A talk with Brian Dunning, who you might call a professional skeptic. He has been doing the Skeptoid podcast since 2006, and is the creator of multiple books and video projects aimed at promoting critical thinking and skepticism. We talk about the reasons why we’re so often drawn to pseudoscience, bullshit, and no/low-evidence ideas in general. I also ask him what he thinks about a range of things, including chiropractic work, acupuncture, UFOs, eye movement desensitization therapy (EMDT), the placebo effect, and more.
A transcript is below.
Listen to the episode:
Here are some resources related to or mentioned in this talk:
Related podcast episodes of mine:
- How we react to threats to meaning
- A talk with a physicist about free will
- Existential therapy and the strangeness of existence
- Debunking bad behavior theories
TRANSCRIPT
[Note: transcripts will contain errors.]
Zach: Welcome to the People Who Read People podcast, with me, Zach Elwood. This is a podcast about better understanding ourselves and better understanding others. You can learn more about it at www.behavior-podcast.com.
On this episode I talk to Brian Dunning, who you might call a professional skeptic. His work examines beliefs in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, and just bad perceptions of things in general, and promotes critical thinking and skepticism. He’s the creator of the Skeptoid podcast, which has been running for a long time, since 2006. You can find that at skeptoid.com. He’s also the author of several books, and the creator of several documentaries.
I’d heard of the Skeptoid podcast in the past but never listened to it. Recently I stumbled across an episode he did about the Erin Brockovich case, and how the true story there was very different than what was depicted in the movie and what most people perceive about the case. This actually had a connection to the depolarization book I’m working on, as I was writing a section about conspiracies and bad actions by corporations or governments, and how often our perceptions of these kinds of things are far more dramatic and exciting than the reality of them.
Anyway, once I heard Brian’s podcast on the Erin Brockovich topic, I started looking at more of his work, and I wanted to talk to him about human gullibility: why do we so easily believe things, even quite outlandish things? I thought with his long history of analyzing all sorts of pseudoscience and magical thinking and conspiracy theories, he’d have some interesting takes. I also wanted to ask him about various things I’ve been curious about over the years, like: what’s the deal with chiropractic work? What’s the deal with acupuncture? What’s the deal with eye movement desensitization therapy? What’s he think about the recent UFO stuff? Are there things he used to think were bullshit but now has more respect for?
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Also, I should say before we start: there were some small audio problems, so if you hear some cut-outs, that’s why. Okay here’s the talk with Brian Dunning.
Zach: Hey Brian, thanks for coming on the show.
Brian: Thank you for having me.
Zach: So maybe we can start with what piqued your interest in focusing. Debunk pseudoscience and [00:03:00] misinformation?
Brian: Well, first of all, I would say debunking is the last thing I try to do.
I try hard not to do that, but uh, I would give you the same answer as probably most of my. Colleagues in science writing is, is that, uh, we just all grew up, uh, reading books, strange things, Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts, whatever it was, watching all the creepy TV shows and just being really interested in, uh, weird stuff and wanting to learn.
Going on with these stories and you quickly find out that, uh, none of these TV shows or books ever do tell you what’s actually going on. They just expect you to accept the, the sort of the paranormal version of events. And, and I always wanted more than that. And so I started just having a lot of fun by digging in and going back to the original historical documents and.
As a bonus, I get to, I get to solve all these mysteries that puzzled me as a kid. Uh, [00:04:00] it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of fun. It’s very fulfilling.
Zach: So, uh, maybe you could explain a little bit about what you mean that you don’t focus on debunking, you don’t, you don’t call what you do debunking.
Brian: Yeah. There’s really nothing at all to be gained in just saying, oh, that’s not true, and leaving it at that.
Um, that’s, that’s just negative. And you don’t get to take anything away from. So when I look at a story to find the, the true history or the true science behind what was actually going on, you’re adding a lot to the story. You’re not taking anything away. People still have the popular paranormal version, and now they have, they can also enjoy the, the true version of what’s really going on, if that’s, if that’s of interest.
I like to, I like to make sure that I’m doing something that’s inherently positive and constructive rather than inherently negative and destructive.
Zach: So when it comes to the, the problem of, uh, gull ability of people being too willing to believe things, do you have an [00:05:00] opinion on whether that problem has been getting worse, getting better, or basically remaining the same?
I think it stays the same.
