Student Questions: the Mozart Effect, Quantum Theory, and AIDS
Skeptoid answers some questions sent in by students.
| 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.
References
© 2009 Skeptoid.com
Discuss!
5 most recent comments | Show all 21 comments
Remember, you should always read with skepticism the comments of anyone too lame to put their real name & city.
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
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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