SciShow Tangents - Science Hoaxes

Episode Date: November 13, 2018

We’re delving into the complicated world of scientific hoaxes. Some are just goofs that went a little too far, but others have had serious negative impacts on public health.Welcome, traveler, to the first episode! This is Sam from December of 2020. I can't believe, more two years later, we're still playing this goofy game! If you're starting here, you have a long and grand adventure ahead of you. It only gets way better from here!If you're working your way backwards... well, you did it! Hopefully a new episode will be coming out soon, otherwise what will you listen to while you do your chores?? Sources:[Truth or Fail]Cello Scrotum:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1610985/https://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b379http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7853564.stmSurfer’s Ear:http://ent.uci.edu/more-at-uc-irvine/conditions/surfers-ears.aspJeep Butt: https://publichealth.gwu.edu/departments/healthpolicy/CHPR/downloads/mil_prep042605.pdfhttp://www.academia.edu/19875506/Pilonidal_sinus_Jeeps_disease_An_improved_model_of_care[Fact Off]Mary Toft:http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/aug2009.htmlhttps://academic.oup.com/past/article/238/1/43/4822513Parapsychology:http://www.tricksterbook.com/truzzi/ZS-Issues-PDFs/ZeteticScholarNos12-13.pdfhttp://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.617.9791&rep=rep1&type=pdfhttps://www.csicop.org/uploads/files/martin-gardner-pdfs/landmark-pk-hoax.pdfhttps://web.archive.org/web/20060503224225/http://www.banachek.org/nonflash/project_alpha.htmhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1S5CRcqJQo[Ask the Science Couch]Andrew Wakefield:https://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2323045/https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.htmlhttps://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/jan/28/andrew-wakefield-mmr-vaccine[Butt One More Thing]Fake coprolite: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140729-dinosaur-coprolite-paleontology-dung-fossil-auction/

Hello there, listeners. Just wanted to give you a heads up that this podcast is not for kids. We will swear and stuff. Also, in this episode, we talk frankly about miscarriage. That section happens around 14 minutes in and runs for about five minutes, just in case you want to skip it. Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents. It's the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. Today, we are joined by these, I am joined by these three friends. You are joined by all four of us. It's you and us and whoever else is in the room with you. We're in your ears.

Maybe we're right there inside your ears. We've got Stefan Chin, producer of SciShow, maker of graphics, editor of videos, also noise engineer. Ooh, yeah. Yeah.

Accurate. What's your tagline? Oh, no. That's good. We're also joined by Sam Schultz. Hello, Sam. Hey, how are you? Artist and millionaire. What's your tagline? Oh no. That's good. We've also joined by Sam Schultz. Hello Sam. Hey, how are you? Artist and millionaire. What's your tagline? I'm so happy now.

I was so tired and now I'm energized. That's my tagline. And we've also got over here on the Science Catch with me Sari Riley. Hello. Writer for SciShow and science communicator. What's your tagline? Eggplant surprise. And I'm Hank Green. I created SciShow with science communicator. What's your tagline? Eggplant surprise. And I'm Hank Green.

I created SciShow with the help of a bunch of these great people. My tagline is get busy with the fizzy. Thanks everybody for listening to us today. This is a show called Tangents in which we get together. We try to one up each other, try to amaze each other, try to delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory, but we are also playing for Hank Bucks.

We start out at zero every time. So we award Hank Bucks and we do everything that we can to stay on topic. But of course we are going to fail at that. That's why it's called tangents. And if you want to intentionally go on a tangent, it behooves you to spend a Hank Buck to do that. And since none of us have any right now, we have

to stay on topic. Oh god. Stay on topic. Stay on topic. Stay on topic. Is that like Star Wars? Yeah, that was Star Wars. Now as always, to introduce this week's topic for the traditional science poem,

we have Sari O'Reilly. Sometimes science gets fiction mixed into the fact. Alien signals from a microwave are the worst first contact. Or wars where the crimes were lies about bones, missing links that stink because they're stitched together stones. It takes one bad egg to turn a field into

farce, but we recover and rebuild and research to parse the latest piltdown man or Bigfoot sighting in the trees. Every hoax will be toast with the right expertise. That was very nice. It was very long. Very good. I feel like the longer the poem, the better it is.