Brian: That’s, that’s, that’s a human constant. It’s, it’s always been that way and it probably always will be that way. Um, human brains are wired toward anecdotal thinking, and so we, it’s, it’s the easiest place to go. It’s the first place all of our brains go. And I, I think it’s, that’s always gonna be the case.
It’s, it’s just a hardwired in us.
Zach: And, sorry, just to make sure you’re saying not only that it’s hardwired for humans, but that the rough percentages of people. Who believe some blatantly untrue things is basically staying the same.
Brian: Yeah. And that percentage is a hundred percent. Oh. I mean, it’s, it’s not like, like I say, it’s the first place everyone’s brain goes.
It’s where our brains are hardwired to go. Mm-hmm. Uh, and where we all differ then is that whatever life experiences we have, which we filter that input. [00:06:00] And learn to match it up to things that we, that we know to be real or that we have more experience with. I think everyone has a different life experience that, uh, that informs those filters and, and how they work and how well they work and on what kinds of things they work.
We all have the, we all start in the same place and we all just end up in different
Zach: places based on who we’re. Do you think, uh, would you say that the internet has affected things? How do you, how do you see the internet playing into, into that problem?
Brian: Yeah, that, that’s a rising tide lifts all boats equally.
Uh, a lot of people say, oh, the Internet’s made it easier to spread misinformation. Uh, but it’s also made it, uh, easier to spread good information. So I would say that, uh, it has not had any impact. You know, we had newspapers 200 years ago and we had, you know, storytelling 2000 years ago. Information spreads the way it spreads.
I don’t think the mechanism really impacts what kind of information is gonna be, is gonna be [00:07:00] spread the most.
Zach: If you were to ask me to name humanity’s biggest problem, I’d say it’s our discomfort with uncertainty because uncertainty seems to make us quite nervous in a existential way, so we always seem to be.
Looking for things that we can be certain about to, to shore up our sense of meaning and to, to ward off anxiety and feel like we’ve got a handle on this world. And I’m curious if how you see that and do you see that as playing a role in, in us being often gullible people?
Brian: Yeah. I, I, I would say, I, I, I would say that’s, yeah, that’s one way to phrase the, the, the, the root.
Cause It’s often pointed out that, uh, conspiratorial thinking is, is something that’s hardwired because, you know, the classic example is cavemen on the, on the Savannah, and they hear a rustling in the grass. Um, it’s the ones who say, oh, that’s probably something dangerous compared to the ones who say, oh, that’s nothing.
I’m going to ignore it. It’s the [00:08:00] ones who suspect something, uh, something harmful and go climb a tree who are incrementally less often eaten by the saber tooth cats. Mm-hmm. Now, there’s a lot that I just said that’s scientifically wrong in that, but nevertheless, that’s the idea. A certain amount of paranoia is, is an evolved trait
Zach: because it keeps you safe.
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and sometimes it’s right. Suspect that, uh, nothing is harmful, then, uh, that’s not a very safe position to be in. Just as if you say everything is harmful means you’re gonna spend all your time hiding up in that tree and you’re not gonna be able to collect enough food. So, you know, there’s always the middle ground and everyone is somewhere on that spectrum.
Zach: Another aspect that strikes me in this area is that it can just feel good and exciting to feel like we’ve stumbled across some secret information to feel like. We’re in the know about something, part of an elite group. And [00:09:00] uh, yeah. I’m curious if you have thoughts on that. Do you see that playing a big role in, in various beliefs and things?
For sure. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve
Brian: talked on that subject quite extensively. Uh, there’s, there’s a lot that’s appealing about believing that you’re part of the elite group that has the secret knowledge. And that’s one thing that’s, that’s, uh, attractive at a conscious level to the conspiracy theory crowd. You know, on the one hand we all have sort of the native instinct to be a little bit paranoid.
Uh, but, but it’s the people who, um, try to solve that problem by. Seeking the elite secret knowledge that they think is gonna protect them, make them part of the, part of the few, rather than part of the many, not, not one of the sheeple, but one of the people at the top of the pyramid. Uh, that, that, that’s, it’s a very attractive idea at a, at a deeply organic level.
Zach: Another factor that has struck me about our willingness to believe in various ideas is just the, [00:10:00] the strangeness of life and how we can. Rationally perceive our existence as strange and mysterious. And I think that can lend itself to a proclivity to believe bullshit or pseudoscience because we can think things like, well, the world in my existence seems so strange and unlikely.
