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Skeptoid episodes you'd like to see

BowlOfRed said:
The linked PDF is an article from a vegan magazine. It seemed reasonable. It focused on the use of animal products in the manufacture (as the first filter stage, others are usually used later). At no point in the article did it ever even suggest that "animal bones" end up in the final product.
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I also believe they use animal/fish derivatives in the fining process during wine making.
 
autohemotherapy

A friend is doing it and i am very concerned. sounds dangerous.
An amount of venous blood is taken and reinjected in a muscle (from the same person). claims go from loosing weight (of course) to healing herpes, gout etc.
 
Episode on Deductive vs inductive logic

I vote for the McDonald's coffee suit.

I would also like to see an episode on deductive vs inductive logic.

Specific to general and general to specific are not the essential characteristics for defining these forms of logic.

Deductive logic can go from general to specific,
but it can also go from specific to specific.

Here is a deductive argument that goes from specific to specific.

If Yale exists, God exists.
Yale exists.
Therefore, God exists.

I hear erroneous definitions given frequently. :mad:
Heard one last night on Star Trek Next Generation.
I have read them in college textbooks. :mad::mad:

Chris Rippel
Great Bend, Kansas
 
5 hour energy?

so is 5 hour energy the real deal or just a placebo? ive used it and it seems to work for me, but i dont know if its just me thinking it will work.have it been tested to work?
 
whamji182 said:
so is 5 hour energy the real deal or just a placebo? ive used it and it seems to work for me, but i dont know if its just me thinking it will work.have it been tested to work?
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This is interesting and something I'd like to learn more about.
 
supernatural

Hi,

I have seen religion being described as the belief that supernatural entities can and/or do influence the natural world. I went to check on definitions of supernatural, and found that most rely on what is visible or tangible. Of course this leaves huge margins for woo and religion believers to cobbler us with nano and quantum blabla. "you do believe in quantum, why dont you believe in energy, or god, or angels, or whatever", they say. 'There is stuff there that our eyes or technology cannot see", they say.
Please, could you give me a more useful definition of supernatural? what is the difference in believing in electrons and in angels?
thank you
 
whamji182 said:
so is 5 hour energy the real deal or just a placebo? ive used it and it seems to work for me, but i dont know if its just me thinking it will work.have it been tested to work?
Click to expand...

It really has caffeine in it.

If you drink 4 cups of coffee a day anyway, it might not do as much as if you never touch the stuff.
 
Perhaps I've missed it, but I'm wondering why Brian hasn't tackled the grandaddy of all conspiracy theories, the JFK assassination.
 
I would like to see a treatment of the so-called "Hundredth Monkey" effect, the "Hutchison effect", the claims of Bob Lazar, and perhaps that Skinwalker ranch place in Utah.

Also, has he done a show on the 'Dulce base' or the 'Montauk Project' yet? Two of my favorite conspiracies.
 
A conspiracy to drive some people to believe that major holograms are being used to conduct a return of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, to alien invasions to bring the public to its knees. Some conspiracy theorist calls it project blue beam in junction with HAARP.
 
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IdiotWhacker said:
A conspiracy to drive some people to believe that major holograms are being used to conduct a return of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, to alien invasions to bring the public to its knees. Some conspiracy theorist calls it project blue beam in junction with HAARP.
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This sounds pretty silly. Who believes this crap?
 
AdMan said:
This sounds pretty silly. Who believes this crap?
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Well I see many things that some people will cite as a possibility like reptoids for instance, Judy Wood's theory of the 9/11 towers being vaporized by a giant lazer, to there was no plane on 9/11 to trick people with certain videos.

​
I know its sounds silly,but some people do believe in project blue beam and an example of 1 group that screams out for this is TFL also known as true forced loneliness movement which generally they are the people who are men rights activist and one of the groups who hounds on Youtube.
 
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One recent episode I particularly enjoyed was on military dolphins. I'd like to hear an equally good one on identical twins.

I haven't hunted seriously for popular literature on this fascinating subject, but it clearly is an ideological minefield, much like "intelligence" testing. The Wikipedia article on twin studies deals with methodology, not (un/)scientific results. All I really "know" about it is the stuff we've all been hearing on talkshows: how twins seperated at birth marry similar partners with matching first names, etc. It would be interesting to know how far the similarities really go, shaky statistics and media hype aside. Twin research and their alleged similarities are historically regarded as arrows in the quiver of nature versus nurture, also tainted as racist and immoral by Mengele's experiments in concentration camps.

