Student Questions: the Mozart Effect, Quantum Theory, and AIDS
Skeptoid answers some questions sent in by students.
Filed under Feedback & Questions
| Skeptoid #128 November 18, 2008 Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe |
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Once again, a giant round of thanks to the students who have sent in this week's questions. If you're a student and are wondering about some pseudoscience or other skeptical question you've heard, send it in and I'll answer it in a future episode. Just come to Skeptoid.com and click on Answering Student Questions. Let's get started today with Jerome from the Philippines:
Hey Brian, this is Jerome Clemente from Manila, Philippines, I want to hear your take on the Mozart Effect. Can music really affect the intelligence of an individual, like they say that rock music can make you dumber and classical music can make you more intelligent. Like me, I listen to heavy metal but I don't feel stupid. Thank you.
I'm glad you asked. It just so happens that my wife Lisa was one of the test administrators when this research was originally conducted in the early 1990's at UC Irvine by Dr. Gordon Shaw, a physicist, and Dr. Frances Rauscher, an experimental psychologist. The idea was to test whether young children's spatial-temporal IQ scores could be improved by listening to various types of music. Although they had some promising preliminary results from a particular Mozart piece which made immediate worldwide headlines, the full study eventually showed no significant result. I once spent half an hour with Gordon Shaw in his office, batting a crumpled-up ball of paper back and forth and discussing his theories on dark matter. I asked him straight out what the research showed so far and he said something like "Basically bupkiss," even though, strictly speaking, that violated the blinding on a couple of levels; but I think by then they were just about done with it, and had zilch.
Nevertheless, as you probably know, the headline "Mozart Makes You Smarter" was such a great one that whole industries exist around it, more than 15 years after it was conclusively falsified, selling Mozart CDs to pregnant mothers and claims that music therapy cures all sorts of diseases, and everything else a snake-oil salesman can invent. In short, the testing found the claim to be pure pseudoscience. The most significant effect of buying a Mozart CD in hopes of making your child smarter is to transfer a sum of money from your pocket into that of a company exploiting sensationalism.
Hello, My name is John and I go to Westchester Community college in New York. I often hear the terms quantum physics and quantum theory used by people pushing pseudoscience. Can you give me a brief introduction to what quantum is and why it is so useful to bad science. Thanks.
This is a great question. It is so tiring to hear peddlers of supernatural nonsense supporting their claims by citing quantum physics. The word quantum refers to the smallest discrete unit possible. For example, a quantum of light is a photon. You can't have half a photon of light. Max Planck discovered around 1900 that energy is always transmitted and absorbed in discrete units, which are called quanta.
Quantum theory is the study of matter and physics at a very small, subatomic scale. Classical physics deals with the large scale world: Where I drop a rock and it lands on my foot, or a planet orbits the sun and is held in place by gravity. In the quantum world, these physics no longer apply, in part because that world is driven by different fundamental forces, and we have weird things like particle-wave duality and singularities and spin and entanglement, for which there are no analogs in classical physics. Our brains evolved in a different world, so it's really hard for us to wrap our heads around quantum theory. Thus, it's the perfect reference to support a meaningless pseudoscience: Nobody understands it, nobody's qualified to falsify its relevance to the claim, everybody's impressed by the term.
When Rhonda Byrne wrote The Secret and claimed that quantum physics explains how you can wish for things and they'll magically appear, she didn't know anything more about quantum physics than the average person on the street. She's just a smart enough marketer to know that when people hear the term, they're impressed. Ask a theoretical physicist who has read her chapter on quantum theory: Not a single word of it makes any sense; it's just childish technobabble to impress the masses. Real quantum theory has no conceivable relevance to paranormal claims like The Secret or What the Bleep Do We Know, thus its frequent employ is almost always without any scientific meaning.
Hi, I’m Bailey from William Smith College and I’d like to know if there is legitimate science behind using an alkaline diet to treat GERD.