So who’s to say this other weird inexplicable thing couldn’t be true? And one way I’ve seen that play out is, you know, just one of many examples is, you know, talking to somebody who believes something I think is is bullshit. And they’ll say something like. Hey, quantum physics, uh, shows us things are strange, so you never really know.
It could be true, you know? So I’m curious if you, what, what your thoughts are on that and, and the, the perception of, of life’s strangeness. The perception of life’s strangeness.
Brian: That’s, I gotta say, that’s a, that’s an avenue I’ve never really gone down before.
Zach: What’s, what’s another example of that that, uh, that you see?
Well, you’ve probably seen the, uh, I think you mentioned this in your, your critical thinking video in, [00:11:00] in some contexts, the, uh, the reference to, you know, quantum physics and other experiments showing, you know, the, that, that the world isn’t, uh, it, it, it, you know, doesn’t, doesn’t abide by. The, the, the common sense ways we think the world abides by which can be a way to both promote bullshit, but also kind of an excuse to believe in bullshit.
It’s like, Hey, this, this thing is wacky, so therefore I’ll believe in this other wacky thing.
Brian: Yeah, very much. This is strange. Therefore strange things are the norm, therefore. I can pretty much believe anything I want. And you can’t disprove it because there’s other things that are strange that you do acknowledge.
Zach: Right. Exactly. Yeah. It’s, it’s just,
Brian: it’s just not very good. It’s just
Zach: not very good logic. Right,
Brian: right. It’s,
Zach: that’s, that’s bad logic with the internet, with the, uh, you know, the rising of all boats, as you put it, it seems like one factor there with the internet playing a role or, or just, you know, be being present is that.
Uh, we can easily find evidence for things we want to believe, you know, and it’s so easy [00:12:00] to go online and find someone talking about an idea what, no matter what it is. Yeah. In a way that doesn’t seem to have existed pre-internet. Like you can find a room full of people online talk, uh, you know, professing in a belief in something that.
Would be much, have been much harder pre-internet. You would’ve had to hunt down all these people that believed this thing. You know? If that makes sense. And I’m curious if you see, yeah. You know, I know you said it, it, it probably balances out with the ability to, to debunk and, and educate, but I’m curious if you, if you have any thoughts on that.
Yeah. One thing
Brian: that that continually surprises me is when we, if I’m investigating some, I. Any random belief or, or paranormal story or anything really. Uh, and if you go back to the really old literature, and now of course we’re able to search really old literature, which we weren’t before. Um, you see that there’s really nothing [00:13:00] new.
There is nothing so crazy today that you won’t find an analog for from 150 years ago. It’s, it continually surprises me and our ability to search old books, um, has really highlighted that for me. There are books written 200 years ago that you would read, and except for the, the language was, was fairly different.
But the content, you might think it was written yesterday. You know, I, I, one example that I always come back to was, uh, when I first started the podcast, the, the Secret was really big. The book and movie by Rhonda Byrne, the Secret. Right. Well, that was nothing new at all. That was, I mean, that was word for word rehashed from what was called the.
That goes back to mysticism from a hundred years before that, and I’m sure it goes back a thousand years. It’s just these concepts are just so timeless, but most people don’t know that. [00:14:00] So you can, you can bring it up and rehash. People think you’re, yeah, people think you’re inventing something new and marvelous.
Zach: It’s, it’s really quite extraordinary. The secret thing. Uh, yeah, really interesting. I actually worked on a, I’m a, i, I have a video film degree, so I actually worked on a knockoff cheaper version of The Secret called the Answer to Absolutely Everything. Oh. Uh, but yeah, the, the whole concept of basically like.
The magical thinking of like, we can influence the world with our thoughts, you know, that it, it makes sense that that would have a long history because that’s kind of like the basic magical thinking wish, you know, we, we can, we can affect the world just by thinking about it. Yeah,
Brian: yeah,
Zach: yeah. Nothing new to see here.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It seems like, I mean, to your point about making the point that maybe it, it’s a, the internet digital age is, is kind of a wash in those terms. It, it kind of makes sense because. A lot of this stuff just comes down, can come down to, you know, what do we want to believe and how much of, you know, the, the desires we have.
You know, like we want [00:15:00] to influence the world with our thoughts or, or these other things. Or, or maybe just influenced by our, kind of like us versus them polarization tendencies to be like, oh, I, I. I dislike the other group, so I wanna believe this conspiracy theory that, you know, maligns them or, or puts them as the enemy, you know, these kind of things.