And there is good movie/novel that just brought me onto this theme - The Prestige. Btw, the book by Christopher Priest has a good twist at the end that isn't in the movie... :D
 
More UFO on the History Channel

That guardian of scientific inquiry, the History Channel, premiered a new program on UFO's "Secret Access: UFOs on the Record" during a series of new and repeat UFO shows today. Much of the last part of the program was spent on the "Belgian UFO Wave". The final piece of evidence was the famous Petit-Rechain picture. Five seconds on Google revealed a Wikipedia entry, with two references, that stated that the person who took the picture confessed on July 26, 2011, that the picture was a hoax. But the show must go on.

Investigating the rest of that series of incidents should be enlightening.
 
I second the motion

I agree with Chris R

I would also like to see an episode on deductive vs inductive logic.

Another interesting one would be our vlunerability to Electromagnetic pulse either from an enemy attack or as the result of a solar storm.

Some folks are out buying canned food and shotguns over the fear.
 
I was stationed at Bitburg AB in West Germany (Army Air Defense) at the time of the "Belgian UFO Wave."

I do remember discussing it in our Intel meetings, but we speculated it was some odd atmospheric effect producing a false or incorrect track. Bluntly put no one knew what it was so we changed some of our procedures to make potential targets less predictiable. Aliens were not even discussed except over beer.
 
I'd love to hear Skeptoid episodes on:

The Prophecy of the Popes
Die Glocke
Rock n' Roll myths and legends (backmasking, subliminal messages, etc)
A more detailed look at the anti-vaccine movement
 
How about more crypto-zoology episodes, such as the loch ness monster or the Mongolian death worm?

There was a guy in bizarre magazine a while ago who suggests that there's an underground city below Moscow, he takes people on tours of the sections that haven't been sealed by the KGB. I don't know how much of this is true but I think that it would make a great episode
 
Fecal Transplant

Freakonomics did a podcast on fecal transplants. They cited an Australian doctor 'treating' an MS patient. I asked one of my 'believer' friends and they said it is being discussed more and more in 'alternative medicine'.
 
John Titor

I would love to see an episode about John Titor. I had only heard of this about six months ago, and I was surprised to see that there hasn't been an episode about it. Especially with the supposed "proof" floating around of designs for a time traveling machine. I can't post links yet, but if you google search "john titor time machine" you will find a link.

It's very detailed, but ultimately proves nothing. Still, a fascinating subculture has sprung up around these "John Titor believers". Could make an interesting episode.
 
Stumbled upon the Titor myth a while back. Elaborate hoax, well worth an episode in my eyes, even if his predictions of course didn't come true.
 
I'd like to see one on the works of Richard C. Hoagland. The whole "NASA is hiding evidence of artifacts on the Moon, Mars, and pretty much everything else they take pictures of" thing needs a nice going over.
 
I might be late to the party but I heard Graham Hancock on The Joe Rogan Podcast. Interesting ideas. Being very skeptical I started doing research on him and think he would make a good Podcast. Not really him, some of his theories.

I'm sure there are lost civilizations but highly doubt they had technology on the level of ours. I don't know too much about him and would like to hear the Skeptoid view.
 
I would like to see a skeptoid episode concerning peak oil, specifically, a response to documentaries like Collapse and Fuel.
 
Red, you could have spent 3 minutes looking that up..albumin like proteins are used and have been used extensively in fining and clearing since the time folk preferred fined beverages and economies dictated that you got the stuff out as clean and quick as possible.
 
Its hard to even look into what Brian comes up with...man, its impressive and extensive.

I'd really like Brian to whack the chemical industry a-la Ben Goldacre. the industry likes it two ways when it comes to our health. Either you buy maintenance drugs (for the most) or buy vitamins supplements and (h)erbal prducts. Many of these companies cross sell or manufacture.

It has to be perplexing for the least skeptical of us.

This was brought on by the fact that a company that makes alty products has a new deal in oz...with our pharmaceutical guild. Whenever you get a PBS script you may face harrassment into buying a supplementary scams product.


Personally, I would prefer a malboro over an ear candle.. am I just over out raged?
 
