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Dec. 1, 2009 - Skeptoid
15:55
Skeptoid #182: Listener Feedback X

Another dip into the listener feedback files for Skeptoid. 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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Listener Feedback Goes Off The Rails 00:04:37
You write in with your feedback and I read and respond right here on the show.
Sometimes, if it's good stuff, if it's fascinating and amazing and makes the show better.
Or in some cases, if your feedback has gone so far off the rails that it's almost magical to read and wonder how an adult human could have come to such a set of conclusions.
Guess which kind we have today?
Listener feedback is up next 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.
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You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Listener Feedback 10.
As I sit here at my desk, it's a beautiful fall morning, sunny and clear.
What better way to brighten it even further than to open my inbox and hear what some of my detractors have to say?
People often ask me if all my email is really this bad.
The fact is that very little negative feedback ever comes through email.
It's almost always posted to the web comment form.
I guess the people who hate me don't want the comparatively personal confrontation of email.
In fact, I welcome it, so bring it on.
But for today, here is a selection of a few more interesting snippets of feedback.
The first comes from Rob in Burbank, California, regarding my episode on the Rendlesham Forest UFO.
In 1980, some new young recruits to an airfield in the UK chased a blinking light through the forest, unaware it was merely the beam of a nearby lighthouse.
Later, some of them embellished the story to turn it into a full-blown UFO encounter.
Like many people who watch the cable networks, Rob seems to prefer the supernatural explanation.
I've been studying this case for years, and I'm not sure what your objective here is, but you certainly missed a great deal of the story.
I've heard interviews of all the men involved, and where's the letter from Colonel Halt?
Where's the statement from the British Ministry of Defense?
It is so funny that you mentioned the lighthouse.
That was debunked years ago, as the lighthouse has a shield on the back, so it doesn't interfere with the Air Force base operations.
Love how you picked just the pieces that would prove your skewed point.
What a flake you are.
I have no idea whether a shield may have since been installed, but if you've been, quote, studying the case for years, you've no doubt seen the video of the lighthouse taken from the base and read the police reports on that night where the local constables stated the airmen were following the lighthouse.
So there certainly was no shield in 1980.
I find this assertion bizarre.
You also ask about Colonel Halt's report and the statement from the Ministry of Defense.
For time constraints, I summarize their contents in the episode because they don't really contain anything particularly interesting.
But if you'd like to see them for yourself, there are links to them on the online transcript of this episode at skeptoid.com.
Colonel Halt simply reported the stories given by the men, which I gave in detail.
And the Ministry of Defense simply said that as far as they're concerned, it's a non-incident.
If this is your best evidence that I'm a flake and that I cherry-picked evidence, I hope your profession is not in research.
On a lighter note, here's a profound and insightful thought from Mr. Nook in the East Coast of the USA on my episode about shadow people.
Team Asai Exposes Income Lies 00:02:46
Ha!
I have just made a decision.
I am going to be like Brian Dunning.
I am going to become an authority on something I know nothing about.
Let's see.
I do not know how to perform open heart surgery, so I'm going to start writing articles on a website with my thoughts on the subject and how I think it's not done right.
This guy probably works at McDonald's when he's not typing on his site.
I bet his kids are totally jacked up.
He's probably brainwashed them.
I see another Fred Phelps rising up.
If that's really the way I am, why do you want to be like me?
Oh well, I guess we all have our aspirations.
Here's a good one.
My episode on multi-level marketing, predictably, drew in all sorts of multi-level marketers who used the comment form as a stump from which to pitch their miracle business plan.
Team Asai Chico from Chico, California, posted the following.
Mona V has a document called the Income Disclosure Statement that is essentially RW2.
It shows the high, low, and average earnings of its distributors.
The document states that 99% of distributors earned an average of somewhere in between $23 and $65,548 per week for the weeks of July 4th, 2008 to June 26, 2009.
Link to income disclosure statement is monavie.com slash IDS.
Take a look at that document.
After the $2,000 minimum required purchases, it shows that 85% lost money and 97% made less than $7,000 a year.
How reliable is that?
All the data is self-reported on the ordering form.
But even crazier, a sharp reader pointed out that to even be included on that statement, you have to have recruited at least one person and received at least one bonus.
Mona V reported to Newsweek that fewer than 1% of their distributors who make these required purchases ever qualified for any commission at all.
