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May 12, 2009 - Skeptoid
16:34
Skeptoid #153: Revenge of the Listener Feedback

Another peek into the mailbag to see who loves us, and who hates us. 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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The Skeptoid Pyramid Logo 00:06:53
If you've ever had a look at the cover art for Skeptoid, you've noticed that it is, quite obviously, a sort of stylized pyramid eyeball thing.
Why?
Well, since many correspondents accuse me of being a New World Order Illuminati Freemason, because who else would dare to promote science, I figured I'd give them what they want.
Today we have an email from a listener who very cunningly saw that logo.
Listener feedback is today on Skeptoid.
A quick reminder for everyone, you're listening to Skeptoid, revealing the true science and true history behind urban legends every week since 2006.
With over a thousand episodes, we're celebrating 20 years of keeping it focused and keeping it brief.
And we couldn't have done it without your curiosity leading the way.
And now we're even offering a little bit more.
If you become a premium member, supporting the show with a monthly micropayment of as little as $5, you get more Skeptoid.
The premium version of the show is not only ad-free, it has extended content.
These episodes are a few minutes longer.
We get rid of the ads and replace them with more Skeptoid.
The Extended Premium Show available now.
Come to Skeptoid.com and click Go Premium.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Revenge of the listener feedback.
Sometimes getting my email is like Sigourney Weaver running down the corridor and suddenly finding herself smack in the middle of a whole room full of alien eggs.
I'll sit here frozen for minutes, holding my breath as a long list of highlighted unread subject lines all stare at me.
I'm too terrified to click anywhere, and my heart pounds.
I know that each of those emails contains a beastly, spidery, vicious personal attack.
I try to tiptoe away quietly and maybe they won't see me, but if I make the slightest move, the little ping sound stops me cold.
So, eventually, each week, I do as I now do for you.
I bust out my flamethrower and spray the whole room.
This week's first victim is Richard Freeman from Exeter, England, who made a comment on my episode about orangpin deck, an ape species known only to cryptozoologists.
I'm a qualified zoologist and former zookeeper.
I've worked with animals all over the world and taken expeditions into poorly explored areas.
Twice I've been to Sumatra and interviewed not only native witnesses, but Debbie Martyr, a Western scientist and head of the Indonesian Tiger Conservation Group.
She has seen orangpin deck four times in the jungle.
It's both easy and spineless to say eyewitnesses are liars or mistaken from your comfrey armchair.
Try having enough backbone to go and look for cryptids before shooting off your big mouth.
Beware the old fallacy that skepticism is not appropriate unless you've personally sampled the pseudoscience.
This is the same comment you hear from people selling all manner of snake oil.
Try it before you slam it.
Well, Richard, I'm not going to try a coffee enema just to find out whether it gives me super health.
And I'm not going to spend a small fortune searching the jungles of Sumatra for an implausible creature.
Nor am I going to break into Area 51 and see if I can find any aliens.
I already gave the reasons Orangpindeck is unlikely in the episode, and I'm not going to repeat them here.
Richard Freeman is a prominent enough cryptozoologist that he actually has his own Wikipedia page.
He is the zoological director of the Center for Fortean Zoology, a UK non-profit dedicated to cryptozoology.
Orangpindeck is not the only implausible beast he believes in.
He's also hunted the Loch Ness monster, rumored giant snakes in Thailand and Guyana, a Gambian dragon, the Almas in Russia, something called the Mongolian death worm, and a race of pygmies with red faces.
How many such creatures has he, or any other cryptozoologist, ever actually discovered?
Zero.
Well, Richard, here's something else I'm going to say to you from my comfy armchair.
There is actually real work to be done in the field of zoology that benefits animals that really do exist.
Try doing some of that.
Maybe you can actually have a useful, positive impact on the world.
Pender from Holland, who has contributed all sorts of colorful perspectives to the skeptoid.com episode comments, seems to have discovered my deep dark secret.
Study the higher ranks of Freemasonry, and you will see what the I on this website is for, as well as the dragons named on the DVD.
They are very telling for he who has eyes to see.
He's referring to the skeptical eye on the Skeptoid album art and the dragon logo on my Here Be Dragons video.
Evidently, he feels I chose them because I must be a Freemason and gain some advantage by promoting the symbols.
You know, I'm not even going to deny that, Pinder.
I'm just going to let you wonder and stew and brood about it, and imagine what conspiracy plots I'm planning against you.
In Freemasonry, the eye represents the all-seeing eye of God and symbolizes how he's watching over us.
So clearly, if you know me at all, this is an idea I'm always trying to promote.
The dragon, however, doesn't seem to be a Masonic symbol at all.
No dragon symbol appears in any of the encyclopedias of Freemasonry, and none of the half-dozen or so masons I spoke with have heard of it.
But Pender says you must go to the higher ranks of Freemasonry to find it.
Like all conspiracy guys, Pender knows more than the experts.
He's probably read on the internet that the dragon symbolizes eternal power, or that St. George's slaying of the dragon represents the triumph over evil, or that the leaders of the American Revolution sometimes met in a Boston pub called the Green Dragon Tavern, which was purchased by a local Freemason lodge for its meeting spaces.