The long-running legends about twin research are waiting to be debunked, and I haven't seen/heard any skeptical podcast taking them on. Besides a very brief mention on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe that twins probably don't have a built-in psychic hotline. ;) Well, how fascinating is that? :D

Do they really marry spouses with the same first names, hair colors and speech impediments? Drive the same cars? Like the same music? After being seperated as babies? Enlighten me! My donations might roll in a bit faster! :D

I don't think we urgently need a(nother) podcast on the Kennedy assassination while presumably decent journalists still write books that contradict the official version of events. Classics like that always remain for a rainy day. As with the lastest health fads & magic ads, it's been done and is being done to death. I'd like to hear about one with two and a half kilos of truth to it. ;)
 
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The China Study

I recently became a vegan, not for ideological reasons, just because I heard the switch can make you lose a bit of weight. Plus, to be honest, I thought it would make me seem trendier. A few people suggested that I might become malnourished or miss out on some key vitamins or minerals, so I did a bit of googling and found out I was fine. But in my searching I came across a book called The China Study by T Colin Campbell, professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University (argument from authority anyone?).

It discusses the health benefits of eating a diet with no animal products or processed food, which as well as a healthy weight range also included lower rates of certain cancers and autoimmune diseases. At first I was a bit concerned that this was some alarmist craziness, especially when the author appeared on Bill Maher's show, but the book makes reference to both correlative and causative studies from which these conclusions were made.

From listening to Skeptoid it seems Brian doesn't believe that diet (presuming you stick within the RDA and calorie limits) is much of a factor in health so I'd be interested to see an episode on this, or just generally on 'plant based, whole foods diets' as the book calls them.

If you want to know the basic claims and have an hour or so to kill, there's a new documentary out called 'Forks over Knives' which is based on this book. It doesn't really explain any of the evidence behind the claims though so it kind of comes off as just another alarmist "everything you know is wrong and you're going to die" film.

I know Brian is paid off by the big pharmaceuticals companies so he might want to keep this quiet, but then again he is also paid off by the reptile aliens from episode #46, and they'd want to keep us healthy and servile, so who knows?
 
plainskeptic said:
I would also like to see an episode on deductive vs inductive logic.

Specific to general and general to specific are not the essential characteristics for defining these forms of logic.

Deductive logic can go from general to specific,
but it can also go from specific to specific.

Here is a deductive argument that goes from specific to specific.

If Yale exists, God exists.
Yale exists.
Therefore, God exists.

I hear erroneous definitions given frequently. :mad:
Heard one last night on Star Trek Next Generation.
I have read them in college textbooks. :mad::mad:

Chris Rippel
Great Bend, Kansas
Click to expand...


I second this. Could be a great episode, one of the fundamentals.
 
Red3 said:
I also believe they use animal/fish derivatives in the fining process during wine making.
Click to expand...


Some beers, as well. The fining agent is called "isinglass," and is derived from the connective tissues of certain fish.
 
Gelatins and albumins are used as well.


Process clearing is used a lot now.



A good conspiracy is that commercial beers are bad for you as they have "heaps" of chemicals in them.

I really dont know how to reply to these charges.


Heaps of chemicals is an astounding claim.
 
The above logic request, I think a perusal of "logical absolutes" would quickly dispel the notion of absolutes, but I get argument like that quite often.
 
mudguts said:
Gelatins and albumins are used as well.


Process clearing is used a lot now.



A good conspiracy is that commercial beers are bad for you as they have "heaps" of chemicals in them.

I really dont know how to reply to these charges.


Heaps of chemicals is an astounding claim.
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Huge macro-brewers use hop extracts (some which have been chemically-altered to prevent skunking) and fermentable adjuncts like rice and corn, that's about it, really.

Beer is its own preservative. The alcohol, low pH, and iso-alpha acids from the hops prevent anything real bad from growing in there.
 
This one would be interesting. Ferdinand Waldo Demara was supposedly one of, if not the greatest, impersonator who ever lived. Purportedly, he changed identities regularly and became extremely competent in the fields he was pretending to be trained in. He even went so far as to successfully perform surgery on multiple patients with no previous training, save a surgery textbook he would glanced at before operating; or so the story goes. The wiki link is listed below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Waldo_Demara
 
The True Scotsman said:
This one would be interesting. Ferdinand Waldo Demara was supposedly one of, if not the greatest, impersonator who ever lived. Purportedly, he changed identities regularly and became extremely competent in the fields he was pretending to be trained in. He even went so far as to successfully perform surgery on multiple patients with no previous training, save a surgery textbook he would glanced at before operating; or so the story goes. The wiki link is listed below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Waldo_Demara
Click to expand...

Yeah, that would be great! The TV series "The Pretender" was based on this guy (at least on the general idea), and I love to hear more about him. I mean, how much info is there on this guy (rhetorical)?
 
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