Skeptics Guide #792

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #792 September 8th, 2020 Segment #1. COVID-19 Update https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/04/health/oleandrin-coronavirus-fda-mypillow/index.html Segment #2. News Items News Item #1 – AI To Detect Deep Fakes https://www.technology.org/2020/09/05/microsoft-announced-two-ai-based-technologies-to-detect-deepfakes/ News Item #2 – The Neuroscience of Stuttering https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-neuroscientists-are-discovering-about-stuttering-180975730/ News Item #3 – Undead Fears https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/09/medieval-pandemics-spawned-fears-undead-burials-reveal/ News Item #4 – Mighty Mouse in Space https://www.pressherald.com/2020/09/07/jackson-labs-mighty-mice-stayed-musclebound-in-space/ News Item #5 – Fake Reviews https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/06/amazon-reviews-thousands-are-fake-heres-how-to-spot-them.html Segment #3: Who’s That Noisy Segment #4: Your Questions and E-mails Question #1: Panspermia Again As a long-time listener, I know that one of your favourite ongoing sagas are the ridiculous panspermia claims coming from Steele and Wickramasinghe in Australia. Well, they have done it again, this time with COVID-19. For your entertainment: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7358766/# Some amazing highlights (but there are many more): • They were clearly writing this chapter about Candida, and then at the last minute before "publishing" (more on this below) decided that they would add some wild speculation about COVID-19 (because... why not?). Some of their predictions from that time did not exactly age well... (e.g. there will likely be little or no human-to-human transmission...lol). • I absolutely love the comparisons of the geographic pattern of COVID-19 infections in China to the fallout from a giant "viral bomb" (I guess a meteorite strike... they find one that fits within the general time period of late 2019). • Several figures are directly taken from Australian newspapers... seems legit for a scientific publication. • Sunspot cycles! Because...why not?! • There are a number of problematic and frankly dangerous statements in the chapter, including the statement that the exterior of masks is likely • The whole article is an exercise in argument from ignorance ("we don't know exactly where it came from -- or at least we can find some out-of-context quotes from researchers supporting that statement -- so must be panspermia")... and also ignoring ALL THE GENOMIC EVIDENCE that shows that SARS-CoV-2 clearly nestles within the phylogeny of terrestrial coronaviruses. But that's obviously giving the authors too much credit... This also pointed me towards a way that I was not familiar with of publishing bullshit in a seemingly legitimate scientific venue that you might be interested in if not already aware. As a researcher myself (although in entomology, far from this domain), I wondered how the heck they got this published under the Elsevier umbrella and indexed by NCBI. To a member of the public who's not in the research game this would look totally legit! I am well aware and familiar with the predatory journal game (as I get many email invites every week to publish in them), but this is a new one: These authors are using an "Online Book Series" called "Advances in Genetics" that has multiple volumes that appear to have different editorial teams; some appear to be legitimate (the series is indexed and has a not-bad-but-not-great impact factor) while others (this one I assume, although this volume is still in press so I can't see who the editors are) have guest editors that are likely sympathetic to the bullshit and can send the chapters to known friendly reviewers. And, CHECK OUT who the guest editors are for the latest volume, 106!: https://www.elsevier.com/books/book-series/advances-in-genetics ... I wonder how critical they were of their own chapters...? Because this chapter, although entertaining, has COVID-19-related statements that are frankly dangerous to have in the scientific literature, I think it'd be reasonable to push for retractions. The series editor appears to be a legit researcher (but I didn't dig deep, I'm sure he could have his blind spots... https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=dD8c7g8AAAAJ&hl=en)... I wonder if he's aware of this. As a very last aside, it's a funny coincidence that the first part of the chapter advances a bullshit panspermia "hypothesis" for the origin of Candida auris to explain how it suddenly popped up in multiple locations without clear evidence of human-mediated spread among those location -- just this week, NPR's radiolab summarized the case for an alternative (and seemingly much more legitimate) hypothesis that selection for higher temperature tolerance is responsible for the recent emergence of C. auris. Seems preliminary, but better than panspermia...https://mbio.asm.org/content/10/4/e01397-19/article-info Anyway, I'd love to hear you talk about the new panspermia BS, if only because I need a laugh these days. And if you ever want to spread the gospel of or have questions about the wild and crazy world of parasitoid wasps (I know, I keep emailing you about this), I'm always here 🙂 Keep up the good work, folks. Paul Abram Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada Segment #5. Science or Fiction Each week our host will come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake – and you can play along. Theme: Wolves #1) Wolves were completely eradicated from the British Isles by about 1760. #2) Wolves raised and socialized by humans from young pups are as "tractable" as domestic dogs. #3) In North America there have been only six reported unprovoked wolf attacks against humans in the last century, none of which were fatal. Segment #6. Skeptical Quote of the Week "I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re sceptical." attributed to Arthur C Clarke