All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
July 2, 2013 - Skeptoid
17:25
Skeptoid #369: Student Questions: Magic Wristbands, Laser Danger, and ManBearPig

Skeptoid answers another round of questions sent in by students all around the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Student Questions Deconstructed 00:08:30
Welcome to another episode of Skeptoid, where today the urban legends we're deconstructing come from students.
If you're a student or a teacher with a classroom full of students, come to skeptoid.com, click on student questions, and send your questions in.
We'll give them the full Skeptoid treatment right here on the show.
And we're doing that right now 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.
Student questions, magic wristbands, laser danger, and man bear pig.
Once again, we're taking a week to answer questions sent in by students all around the world.
Any question is welcome from any student.
Today, we're going to explore the question of whether Stanley Kubrick made The Shining as a confession that he was behind the alleged moon landing hoax, whether acupressure wristbands are a way to cure nausea or just a placebo, whether you should use hydrogen peroxide as a bactericide on minor wounds, the song Gloomy Sunday, and if it has indeed been connected with an increased number of suicides,
the true nature of weather danger can be expected from common laser pointers, and whether we need to worry about hordes of human-animal hybrids swarming down from the mountains.
Let's get started at a creepy old lodge hidden away up in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
Hello, Ryan.
I am a sophomore going to MiraCosta College in Oceanside, California.
I recently heard about a conspiracy theory which states that Stanley Kubrick's film, The Shining, is actually a big allusion to the fact that he helped NASA cover up the moon landings.
This particular conspiracy was recently featured in the documentary Room 237, and I was wondering if there's any truth in this.
Thank you for your help.
Room 237 was a 2012 documentary film that features five people, each of whom has a different obsessive interpretation of Kubrick's 1980 movie, The Shining.
One believes it was really about the Holocaust.
Another believes it was about the plight of Native Americans.
One of the five was conspiracy theorist Jay Widener, who believes that Kubrick made the movie to confess that he had faked the moon landing films.
There are hardly any bizarre conspiracy theories Widener has not promoted, including the 2012 apocalypse, the claim that Denver International Airport is a headquarters for the Illuminati, and that the Georgia Guidestones Monument is actually some sort of Rosicrucian shrine.
Widener's evidence that The Shining was Kubrick's moon hoke confession leaves one wanting, to put it mildly.
The kid in the film wears a sweater with an Apollo rocket on it.
And that's about all.
The other points he raises are wrong, that 237 was chosen because the moon is 237,000 miles away.
It's not.
And that a pattern in the hotel's carpet looks like the Apollo launch pad.
It doesn't remotely.
The shining was based on Stephen King's 1977 novel, Kubrick Didn't Even Write It Himself.
Room 237 is not about the shining.
It's about five bizarre theories and the people who come up with them.
Don't miss the point and assume that the theories were being seriously presented.
Hi, Brian.
My name is Rachel Bloom.
The other day I was watching ABC Shark Tank and a woman came on touting her own brand of anti-nausea acupressure wristbands.
She said they were FDA approved.
I have a lot of friends who use these wristbands and after doing a little bit of internet research it looks like there have actually been studies where the acupressure wristbands were more effective than placebos in combating motion sickness and or nausea.
So my question is, what's the deal with these wristbands?
Thanks.
You bring up two points.
First, FDA approval.
This does not necessarily mean that the FDA has tested the device and found that it works.
In this case, the applicants merely have to show that similar devices, which may or may not have been tested, are already for sale.
This is all that's needed for the FDA to grant clearance for a company to market something.
In the case of C-band, one of the more popular wristbands, such clearance, based on the existence of similar products, is all they ever received from the FDA.
Obviously, C-band trumpets the fact as if it constitutes an endorsement, which it's not.
Second, whether they work.
You are correct that tests have shown them to be effective.
However, all such tests that I was able to find were uncontrolled and unblinded.
Randomized controlled trials of the wristbands, however, have had very different results.
The Institute of Naval Medicine did such a test in 1990 and found that C-bands performed no better than placebo, and both were outperformed by scopolamine.
Even in post-surgical nausea, controlled tests have found no improvement through the use of wristbands.
An interesting warning sign to be aware of is that research that tends to find a positive result usually has not only poor experimental design, but almost always mentions the P6 acupressure point on the wrist.
This is a sure sign that the article is written from a pro-acupressure perspective.
P6 acupressure point is not a medical or scientific term and is only used in the acupressure community.
Although the placebo effect can be very compelling and creates passionate believers, the wrist simply has no connection to your body's sense of nausea, and no plausible hypothesis has ever been suggested to explain how it might.
Hi, Brian.
This is John from the University of Kentucky.
My family has always used hydrogen peroxide to clean out cuts and wounds, but I've heard that it may not be particularly effective or effective at all, despite the nice bubbling effect that accompanies its application.
Could you weigh in on this?
The use of hydrogen peroxide for cleaning and disinfecting minor wounds is a lot like taking vitamin C for a cold.
It's something a lot of us do because we've always done it and our parents did it without ever really checking into its effectiveness.
When you put hydrogen peroxide onto a wound, it reacts chemically with an enzyme called catalase that is present in your cells and is released when you have damaged cells.
This reaction breaks down the hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, into water, H2O, and oxygen gas, O2.
This oxygen gas fizzes up through the liquid, producing the bubbling action we're all familiar with.