So I can see your point where you see it as kind of a wash, uh, all altogether. Yeah. A small note here. Personally, I believe the internet is an amplifier of us versus them polarization. And I think by it amplifying us versus them feelings, it creates more of a demand for various forms of bad thinking. For example, it can make us more likely to be drawn to conspiracy theories and other types of paranoid Thinking about the people on the quote other side, if you’d like to hear more about that idea, check out a past talk I had with researcher Emily Cuban about the impacts of the internet and social media on polarization.
Okay. Back to the talk. Yeah, so I just wanted to go through a few random [00:16:00] topics because I’m, you know, as you’re somebody who’s worked in. Pseudoscience and and such for so long. I, I’d love to get your takes on just a few things that I’ve been curious about over the years that’s been kind of hard for me to, uh, get, get, uh, some, some smart critical dinging people’s thoughts on.
So if you don’t mind, I’ll go through some of those now. Yeah, let’s do random ideas. I love that. Okay, so, um, one of them was chiropractic work and. I, you know, I, I’ve researched this a bit. I’ve seen how much pseudoscience originated with it and how much, even now pseudoscience is there. Uh, but then I, I’m also confused because I do see some smart people sometimes saying they go to chiropractors.
So I’m curious, what, what is your take on the whole chiropractic field if you had to sum it up? Well, yeah, I mean, there’s a lot to
Brian: say there. Um, the has been very successful at inserting the. Public perception of medicine. You know, they don’t go to medical schools. Their school schools are not, uh, [00:17:00] certified.
They’re not, um, it’s not a medical specialty under the American Medical Association. Um, their schools are not accredited by the Department of Education, the, uh, and so it’s, they the calling yourself a doctor. Should be legally meaningless. But they’ve been very successful in getting states. Um, I’m US centric now, but it’s probably something similar in most other countries to allow them to use the word doctor in business.
Naturopaths are the same way in in many states now. If you’re someone who grows pot, you can’t literally, legally call yourself, you know, doctor, whoever, because you’re an herbalist. That’s, that’s a deceptive trade practice. But, uh, chiropractors have, have gotten around that and they’ve, they’ve been able to get recognized by the states.
You know, that’s not a scientific thing. That’s a legal thing, that’s a bureaucracy thing, so that they can call themselves doctor by no means.[00:18:00]
The main reason for that is that what they’re doing incorporates legitimate aspects of, uh, massage and physical therapy. The difference is they’re not providing it legally because you have to be a physical therapist to provide physical therapy, you have to be a, you have to be certified in massage to, to give a massage legally, certain kind, massages.
Legitimacy toward what the better chiropractors are doing. The thing is, they’re just wrong about the mechanism. It’s got nothing to do with, you know, popping the little bubbles of syn synovial fluid and making the cracking sounds. It’s, it’s basically stretching and massaging the, the muscles around it.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. So I would say just go to a physical therapist, go to A-D-P-T-C-P-T, someone who is trained to do that legally. One thing that you’ll see that [00:19:00] really supports what I’m saying is that many chiropractors have some sort of a certified physical therapist on staff. Uh, unfortunately many of them do this so that they can bill against that person’s insurance and except insurance for providing chiropractic services.
So. D and the, the excuse not the FDA, the FTC has not been very successful at, uh, at dealing with, I think it’s just too enormous a problem in its scope to ever be possible to deal with these people one by one. But I mean, the fact is chiropractic for everything that differentiates chiropractic from physical therapy is 100% bullshit.
Mm-hmm. You know, there, there is no. Oh, what’s the term? The innate intelligence, which is their word for q, the, the energy that they believe throws flows through your body and is, uh, hampered by these blockages in the spine that they say they’re fixing. By basically doing a [00:20:00] knuckle crack on your, on your spine.
Mm. That’s just straight up false pseudoscience. There is no such thing as a mystical energy field flowing through your body. That is the root cause of all disease. You see chiropractors with all kinds of things, illnesses, some treat cancer, some, some treat all kinds of childhood diseases when there’s no conceivable plausibility behind that.
So it’s there, there, there’s a small segment of the chiropractic, it, it’s probably, I shouldn’t say small, it’s probably a larger than 50% segment of chiropractic that, that does provide useful care. But what they’re providing, they’re not licensed to provide and you can go to a licensed provider legally.
Um, so I see no reason to go to a chiropractor.
Zach: Uh, what are your thoughts on acupuncture and, and acupuncture? Obviously, you know, we hear a lot about. How it, it seems to work and, and insurance covers it and such, and, but obviously it’s, it’s hard to imagine. Uh, we, we don’t know how it works, so I’m curious to get your, [00:21:00] your take on that.
