Skeptoid - Skeptoid #233: Student Questions: Bird Gender and Bad Karma Aired: 2010-11-23 Duration: 14:02 === New Podcast Questions (01:50) === [00:00:03] Is it true that playing Mozart to your unborn baby is going to improve its development? [00:00:09] Well, before answering that, let's recall that people are always in search of magically easy solutions to difficult problems. [00:00:17] And that one certainly bears all the signs. [00:00:20] Today, we're going to find out and also answer a whole bunch of other questions that have been sent in. [00:00:26] Student questions are today on Skeptoid. [00:00:34] Hi, I'm Alex Goldman. [00:00:36] You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that. [00:00:40] I'm doing something else now. [00:00:42] I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed. [00:00:44] On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems and I try to solve them. [00:00:49] Some massive and life-altering, and some so minuscule it'll boggle your mind. [00:00:53] No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you. [00:00:57] That's HyperFixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia. [00:01:00] Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com. [00:01:10] You're listening to Skeptoid. [00:01:11] I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com. [00:01:15] Student questions, bird gender, and bad karma. [00:01:20] Today we're going to tackle another round of questions sent in by students all around the world. [00:01:25] Teachers, let your students know about this resource. [00:01:28] Submitting a question through the skeptoid.com website is quick and easy. [00:01:32] All you need is a computer with a microphone built in. [00:01:35] Our questions in this round pertain to whether food preservatives cause your body to be automatically embalmed when you die, the benefits of playing music for unborn fetuses, whether violent video games create violent people, sexing a bird with a pendulum, and whether karma actually exists. === Debunking Food Myths (05:45) === [00:01:54] Let's get started with food preservatives. [00:01:57] Ben Schmidt from the Worshipping College of Mortuary Science. [00:02:01] There's an urban legend claiming that embalming is easier thanks to food preservatives. [00:02:05] Can you please address this? [00:02:07] This is a really popular urban legend. [00:02:10] Supposedly, we eat so much prepared food these days that when we die, our bodies are laced with preservatives and are automatically embalmed. [00:02:18] The simple answer to this is that it's completely untrue, since common food preservatives are very easily metabolized by the body. [00:02:26] Even the most basic embalming fluid, formaldehyde, is naturally found in the human body, as it's a byproduct of metabolism. [00:02:34] It seems paradoxical that chemicals such as alcohol, salt, and formaldehyde preserve our bodies when we die, but are naturally consumed and processed by a living body. [00:02:46] Antioxidants are a fundamental food preservatives, yet are widely marketed as miracle health products. [00:02:54] That's not to say that food preservatives are without risk. [00:02:57] Ongoing research continues to scrutinize food preservatives for health concerns, and plenty of studies have found danger, though most of it inconclusive. [00:03:06] But even the worst of this finds that some synthetic food preservatives may be correlated with effects such as attention deficit disorder or anaphylactic shock for those allergic to them. [00:03:17] Preventing your body from decomposing has never been among the observed effects. [00:03:23] Hi, I'm Daniel, age 15, and I want to know, is playing music for an unborn child really beneficial to its development? [00:03:30] Playing music to unborn babies is, first and foremost, a way to sell snake oil, in the form of special musical recordings, to mothers desperate to breed superior children. [00:03:41] It is also one way to get a late-term fetus to react to sound. [00:03:46] No good research has ever shown that this reactivity has any benefits. [00:03:52] The audio environment inside the womb is a peaceful one and filled with natural low-frequency rhythms. [00:03:58] The mother's breathing and heartbeat are the dominant sounds, followed by low-frequency external sounds below 50 Hz, and the mother's own voice. [00:04:08] It's unlikely that any of the higher frequency sounds of music, anything above 500 Hz, could be heard by the fetus at all, unless it's extremely loud. [00:04:18] By about 25 weeks into gestation, the fetus is able to hear sounds and will often react with a faster heartbeat to noise. [00:04:26] Simple