So the remaining 99% who never recovered a dime are all excluded from the quote averages reported on this statement.
So in effect, this document, produced for marketing purposes, boasts that 99% of all MonaVee participants, plus 85% of the top 1%, lose money.
This is the best that Team Asai Chico can come up with to try to impress me?
Chaos Feels Real But You Are Not Powerless 00:06:21
Like I said in the episode, victims like Team Asai Chico are susceptible to these plans for two reasons.
A lack of business acumen and B, poor math skills.
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.
PJ from DK had this to say on my episode about the safety of food cooked in a microwave oven.
I've been eating micro stuff for a decade, and I'm feeling worse and worse.
My memory is bad, my concentration is bad, etc.
Let me just ask you a question, PJ.
What happens to the average normal human being as they age?
They feel worse.
Their memory and concentration seems to go.
These are called symptoms of life.
They're the things that happen to most people as they get older.
But let me ask you another question.
Over that entire decade where you've eaten microwaved food, have you ever done anything else that might affect your health?
Have you aged?
Are you obese?
Do you smoke, drink, exercise, swim in toxic waste, take good care of yourself?
Do you have any congenital conditions?
Is it really likely that eating microwaved food is the only risk factor you've been exposed to?
Why single it out?
Do you feel you're not as young as you used to be?
Yes.
Do you eat microwave food?
Yes.
Oh my God, a correlation.
Let me ask you one more question.
Do you use toothpaste?
Yes?
Oh my god, it must be poison.
I did an episode called Screwed, a musical parody of a meeting of the secret society of Illuminati planning their takeover of the world through conspiracy and deceit.
I waited curiously to see what people this one would draw from the woodwork and was not disappointed in the person of Joe from Hanover, Ontario.
Interestingly, Joe was for a while one of the most prolific posters of pro-Christian commentary on the website, preaching biblical literalism and young earth creation.
When he heard Screwed, Joe said, If any of you don't believe that the new world order of Masonic Illuminati, or something similar, do not exist, then they have successfully pulled the wool over your eyes.
Doing spoofs or parodies on secret societies is fun, but there's a line from an old song that says, the devil thinks it's great that you don't believe in him.
The same applies to the hidden hands of governance.
Are you paying attention, Mr. Dunning?
When you have been plastic moneyed, data chipped, phone tapped, email tapped, and protected by a ton of for your safety laws to the death of your liberty, you may not have room to wonder where and why it all came upon us.
The best thing for tyranny to succeed is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke.
Oh yeah, deception is hilarious.
It's funny.
Of course, everyone, or almost everyone, agrees that unreasonable invasion of our privacy is detrimental in many ways.
I don't like it that everything I buy with my debit card can be tracked.
I don't like it that phones and emails can be tapped, even though I don't have any particular reason to care.
What I do is my business.
To that point, I think most of us would agree with Joe.
And I'll agree with Joe on one other point, that there's almost certainly something out there that most of us don't know about that would allow the government to track some aspect of what we do.
I don't care for that.
But tracing your point-of-sale purchases and archiving your Gmail are not really the driving evils of the type of secret society I was parodying in Scrooge.
Where Joe leaves the realm of rationality is in his belief that such tracking is not only pervasive and malevolent, it extends to far more than just surveillance and constitutes control.
He believes his life is being controlled by a secret power.
He believes that anyone who does not embrace a belief in this secret power has had the wool pulled over his eyes.
Secret, Joe, means secret.
That means you don't know about it.
That means there is no evidence.
There's nothing secret or mysterious about ATM transactions.
The secret overlords manipulating Joe are really just one more expression of his faith.
Well, Joe, I don't choose to live and make my decisions outside the realm of what's real.
I don't put entities whose very existence requires faith in charge of my life.
Skepticism Is The Best Medicine 00:02:06
If you prefer to do so, then there's a secret alien entity out there that wants you to make large contributions to Skeptoid.
I always like to close with a particularly fun one.
I did a joke episode about homeopathy.
It was 10 minutes of silence, which I thought was a fun way to make the point.
Tom from Dusseldorf had this to say.
You are just an arse.
Homeopathy works no matter what you spew out your mouth.
Even, apparently, when I spew nothing at all.
Be sure to follow Skeptoid on Twitter at twitter.com slash BrianDunning and friend me on Facebook at facebook.com slash briamdunning as well.
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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