All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
Feb. 15, 2022 - Skeptoid
18:02
Skeptoid #819: Corrections with Hat in Hands

Some corrections to errors made in recent shows. 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
Correcting My Biology Mistakes 00:08:12
We talk about a lot of urban legends and conspiracy theories and stuff on Skeptoid.
And to understand them best, we need to understand them accurately and in their proper context.
Thus, precision and reliability are some of our most important tools.
However, sometimes I get stuff wrong.
And so today we're going to correct those in order that we might keep the bar high for all the topics still to come.
Some corrections are coming up right now 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.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Corrections with Hat in Hands.
Another week of Skeptoid, and it's time for another episode dedicated to corrections.
For those listeners new to these, believe it or not, I do get some facts wrong sometimes.
And when I do, it's necessary to correct them.
Not only in the interest of having Skeptoid be as good and accurate a resource as possible, but also in the interest of all of us working to always improve our knowledge.
Myself included, very much.
We all carry decent databases inside these clunky skulls of ours, and not one among us couldn't benefit from a tune-up.
And so here we are today to do just that.
We'll get started with a correction about using the right terminology for geological periods.
In episode number 798 about the big cats of Britain, I mentioned how the Eurasian cave lion had gone extinct at the end of the Pleistocene era.
Well, paleontologist and Skeptoid guest host Ryan Haupt was quick to drop this truth bomb on me via Twitter.
Publicly, of course, so as many people saw it as possible.
Pleistocene is an epic, not an era.
Add it to the corrections.
It's part of the ongoing Cenozoic era for what it's worth.
He is, of course, correct.
The geological time scale is broken down into eons, which are broken down into eras, which are broken down into periods, which are broken down into epochs, which are broken down into ages.
We are currently enjoying the Holocene Epoch, and the Pleistocene Epoch is the one that preceded it some 12-ish thousand years ago, ending with the last ice age.
Both epochs make up the quaternary period of our current era, the Cenozoic.
Anyone know what eon the Cenozoic is part of?
I didn't.
It is the Phanerozoic Eon, during which abundant plant and animal life has existed on Earth.
In updating the transcript for that episode with the correction, I did a text search and found the same error in two other episodes.
All are now in properly tidy condition.
In the conclusion of episode number 791 on water dowsing, I casually referred to a practitioner of dowsing as a necromancer.
Quickly, I received the following Facebook comment from listener Dan.
As a long-time listener, I usually agree with what you have to say.
Imagine my shock and to put it mildly, dismay at hearing such an egregious and frankly unforgivable error in this week's episode.
Water dowsing would be classified as hydromancy, not necromancy.
As any native English speaker should know, the prefix necro refers to the dead or dying things, for example, necropolis necrosis.
Hydro is the prefix referring to water, for example, hydrological.
I will certainly have to reconsider just how reliable your information is.
Perhaps there is something to the Illuminati after all, and you are the government shill people have accused you of being.
Well, all of that may or may not be true, cannot confirm or deny, but Dan is correct.
Dowsing should not be filed under necromancy.
I've updated the transcript not to hydromancer, since nobody will know what the heck that is, but to witch, as that's reasonably generic and still accurately encompasses the practice of dowsing.
Next, we have a correction from listener Danielle to episode number 738 on the QAnon conspiracy theory, which asserts that prominent U.S. Democrats and other world leaders run an international child raping cartel.
The anonymous internet poster calling himself Q claimed to be an insider in the Trump administration and posted frequent predictions of arrests of Democrats, none of which ever came true.
In explaining where the name Q came from, I said in the episode, the highest security clearance level at the U.S. Department of Energy, equivalent to a top secret clearance at the Department of Defense.
Danielle wrote, My understanding from my colleagues at Los Alamos National Lab is that the Q clearance is an entry-level clearance and only grants access to the most basic level of secure information.
There's a distinction between Q, which is TS or top secret, and SCI.
These descriptions are consistent with my understanding that SCI is related to global security and is much harder to obtain than Q and gets access to all top secret info rather than need to know that is standard with a Q.
And she attached a link to the Personnel Security and Suitability Program Handbook, see chapter 5 and pages 30 to 33 in chapter 6.
Sure enough, Q is the middle of three basic sensitivity levels.
So, sorry, QAnon, you were not nearly so special as someone led you to believe.
I got some important terminology wrong in episode number 454 on myths about genetically engineered crops.
The specific myth under discussion was the belief that when you eat some food crop, its genes get incorporated into your own.
Obviously, this is nonsensical.
Digestion is not gene splicing.
If it was, we'd all be walking around as human-banana hybrid monsters.
In the discussion, I said genes that get digested are broken down into their constituent amino acids.
Listener Alon wrote in and responded, Genes are made of DNA.
DNA is made of nucleotides.
Nucleotides are made of the sugar 2-deoxyribose, phosphoric acid, and a nitrogenous base, adenine, guanine, cytosine, or thymine, depending on the nucleotide.
No amino acids there.
It is proteins that are broken down into amino acids.
But the intent was correct.
We don't incorporate genes from our food.
I've made this mistake before.
Apparently, I always thought that those four DNA bases were proteins.
I blame my high school biology teachers.
Actually, I should probably blame myself because I don't think I did very well in high school biology.
Regardless, it's correct now, and I've finally been educated for the better.
California Marshals Mystery Solved 00:05:10
Hey, everyone, I want to remind you about a truly unique and once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
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.