GERD, basically gastric reflux disease, is a chronic condition where stomach acids come up into your esophagus, causing heartburn discomfort and also tissue damage. When this happens a lot, your esophageal sphincter can be damaged which makes the situation even worse. An effective symptomatic treatment is to take an antacid, like Tums, which quickly neutralizes the acids in the esophagus and eases the discomfort. Effective long-term treatments include drugs that block acid production, changes to your sleeping position like elevating the head, and weight loss. What doesn't work so well is making your diet more alkaline, i.e. less acidic. According to a number of studies, eating less acidic foods and even consuming antacids stimulates additional acid production in the stomach to digest it. Now that's OK — your stomach is designed to hold highly acidic contents — but it means your reflux is probably going to continue. Most research does not support an alkaline diet to treat GERD. Your best bet is to eat a lower calorie diet to help you lose weight, watch your sleeping position, treat the symptoms with antacids only as needed; and if it continues, consider drugs to reduce acid production and give your esophageal sphincter a chance to heal.
Hello Brian, I am Javier from FSU at Tallahassee, Florida. I read online that there is no scientific evidence showing the relationship between HIV and AIDS. I would like to know what do you think about this and the HIV conspiracy theory. Thanks.
First of all, it's important to understand that the fact that AIDS is caused by the HIV virus is thoroughly established and is beyond any reasonable medical question. The best article I've seen that explains how we know this is by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and is reprinted on Dr. Stephen Barrett's excellent Quackwatch web site. The article also goes through many of the specific claims made by the people who doubt the relationship, and explains the facts behind each question. The medical questions are raised and answered, and also a few of the crazy conspiracy questions are outlined. For example, "AZT and other antiretroviral drugs, not HIV, cause AIDS." You know, the whole thing where American Big Pharma conspires to spread death and disease throughout the world in order to maximize profits. Well, that's goofy of course, but you can banter the goofiness back and forth all day long; whereas this article describes clinical trials that have proven AIDS is not caused by AZT or any other drugs. The scientific evidence showing that HIV causes AIDS is vast. There's a link to the article, titled The Evidence That HIV Causes AIDS, on the online transcript for this episode.
Hi Brian, this is Kevin Determann from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and my question is: Is recycling really environmentally or economically friendly?
Exceptions abound, but generally the answer is yes, recycling does often have limited environmental benefits, and no, recycling rarely makes economic sense.
Here's an oversimplified example. Let's say you're a manufacturer who buys aluminum. You can buy it from the mining company, who finds it profitable to employ miners to dig it out of the ground, refine it, and sell it to you; or you can buy it from the recycler at a similar price. Is it profitable for the recycler to employ drivers to go around collecting recycle bins and selling it to your factory? No, which is why they don't pay the owners of those bins the way the mining company pays its miners. The recycling company has to charge the owners of those bins. That's why all of our monthly utility bills cost extra to have a recycling bin collected.
Aluminum is also a great example because it's the most recyclable of materials. It can be recycled over and over again forever, and is the only recyclable material that pays for itself. Aluminum is also rare in that it takes less energy to make a recycled can than it takes to make a can from natural ore (Previous version of this episode erroneously cited a source that got this backwards - BD). But for most other compounds, manufacturing from raw materials enjoys an economy of scale unmatched by the tedious inefficiency of driving trucks around to everyone's house, hand sorting every piece of garbage, and driving more trucks around.
Paper is among the worst materials to recycle, making neither economic nor environmental sense. Paper manufacturers plant trees, which are a renewable resource, and they suck carbon dioxide out of the air. Paper recyclers drive trucks around, hand sort, and drive more trucks, emitting carbon dioxide into the air.
But it's not a simple question. What do we do with our trash when we're done with it: Bury it in a landfill, or pay the costs of recycling? Neither solution is desirable. The important lesson to learn here is that improvement is needed throughout the process, and all existing solutions have downsides crying out to be addressed. So don't oversimplify it and conclude that recycling is either good or bad.
You should follow me on twitter here.