More rhymes. It means you had to think of more rhymes. You worked harder on it. Our topic today is hoaxes. I guess we don't need Sari to explain what a hoax is, but you like referenced several actual science hoaxes. Hopefully no one's talking about any of those. Seriously.

Yeah, you're trying to ruin everything. So sorry, I tried to pick the ones that everyone knows. Yeah, the more famous ones. Of course, everyone knows all of those hoaxes. So that is, of course, a big part of science is getting stuff wrong, sometimes getting stuff wrong because people intentionally led you to think a wrong thing, which jerks. Yeah.

What's even motivating you? Maybe they wanted the world to be more interesting. The world is so interesting on its own. There's no Bigfoots, though. There's no Bigfoots. I have pretty big feet. Oh, excuse me. Are you Bigfoot?

You can if you want, but I immediately feel uncomfortable. I don't like it anymore. How's it going, Bigfoot? Nope. Take it back. To your podcast nickname. Does anybody, who else gets a podcast? What's your podcast nickname?

Sam. That's not a podcast nickname. Okay, mine is Sam. No. Sari is Sam. Sam is Hot Fries. Hot Fries. I don't want to be Hot Fries. Hey there not a podcast nickname. Okay, mine is Sam. No! Sari is Sam. Sam is Hot Fries. Hot Fries. I don't want to be Hot Fries.

Hey there, Hot Fries. This is bullying. Call her Sam. Try to see how she likes it. Hey, Sam. That'd be great. That's stupid. You're a good person, so.

So we're going to get started with Truth or Fail. So Truth or Fail is the section of the podcast where one of our panelists has prepared three science facts for our education and enjoyment. I'm going to present three medical conditions. Okay. Two of them are real and one of them is a hoax. And so you have to figure out which one the hoax is. The first one is Jeep butt. That's a good name.

That's the fake one. Hold on. Can Jeep butt be your podcast nickname? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So Jeep butt is a skin infection or growth at the top of the butt crack from the bumpy ride of a Jeep.

Number two. Number two, surfer's ear, which is an abnormal bone growth in the ear canal from the exposure to cold wind and water. Okay. That sounds real. Yeah. Did they also get exposed to jeeps? Yeah.

On their butts? No, on their ears. Oh. Oh. Jeep ear. That's just like going deaf from- Yeah. Don't put your ear on a jeep.

Yeah. Yeah. So the third one is cello scrotum, and this is an irritation of the scrotal skin from extended cello playing. Oh, wow. Super real to me. Do you straddle cellos to play them?

Yeah, I think you do. I mean, I've never played a cello. I've seen it happen, but I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the groin area. I can't remember where your crotch is on the cello when you're playing it. But I think you're kind of like, it's there. It's crazy.

I feel like I've heard of cello scrotum. Sounds real to me. I mean, Jeep butt definitely sounds like the fake one, but that makes me think that it might not be the fake one. I bet Jeep butt, that sounds like something that an army man would name something. So I bet it's from like Vietnam. He's like, I got a Jeep butt. Back in Nam. That's what he said's like, I got a Jeep butt. Back in Nam.

That's what he said. He came aware of that. Jeep butt. Yeah, I've been living there with my whole life. I've been living there with Nam because of the Jeep butt. So I think that one's real. Okay. I don't.

No. I don't think Jeep butt's real. I'm not going to listen to you. Do we have a double agent? Is this a game of werewolf now? What's happening? I feel like he's trying to draw us into Jeep butt. I don't know.

It's going to be really hard for me not to go with Jeep Butt. Yeah, what are you going to do now, Sam? No, I think... Only a coward doesn't go with Jeep Butt. No, I think Jeep Butt is the most fake. Oh, that's the fake one. Oh, it's different. I'm all mixed up now.

Yeah, I think cello scrotum sounds real enough. I feel like cello scrotum must exist, but maybe it's something different. What if surfer ear is so boring and normal that that's the fake one, though? I know. That seems completely possible. I also feel like I've heard of surfer ear, too. I feel like surfing's a dangerous sport, so I would believe that something weird would happen because of water and wind.