Brian: Well, I, I mean, the, the science is pretty solid on that. There’s been a lot of randomized controlled trials on acupuncture, and it fails completely every time. Oh, okay. People don’t know whether they’re, you know, you can do the sham acupuncture with these little sleeves where it just. Tricks the skin or makes, you can’t tell if it ac if the needle actually went into you or not.
And so doing these tests, uh, it turns out that there’s no difference in, in the relief that people report. It doesn’t matter where you put the needles. Uh, really nothing. It doesn’t matter even if the needles go in. Um, and we can learn all of this through testing, which has been done. Hmm. So when you look at the scientific literature, it’s clear that acupuncture does not work.
Now, does that mean that people don’t get any relief from it? Well, no, they do because it’s a very powerful placebo. Actually sticking a needle in someone is a pretty dramatic intervention, and so it’s gonna have a strong, a placebo effect as anything. What’s [00:22:00] important to know though, is it doesn’t matter if you’re actually putting the needle in or where you put the needle in.
This is just people’s brains saying, Hey, something, something dramatic is happening to me right now, so I’m going to feel relief from my pain or my fatigue or nausea, or whatever it is that you’re taking it for. So it’s, it’s interesting. It’s a great case study in, in how and why placebos work and it’s a, it’s the best example.
I certainly wouldn’t use it if you’re, if you’re trying to actually solve something.
Zach: Yeah. The placebo effect, I mean that, that, that probably accounts for so much of, you know, I, including some of the chiropractic work I’d imagine, especially on the more pseudoscience and, and, and spiritual side of the chiropractic work.
And, uh, yeah, I could see that, I could see that playing a role in so much of the. Probably a lot, a lot, a good amount of the things you’ve talked about in your podcast and such.
Brian: Yeah. That’s, um, acupuncture is definitely one of the, one of the standards in, in, in the field of science versus pseudoscience.
Zach: Why do you think, uh, is it still true that some insurances will [00:23:00] pay for acupuncture? Do you know much about that? Sure. Yeah.
Brian: You gotta keep in mind these things are not, these are not, these are bureaucratic decisions, these are not science decisions. Mm-hmm. If there sufficient consumer demand. Then insurance companies will sell that product.
It’s not a science question. It’s a purely a legal and bureaucracy question.
Zach: Do you think theoretically, even if they knew it was a placebo effect, would they, do you think insurance companies have a motivation to cover things, even if they know that A, it’s working but it’s working through the placebo effect?
Brian: Well, I, I don’t want to get too far into how insurance law works because that is not an expertise of Right.
The general overview, but getting, getting into the nitty gritty beyond that would be above my pay grade.
Zach: I understand. Speaking of placebo, this is probably a similar question. Uh, I don’t know if you’ve researched eye movement therapy, which I [00:24:00] sometimes hear about, and it strikes me as one of these similar things where, uh, basically I move to therapy.
Is is for people listening is they do this thing where they have you revisit painful memories and traumas, and they do this thing where they have you move your eyes in a, in a certain way while you do that. And, uh, people have reported that it’s helpful. But I, in, in my opinion, from, from what I know of it, it’s similar to a lot of things where, you know, just the fact that you’re working on trying to help yourself mentally and, and get over something traumatic, it isn’t itself helpful no matter what.
So I think that to me, that helps account for why some of that and some other, uh, things in that area, uh, similar kind of psychological treatments would have an effect. Uh, just, just by the mere fact of you trying to, you know, do something about your, your trauma and your, and your pain.
Brian: Yeah, what, what you’re talking about is called EMDR.
Zach: Yeah.
Brian: And I had exactly the same reaction as you did when, when I first heard about it. I mean, [00:25:00] my kind of, my default was, oh, that, that sounds like nonsense. But it just so happens, my wife is a mental health therapist and we were married while she was going all through school and everything, and when they did their unit on EMDR, you know, they, it’s something that they all did to each other.
And, uh, no, it’s, it is a very real thing. I, I don’t know if, if there’s anything special about the eyes or if you could be just as easily doing something with your hands or your toes or jumping up and down, but the, the EMDR gets you to consciously focus on one thing, which makes it easier for you to deal with the traumatic memory.
I remember she talked about, uh, one particular case study in, in her class as the professor was doing MD. Woman who had witnessed something extremely, extremely horrible. You don’t need the details, but it was an infant being, um, killed in a very violent and [00:26:00] and graphic manner, and this poor woman was, was just tormented by this memory.