© 2008 Skeptoid Media, Inc. Copyright information
References & Further Reading
Graham, L.R. "Quantum Mechanics and Dialectical Materialism." Slavic Review. 1 Sep. 1966, Volume 25, Number 3: 381-410.
Marks, J.W. "Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD)." MedicineNet. WebMD, 1 Apr. 2010. Web. 19 Jan. 2010. <http://www.medicinenet.com/gastroesophageal_reflux_disease_gerd/article.htm>
Shaw, J. "Recycling." The Concise Economic Encyclopedia. Library of Economics and Liberty, 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 17 Jan. 2010. <http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Recycling.html>
Steele, K.M., Bass, K.E. Crook, M.D. "The Mystery of the Mozart Effect: Failure to Replicate." Psychological Science. 1 Jul. 1999, Volume 10, Number 4: 366-369.
Wiggins, A.W., Wynn, C.M. Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where Real Science Ends...And Pseudoscience Begins. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2001.
Reference this article:
Dunning, Brian.
"Student Questions: the Mozart Effect, Quantum Theory, and AIDS." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc.,
18 Nov 2008. Web.
6 Sep 2010. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4128>
Discuss!
Remember, you should always read with skepticism the comments of anyone too lame to put their real name & city.
@Dan
That sounds awesome, but it's a matter of what is more efficient. What happens to the rest of the cardboard? Can it still be used for something? Is it totally reduced?
On quantum physics:
We have a joke here at the uni that quantum physics makes your brain hurt, but not nearly as much as the people who buy "the secret".
Of course, it's a pun over here, so much more catchy ;)
Erik, Trondheim, Norway
November 18, 2008 12:49pm
I think that the energy to create aluminium from ore vs recycling is the wrong way around.
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling) states that recycling saves 95% of the energy cost of producing new aluminium.
Perhaps your source made a typo in their statement about energy required to process ore vs recycling, especially since they say in other points that you save energy by recycling (enough per can to run a TV for 3 hours)
Mark
Mark, Sydney
November 18, 2008 3:36pm
A small but important distinction about the classical vs. quantum world:
The macroscopic world is just a bunch of quantum ones summed together, and so the rules of quantum physics, when taken at the scales of everyday life, are approximated (extremely well, by the way) by Newtonian rules. Classical physics is a product of Quantum physics, and not quite the same as saying that they're completely different. Newton's laws are not wrong, they just happen to not be as fundamental as he thought, but merely emergent from quantum rules when taken at huge scales.
Shane, Guelph, ON
November 18, 2008 9:40pm
Good catch, Mark.
And the referenced article concludes:
"There’s no downside to recycling aluminum: it’s fast, it pays for itself, and it’s great for the environment."
Or you could reshape it into a hat to protect you from mind control rays.
A common sense treatment for GERD is to avoid foods that aggravate it, which are more likely spicy than sour. Acid suppression can lead to food poisoning, since stomach acid kills pathogens.
Max, Boston, MA
November 18, 2008 10:34pm
A big thanks for including my question on this episode. it's nice to hear my name on you're brilliant podcast. I was Starstrucked,
Thanks for clearing that up, now I know I cannot use my obsession for heavy Metal as an scapegoat for my bad grades at school.
Jerome Clemente, Manila, Philippines
November 19, 2008 12:24am
Hi Brian,
thanks for the link to the HIV/AIDS thing. Recently my cousin told me he'd seen 3 videos that stunned him and "proved' that AIDS doesn't exist and that people are being killed by drugs such as AZT. I knew he was wrong but I didn't know how to prove it (I didn't watch the videos - Life's too short).
The other thing (that I'm hoping you might take a quick look at if you have time) is my cousin's other great discovery. An italian "oncologist" who believes that cancer is simply caused by Candida! And can easily be cured by bicarbonate of soda. Now this sounds very silly but my cousin made me watch a video complete with "cured" patient testimonials. I couldn't find anything to show this is wrong and only have this guy's website http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/
I'm fairly certain (I'm not a medical expert) that skin cancer is caused by the sun and that mesothelioma is caused by exposure to asbestos. Anyway, if this guy is wrong he almost certainly is harming people as well as ripping them off.
