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Oct. 19, 2021 - Skeptoid
19:47
Skeptoid #802: Pop Quiz: 15 for 15

It's 15 trivia questions from 15 Skeptoid episodes, to celebrate our 15th anniversary! 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
Breaking Down Confirmation Bias 00:07:48
Skeptoid is the podcast about the true history and true science behind our urban legends and strange beliefs, and learning about how and why smart people come to believe weird things.
And so by studying them, we end up learning a lot of random facts about all these popular stories.
Today, we're going to see just how many of these random facts about our world you've absorbed with another pop quiz.
That's coming right up on Skeptoid.
Hi, I'm Alex Goldman.
You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that.
I'm doing something else now.
I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed.
On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems and I try to solve them.
Some massive and life-altering, and some so minuscule it'll boggle your mind.
No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you.
That's Hyperfixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia.
Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com.
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I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Pop Quiz, 15 for 15.
In celebration of Skeptoid's 15th birthday, I decided it's time to give myself a break from researching and quiz you all on past episodes, since that's all work I've already done in the past.
But fear not, these are all pretty good general knowledge questions, and you shouldn't need to be absolutely fluent in all the myriad oddball details in some 800 Skeptoid episodes.
All you need to do is appreciate that every question involves the number 15.
If you can get all 15 right, then you are indeed a Skeptoid superstar.
Let's get started.
Question 1.
In 1827, 15-year-old music student Ferdinand Hiller went to the home of his mentor who had died the day before and took a lock of his hair.
Hair which today has been wrongly claimed to prove the great mentor died of lead poisoning.
Who was the mentor?
Ludwig von Beethoven.
It was common back then for the bereaved to keep locks of hair from the deceased.
So many of Beethoven's survive.
Although considerable press has been given to the highly publicized claim that modern testing has shown his hair to be laced with lead, little attention has been given to the science-based responses to this.
Beethoven's symptoms and autopsy report bear no similarities to the symptoms of lead poisoning, and the positive findings of lead are perfectly consistent with expected sources of contamination, both contemporary and modern.
Question 2.
An urban legend speaks of Russian scientists who left a group of political prisoners alone in a sealed chamber for 15 days.
When they went to check on them, they had committed horrors beyond any human experience.
What was this experiment?
The Russian Sleep Experiment.
The story goes that the prisoners were sealed into the chamber filled with a gas that forced them to stay awake, and thus sleep-deprived for 15 days, they went all kinds of insane and ate each other, cut their own flesh off, and did all kinds of unspeakable things, looking like nothing human when the chamber was opened.
It's said to be an example of what can happen when you're sleep-deprived for too long.
But the story is, luckily, pure fiction.
created for the Creepypasta website in 2010.
Question 3.
In an earlier episode, I created a 15-point checklist called How to Spot Pseudoscience.
This was based on the Baloney Detection Kit developed by WHO.
Carl Sagan.
In his great and famous book, The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark, he had a chapter called The Fine Art of Bologna Detection, in which he laid out his principles to follow to make sure you're always erring on the side of what's probably true.
In my episode, I relied on this one and several others from other authors to synthesize my own.
Question 4.
In 1942, anti-aircraft batteries were stationed around a major American city when the anti-aircraft artillery commander reported a fleet of 15 enemy aircraft over the city.
Batteries opened fire for over an hour, raining tons of shrapnel over the city and causing much damage.
It was soon determined there were no enemy aircraft, and now some say the batteries were firing at UFOs.
What city was this, after which this battle is named?
The Battle of Los Angeles.
Today it's a bastion of UFO mythology that claims the government knows all about aliens and covers them up.
But really, all it was was a great big case of nervous trigger fingers from gun crews and their commanders, immediately following a shelling attack on Santa Barbara by a Japanese submarine.
It was not an unreasonable reaction at all.
Question 5.
In 1955, a Kentucky family was besieged by as many as 15 small creatures they believed were aliens, and which we now believe was probably one pair of owls.
In what town did this famous event take place?
Kelly-Hopkinsville.
Hopkinsville is a town in rural Kentucky, and Kelly is a place name nearby.
The event is usually known as the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter.
Question 6.
A popular urban legend claims there's a huge list of uncanny similarities between the assassinations of two U.S. presidents.
Among them is that both killers are known by their three names, and both those names have 15 letters.
Name both assassins.
Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth.
They are, of course, the killers of JFK and Abraham Lincoln.
When we look at the list of similarities between their assassinations, it seems incredibly amazing until you start to break it down and find out that it's a case of confirmation bias, fixing on the matches and ignoring the much larger number of differences, and coincidences that disappear once you do the math.
Question 7.
In several episodes about global warming, we've discussed one particular element that plays an important role, and of its 15 isotopes, only two are stable.
What is that element?
Carbon.
Carbon-12 and carbon-13 are the only two stable isotopes of carbon, unlike the others such as carbon-14, which undergoes radioactive decay.
This is why carbon dating works, and why all radiometric dating works.
Carbon Isotopes and Decay Rates 00:05:36
The unstable isotopes decay into the stable ones at a known and predictable rate.