And using EMDR was the only time she was able to talk about it and describe what happened. And you do that with enough repetition and then finally you’re able to just deal with it and you, and then it becomes something that you can talk about normally without having to do the EMDR. They’re doing the same thing with, um, with, uh, is it LSD now?
Mm-hmm. I’m not sure where this is being approved. Small doses of LSD. I think it’s LSD. It could be ecstasy, I don’t dunno.
Zach: Mushrooms maybe too. Yeah. A small note here I realized, I think we’re talking about ecstasy here, also known as MDMA. There is research that’s been done involving taking MDMA while revisiting past traumas.
They’re doing research with hallucinogenics and ketamine and such on anxiety and depression. But I’m not sure that involves revisiting past traumas and such. But I confess, I don’t know much about all that. [00:27:00] Back to the talk,
Brian: but it, it puts them in a state where they’re able to talk about these things.
Mm-hmm. And you’re able to do the repetition and talk about it and get it out, and it, it, it becomes, it gets to the point where it’s no longer a traumatic memory for you to, to retrieve and discuss. So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a very powerful tool. Which came as a surprise to me.
Zach: Yeah, I’d like to, I I, I’d like to read up on that more because I, I’d imagine, I mean, my, my own theory would be that just by revisiting it, you’re, you’re helping yourself.
And I, I’d be curious if anyone’s done studies of, you know, doing another body part or doing anything and, and doing the same thing and seeing the effect. But yeah, that, that’s interesting to know that, uh, you, you’ve got some. Respect for it. And there’s, there’s good, um, good writings about it and such
Brian: that I haven’t, I don’t think I’ve done an episode of my show on that, but, uh, it’s one of those things where, you know, I love it when my default assumption about what the conclusion is probably going to be.
I love it when that turns out to be completely wrong.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Brian: And that that’s one [00:28:00] case.
Zach: And I’m curious, maybe this is a good segue, are are there things that you used to think were pseudoscience or initially thought were pseudoscience or bullshit and then later you gained more respect for them? Or are there instances of that that come to mind?
Well, uh, this is, this is
Brian: the most common question I get. Mm. And it’s, it’s usually asked, um, by someone what they’re really meaning to ask is. What are the cases where the paranormal explanation has turned out to be the true one? Hmm. And I honestly have to say no, we haven’t, we have not found any of those yet.
So I have not yet found any case where it turns out that magic is real or, or anything like that. The, the, the closest I can get to is, um, what used to be considered a conspiracy theory called numbers stations, which are these shortwave radio stations. Um, they’re not as common as they now, as they were.
Even just 15, 20 years ago. Uh, but they are radio stations that you tune in a short wave receiver, uh, which is harder and harder to find these days. And at a certain time of day and [00:29:00] a certain day of the week, you’ll get a radio broadcast that is an automated voice repeating strings of numbers five at a time.
And they repeat. And this might go on for five minutes, it might go on for an hour. And the belief was that the claim online was that oh, number stations, this is, you know, world governments doing something nefarious. It’s sending instructions to their spies or whatever it is. And then people who are of the, you know, more skeptical mindset, were saying things, it’s probably something mundane, like oceanographic research, buoy transmitting data or something.
Like anything, anything that doesn’t require some nefarious purpose. And then what happened on, um, September 11th, 2001. Many people recognized that date ’cause something big happened on that date, but there’s something else happened on page two of the newspaper, which nobody ever turned to page two of the newspaper.
No one else knows what else, what else happened on that day. But inside the Pentagon, while part of it was burning from getting hit by the plane, [00:30:00] they made a large arrest of a number of people, including a fairly highly placed intelligence official. And what these people had been doing was tuning into this number station broadcast out of Cuba, typing the numbers into a laptop computer and decrypting them.
And they were in fact instructions from Cuban Intelligence Communications going back and forth between commute Cuban intelligence in Cuban spies placed inside the Pentagon. Whoa. And since then, there have been quite a few other arrests all around the world by other countries. The evidence always turning out to be laptop computers with these decryption programs on them, and people having been found to be listening to numbers stations.
Zach: Hmm.
Brian: So it turns out that the tinfoil hat explanation, if you were, was the, uh, was the true one
Zach: are Yeah, I had not heard that. That’s very interesting. Are, are there any other things that come to mind in that area as far as conspiracy theories or pseudoscience?