Will you describe what happens because of water and wind one more time? It's an abnormal bone growth. Bones? Bones? Those are way down in there. But in your ear canal, if it's vibrating enough. And it's cold, and there's cold water. We gotta mix it up, you guys.

We can't all go with a jeep butt. I'm not going with a je Jeep butt. You're not? I'm going with Surfer Ears. Okay. That's the fake one, right? Yeah. Fake one. Sam thinks that Surfer Ears is the fake one. He's really having a hard time locking in on it. It's four o'clock. You shouldn't be that drunk. I worked all day. Come on.

Come on. Should we just do like complete variation? I'm gonna go with Cello Scrotum. Okay. Jeep butt. I'm gonna knuckle down Jeep butt. We gotta mix it all up. So it going to go with cello scrotum. Okay. Jeep butt. I'm going to knuckle down. We got one. I'm going to mix it all up. So it was cello scrotum was the host.

What? No. Cello scrotum is a different disease. It's just when your scrotum looks like a cello. Just like. Is that a disease? Hitched in the middle. Size or just shape?

Size or just shape. I don't know. Or that you can play musical tones on it. Yeah. And they sound luxurious like a cello. Mm-hmm. So anyway.

I want to continue down this path, but I'm not going to. Okay. You have to spend your only hank buck. Yeah. So someone had written

into the British Medical Journal saying that they had encountered a few patients who had guitar nipple from practicing. Yeah. From practicing. I can see. Totally see it.

It sounds like you've suffered from guitar nipples for a very long time. No, I was thinking of where guitars go. I can see where I have it. Yeah. And similar to jogger's nipple, which is like a more common thing. We all know the pain of jogging. We all know the pain. I actually do.

Yeah, me too. I have very sensitive nipples. pain in the jaw. We all know the pain. I actually do. Yeah, me too. I have very sensitive nipples. So in that first letter where they talk about guitar nipple, this doctor was asking if anyone else had experienced this in their patients. And so another doctor wrote in to the journal with a case report that they had seen celloscrotum. And then that was in 1974. And they finally admitted that it was a hoax letter in 2009 like pretty low consequence hoax but kind of silly right so cello scrotum was a thing for 20 years yeah but never was a thing but was not actually there it is apparently medical condition the the position that you

sit in to play a cello it would be very difficult to actually irritate the scrotum yeah i mean i don't pay a lot of attention yeah But if any of us had played cello, we would have known that. Right. We'd be like, there's no way you can get your scrote onto a cello. I mean, there is a way. Yeah, there's always a way. There's always a way. So, Jeep butt is known as pilonidal disease.

So, it's a skin infection or a cyst that occurs usually at the top of the butt crack. There can be yellow or bloody discharge and, quote, unexpected moisture as well as pain. And some people think- My least favorite kind of moisture. Especially in your butt. Yeah. They think it might be caused by ingrown hair, but one of the risk factors seems to be prolonged sitting.

And it was apparently pretty widespread in World War II. Hey! What a loss. So yeah, it was mostly like Jeep drivers who were getting it, and so they thought it was because of the bumpy ride. Because you're bumping all around in the streets of Europe trying to fight the Kaiser. Yeah. According to the Wikipedia page, it's called Jeep Bottom.

Sure, Jeep Bottom. Jeep Butt. Same shit. And then Surfer's Ear. Surfer's Ear. So Surfer's Ear, that one's pretty straightforward. Apparently, most avid surfers have extra bone growth in their ear canal. Wow.

That's from irritation from cold wind and water. I didn't realize that that would trigger bone growth, but apparently it does. There can be so much growth that it will trap water and wax in there, and then you can get ear infections from that. What? How fast does a bone grow? So most of the people who get it are in their 30s or 40s so they've been surfing

for like decades. But bones can grow pretty fast. I guess that you get because they got to heal and stuff. Healed up. That's true. I like if you get braces

that's bone deconstructing and then reconstructing. Hold on for a second. Wait a second. Are you going to spend a hank buck on this because I'm really curious? On braces?