However, these oxygen bubbles are harmless to bacteria, and there's no evidence that hydrogen peroxide reduces the chance of infection more than clean water or plain soap.
However, there is evidence that hydrogen peroxide can damage even more of your cells, potentially slowing the healing process.
However, any such effect is very small for practical purposes, and using hydrogen peroxide is not likely to either help or hinder the cleaning of a small wound.
Save your money and stick with soap and water.
But if you've got some hydrogen peroxide in the cabinet, it's probably not going to hurt you.
Laser Pointer Myths Explained 00:04:49
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.
Hi, Brian.
My name is John, and I'm from Stockholm.
I was wondering if you could tell us something about the song Gloomy Sunday and all the suicides it's supposedly responsible for.
Gloomy Sunday is an old Hungarian song from 1933, and various urban legends claim that it's been banned for causing suicides.
This notoriety made it popular in the United States, where it became a jazz standard and was recorded by such artists as Billie Holiday.
But while there's never been any evidence that the song actually caused suicides in Hungary, it has had enough of a pop culture association with suicide that people who chose to end their own lives did sometimes include its lyrics in their suicide notes or have the song playing in their room when they killed themselves.
In Hungary, the song is something like the Golden Gate Bridge for American suicides or Al Gigahara Forest for the Japanese.
Hungary has had one of the world's highest suicide rates for many decades, and Gloomy Sunday had the misfortune of being their principal suicide icon.
Many versions of the song, both in English and in Hungarian, both old and new, both instrumental and vocal, are available on both the American and Hungarian versions of iTunes, which is merely the first and only place I bothered to check.
So whatever ban is said to be in place doesn't appear to be very effective.
Hello, Brian.
I'm sure many people have seen those warning labels on laser pointers advising them not to point the laser directly into people's eyes as this can cause supposed vision damage.
I was just wondering, can a small laser pointer actually cause substantial damage to one's vision, and if so, to what extent?
Thank you.
Any laser pointer with such a warning label is both legal and safe.
These lasers, which are red, are set to a power that's one-tenth of that needed to cause permanent eye damage.
With that said, such laser pointers do cause flash blindness and afterimages that can, at worst, last for several days.
Obviously, you should never shine any laser into anyone's eyes or face.
Green lasers are another matter.
The eye is far more sensitive to yellow-green light than to red.
And a green laser, even of the same power as the red, is 30 times brighter and is easily capable of causing permanent eye damage.
You should never use any green laser as a common laser pointer or shine it at anyone for any reason.
You should only buy, use, or possess a laser pointer that has a warning label and is in class 2 or class 3R.
It should be a red color with a wavelength of 630 to 680 nanometers and should be between 1 and 5 milliwatts.
Even if it meets those specs, if it lacks a warning label, it was probably illegally imported and may not have been manufactured according to federal specifications.
And never, ever use any laser that's any color other than red for anything other than intended professional purposes.
Human Animal Hybrid Truths 00:02:33
Hello, my name is Brian Plancic and I am a senior micromolecular and cellular biology major at Kutstown University in Pennsylvania.
Recently, some research I was doing revealed hundreds of websites asserting that godless scientists have begun or very soon will have begun creating half-man, half-animal creatures fit for the island of Dr. Moreau.
My question is, does the current state of science necessitate a debate on the ethical implications of man-animal hybrids?
And at what point in my undergraduate or graduate career can I hope to start getting the more exciting laboratory jobs like feeding and watering the man-bear pig?
Yes, those ethical debates are already ongoing.
And depending on your feelings about the use of human cells for research, you might well feel that the time is overdue.
There's a lot we can already do with human-animal hybrids, but first, it's important to understand what that doesn't mean.
Regarding the creation of a new species, where a single genetic code defines a living creature with characteristics of two or more deviant species, we're nowhere near that, and it's not even on the horizon.
The creation of a man-bear pig or a turtle bird or a mix of the gametes of any two animals into a single zygote with a combined genetic makeup is called a hybrid.
So far, this is only possible by breeding compatible species, like lions and tigers to make a liger, or cattle and buffalo to make a beefalo.
But there are combinations that we already create and that are the subject of ethics debate.
These are chimera, which is a single organism made up of two or more distinct cell populations.
A human who has received a pig's heart valve is a chimera.
Some people born with an internal twin are chimeras.
But the two genetic codes remain distinct and always will.
There's no mechanism by which those genetic codes might merge.
The heart valve recipient will not grow a snout and hooves.
Chimeras are usually created for research purposes by implanting the nucleus of one embryo into the enucleated egg of a different species.
One popular purpose is to learn more about how diseases like AIDS or avian flu are able to cross from one species to another.
So students, if you're able to escape the man bear pig, keep those questions coming in.
Genetic Codes Remain Distinct 00:01:28
Just come to skeptoid.com and click on student questions.
You're listening to Skeptoid, a listener-supported program.
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 mousse.
And I'm here to ask you to consider becoming a premium member of Skeptoid for as little as $5 per month.
And that's only the cost of a couple of Tim Horton's double doubles.
And that's Canadian for coffee with double cream and sugar.
Why support Skeptoid?
If you are like me and don't like ads, but like extended versions of each episode, Premium is for you.
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.
Remember that skepticism is the best medicine.
Next to giggling, of course.
Until next time, this is Adrienne Hill.
From PRX
Export Selection