Regards and thanks for your work,
Francis
Francis, Sydney
November 19, 2008 12:31am
Francis, I didn't know that medical fraud was legal in Italy.
By the way, that website Brian referenced about recycling is not a credible source. For example, here's their article on "Holistic Medicine Treatments for Lymphoma"
http://www.professorshouse.com/family/health/holistic-treatments-lymphoma.aspx?terms=organic
"Detox juices, teas and colonics will help reduce these toxins, and flush out impurities. Eat plenty of organic foods that promote detoxification and are high in anti-oxidants."
Max, Boston, MA
November 19, 2008 12:52am
@Shane
No, it's not. At least, not with the current understanding of quantum physics. The whole problem of modern physics is that Newtonian and Quantum physics are incompatible and that there is a clear distinction.
If it's tiny, Newtonian physics stops working and QP starts, if it's big, QP stops working and NP works fine. What happens on the "border" is one of the biggest mysteries in in physics.
The problem of incompatbility is the very reason so much research* is being put into testing wether M-Theory is valid. It would form the "theory of everything", uniting Newtonian and quantum physics.
*using the term losely
Erik, Trondheim, Norway
November 19, 2008 2:23am
When telling people that elevating the head can help with GERD during sleep, it is important to also remind them to keep the neck supported - otherwise it can be damaged over time, leading to chronic pain.
Lee, Nottingham, England
November 19, 2008 2:34am
I think your numbers on aluminum from mining/refining and recycling may need a little work. Because aluminum is so reactive, it requires lots of electricity in the refining process (aluminum ore is dissolved in a solution and electrolysis is with a sacrificial carbon electrode... carbon dioxide is a by product). Aluminum smelters are located where electricity is less expensive.
From http://www.enotes.com/how-products-encyclopedia/aluminum-3 ... "The other major ingredient used in the smelting operation is carbon. Carbon electrodes transmit the electric current through the electrolyte. During the smelting operation, some of the carbon is consumed as it combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. In fact, about half a pound (0.2 kg) of carbon is used for every pound (2.2 kg) of aluminum produced. Some of the carbon used in aluminum smelting is a byproduct of oil refining; additional carbon is obtained from coal.
Because aluminum smelting involves passing an electric current through a molten electrolyte, it requires large amounts of electrical energy. On average, production of 2 lb (1 kg) of aluminum requires 15 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy. The cost of electricity represents about one-third of the cost of smelting aluminum."
We do have recycle pick-up here, but we take our aluminum cans to a center for cash. Because we are cheap.
HCN, Wacky Washington Way out West
November 20, 2008 9:20am
I think Brian may have reversed himself on the aluminum cans. It takes 5% of the energy to recycle an aluminum can that it does to get it from ore.
It is the one thing that we all can recycle easily and be confident that we are doing something good for the environment.
On a different note though. Economies of scale does play a role. I just visited the Coca Cola Facility in Bellevue, Wa, they are recycling 99.7% of all their waste. They can do this because 1. They are a big company and can direct resources to make it happen. 2. They are a big company making 1500 cans per minute of 12 oz cans, 1000 cases /hour of Dasani water and which means that for every waste stream they have, they have lots of it, or will have in a relatively short time. Pulling #2 plastic out of a home recycle bin isn't that cost effective. Pulling it out of a drum that has nothing else in it, is.
The biggest step they took to achieve this was to bolt over their Garbage compactor, so no one could put garbage in it.
brad.tittle, bremerton
November 21, 2008 9:00am
I'm currently reading Collapse by Jared Diamond. He begins the book by talking about Montana. One of the issues they have is toxic waste created by mining getting in to their water supply. This seems like a rather important factor in the recycling debate.
