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April 13, 2021 - Skeptoid
18:30
Skeptoid #775: Listener Feedback: Monstrous Reversals

Some updates and additional information to a few past episodes... better all the time. 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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Time Text
Listener Updates and Tidbits 00:12:31
No report on an urban legend or a popular belief is ever really truly complete, as there's always some extra information that filters in.
So today we've got a roundup of extra special tidbits to be added to some of our previous shows.
Sent in, as always, by you, the listeners.
That's coming up next on Skeptoid.
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I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Listener feedback, monstrous reversals.
Once again, we turn to the mailbag and answer some listener feedback.
Plus, we're also going to throw in a handful of updates to past episodes.
Shows like this are always a lot of fun because they bring back some episodes you probably remember and often introduce you to a few that you might have missed, and ideally prompt you to go back and catch them up.
Today, we're talking about the reasoning powers of Sherlock Holmes.
We uncover some original evidence about the Alaska town supposedly abandoned due to Bigfoot attacks.
We'll see if there really is new information about what happens when the Earth's magnetic poles reverse.
We'll see how an 1803 ghost story changed the law in England.
And finally, we'll see if the police state conspiracy website Natural News is really as bad as we think it is.
Spoiler, it's worse.
Let's get started with our favorite consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, Inductive versus Deductive Reasoning.
So this first one's actually a show from just two weeks ago, number 773, a list of my top 10 pro-science fictional characters.
At first, I wasn't sure whether to include this in a feedback episode, which this one is, or in an episode dedicated to the correction of errors, another of which should be coming up soon.
Well, in the listing for Sherlock Holmes, I mentioned that the detecting tools he used included his powers of deduction, a term virtually synonymous with Holmes.
Now, an error did occur, but I decided to include this feedback here because the error was not mine, but was that of Holmes himself and of his author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Many of you emailed me, literally beginning within minutes of the episode going live.
One representative such email came from listener Stephen.
Love the character and have taught many of his stories in class.
But deductive reasoning, doesn't he use inductive reasoning?
Yes, he does.
To be sure, I downloaded all of the collected works to do a keyword search.
His reasoning is called deduction, exclusively.
But it is, in fact, induction.
Deduction would be if Holmes had started from a hypothesis, like, all criminals are left-handed, and said, this man is left-handed, therefore he must be our criminal.
Induction would be if Holmes started with an observation, like, this man is left-handed, and the blow was struck from this direction, therefore this man is our criminal.
Then, of course, there's abduction, but this is the point at which I call you overtly pedantic and send a virus back through the internet to destroy your email program.
But the bottom line stands, Sherlock Holmes used induction, not deduction, and Holmes and Doyle both called it by the wrong name.
The original Port Chatham Monster Episode number 772 told a tall tale of an Alaskan town that was abandoned due to persistent Bigfoot attacks.
A tale which was relatively easy to disprove, perhaps to nobody's great surprise.
We track down the origin of the story to an article in a 1973 edition of the Anchorage Daily News.
But sadly, I was unable to find it in any extant archives, save for an excerpt reprinted in a later book promoting Bigfoot as a real creature.
All hail, listener Kevin, whose archive foo skills exceeded my own.
He found the original article and sent me a copy.
It was called Portlock, Home of a Sasquatch, and was written by a Robert J. Dolezal.
Kevin sent the PDF and wrote simply, Thanks to the Alaska State Library, here's the article with photos and illustrations.
The discovery of the original article adds nothing new to the story.
It was already known that it was the original source for a few of the vague details of what supposedly happened in Portlock.
It's a narrative written by one of two men who sailed a boat to visit the empty buildings, then met a friend who related a few campfire stories, all uselessly devoid of any details.
So, no changes to the episode other than the original article's citation has been added to the references section of the transcript page.
Magnetic pole reversals and extinctions.
Episode number 728 was about what really happens when the Earth's magnetic poles flip, and more importantly, what doesn't happen.
And the popular media is always telling us that it heralds worldwide catastrophe.
Listener Michael wrote in with one more such example when CNN reported that a recent paper in Science magazine claimed one such event did indeed cause havoc, including the extinction of the Neanderthals.
They appear to claim that the magnetosphere was rendered almost completely inactive 42,000 years ago for a period up to 800 years.
The article goes on to claim that these new findings show polar reversal would have drastic climate and environmental impacts and may have caused a number of species extinction.
I thought I'd pass it along in case this research significantly changes what we humans know about the subject.
But based on your episode, it felt like something in the CNN article didn't add up.