My bones regrew when I got braces? I to spend a hank buck on this? Because I'm really curious. On braces? My bones regrew when I got braces? I'll spend a hank buck on this. So the way it works is when your braces are pulling on your teeth, it's increasing a biomechanical load on part of your jawbone. And in response to that pressure, the bone cells, there are several kinds of bone cells. The ones called osteoclasts break it down in response to the pressure because they're like, something weird is pressing on me. Let's break down the bone cells and get rid of them so that this thing won't interfere, won't cause a fracture.

And then when there's space on the other side of the tooth, as your wire pulls it into this gap gradually, osteoblasts generate bone cell. So they build it up around. So when you wear braces, you're basically remodeling your jaw. So how come sometimes they go back? Because something must be pushing them in another direction. Yeah. Just like the growth of you or something?

Yeah, or new teeth. Because that happened to me, for sure. Yeah, me too. Where it was like, and then it was like, oh no. Yeah. There's not enough space in there for that tooth. Is that the same kind of thing that's happening when you just wear really tiny shoes and it like. Probably some of that might happen.

Squeezes your feet in weird ways. Definitely bones change shape. Right. And people who've had their feet binded. But yeah, I always just assumed that it was like my teeth just got yanked around until they like. I don't know what I thought was happening. I don't know what I thought was happening, but my teeth look very nice now. So thank you to my orthodontists.

I sort of feel like you, Hank, should have to spend the Hank Buck there because you go to pursuing that. I guess that was kind of my tangent, but I did appreciate it for him. Fine, zero, I'll be at zero and only Stefan has Hank Bucks. Oh yeah. And speaking of Hank Bucks, let's go make some George Washington Bucks. Let's talk to our sponsors.

And we're back. Let's go over the scores. Sam, how many points you got? I have nine. Stefan, how many points you got? I've got two points. Sari, how many points you got? I have nine. I also have none.

And I'm Hank. Oh, no. Stefan's the one to beat, everybody. Now it is time for the fact off. Fact off. Fact off. Fact off. for the fact off.

Fact off. Fact off. Fact off. Two panelists have brought science facts to present to the others in an attempt to blow their minds. The presentees

each have a Hank Buck to award to the fact that they like the most. However, if both facts are a giant snooze, the presentees

can choose to not award their Hank Bucks and just throw them in the trash. And we're going to figure out who goes first by asking who is the person

who lied most recently i guess oh god definitely well i don't know i'd be curious on how much you lie i probably lied right before i came downstairs really i probably lied to marianne about how i could or couldn't do something in fact i know i did i haven't told a lie today i don't think you haven't told a single lie today i haven't think. You haven't told a single lie today? I haven't talked to anybody today. All right. So I guess I go first. Yeah, you big liar. Okay.

In 1726, a pregnant woman started feeling pains and then probably because of a placental abnormality, miscarried. Then a couple of weeks later, she gave birth to a dead rabbit and then some more rabbit parts and then a very clear things that were definitely parts of a cat. And then when respected doctors went to study her case, she, within hours of them arriving, gave birth to the head and torso of a rabbit. It being the very early days of newspapers, this story spread very far and very quickly. And many doctors and scientists agreed that there was a woman giving birth to rabbits and they had ideas about why it was happening that's it that's it what what the hell who needs

it her name was mary toft what she was she doing just and what were their ideas clearly this was a hoax yes well it is the end of the episode today was she putting them up there herself yes so but they were like parts they found out later they were not full Yes. But they were like parts. They found out later. They were not full rabbits. They were just... They were not... She did give birth to some full but dead rabbits. She never gave birth to a live rabbit.

Was she just having a little fun? It was apparently made easier by the miscarriage because her cervix was dilated. And so she actually was putting them all the way up, which is terrifying. But before we get to the functionality of the hoax, I think the most interesting part is the reaction of the scientific community, which was like, well, science is pretty new. And so she told this story about how she and her friends were out in the fields, I think working in the fields, and they saw a rabbit and they all chased it together.

