 Alrighty, let's get started. We've got another full day of wonderfulness. Our first speaker is Joe Schwartz He's the director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society. He's got two incredible books for sale Science Sense and Nonsense and Brain Fuel. His talk is called The Worms in My Blood Vessels Nice Here's his haiku. Sunday morning, Tam. Joe Schwartz ready to talk next. It is Sunday, right? Please welcome Joe Schwartz Thank you very much It was a dark and stormy night It really was and there was a knock on my door and standing there was a salesman He looked kind of haggard. He wanted in. I didn't know what it's all about So I ushered him into my kitchen and we sit down and he looks over at my water tap And he says to me sir is this what you drink and I sheepishly admitted Yes, this is what we drink. We even give it to the dog with no problem and At this point, he started to look confused and he says sir tell me Do you know that there are chemicals in that water? Well, I didn't know where this was going I thought it was a little bit too early to say boy that you knock on the wrong door because I Kind of felt something delicious coming out of this So I said what do you mean? Do you mean the h2o and he says no no no that's not what I mean I mean the hidden chemicals in your water Can I see those? By all means he says let's take a glass of your water We do that and then he reaches into his bag and he pulls out this contraption a couple of electrodes and Plunks them down into the water turns on the current and within a couple of seconds It starts to go yellow and it goes all cruddy and he holds it up for me to see this is what I was drinking Apparently the chemicals had been dissolved happily in the water But now they were scared out of solution by the electrical current that cruise through them Of course, I knew what was kept happening here. This was just ferric hydroxide. Basically. It was rust That's what we were looking at but I still didn't know quite where this was going So I kind of let him go on and then he reaches into his bag again and drags out a water filter He passes my water through the water filter. We have another glass of water. He puts in his electrodes and Low and behold nothing happens Well, this was getting pretty good. I realized what was going on here Of course water does not conduct electricity unless it has electrolytes in it and the filter indeed removed the electrolytes It was a pretty good good filter and Then I decided it was time for chemistry lesson because of course the message was that that you know Now I was liberated from all of these nasty chemicals so said let me just take a bit of salt and Put it in the water and now shove your electrodes back in Which of course he did and the same crud happened. He was all confused He couldn't understand how that tiny amount of salt made all of these terrible chemicals appear Now it was time for lesson number two So I picked up the glass of water and I drank it Because I knew that at the very least I was giving myself a little iron supplement and at that point his face Turned about the color of that liquid And he was just absolutely confused And then I tried said, you know what we've just experienced here was electrolysis It's a very simple chemical experiment Maybe you did it one time in in high school where you had this contraption and you put electric current through it and the water separated into hydrogen and oxygen and Indeed if one of those electrodes happens to be iron the oxygen reacts with it and you get iron hydroxide I'm not sure how much of this he understood, but then I confused him further because I bought one of his filters I'd be looking for one to take the pouring out of the water anyway and Then I watched as this gentleman walked out of my house Into the driveway put his briefcase in the trunk of his car leaned back confused and lit up a smoke Livius of all of the nasty chemicals in there Well, of course, it's an interesting story, but it has sort of a further message Because this contraption that you're looking at here, which I'm sure many of you have seen the ionic foot bath Which draws toxins out of the body you put your feet in there You put it into the electrical outlet and within about 30 seconds. You see the toxins appear It's exactly the same chemistry that I just described to you, but six seven hundred dollars is what? unfortunate people pay for this this contraption just because they don't understand the chemistry that is involved Well, this is what we try to clear up to our office at McGill University in Montreal It's an academic institution and it's one of the I think a few such Organizations in the world where university has said that it our duty basically to Foster critical thinking and provide good information I do this with my colleagues David Tarzan Ariel Fenster and We've been at this for many many years. We don't have any vested interest Which is the reason that I think we are trusted and believe We're funded by the University and also Thanks to a generous philanthropic plant grant from dr. Lauren trotier. He is not the one in the red shirt Lauren is is there and he has made it possible for us to operate on a grander scale including a Very very important symposium that we run every year This particular one was on confronting pseudoscience and at that one the amazing one actually appeared and Amazed the audience of some 700 people We do this every year Just to tickle your fancy the next one is coming up this October We've been titled is that a fact and We're going to have some pretty nifty speakers there. So that's that's what we do we demystify science We try to keep people up to date on what happens in the world of science foster critical thinking separate funds for nonsense And hopefully keep people out of the clutches of charlatans When we first started this I thought we needed a logo and I suggested this to the University It's not that we're against eating meat know what we're against is this commodity Which is being piled higher and deeper? University didn't go for it, but I think it does describe what it is that we do because there's so much nonsense out there People are buying aerobic oxygen and if they can't get their hands on that they want dehydrated water Which of course you need to make up your homeopathic solutions There's tremendous nonsense and add that was dropped in my bail mailbox for underwear Pretty good underwear pro polypropylene it allows moisture to pass through but just look at the words H2O also on a sweat is attracted to thermoskins like ants to a picnic or constant comfort process Separates the H2 from the O making evaporation takes faster Well, we'll leave the graphic artist alone who thinks that there's a covalent bond between the hydrogens in water But imagine I mean this would be miraculous underwear because it could perform electrolysis If all you had to do was rub your underwear to produce hydrogen Well, you know what hydrogen can do you remember the Hindenburg? We'd have a solution to the energy crisis The quacks are out there we try to reason with them But we can't turn them over As much as we would like Because they're everywhere. They're massive. They're outside our homes. They're inside our homes and many of them are vicious If you've ever had confrontations with the anti-vaccine people, you know what I'm talking about So we battle all of these things. We don't yield because we have ammunition Our ammunition is evidence. It is the scientific literature That is the altar at which we