Brian's A Wild Downer, Denton, Texas
November 25, 2008 1:03pm
Erik from Norway,
You are right, there is a bi-product to creating Alcohol from cardboard, and its a pulpy messy gooey substance... It has been suggested that once this dries in the sun, it can be reprocessed, and burned to heat the whole solution, which has to ferment for several days... which would create smoke, however I think it would be on the level with the polution that they already create powering enourmous recycling factories, trucks, and reprocessing the paper. If this were to be done, you would have paper in, alchohol, ash, and smoke out. Ash is a fertilizer, and alcohol is obviously a great fuel. Smoke is already created.
The real problem is, the yeast is genetically modified... and you know how people are with genetics.... if GOD didn't make it it ain't good....
or if you do it another way, the catalysts are REALLY expensive.
But then they get on an airplane to go to their anti-genetic conference and drink their coke, and eat their peanuts from a plastic bag... all things god did not make!
Dan, North Carolina
November 27, 2008 6:16pm
I would refer you to the December 2008 issue of Popular Mechanics, where they do an excellent job of laying out the economic and environmental pros and cons of recycling.
Not all recycled material must be separated by hand. As technology progresses, plants like the one in San Francisco's Recycle Center make the process automated.
Others have already corrected your gaffe regarding aluminum. As for paper being the worst thing to recycle, I bet the guy who buys the waste paper from the plant where I work would be surprised to hear it.
Judith, Lawrence, KS
November 30, 2008 11:46am
It seems to me that the only truly environmentally friendly way to deal with waste and general garbage is to incinerate it in large quantities at a time... but what can be done with the remains, I don't know. I suppose it would depend on the material.
Just wanted to throw that out there. I don't know much about the subject, but wanted to give a little input anyway.
Good episode!
Robert, Lenexa, KS
January 09, 2009 10:49am
Hi Brian,
I'm not the biggest enviromentalist around, but I did notice some logical fallacy in your reasoning concerning recycling. First of all, if Kevin, like me is from Toronto, he is not being charged extra by a recycling company to recycle his cans as recycling in Ontario is free for everyone and whatever fees there are, are paid for by the province. Also recycling can be done without separate recycling trucks. Regular garbage trucks can be outfitted to have separate compartments for different types of waste. Therefore more carbon dioxide would not be generated by more trucks driving around as it would only be the same amount of trucks that would be driven around for regular garbage pick-up.
In regards to paper recycling, while trees are a renewable resource, they are not instantly renewable. A replacement sapling takes several years to grow back to the height of the original that was cut down. As the sapling is smaller than the full grown tree, it is generated less oxygen and sucking up less carbon dioxide for several years than the tree it replaced. Trees and forests provide homes to animals and insects. Each tree that is cut down displaces the creatures who lived in it. If an entire forest is felled, the impact to the biodiversity of the region can be severe. Animals cannot wait around for their forest to grow back. A single large tree can house all manner of life from microorganisms to monkeys. This is something that must be taken into account.
Adira, Toronto, Canada
January 21, 2009 8:21pm
I think you should back up your claims that recycling paper isn't environmently friendly. Just saying that transporting materials to be recycled generates pollution and paper-producers plant tree-saplings isn't comparable. Not even by a long shot. As prior commenters has adressed growing tree takes time.
And paper isn't always buried. When you look at the alternative to recycling, paper will end up in the same cycle as regular trash, which isn't always buried. It might be burned in a garbage processing plant. Even the fact that garbage is buried isn't always environmentally friendly, but that is just another issue alltogether
Another element you did not take into concideration is the use of bleech and similar whitening agents in paper productions which are can be very bad for the environment. The same can be said about coloring agents, but possible to a lesser degree.
I would suggest investing a little more time on the subject and covering the whole issue in a full Skeptoid segment. Put some numbers to it, and broaden the scope of the subject. I don't think you can talk in broad terms about paper production and recycling without mentioning deforestation and the possible environmental impacts of over-using the natural resources, albeit them being renewable.
Frank Audun, Trondheim, Norway
March 11, 2009 10:59pm
Brian,
It has actually been demonstrated that classical music played in barns leads to cows letting down more milk than when any other music is played. I wonder what bodily orifice lets down what if grunge rock is played to cows... Three cheers to the Mozart Effect!