And she became so enamored of this rabbit and she couldn't stop thinking about this rabbit. And then she started giving birth to rabbits. Yeah. I could see how that would be believable like 200 years ago. Yeah, I guess. I mean, not really. So enamored of rabbits that it just got into her brain. Literally, this became a big enough story that people

stopped eating rabbit because they felt this kinship with them. And if a human could give birth to a rabbit, then we shouldn't be eating them. Where was this? In England. Okay. And there's a cat in there somewhere too? Yeah, so it was almost all rabbits, but at one point there was some

cat parts. What? Okay. I hate this. And like you could see like the cat paw and fingers. So who figured it out? Some people started to investigate. In hindsight, of course, this is dumb. But like if I'm the doctor and I arrive and a rabbit comes out of this woman who is clearly laboring,

then like I'm not going to think that she's trying to fool me. Why would anyone do that? So you just assume that maybe this is a thing and let's start to test some hypotheses, I guess. So after this story started to get reported in the newspapers, some people started to do some research and found that there were some people like buying rabbits in the household and then bringing them to her. And she was like, oh, that was just for cooking. We just cooked them. That was a different rabbit than the ones I was giving birth to. But then eventually,

after a lot of scrutiny, she admitted that she had orchestrated it because she wanted to hopefully get famous and maybe there would be money and she could be like a sideshow thing, the rabbit birth lady. But it also became like a significant problem for science. Like it seriously lowered the esteem of the doctors and scientists in the public imagination. Because it was like this big thing was happening. Scientists were saying like everything we know about how babies happen is wrong. But then it turned out that they were wrong about being wrong. And that was bad.

How did they reconcile it with what they knew about reproduction? Were they just like, we don't understand the uterus. They thought that they were breeding inside of her fallopian tubes. They thought like that, like somehow like the essence of a rabbit got into her and that they were like new baby rabbits were being because that like what we knew about human reproduction, maybe that isn't how rabbits work. And that like this rabbit essence was sort of multiplying inside of her. And a cat. And a cat at one point. I don't know what the cat was about. It was nearby, I guess. And she did get a nice long obituary when she died, but it doesn't seem to have had a particularly

good life after the event. Just. You know, just like normal. Normal or bad? There's very little that we know about her afterward. There's like a report of her getting arrested at one point for receiving stolen goods. And that's all we know. Okay. Well, so she was just kind of a scammer, maybe. Maybe a bit of a scammer, but I don't know.

Who hasn't received a stolen good? Knowingly or unknowingly? I don't actually, you i'm thinking like i have to think about it yeah i don't think i have but like i've been alive for a while yeah i forget about you probably pirated an album oh yeah no i've definitely i have definitely uh distributed stolen goods through bit torrent and Napster. Oh, my. Lock them up, boys. Lock them up.

This is a sting operation on the podcast. This whole company was just a front to get you to admit to that. To get you to admit that I distributed copies of Full Metal Alchemist before they were available in America. Yeah. That was me. You're an anime criminal. The worst kind. Is that my podcast nickname?

Anime criminal. Okay, Sam's going. My brain's too stupid. Okay. In 1979, an aircraft tycoon and paranormal enthusiast gave the University of Washington in St. Louis $500,000 to set up a paranormal psychology laboratory. So they were studying psychokinetics, which was really popular because of Yuri Geller, who was like a really famous spoonbender on TV. And like a cult was just really popular back then in the seventies. So after a few months, they narrowed their testing

down to these two dudes who had seemed like they could do all kinds of cool stuff. They could blow fuses with their hands. They could bend spoons with their minds. They can make propeller spin inside of things that seemed like they were all sealed up Their names were Steve Shawn Mike Edwards So I've studied them for three years and then they brought their findings to the conference of the para Psychological Association which was a thing and I think still is a thing but it was like kind of big in the 70s I'm pretty sure but at the conference the researchers were confronted by a professional skeptic and stage magician named James Randy who told them that the two men were plants and that for three years they

had been tricking them with like sleight of hand and just like really run of the mill magic tricks. So this Randi guy was trying to convince people that Uri Geller was a fake and he'd been trying to convince people for years. So he hired these two dudes and he had written them letters while these two dudes were doing their tests. And he was like, these guys are fakes. You should have a magician here to make sure that the people that you're testing aren't fakes. But they didn't read his letters.

