sending in feedback.
Jaime from Manila observed that on the skeptoid.com comment form, I advise people to read with skepticism the comments from anyone who does not give their name.
If you're not willing to stand behind your remarks, I'm not too eager to listen to them.
Jaime wrote, As you suggested, I read with skepticism the detoxification myth because the writer was too lame to put his real name in city.
His signature is meaningless because it cannot be read with no name clearly printed underneath.
Please practice what you preach.
Has Jaime found out my dirty little secret that I keep my identity hidden?
You've got to work pretty damn hard to spend any time on skeptoid.com and not find my name blitzed everywhere.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning, and I'm in the phone book, Jaime.
And my picture and bio are on skeptoid.com.
Hello, everyone.
This is Adrian Hill from Skookum Studios in Calgary, Canada, the land of maple syrup and moose.
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Remember that skepticism is the best medicine.
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Until next time, this is Adrienne Hill.
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