Summary:
An introduction to Dr Michael Shermer: scientist, sceptic and mythbuster.
Captions:
Music
Ruby: Hi, my name's Ruby. I'm from Sydney Girls High School and we're here at the studio at the Centre for Learning Innovation. Joining me is Mohammed from Homebush Boys High. Hi Mohammed.
Mohammed: Hello Ruby. Today we are lucky enough to have Dr Michael Shermer. He's an internationally renowned scientist, a sceptic and mythbuster.
He spends his life debunking myths, superstitions and urban legends, while explaining why we believe them.
He's also the founder and executive director of the Skeptics Society and the driving force behind the Skeptic.com magazine. Welcome, Michael, and thank you very much for being part of our program.
Michael: You're welcome, thanks for having me. Good morning everybody.
Ruby: We also have two schools joining us via videoconference, Heathcote High and Homebush Boys High. We are also live to the internet. Welcome everybody.
Summary:
So why do people believe weird things?
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Ruby: So tell us, Michael, why do people believe weird things?
Michael Shermer: The problem is that our brains evolved this incredible capacity for making connections between things, that's
called learning, but it never evolved a 'baloney' detection module, that is, how to tell the difference between a true pattern and a false pattern.
So what I mean by this, let's take something really simple.
This is a kind of a water dousing or dousing rod. I understand they're popular here in Australia because people are looking for water under the ground.
And you'll see these water dousers and they'll walk around with something, like this device, this device is not made for ... but something like this.
And it will point to something, maybe if you're looking to drill somewhere, it will point there and you'll drill there, you'll point
there and you'll drill there, that kind of thing.
Now how does this work, because people actually do find water, right?
So, but the problem is of course, maybe by chance, you manage to find water.
So you have to keep track of the hits and the misses.
This particular one is an interesting one.
This was sold to high school administrators in America for $900.
It's a piece of plastic and a radio antenna.
$900 because they told these principals that they could find marijuana in students' lockers.
So, the way they did this was, and if you interview these principals, they say 'Well we did, we found marijuana in students' lockers'.
Like, yeah, if you open enough, you would. So you walk down the hallway and you have a bank of lockers on either side and maybe it does this and ... aha.
And you open a locker and maybe it does this ... oh, hmmm.
Alright Ruby, what've you got there in that pocket, what's in that pocket now? Okay, so now, the way we tested this was because, of course,
there will be some hits by chance if you open enough lockers.
The question is, is it above chance, the number of hits that you got? And so you have a controlled condition where you have a box with
nothing in it and over here a box with marijuana in it but maybe the box with the substance is over there, who knows?
And so the people that are doing the test can't know where it is and then you just do an AB test.
It's either here or here and you see which way it goes.
And are they able to get the right number of hits, so if you had like, say, fifty trials, you tried it fifty times, they'd have to get a correct number
of hits, thirty-six or better to be confident at the ninety-five per cent level that that was not due to chance.
Okay ... so that's a kind of a simple example of the way a scientist would think about something.
You don't have to get it every time but above chance and so we begin in science with what is called the null hypothesis, that is, whatever
your claim is, it's not true until you prove otherwise.
You think you've got Bigfoot, you call me up: 'We found Bigfoot'.
Great, show me the body, right?
I mean, in other words you have to have evidence for it, it can't just be some random opinion because everybody's got those and in
science we want to know if it's real or not.
Summary:
How do you test the validity of an idea?
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Ruby: Michael, you're known to debunk faulty science but how do you test the validity of an idea?
Michael: Ah, yes, in fact that is the central question of all of science. If you can't test it, it isn't part of science, or at least it's not quite part of science.
So even string theory, which is conducted by scientists and so forth, they've yet to figure out a way to test which of the different string theories are correct or even if any of them are correct.
And so, there will be equipment coming online and satellites going up into space that will help us be able to test string theory.
But until then it's still not quite science. There has to be some way to get at it, some way to test it.
And short of that, then, we are just left with, it's my opinion versus your opinion and that isn't really science. So that's a good question.