So he was just sending these letters to him over and over again. And nobody was looking at him. After that, none of the scientists seem like ever really admitted that they got tricked. But the lab got shut down and it kind of like was a huge blow to the field of parapsychology. But basically they were just like palming already blown fuses in their hands or like blowing on their propeller because they had like made a little bitty crack in the glass dome or they just had like a spoon in their pocket that was already bent and they would be like, Hey, look over there. And the scientists would look over there and then they pull out the bent spoon. They were just just like they were using these little tricks to get

them to not pay any attention and then it kind of like single-handedly took down the whole field of psychic research and probably for the best yeah so yeah i've heard about this and james randy is is like a famous yeah he was really famous he and er Geller were like, they did the night show rounds yelling at each other. And he was, I mean, I wasn't alive in the 70s, but I was reading these articles and I was like, how did these people ever believe this for a second? But it seemed like a lot of people really were willing to think that Uri Geller could like just make a spoon snap in half with his brain. It seems so weird to me. Yes. Well, I mean, I guess if like you're good at sleight of hand and you want someone to

believe a fake thing. Yeah. The strange thing to me is the person who's like, look, I fake bend spoons and I want to create a department of studying fake spoon bending as if it's real. Right. Because what's the end game? Well, you. As if it's real. Right. Because what's the end game? Well, you find out that it's fake. They were.

If you know it's fake and then it's like, let's study this, you're going to study it and find out that it's fake if you're trying to lie. I think more it's like, so there were people who believed it was real. Like this guy who gave them $500,000. Right. He was just an eccentric millionaire. So he gave them all this money, but then Uri Geller was being studied in a lab too.

But I don't know what his end game is to be like, study me, please. I can bend these spoons. But he knows he can't. But he knows he can trick them maybe. Right. And that'll just make him more rich and famous. Yeah, more famous.

Yeah. And he's somebody who's also never admitted that he's fake. Oh. He's still going around saying that he's real. I mean, it's just so easy to study whether or not somebody's actually bending a spoon. Yeah. Well, so after these two guys came out as frauds, they didn't believe Randy at first.

So they brought them back and they did tests where they had tightened up all of the parameters of their test. And then they were like, oh, these guys aren't real. Because the guys would be like, hey, turn that camera around. And then they would do it. And then they just like open the envelope they were supposed to be seeing through. So he was just trying to prove, I guess, that you believe what you want to believe. But why? Why would you want to believe that?

Well, what you want as a scientist is that breakthrough yeah yeah if this was real i can understand wanting to be the scientist who's like we proved it yeah i can't understand being the fake person and being like thinking that you can just fool right people who are trying to prove something yeah especially if you're not trying to like trick them if you're just trying to make them think that you're cool but like the cia was studying this stuff trying to like trick them if you're just trying to make them think that you're cool but like the cia was studying this stuff trying to get like psychic assassins and all that maybe they got them and that's why we don't hear about it anymore well i feel like there's people who would have been psychically assassinated if there was if it was possible yeah i guess that's true

like me oh no i haven't done anything wrong except for that you distributed the anime yeah and you lied to marianne i did that's basically how i feel about all of these hoaxes especially post-internet i'm like why would you stake your scientific career on making this amazing claim when like you know you know you're gonna get caught you know you're gonna get caught how do you how do they convince themselves that they're not going to get caught? I feel like some of the claims are more subtle though. And they just like get wrapped up in the idea of this is a really cool new discovery. No one else has found it.

And because I'm special, I'm going to be the one to do it. And then it's easy to get defensive when people start saying that you're lying and just be like, you just don't understand what I understand. Yeah. Especially if it's like, no, you just don't understand what I understand. Yeah. Especially if it's like, no, I just need to do more experiments to see. Like the data is not perfect, but I can do more. And there's things like trying to influence how many marbles fall through a thing and then you can mess with the data as it comes out if you're trying to manipulate it as the scientist.

Or you're just trying to create things things that are less obvious than like a fan spinning or knowing what's inside of a letter like those things are just so easy to test which is why we know they're not real yeah exactly what i was trying to say who are you who are you assigning a hank right. I gotta do the rabbit uterus. That's fine. Rabbit uterus? I think I'm also gonna go with the rabbit. Oh, two Hank bucks for Hank! Fuck both of you guys. It is so weird.