tapping on the mother's abdomen is a far more effective way to transmit low-frequency rhythm than playing music, most of which can't be heard anyway. [00:04:36] But once again, though the reaction is definite, there is no good reason to think this carries any benefit. [00:04:44] Claims that babies can remember and recognize certain music are highly improbable, as the hippocampus, that part of the brain that stores experiences and memory, does not develop until well after birth. [00:04:56] People who say that their newborn appears to smile or react upon hearing the same music played during gestation are probably just experiencing confirmation bias. [00:05:06] They think it's so, therefore they notice behavior that confirms the belief and fail to notice behavior that doesn't. [00:05:14] In any case, avoid buying special musical recordings that claim to be supported by research that shows the music will benefit the child. [00:05:23] If you choose to entertain your fetus, any low-frequency beat is all it takes. [00:05:29] Hi, my name is Andrew from California, and I'd like to know if violent video games promote violence in youth. [00:05:36] Thank you. [00:05:37] This is one of those topics on which everyone seems to have an opinion, including researchers, and those opinions and conclusions are all over the map. [00:05:46] I spent a few hours and looked through a couple of dozen different studies in various journals, including a number of meta-analyses of even more studies. [00:05:54] The only thing I learned for sure is that there are two clearly defined camps, and they're still going at it, hammering tongs. [00:06:02] Many researchers are steadfastly convinced that gamers do not become more aggressive in real life, but a larger number of researchers find that there is a correlation. [00:06:12] The battle between research camps is at least as heated as the battles on screen. [00:06:19] Many researchers note that the environment in which we develop plays a large role influencing our personalities. [00:06:25] If that environment includes violent games, it would make sense for such behavior to become ingrained. [00:06:31] And according to my own quick survey of the research, the majority of observational evidence does indicate that violent gameplay is a predictor of future aggressive behavior. [00:06:43] But it's not clear how much of the effect is causal. [00:06:46] One thing that nearly everyone seems to agree on is that more aggressive people tend to gravitate toward more aggressive games, so we should expect to see a correlation regardless. [00:06:58] Interestingly, my observation was that most research supporting a link seems to come from Europe, while most research dismissing the link comes from the United States. [00:07:08] Both sides almost always report their findings as cross-cultural. [00:07:14] Whatever effect there may be is probably small and does not appear to significantly affect the vast majority of people. [00:07:22] Therefore, if you play a lot of Call of Duty, you, or any other given gamer, are unlikely to become more aggressive in real life. [00:07:29] So fire away. [00:07:31] It's going to be interesting to see how this particular battle shakes out. === Testing Karma Claims (06:04) === [00:07:39] Hey everyone, I want to remind you about a truly unique and once-in-a-lifetime adventure. [00:07:46] Join me and Mediterranean archaeologist Dr. Flint Dibble for a skeptoid sailing adventure through the Mediterranean Sea aboard the SV Royal Clipper, the world's largest full-rigged sailing ship. [00:07:59] This is also the only opportunity you'll have to hear Flint and I talk about our experiences when we both went on Joe Rogan to represent the causes of science and reality against whatever it is that you get when you're thrown into that lion pit. [00:08:13] We set sail from Málaga, Spain on April 18th, 2026 and finish the adventure in Nice, France on April 25th. [00:08:22] You'll enjoy a fascinating skeptical mini-conference at sea. [00:08:26] You'll visit amazing ports along the Spanish and French coasts and Flint will be our exclusive onboard expert sharing the real archaeology and history about every stop. [00:08:37] We've got special side quests and extra skeptical content planned at each port. [00:08:43] This is a true sailing ship. [00:08:45] You can climb the rat lines to the crow's nest, handle the sails. [00:08:48] You can even take the helm and steer. [00:08:51] This is a real bucket list adventure you don't want to miss. [00:08:54] But cabins are selling fast and this ship does always sell out. [00:08:59] Act now or you'll miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. [00:09:02] Get