AIDS is not caused by the HIV virus. It has been documented as being mostly related to malnutrition and abusive drug use. You should do a piece on the real rip-off harm that Big Pharmaceuticals do to our health care sector. Obviously you do not know very much in this area, Brian. You are so gullible as to believe the myths about AIDS...
Paper is arguably the easiest and best thing to recycle. It is the main ingredient in cardboard, the manufacture of cellufibre insulation (one of the best and cheapest home insulations) and in tri-gen energy plants.
Joe Boudreault, Hanover, Ontario, Canada
April 29, 2009 7:01pm
joe b
ummm if aids is caused by malnutrition and drug use shouldnt it have been around longer? like since the beginning of time not just since the 80's and documented by who exactly?
mimsy borogrove, denver co
May 31, 2009 11:11am
Mimsy,
AIDS (and things like heart disease and cancer) were almost certainly around for a long, long time. They just weren't recognized as such. AIDS, as a modern epidemic, came to light when widespread drug abuse and homosexuality etc were increasing rapidly over the last quarter century.
I'm not an expert in this, of course.
So look up Dr. Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati and his intensive research. It's quite an eye-opener. Keep in mind that while we shoulkd rule out viruses for AIDS, there's still a lot of other bad viruses out there and still a lot of AIDS misery...
Joe Boudreault, Hanover, On, Canada
June 10, 2009 6:43pm
Joe if AIDS is caused by malnutrition how is it related to homosexuality?
Most countries in the 3rd world with high spreads of HIV and AIDs homosexuality is againist the law or at least very frowned againist.
And based mainly on my gay neighbours most homosexuals are fitter and more interested in good nutrition?
Read a couple of medical journals on HIV and you will see a lot of research has gone into HIV and it has come to the conclusion that HIV causes AIDs, no futher research into this fact is needed. We now need to research treatment, cures and hopefully a vacine.
Claire, Melbourne, Australia
July 05, 2009 10:50pm
I just had a thought - if AIDS wasn't caused by HIV, then where is the news reports about the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people with AIDS and not HIV?
Adrian, Brisbane, Australia
July 21, 2009 12:32pm
Well, Adrian, it's simple really:
If AIDS is caused by HIV, then AIDS itself is not a direct punishment from god for being poor and/or homosexual...
John, New York
July 21, 2009 2:49pm
"...they had some promising preliminary results from a particular Mozart piece..."
Can I find the details somewhere? Sounds interesting.
To the paper recycling crowd:
Lumber companies own huge tracts of land and wait something like twenty years between each cutting of a particular tract. It's not like they just plow a forest five years after it was replanted.
The world demand for paper will stabilize as more texts go digital. Sure, we'll still need cardboard and books and paper products, but have you ever visited the forests of the northeastern U.S. and Canada? Those forests are dense and grow very quickly. There is plenty of supply to meet the demand.
Abby, Austin, TX
February 21, 2010 10:54pm
pparently the media's still catching up on the Mozart Effect:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j5XJw_LTuVGfn5FGNGVgP9LUeEQA
Kevin, Canberra, Australia
May 10, 2010 10:32pm
Re: GIRD
At the extreme end of treatment is corrective surgery. I was to the point of aspirating stomach acid that was damaging my lungs. A quick, laparoscopic, Nissen's fundoplication, turned off the reflux like a switch. Haven't touched a Tums in over fifteen years.
Gary A. Crowell Sr., PE, Boise, ID
July 20, 2010 12:13pm
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Talking about recycling paper... I personally think that a much better alternative to what they do now, would be to use Saccharomyces yeast to ferment and break down the cellulose in paper into glucose and then further into alchohol.... 1 ton of cardboard could yield several gallons of ethanol, which burns cleaner than gasoline, and could be done just about anywhere. This could lead to a renewable fuel, that we already have the technology for.
Good episode Brian
Dan, North Carolina
November 18, 2008 11:22am