Man, I got two Hank bucks now. I feel like I need to go tangent. Yeah, what are your tangents? We'll see what happens when we head over to Ask the Science Couch. We collect questions from listeners to get answered by our finely honed scientific minds over here.

From Deck Dat on Twitter, was the MMR vaccine autism thing a hoax or just terrible science? So here's how the Science Couch works. I say what I think and then Sari says the true thing. My guess is it's a situation where you start to see a correlation or the public starts to see a correlation. They worry about it. And even before any science is done,

this is just something that is like people are starting to believe. And then like if you're doing a lot of research, you can tend to find some studies that are showing a correlation just because like if you do enough samples, you can tend to find some studies that are showing a correlation just because like if you do enough samples, you'll find a false positive. And then once you have that, you might end up having some people who are motivated by the wrong things doing studies

that are intentionally going to lead to more false positives and also saying things that are basically just there to help you sell books. So a combination of both? Yeah, I think the last thing you said is the most accurate to what actually, to my knowledge, kicked off this whole bad thing, this objectively bad thing that happened to our society. So the big start to the MMR vaccine, autism thing, MMR stands for measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.

Diseases. Diseases, three diseases. It's usually an attenuated virus vaccine. So they give you like weakened viruses, builds your immune response, whatever. Good for babies because you don't want them to get any of those diseases. And it's a combination vaccine. So you get three viruses in you at once. All of this hype around not using the MMR vaccine is traced back to one paper that was just some of the most fraudulent science that you could ever do. It really was. It was garbage. It was like absolute garbage. On February 28th, 1998, a doctor who was at the time a doctor now has been disbanded from all

that named Andrew Wakefield. Disbanded from all that. You're not allowed to be involved with being a doctor anymore. Bad man. So him and 12 of his colleagues, so it was a lot of authors on this paper, published a paper in The Lancet, which is a peer reviewed journal in the UK, which suggested that the MMR vaccine may predispose to autism in children or any sort of like mental behavioral regression. And then in 2004, there was a retraction of the original data. 10 of the 12 authors were like, oh, yikes, this is bad. And then the paper was fully retracted in 2010, but it took them like over a decade to fully retract the paper. It was retracted for so many reasons and I will list them all. It was a combination

of really, really bad research and really bad ethical violations that he just conducted these experiments in horrible ways. He was experimenting on children basically without parents' consent about what was happening and without needing to do those experiments. It was a small case study. So there were only 12 children involved and no controls. And eight of the 12 had some sort of mental regression as he categorized it. And he lied about them having no symptoms before the MMR vaccine, because I think five of them already had some sort of behavioral abnormalities. But he was like, they were all fine before the vaccine. And then within a week or two after getting the vaccine, they all developed

symptoms. But really the timelines were all different. There's one reporter that really unpacked a lot of this. When he talked to parents, the parents were like, like you're a medical record showing the timelines of all these things. All the things that he reported in the paper are condensed and manipulated data. He did selective sampling, which is choosing specific children to include in the final study rather than consecutive sampling, which is when you go into research and just like any child who meets this criteria, you include them in your study to have a big sample size. But he like handpicked children

from different circumstances to like skew the results toward what he wanted. It was immediately refuted by other studies afterward. He didn't disclose a conflict of interest. He was funded for at least 55,000 pounds from a legal board that was trying to prove that vaccines were unsafe as part of it. So he was making money off of this to have a certain conclusion in the study. And then like the ethics of what he did to children was ridiculous. Like he said that there was a trial going to happen, but did not get all the tests that he was going to conduct on the children approved by the board at the hospital where he was doing this work. And he did tests like lumbar punctures to the spine and colonoscopies that they didn't need without their

parent approval, I don't think. He paid children five pounds at his son's 10th birthday party to give blood samples that he wanted for his research. No, that seems like not right. Yeah. It's amazing. I haven't heard this stuff before. It's bonkerskers he lied to parents about how many children were involved in the study like there's one interview with a parent where this dr wakefield said that my child was the 13th child that he had reviewed and this wasn't