Brian: Not really. That’s, that’s, that’s usually my go-to answer for [00:31:00] that question.
There just haven’t been. There just haven’t been that many other cases where. It’s not easy enough. You’re
Zach: surprised.
Brian: Yeah. I mean, I, I, I
Zach: wanna find more. ’cause that’s always the most exciting kind. The truth is out there, but it’s much less exciting than, than people think sometimes. That’s right. Um, and so I gotta ask you about the, the UFOs Of course.
What, what is your take on those? And I saw you, I just happen to see you were putting out a, a movie out that, about that I think.
Brian: Yeah. I’m producing a movie on that right now. Uh, that’s something we do at SST was we always have a, a documentary film in, in the works. Mine is called the UFO movie. They don’t want you to see, which was initially just a fake title just for fun.
But then it turned out that was a title that workshopped the best and so I decided to keep it. I mean, that, that gets attention. I mean, yeah, it does
Zach: good clickbait, it’s got that going for it. Yeah. Are you willing to say what, what, what your take is on it? Or you Do we have to wait for the movie?
Brian: Well, no, it’s, I mean, I’m, I have nothing, uh, [00:32:00] nothing particularly earth shattering to say on that subject.
We think that there are probably lots of life out there in the universe, and it’s clear that if there is, it can’t get here and we can’t get there. And there’s a lot of reasons for.
Some UFO is probably an alien spaceship. Well, you have to have pretty damn good evidence, and if you’re gonna believe such a claim, you have to have a very high bar for the standard of evidence that you’re gonna accept. So that’s mostly what the film focuses on. We talk, we do talk about a number of cases in particular, and show why these popular cases that are promoted on the TV shows are actually terrible, terrible evidence.
And why we need to have better evidence and what some of that good evidence might be. And finally, how we probably will meet neighbors in the galaxy one day. And, and I, I do think we probably will, but I’d give that a, it’s not a definitely and it’s gonna [00:33:00] be a long time, but, uh, I think it’ll happen.
Zach: So you sound pretty skeptical on that.
And, and then somebody who’s watched, you know, for example, the 60 Minutes episode, which, you know, paints a pretty. Compelling picture that something strange was going on. Do you, do you think something strange was going on that maybe. Might not be aliens or do, do you think it’s just wasn’t that strange to begin with?
Or,
Brian: which, which case are you talking about?
Zach: So there was the, um, the videos of the, of the, uh, aircraft, the Navy videos that were caught on Yeah. The Navy videos and also the, the eyewitness of the people who said that they were, you know, flying around the Pacific and they would see like UFO aircraft almost every day out there.
And do you know that and that those are the people that, uh, talked on. 60 minutes about at the two, uh, two, uh, air Force people. Just a correction here. I meant to say the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific Ocean.
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I remember that. I remember the, the science, science writing community just kind of just [00:34:00] erupting in horror over that, that CNN was.
Incredibly credulous and just gave essentially an unchallenged platform to,
Zach: oh, you mean the, the 60 Minutes episode? Yeah,
Brian: yeah. 60 minutes. Yeah. Basically gave an unchallenged platform to the advocates for alien visitation. So yeah, there’s, there’s nothing, there’s nothing at all interesting. In those Navy videos, there’s very widely available explanations of what you’re actually seeing Gives.
We do talk about that in, in my film also. We do go through all the Navy videos, four of them actually, and show exactly what you’re, what you’re really seeing and how we know that. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, Navy pilots are, there’s a, there’s a perception that pilots are incapable of error. Anything a pilot says, or reports must be a literal true account.
And that’s, that’s really hard to defend. That’s not a very, a very sound viewpoint [00:35:00] because you can ask any pilot, are pilots always in errand and incapable of making mistakes? And they will say, no, we’re as human as anyone else, and we make mistakes every day. Just like every people. A person does, you know, you’ve got cases of navy pilots landing at the wrong airport, right?
I mean, they can certainly be mistaken about things that have nothing to do with their training or any, any particular skills they might have with the knowledge of the systems of their aircraft.
Zach: Yeah, I guess, uh, that one really stood out, I guess, because there was two people from, you know, doing the same missions who were willing to say they saw them multiple times, but, uh.
Yeah, I that it’s, it’s, it’s interesting to get your, get your take. Uh, I was curious how, how skeptical you were.
Brian: The star of those shows is, uh, Mylar balloons from cruise ships. Mm. Cruise ships leave a trail of Mylar balloons wherever they go. They’re metallic and they do have radar signatures, so you’re gonna see them on the radar.
