Righteous Indignation is the weekly UK based podcast that aims to critically examine extraordinary claims and the people who surround them. These include ideas related to conspiracy, the paranormal, the occult and attempts to redefine the boundaries of science and current understanding.
The show is presented by Hayley Stevens, Michael Marshall and Trystan Swale with a revolving door of guest hosts including Gavin Schofield and blogger Dr T. Click here to learn more.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:06:03 — 30.3MB)
Talking Points
MMR: should the blame just lie with Wakefield?
Curing MD for cash
News Stories
Quarter of British women have been raped
Rhubarb doesn’t cure cancer
Our Guest — Matt Parker
Matt Parker
Stand up mathematician Matt Parker talks bad stats and altmed deception. Just don’t touch his quantum!
one of your better shows
Big fan of Matt Parker!
Great interview.
Although News Stories seems a bit dodgy the way it is listed
“Quarter of British women have been raped“
and then
“Rhubarb doesn’t cure cancer”
I’d like to hear more about the YK issue. Is it so clear that it would not have caused problems? And if so, was that obvious beforehand?
Matt Parker brought up something I’ve wondered about recently. What do homeopaths do with the byproduct of their dilutions? Obviously, they’re not creating all the 1060 30C doses they potentially could. By their logic, tossing even a “potent” 20C dilution down the drain is irresponsible and dangerous.
Y2K was mostly not a concern among professional software developers who understood the issues. The possible problems fell into roughly two camps — one dealing with administration of dates and one dealing with real-time systems in embedded devices. Of these two the only really credible concern was for dates (your grandfather’s age suddenly going from 98 to –2 say) where an error may go unnoticed but render investments or insurance calculations incorrect.
It would be pretty poor real-time software (like in your car, heart monitor machine, DVD player etc.) that cared about whether the actual date and time were correct. During development, test programs are run on bodged together hardware that no-one ever bothers to set the date/time on — especially if the system is being wiped and re-programmed every few hours or minutes. Real-time software only cares that time moves forward from a given starting point, it might cause a problem if Y2K meant that time would be running backwards. That won’t happen until 2012:)
Glad you liked the story headlines Jon! Let’s just say I had seen a local newsletter shortly before and had been ‘impressed’ by their imaginitive approach.
I think that Marsh oversimplified MMR choices at the start of this podcast by totally ignoring social pressures (especially from close friends and family).
In the tide of media reporting and scaremongering on this story, simply asking your GP for advice will not, in my opinion, placate fears.
Further complicating the issue is that you’re a parent in charge of an infant. Trust me, the “what if” question looms pretty large in your mind with a lot of things when you have parenthood thrust upon you.
“What if I don’t use a strict routine, will that affect them later in life?“
“What if I let them watch TV, will that affect their attention span?“
“What if I don’t give them lots of opportunities to play with other babies, will that stop them being able to make friends?”
etc.
Then ramp that up to “what if I ignore this apparently vast tide of evidence that says it’s bad, and my child develops autism” and you’ve got a big parental dilemma. One of your biggest jobs is to protect your child, yet there’s seemingly lots of people telling you that you could do your child harm and that the scientific/medical community are blinded to the facts, with the argument being that it’s a similar situation to the use of thalidomide.
I like to think of myself as a relatively educated guy, but even I’m glad that my son was born when he was, as the MMR story was pretty much debunked. That made it easy to dismiss my mother-in-law’s arguments for us to give our son single vaccines.
If he was born at the turn of the century, those concerning opinions would have weighed a lot heavier on my mind and could have easily swayed me. I completely understand why Trystan made the decision he did with his own child.
The advice of GPs is just one opinion that parents seek, but it is by no means the only one, and for a lot of parents I don’t think it necessarily greatly outweighs others.
With regard to MMR I had no issues with the injection. My wife was not so sure (mainly because of the reasons mentioned by Chutzpah above) and I didn’t really see too much of a hassle with having three separates. Obviously the withdrawal of Mumpsvax has changed things.
One of the things I love about RI is that we can have differences of opinion but handle it in good stead. Nigel who runs Skepreview.com (great site!) feels the Lancet was more responsible. Different opinions but we can respect each other and take it all with humour and with good grace. I think debate is healthy — but far more amusing when I forget how to handle probability.
To be honest, I’m still spooked at being able to use the phrase ‘at the turn of the century’.
That makes me feel pretty old.
A funny thing about Y2K bug. The PS3 today had a similar issue where the clock screwed up, causing people to lose saved games and the like.
I went to look up the haven’s statistics when I got home because listening to it at work just pissed me off a lot.
reading through it as well as looking for the ones pointed out by you I find this one very disturbing.
‘people who are hetrosexual are less likely to agree that “most claims of rape are probably not true” (15% vs. 44% of people who are ASEXUAL)’
I think the fact they are going to the asexuals for comparison might mean better results for the homosexual and bisexual groups…but the 7 people with no interest in sex at all agree with it I still find disturbing.