even like the last child but he only had 12 in the final study so who knows how many he interviewed and then tried chose to include right right he tried a new potential measles vaccine on a child in a hospital without putting on their medical records or anything or asking permission beforehand. He wanted to do a trial of it. And his co-authors didn't always know what was going on. And so there was like a whole debate about how guilty they are and how complicit they were with this research because they just didn't review it before the thing. But anyway, so like all this garbage stuff happened and then the paper was reported upon in such a way that it was just sensationalized news. Like as soon as it was

published, then news outlets picked it up and were like, they're linked. He knuckled down on what he did and never, like even through this really long retraction process, he stood behind the research that he did, which makes him garbage human. I mean, this way he can keep selling the books. Yeah. I guess. Why do they want him to attack vaccines or like disprove that they were good?

Because I think they wanted to sue the pharmaceutical companies. Yeah. I think it was like part of a larger legal battle. Sure. This is how I picture it. At least the TV ads. Mesothelial. Yeah. Did you it was like part of a larger legal battle. Sure. Like this is how I picture it. At least like the TV ads like did you have a yeah, did you have a relative do this? Did you have a relative have a bad reaction after a vaccine?

Yeah, right. We'll fight your legal battle for you. So he was being paid by those lawyers who were trying to bring that lawsuit. Wow, great. Look what you did buddy. Oh boy. I'm surprised I'd never heard of any of that either. I mean, I knew about Wakefield study being retracted. I didn't know that it was so early.

I had the idea in my head that this happened like after the activism started against vaccines and that this wasn't like a catalyzing moment so much. Yeah. I didn't realize how much went into this. And it was like such a long, hot button topic in the medical community to realize. And also, like, it was 12 people. It was 12 people. It was 12 people. And so like, it's very easy to do cohort studies once you're curious, like if there's like a legitimate thing to look at, you can do big studies on people who have and have not had vaccines because like we have a lot of people who have had vaccines now. And immediately afterward,

a bunch of epidemiologists were like, no, this study is bullshit. Why are you reporting on it in this way? But it just took off in the public consciousness like nothing else before it when it came to vaccines. Just bonkers. Here we are. Yeah, and now here we are. Vaccines are good people. Vaccines are good people.

They're little guys that swim around in your blood and they beat up the germs, right? Punch them, yeah. Yeah. Sure. Osmosis Jones. Oh, I like him. He's a white blood cell. That's going to cost you a Hank Buck.

Excuse me, I don't have one. I brought it up. She said Osmosis Jones. So let's take a look at the final score. And Stefan, I tied you. I have two points. You have two points. Yay. Hank Bucks, I mean.

Good job. This feels great. Sam has zero hank bucks. Yeah, but I'm not last, am I? No, you're not, because Sari talked too much about Osmosis Jones and has negative one. That's garbage. There's no such thing. No such thing as garbage or no such thing as too much Osmosis Jones?

That. There's no such thing as garbage. Everything is a precious resource. If you want to ask the Science Couch some questions, you can tweet your question to us using the hashtag AskSciShow. If you like this show enough that you want to help us out, just like do us a favor,

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Thank you for joining. I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Sam Schultz. And I've been Stefan Chin. This has been SciShow Tangents. SciShow Tangents is a co-production with WNYC Studios. It's produced by us and Kevin Hoffmeister.

Our art and music are by Hiroko Matsushima and Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno. And we couldn't make any of this stuff happen without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited. But one more thing. In July 2014, someone paid over $10,000 for a six million year old meter long fossil poop. Oh. That wasn't poop. Was it just a hot dog?

What was it? Was it a hot dog? It was like fossilized muddish rock that just solidified. How long was it? A meter. So 40 inches. It was advertised as the long- So it was like elephant dino... Elephant? Dino?

Dino. Longest example of coprolite ever to be offered at auction was how it was advertised. But it was fake. Yeah. Fake on purpose or fake, they just thought it was poop? All the paleontologists were like, don't market that as poop.

And then the auction house was like, we're going to market it as poop. Poop sells. Yeah. Poop sells.