But whenever a mass media outlet claims a recent science publication has made earth-shaking new revelations that overturn our understanding of anything, your default assumption should be that the media outlet is looking for clicks and is exaggerating.
That was the case here.
The paper referred to went quite a lot farther than most other researchers who have been writing about this particular field reversal for the past 50 years.
It was the Lachon event from about 42ka to 41ka.
Much of what was in the paper was already known.
The magnetic field strength did drop to about 5-6% of what it is now.
Worldwide concentrations of cosmogenic isotopes rose.
Ozone levels dropped, and a variety of other effects took place.
Claims that the Lachon event caused the extinction of Neanderthals and other megafauna around the world are not new, and they are typically minority views.
Importantly, what failed to receive CNN's amplification was a competing article in that very same issue of Science that found in favor of the conventional view that the links between certain extinction events and the Lashaw event were too tenuous to draw any causal relationship.
If you're a CNN editor, are you going to pick the paper that reports a sensational view or one that reports a conventional view?
Both articles are linked in the references section on the transcript page for this episode at skeptoid.com.
In a world that can feel overwhelming, spreading thoughtful, evidence-based content is one of the best ways to make a positive impact.
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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.
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The Hammersmith Ghost and the Law Episode number 714 was about a famous ghost case in London in 1803, in which the people in the Hammersmith district believed that a ghost was going around attacking people at night.
It became so prevalent that vigilantes began patrolling, and one of these, upon seeing a figure clad in all white, fired his pistol and killed a bricklayer walking home in his white work coveralls.
I pointed out as an aside that the case made some waves in English case law, in the form of the idea that a mistaken, though genuine, belief could be a valid defense for a homicide.
The young vigilante never had any intention of killing a human being.
I actually heard from a number of people in England, both barristers and legal scholars, who felt, quite rightly, that I had either not accurately or completely characterized the impact of the Hammersmith ghost case on English law.
So I'm going to let the words of listener Mike speak for themselves on this one.
So it really only talks about the degree of force you can use depending on your honest belief, not whether a mistaken belief makes the use of force right in the first place.
Indeed, this section was subjected to a later, very highly publicized, by Section 43 of the Crime and Courts Act of 2013.
This allowed people to use greater force in defense of their homes against burglars.
The Natural News Problem 00:03:15
If you want to know more about how the law is intended to apply, this is the Crown Prosecution Service guidance.
Note this guidance does not apply to Scotland.
And he gives a link which is on the transcript page for this episode.
Overall, I and Tammy think the correct thing to say would be that this kicked off a legal debate around the law and how an honest but mistaken belief could be used as a defense.
As far as England, Wales, and Northern Ireland are concerned, the law is now set out in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act of 2008.
However, who knows what will happen in the future?
I stand clarified with thanks to Mike and Tammy.
Natural news is worse than you thought.
I've done a handful of episodes where I revealed the top 10 worst anti-science websites.
And in all of them, the number one slot has always gone to natural news, the police state conspiracy website run by anti-pharmaceutical activist Mike Adams.
This award has always been due not only to the depth and profundity of its harmful anti-science content, but also for the website's surprising reach and influence.
Well, turns out natural news is even worse than I knew.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue is a London-based think tank that studies hate and extremism.
In 2020, they published a 47-page report titled, Anatomy of a Disinformation Empire, Investigating Natural News.
It is eye-opening reading, to say the least.
From the executive summary, The complex web of infrastructure surrounding natural news is vast.
Its activities remain largely unchecked on social media sites, where it finds platforms to proselytize.
Despite being banned from Facebook in 2019 and again in 2020, Natural News has continued to post on branded Facebook groups and appears linked to a network of over 400 affiliated domains, including domains promoting extremism and violent material.
In May 2020, Facebook banned posts with links to naturalnews.com, newstarget.com, and brightion.com, all of which appear to be owned and run by Natural News and its founders.
These sites were banned from the platform after using content from troll farms in Macedonia and the Philippines.
But existing efforts from Twitter and Facebook to limit the presence of natural news and recent attempts to stem the spread of some of its affiliated sites have failed to halt the ride of disinformation from the empire established by Adams over the last decade.
So yeah, Adams left his advocacy for natural supplements to replace medical care far behind him and has moved on to promoting COVID-19 and George Floyd conspiracy theories and extremist groups such as the Oath Keepers.
Support Skeptoid Today 00:02:40
With his content streaming through any of his 400 domain names, it's going to continue to be difficult to recognize and block.
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Remember, you can always email me with suggestions for new shows, and I'm always looking for corrections and new evidence to help enrich past shows.
Reach me at brian at skeptoid.com and let's keep Skeptoid as good of a resource as we can.
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