You’re going to see them. As you fly past them [00:36:00] with the parallax effect. That’s the parallax effect is basically the main culprit behind most of those U Navy UFO videos where it looks like something is moving, but really you’re the one who’s moving because you’re in a fast moving aircraft. Mm. And when you break down the numbers that’s displayed on the screens and you can see what’s the altitude, how far away you are, and, and, and, and it becomes.
And that goes back to what I’m talking about where, you know, the process is to learn something new. It’s not just to simply say, oh, that’s fake. I don’t think that’s a spaceship ladi da. Leave it at that.
Zach: Hmm. So I, I’d imagine you probably believe then that in the cases where multiple people report. Seeing a UFO or, or anything really you, you’d, I’d imagine you would say there’s some elements of kind of like mass delusion or, or a light version of it where they start talking about it, then they convince themselves that it happened.
Is that, is that accurate?
Brian: That’s, that’s, that’s something I’d have to address on a case by [00:37:00] case basis. I mean, I’ve got, I’ve, I’ve dealt with a lot of. Cases where there actually were a lot of people witnessing something. And I don’t a lot of cases where it turns out that, uh, very few people actually witnessed something.
But the story got changed dramatically in the retellings and retellings and retellings over the decades. So you’ve got, uh, you got all cases. Um, there’s the famous case out of South Africa, for example, where a handful of children, uh, said they saw something. More than 250 who were present at the same place, said that there was nothing there at all.
But then they were all put into groups to tell the story of what they saw, and so all their stories conformed and merged together because this was handled by UFO authors and not by like, you know, police investigators who would know that the first thing you do with witnesses, you separate them, right?
And you interrogate them separately to find out where the stories might match up and where they don’t. Very much motivated to do the exact opposite of [00:38:00] that. They want all the kids to have a, to have the same story. And they were successful in getting about a fifth of the kids to some version of events that was, you know, a lot different in how it was finally published than, than compared to what the kids said on the first few days.
These, these cases are fascinating to learn from. Um, why did the story change so much? How did it change how? This from happening again in the future. Mm-hmm. Um, the answer is to not have UFO
Zach: authors involved in the investigation. Right. Really, really pays to be skeptical and to realize how fallible, uh, we are.
And yeah, that’s the whole social aspect of, you know, telling a story makes us more likely to believe a story and, and all these, these kinds of things. Yeah. Maybe a good place to end on. Would you like to share about what you’re working on these days?
Brian: Yeah, well, of course My main podcast, sspt is what I’m best known for.
That’s at [00:39:00] oid com And um, the UO movie I’m working on is at, uh, the UFO movie. There’s little clips from it and everything that’s out that website. I didn’t even know Domo was a website, but it’s the UFO movie. Check that out. Nice.
Zach: URL. Yeah,
Brian: I know. Looking forward to that.
Zach: It’s, it’s really good. I’m super, super stoked with it.
Yeah, looking forward to watching that. Okay, thanks a lot, Brian. This has been great, and thanks for your time.
Brian: Yeah, thank you. It was fun for me too.
Zach: That was Brian Dunning, creator of the Skeptoid podcast, and assorted other books and videos and projects aimed at promoting skepticism and critical thinking. You can find his podcast site at skeptoid.com.
If you enjoyed this episode, there are some related episodes of mine in the library that you might enjoy. A few of them:
I have an episode where I talked to a physicist about free will, and what it’s like to live life without a belief in free will. You could say not believing in free will is maybe the ultimate skepticism one can have about the world, so I saw that as a bit related.
I have an episode where I talked to Kirk Schneider, an existential psychologist and therapist. One thing we talk about is the strangeness of life and it’s connection to existentialist thought. I also have a piece I wrote about the strangeness of life, which you can find by searching for ‘zach elwood strangeness of life’; it’s on Medium.com.
I have an episode where I talk to Stephen Heine about our desire for meaning, and how when we lose meaning in one area, we can feel a pressure to defend meaning or create meaning in other areas. This is related to the idea that our belief in strange, unlikely things can sometimes be a way for us to give ourselves meaning.
In general, I think a lot of my work on polarization is about being skeptical of narratives about the other political group that are common in our political group. I think embracing humility and skepticism about the various narratives floating around us is an important part of combatting us-versus-them polarization.
To get links to some of the resources mentioned in this talk, or related to this talk, go to the post for this episode on my site, behavior-podcast.com.