the full details and book your cabin at skeptoid.com slash adventures. [00:09:09] Hope to see you on board. [00:09:10] That's skeptoid.com slash adventures. [00:09:20] I recently purchased a pet bird and was told I could determine the sex using a magnetic pendulum. [00:09:24] If it spins in a circle, the bird is female. [00:09:27] If back and forth, it's a male. [00:09:29] Is there a natural mechanism to explain this apparent phenomenon? [00:09:32] Yes, there is, but it has nothing to do with the bird's gender or magnetism. [00:09:37] It's called the idiomotor effect. [00:09:39] This is a well-documented psychological phenomenon that's been tested and retested extensively. [00:09:46] It involves unconscious movements by the experimenter's own hand that causes a pendulum, dowsing rod or Ouija board planchette to move in the manner expected by the experimenter. [00:09:58] These movements can be so minute that the experimenter is unaware they're even happening. [00:10:03] Consequently, many dowsers have a fully honest belief that their perceived ability is indeed of supernatural origin. [00:10:12] Regarding your bird's gender and magnetic pendulums, there is demonstrably no such effect. [00:10:19] This would require that birds generate a reasonably powerful electromagnetic field that oscillates or changes polarity according to a gender-dependent pattern. [00:10:29] If you have any doubts, place a compass on a solid surface near your bird or any other animal. [00:10:35] A compass needle is a magnetic pendulum that weighs much less than your pendulum and should react much more dramatically. [00:10:43] You'll see that once your hand's movements are taken out of the picture, your bird does not emit any sort of pulsing magnetic force, regardless of its gender. [00:10:53] Hey Brian, I'm Mike from Housatonic Community College in Connecticut. [00:10:56] And I was wondering if there's any real evidence that people have bad or good karma. [00:11:01] Karma is a concept originating in ancient India in which your actions, either good or bad, have consequences. [00:11:09] Rob a bank and you'll get cancer. [00:11:11] Give to the poor and you'll live a long fulfilling life. [00:11:14] While it sounds like it should be relatively easy to set up a small test of this concept, true karma is not really testable for a couple of reasons. [00:11:24] First, the timeframe for payback is often believed to be over multiple reincarnations of your life. [00:11:31] And second, it's not necessarily a linear system. [00:11:35] Robbing a bank today could be the cause of falling and skinning your knee when you were six, or having to live a previous life as a slug. [00:11:44] Even designing a test to correlate some people who have generally good or bad luck with generally good or bad actions would be problematic, as it would be impossible to control for much more powerful influences, such as their socioeconomic status, their intelligence, personality, etc. [00:12:03] Belief in karma, however, is a different story. [00:12:06] At least one study has found that belief in karma may be associated with personal experience of trauma. [00:12:13] This is an interesting result. [00:12:15] When something bad happens, people tend to seek an explanation, a reason, even if it means blaming themselves. [00:12:22] Such a tendency may well explain how the concept of karma came to be in the first place. [00:12:33] Got a question you'd like Skeptoid to answer? [00:12:36] If you're a student of any age, come to skeptoid.com and click on student questions. [00:12:44] You're listening to Skeptoid. [00:12:46] I'm Brian Dunning from skeptoid.com. [00:12:55] Hello everyone, this is Adrienne Hill from Skookum Studios in Calgary, Canada, the land of maple syrup and mousse. [00:13:04] And I'm here to ask you to consider becoming a premium member of Skeptoid for as little as $5 per month. [00:13:13] And that's only the cost of a couple of Tim Horton's double doubles. [00:13:17] And that's Canadian for coffee with double cream and sugar. [00:13:22] Why support Skeptoid? [00:13:24] If you are like me and don't like ads, but like extended versions of each episode, premium is for you. [00:13:30] If you want to support a worthwhile non-profit that combats pseudoscience, promotes critical thinking, and provides free access to teachers to use the podcast in the classroom via the Teacher's Toolkit, then sign up today. === Join Skeptoid Premium (00:17) === [00:13:44] Remember that skepticism is the best medicine. [00:13:48] Next to giggling, of course. [00:13:50] Until next time, this is Adrienne Hill. [00:14:01] From PRX.