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.
We set sail from Málaga, Spain on April 18th, 2026 and finished the adventure in Nice, France on April 25th.
You'll enjoy a fascinating, skeptical mini-conference at sea.
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.
We've got special side quests and extra skeptical content planned at each port.
This is a true sailing ship.
You can climb the rat lines to the crow's nest, handle the sails.
You can even take the helm and steer.
This is a real bucket list adventure you don't want to miss.
But cabins are selling fast, and this ship does always sell out.
Act now, or you'll miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Get the full details and book your cabin at skeptoid.com slash adventures.
Hope to see you on board.
That's skeptoid.com slash adventures.
Episode number 675 was about a small-time UFO author named Frank Strangis, who invented a mythology of a visitor from Venus named Valiant Thor.
Strangis was notable for inventing all kinds of charitable and government institutions and claiming to have been a high-ranking official with them.
One of his fictional titles was the Assistant Deputy Director of the California State Marshal Association.
In the episode, I stated that there was no such organization and that California has no state marshals and never did.
This correction gets a little bit complicated.
I heard from fellow podcaster Micah Hanks, who had also spent some time with his hands full debunking all of Frank Strangis' false claims about himself.
Micah wrote, I'm happy to offer some background on what I've found about this mysterious California State Marshals Association.
Also, let me begin by saying that I bet your initial assessment of this organization is still probably very on point.
While references to it do turn up with some additional archival research, I get the sense of it having been the law enforcement equivalent of the kinds of diploma mills that Strangis et al. appeared to be involved with over the years.
The first reference I managed to locate was a political ad for one Marshal Wayne Sala, which lists the California State Marshals Association as one of the groups or organizations that endorsed him at the time.
Similarly, an Orange County, California campaign biography for Michael S. Mike Corona, then a candidate for sheriff coroner, described himself as a member of the California State Marshals Association from 1976 to 1998.
And indeed, deeper searching does reveal a few more references to the association.
I even found it listed as an appellant in a 1989 lawsuit, the only remotely concrete reference.
However, I did a thorough search of the California Business Registry going back to 1980, the fictitious business name filings, and the Registry of Charitable Trusts, and came up completely empty-handed.
It also has no internet presence at all.
neither current nor archived.
So far as I can tell, this association has never existed as anything more than what Frank Strangis used it for.
An impressive sounding title to add to your resume, which would explain why the only other references to it have been in political candidates' advertisements.
But what is a California state marshal?
So far as I could determine, there has never been any such thing.
However, many county courts in California have their own small law enforcement departments for the court themselves, and many of these have been called marshals.
A few still are, but the majority have been absorbed by that county's sheriff's department.
Still, these would be county marshals or county court marshals, not state marshals.
So, it remains a mystery at this point.
I invite any historians of California law enforcement to enlighten me further, especially anyone who can better ID this apocryphal association.
It's quite an odd little mystery.
Gluten-Free Diet Clarification 00:04:35
Here's a minor correction from episode number 239 on gluten-free diets.
Speaking to those who choose to avoid gluten in their diets, I said that it would be pretty hard to do.
I also said, forget most alcoholic beverages.
Well, my use of the word most was perhaps a bit hasty.
Listener Chris wrote in with a link from the University of Chicago Medical Center that says, Most alcoholic drinks, including wine, gluten-free beer, and most spirits, do not contain gluten.
Regular beer obviously does, but when I said most, I was thinking of whiskey and other spirits made from wheat, rye, or barley.
What I hadn't realized is something else the article said.
Liquors that are distilled from gluten-containing grains, such as rye or barley, are generally considered to be safe as well.
The distillation process removes proteins, including gluten, from the liquor.
This was funky because I'm quite familiar with distilling whiskey, and if you are as well, you know that distilling just keeps vapor, and vapor doesn't include the proteins from the grain.
My brain had just never happened to make that connection, and I'd always just stopped at the half-baked thought of, oh, whiskey made from rye contains gluten.
Nope.
Thanks to Chris for reminding me that all of us know things that are wrong.
And just to be clear, no, I do not avoid gluten, as I do not suffer from celiac disease, and there is no reason to.
And it is a great useful protein to include in the diet for all normal healthy people.
Of course, even now that it's a few years after the whole gluten-free fad has mostly faded away, there are still healthy people who choose to avoid it for whatever reason they might have heard, and they are at liberty to do so.
And on that note, we'll put away our notebook of errors to be corrected for now.
I'm always accumulating these, and so please feel free to always send them in.
There's even a handy webpage on skeptoid.com to facilitate the submission of corrections.
Just click the obvious link at the bottom of any transcript page on which you find an error.
Next week, we're back with a regular skeptoid topic, so don't miss it.
And listen carefully because there's just as likely an error in that one, too.
A great big Skeptoid shout out to Premium supporters Dave Bogas, Stacey Degnan-Campbell-Kitty, John Geyer, and the semi-anonymous Marcos.
Thank you all so much for your continued financial support that makes Skeptoid possible, along with all its various cogs and wheels and gears.
And its people.
Don't forget our staff here at Skeptoid.
You can meet everyone at skeptoid.org slash people.
And sometimes we're hiring, so check out the job postings out as well.
And also, please check out Infact, our YouTube video series based on selected Skeptoid episodes.
Find it at infactvideo.com.
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 nonprofit 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