Well, Pender, now we know about you, so you'd better grow eyes on the back of your head.
Organic Food Statistics Misuse 00:06:59
William from Vancouver, British Columbia, had a comment typical of those that continue pouring in on my episode about organic food, the basic point of which was that while there's nothing wrong with so-called organic crops, there's also nothing wrong with conventional crops, despite the ongoing smear campaign by organic proponents.
Read the Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan for an unbiased view of the organic versus corporate monopoly grown foods.
Brian is basically an uninformed apologist for big agro-business.
I would not be surprised if he is pulling a salary from Monsanto or Cargill.
That's right, William.
You found out Monsanto's dirty little secret.
They found an uninformed apologist, then paid him a salary for two and a half years to have him put out over 150 podcast episodes on wide-ranging topics as a cover, just so they could sneak in one little episode about organic food myths, basically amounting to little more than one blog entry among millions on the web.
Hope they got their money's worth.
I congratulate you for your detective work.
And that's a fine false dichotomy, you state.
Organic versus corporate monopoly grown foods.
Look up virtually any large organic producer.
More often than not, you'll find they're owned by the same corporate monopolies.
Organics are an important market segment.
There's hardly a food producer in the world that hasn't gotten on that bandwagon.
Indeed, the food companies largely created that market segment.
If you're saying stuff like organic versus corporate monopoly grown foods, you're thinking exactly what the advertising agencies are paid to make you think.
Oh, and thank you for introducing me to what unbiased means.
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.
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.
Leonard, a chiropractor who is a friend of a friend, offered the following regarding my episode on chiropractic.
The statin Lipitor being promoted as reducing heart attack deaths by 50% is one example of crooked science.
Two patients per 100 on Lipitor over three and a half years died, and three of the control group died per 100.
Two instead of three translates into a 50% number.
25% had side effects using Lipitor.
Billions of dollars are spent on statins worldwide.
I am sure your critical and skeptical approach could do a much more scientific discussion of this and other medical dragons.
Otherwise, it appears you are on a witch hunt against chiropractic.
How do I get my critical thinking on this subject reviewed to see if I am in error?
Evidence does not seem to be scientific proof for medical procedures, in my way of thinking.
We had a lengthy email exchange, but this paragraph sums up his position pretty well.
He's a nice guy, but he's a denier of modern medicine, and he feels that the failings of evidence-based medicine constitute support for chiropractic.
That's like saying person A is in jail, so what does that tell us about person B?
Obviously, nothing at all.
Leonard doesn't go around flaunting the magic-based claims of chiropractic's innate intelligence energy fields.
He just figures it must be true because he sees problems in medical science.
Thus, he draws a false dichotomy.
If I don't join the ranks of those who deny medical science, I must be on a witch hunt against chiropractic.
Well, Leonard, the two don't have anything to do with each other.
Certainly medical science is not perfect, but then again, nobody's claiming that it is.
Chiropractic is a very different story.
It does incorporate some elements of conventional physical therapy, but the rest of it is completely made-up hooey based on the belief in mystical new age energy fields that cannot be either detected or described.
I find Leonard's closing comment particularly telling.
Evidence does not seem to be scientific proof for medical procedures.
This is pretty common among alternative practitioners.
It's called a special pleading.
It implies that some higher power, not detectable to science, governs the human body and it's thus immune to failures evidenced by scientific testing.
A special pleading can be used to defend any supernatural claim.
If an appeal to an undetectable higher power is the best evidence they've got, you have good reason to be skeptical.
Leonard also brings up a valid point about the misuse of statistics.
The difference in risk between 2% and 3% is not 50%.
It's 1%, which is hardly any difference at all.
It's easy to shock someone with a big number like 50% greater risk, because the number 3 is 50% higher than the number 2.
When you phrase it like that, people hear the 50% part and are terrified, when in fact the risk is 3%.
Always be skeptical of the way marketers use statistics.
Soldier Paul's Iraq Story 00:02:37
I always like to end these episodes on a high note.
Paul, currently stationed in Satyr City, Iraq, tells the following tale.
I'm a soldier currently serving in Iraq, and I just wanted to say how much I love your podcast.
We don't get regular access to the internet, so I take any opportunity I can to snag as many episodes as possible when I can.
Sitting in an uncomfortable, hot, stuffy tank all night long, watching for IED emplacers, we will sometimes hook our iPods up to the internal comms to pass the time.
We're not supposed to, but what can you do?
Anyway, I had mine on random, and your podcast came up.
Not wanting my skepticism to be known amongst my unit, I tried to skip ahead, but I dropped the iPod into the bowels of the tank where I had little hope of reaching it.
Strangely, the other crew members loved it.
We listened to a few more episodes before I finally fished my iPod out of the gun turret.
From the 24M1A2 tank crew from 2nd Platoon, Delta Company, 2nd of the 5th Cav, thanks for making that long boring night a little more enjoyable.
Well, thanks to you, Paul, for making this episode a little bit more enjoyable.
And again, you're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from 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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Next to giggling, of course.
Until next time, this is Adrienne Hill.
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