And we can measure the ratios of each one and find out how long it's been decaying.
Question 8.
15 years before Sputnik 1 was launched, some 3,000 of these suborbital rockets were launched.
The German V2.
Although it was developed as a weapon of war, built by slave labor, and used by the Nazis to kill innocent civilians, the V2 was also an important milestone in the development of spaceflight.
It was liquid-fueled, genuinely suborbital, and had the world's most advanced inertial guidance system.
Many unarmed V-2s were employed in vertical launch programs and actually made it all the way into space.
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.
Question 9.
In one of several early attempts to establish this famous New World colony, Sir Walter Raleigh left a garrison of 15 men in the 1580s, none of whom were ever seen or heard from again.
What was the colony?
Roanoke.
It was just one of several unsuccessful attempts to get the colony established.
After these 15 men disappeared, another much larger effort was made, including whole families.
It was this later, larger group of colonists who left the famous message carved in a tree, Croatoan, and became who we now refer to as the lost colony of Roanoke.
Question 10.
In the 1990s, the Society for Psychical Research held a series of seances in an attempt to prove that they are real contacts from the afterlife.
These seances involved six mediums and 15 investigators.
What was the experiment called?
The Skull Experiment.
In their honest efforts to certify whether the mediums truly had supernatural abilities or not, the Society of Psychical Researchers had physicists come in and join the seances, reasoning that physicists are so smart they can tell if some phenomenon in the room was real or not.
But physicists don't have any more knowledge of how magicians do their tricks than anyone else, and so are, of course, just as easy to fool.
What they needed were magicians, who are very familiar with the arts of deception.
One magician who was there, Richard Wiseman, later wrote me this succinct assessment of the event.
It was a load of rubbish.
Question 11.
In October 2017, the United States expelled 15 Cuban diplomats in retaliation for what?
Havana syndrome, aka sonic weapons.
Some American diplomats in Cuba, and also now in other U.S. embassies around the world, believe they were attacked using some sort of sonic weapon.
The only thing wrong with this identification of the phenomenon made by the U.S. government is that nothing in it is real.
As Cuban scientists called it immediately, the symptoms experienced by some sufferers are textbook examples of those associated with acute stress, brought on by some triggering event, possibly one of their colleagues complaining of pain and ringing from an ear infection, combined with the noise of unfamiliar insects outside.
No Cubans working in the same houses and offices were affected.
Debunking Havana Syndrome Myths 00:06:19
Question 12.
When this alleged religious miracle took place in Egypt in 1968, 15 people were trampled to death by crowds trying to see it.
What was this event?
Our Lady of Zaytoun, or the Virgin of Zaytoun.
For three years, the luminous figure of the Virgin Mary was seen atop a Coptic church in Cairo at night, drawing crowds that sometimes reached tens of thousands.
Fortunately, a proper academic was on hand from a local university, Dr. Cynthia Nelson, who studied the phenomenon in detail and found nothing more than reflected lights and a crowd caught up in the excitement of the moment.
Question 13.
This fad beverage claims to be a superfood, but in a typical two-ounce shot, you get only 15% of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin C. What is it?
Wheatgrass juice.
It's been a fad for nearly 20 years, even though it's absolutely disgusting, overpriced, and provides virtually zero of the benefits that are claimed for it.
Far from a superfood, it has no significant nutritional or caloric value, which is why humans don't eat grass and essentially no vitamins or minerals, except that measly 15% of your vitamin C and 20% of iron for all the rest of the vitamins on its nutritional information chart zeros all the way down.
Question 14, when this famous researcher died, government investigators entered his home and reported.
His thoughts and efforts during at least the past 15 years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical and somewhat promotional character, often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power, but did not include new sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.
Who was he?
Nikola Tesla.
His name has been hijacked and co-opted more than any other scientist by the promoters of woo and pseudoscience, largely based on the wild claims he made in his later years that had no foundation to them.
One of these misuses of his name asserts that he created free wireless energy, but the government suppresses it.
In fact, he tried to experiment with wireless transmission of energy.
However, it would still have had to be generated somewhere.
We now know his ideas were generally sound but hopelessly inefficient.
Question 15, in the 1990s, a pair of British cryptozoologists began a 15-year search in Sumatra for this cryptid, including taking plaster footprint casts.
What is it?
Orang pin deck.
For a long time, a subculture of cryptozoologists have believed in an unknown species of ape in Sumatra, something of a cross between an orangutan and a gibbon.
There are no known photos and no known evidence for its existence, and most reports of sightings are generally believed to be of either wait for it orangutans or gibbons.
So how did you do?
If you got all 15, you are a skeptoid superstar.
If you got 10 or more, you have my respect and I tip my glass to you.
And if you got fewer than 10, then you are my next most favorite kind of listener, because it means you've got plenty of podcasts to catch up on, and i'll be seeing you in your podcast player many more times, and i'll be seeing you as well as Skeptoid's premium listeners like Eric Peterson, Beth Won, Ronald Hayden thanks for everything, Ron and Stephen Rangut.
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