Skeptics Guide #1027

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #1027 March 12th 2025 Segment #1. What’s The Word Psionic Segment #2. News Items News Item #1 – Screen Time and Mental Health https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250310131816.htm News Item #2 – US Mass Shootings https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/society/us-mass-shootings-impact/ News Item #3 – Stem Cells for Parkinson’s https://theness.com/neurologicablog/stem-cells-for-parkinsons-disease-2/ News Item #4 – Brown Fat and Exercise https://www.rutgers.edu/news/special-type-fat-tissue-could-promote-healthful-longevity-and-help-maintain-exercise-capacity Segment 3. Who’s That Noisy Segment #4. Your Questions and E-mails Question #1: Vitamin A and Measles Dear Skeptics, your show is a highlight of the week for me. I am sure I am not the first to point out inaccuracies in episode #1026 regarding the Texas measles outbreak. I certainly got the sense from the skeptics that fun was being poked at the recommendation to use vitamins in the treatment of measles. According to the WHO guidelines Vitamin A has been and continues to be a core treatment for measles, and Cod Liver Oil contains not only, Vit D as reported, but also Vit A. In the situation with the Mennonites its plausible that this traditional remedy would be more "palatable" given their cultural norms than pills from the big bad government. For example Cochrane states that Vit A reduces death by 87% in children younger than 2. Any cursory search for measles treatment would have outlined the importance of Vitamin A. While I think the reporting content was uncharacteristically shoddy, it was actually the tone that I found more problematic. I agree with the general premise that RFK Jr. has been a dangerous vaccine skeptic but in this case he basically seems to recommending the correct treatment. While I understand the bias of judging RFK Jr. based on previous quackery, each time the skeptical community stoops to judging a current behaviour in this way it feeds the narrative that the sky is falling. If RFK Jr. starts to promote general health via exercise will that be taken at face value or also laughed off? Lest we forget, vaccine hesitancy and denialism exists on all sides of the political spectrum - I would hope the skeptics can try and stick to a more neutral and fact based approach. Keep up the great work. Tim Graham Canada Segment #5. Interview with Dave Farina https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorDaveExplains Segment #6. 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: Ancient Roots Item 1: Persian scholar, Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni, proposed in the 11th century that India may have been connected to other continents in the past. Item 2: Aristarchus of Samos was the first to propose a heliocentric system, in which the Earth revolves around the sun in one year and rotates on its axis in one day. Item 3: In his 1025 work, Muslim physician Ibn Sina proposed human-to-human transmission of disease through invisible entities, and was the first to propose a quarantine to limit the spread of contagion. Segment #7. Skeptical Quote of the Week "The burden of proof as far as authentication is concerned is on the claimant—not on anyone else to prove a negative. Asserting that a particular image must be paranormal because it is unexplained only constitutes an example of the logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance. One cannot draw a conclusion from a lack of knowledge." - Joe Nickell