worship sometimes I think perhaps a bit too much because after all Andrew Wakefield appeared in the Lancet I've been in this for a long time Way back in 1980. I was asked to do a radio show It is Kind of disturbing that it was that long ago. It's obvious here Of course, it's only obvious because you see the dial telephone in the picture You know, I don't remember the first question that I was asked but I remember the second question because it's timid me I thought I heard this rather incredible query. I Don't know what to make of that and all of a sudden you start to have these strange anatomical juxtapositions go through your mind But it turned out that the color had spoken very quickly and had forgotten a word which was golf Because it seems that golfers sometimes have the habit of putting down their golf ball picking it up kissing it before whacking it again For superstitious reasons and this gentleman was concerned about chemicals on the golf course He was worried that he might be transferring some of these to his his mouth so we discussed this and Right away. I saw that when people think that they're talking to a chemistry professor These are the questions that arise. Is it toxic? Is it dangerous? Is it poisonous? I get these all the time is try polyphosphate a chemical what they're asking is it really dangerous? That's what they want to know because chemists do back things We unleash carcinogens on the unsuspecting population to try to kill off as many as possible That's what we try to do. Well Get a Call from this lady who was worried about the phosphate and she had seen it on a cleaning agent She wanted to know what it was doing in there So I explained that everything in the world of course is made of chemicals and you know, I guess she kind of Understood that I said that this just made the detergents work better by tying up the minerals in the water She was pacified. She calls me back two weeks later. I recognize her voice even though there was panic in it and This time she had again crossed swords with sodium try polyphosphate this time on a different product It was on craft dinner. So she says to me, you know, I give my son craft dinner every day, which apparently was not a problem What is a cleaning agent doing in there so I explained no here that's performing quite a different purpose It allows water to be absorbed more quickly by the starch in the macaroni so that you can feed your clamoring child The dinner that he wants every day more rapidly. I don't think she bought it because chemicals are okay in cleaning agents You don't want them in your food She probably had some perverse idea that the craft company of course being an evil company as all multinational are Had discovered that eating their product is a messy business and wanted to clean the kit from the inside out And they had found some magical way. Where do they get such ideas by reading books like this a Dictionary of food additives by Ruth winter. I don't think she should be writing books like this Because well, let me show you why Try sodium phosphate if my phosphate feeding friend looked up here would see Phosphate cleaning agent bubble bath all of that makes sense But also in incendiary bombs and tracer bullets Now she would not only worry about her son being cleaned from the inside out She'd worry about him bursting into flame and disappearing but not without a trace Ruth winter makes the most fundamental of all chemical errors confusing phosphorus with phosphate Phosphorus is the element highly flammable phosphate completely different substance Well, of course people buy these books and that's where chemophobia starts And that's one of our main battles is to try to take away the fear of chemicals in their rational way Because of course there are some issues. There are no safe or dangerous chemicals They're only safe ways and dangerous ways to use them we investigate and We get products sent to us to to investigate for example this one here, which is supposed to make you smarter You wear it over your eyes It looks pretty nifty. It's got all kinds of gadgets associated with it. I don't think it made me smarter because I Went further and tested another product that they sent me which was this device which allows you to levitate a ball By concentrating on it. Well, it actually does as long as you turn on the fan, which is in the base of the So we investigate We look at products such as this which claims to magnetized water Well water of course cannot be magnetized But the idea here is that this will cure everything that else if you drink the magnetized water It makes you want to scream, but Let me get to a point where Really it starts to to become even more interesting for you guys. So the skeptics This gentleman here Zef Coleman is a healer in New York but he goes around the world healing people and it came to Montreal and I was actually asked to meet with him because he wanted to reveal the word to me so we did and I met him and he told me his story how he had been a Soldier in Israel and one day while he was stationed in the Sinai desert that that was about 35 years ago He all of a sudden was called to the top of the mountain He didn't understand but he had to go up there and when he went up there He saw the strange gray disc hovering above the mountain and he just passed out And when he came down from the mountain and of course this image immediately comes to your mind He felt energized. He felt energized He had discovered that all of a sudden he had a healing ability Because he had placed his hand on his friend's knee who had been complaining of arthritic pain and all of a sudden that Pain departed so he discovered that he had this magical ability to heal people and Including Martin Sheen. I'm not sure how much of a testimonial that is You know how effective he was there. He goes around the world and of course there are the usual anecdotes about his wonderful healing abilities, how he can generate electricity from his hands and How people subjects actually feel this electricity. I Sent my assistant to see him and she comes back. She's very reliable and she says to me You know, I felt it. I was lying there. He hovered his hand above my Body and I felt it like when you put your hand in front of a television set So I didn't know what this was all about. So when you have a problem like this, who are you gonna call? so I called and Randy Kind of knew all about this and he says maybe you guys better check out the device called electric touch Now I didn't know about that particular device But I know quite a bit about magic because I've been doing that since I was about 10 years old so I went down to my Magic shop and I got them they didn't have it in stock, but I had it delivered by next day electric touch It's a neat little gizmo What you do is it's about the size of a pack of cards and you wrap it around your leg and It allows with the because it has a high voltage that infuses into you You can do all kinds of fascinating things You can pick up little pieces of paper and you can raise the hairs on People, you know, I mean it's really very very impressive now I don't know for sure that this is what he was doing But I suspect that if it looks like a duck and it cracks like a duck it pretty well is one but anyway, I was you know pretty pretty polite to him and I said look, you know, we'd right really like to test this and Could you come down to my office at McGill and we'll set up a proper test and he said very very happy Yes, he would do that But because I knew how this thing worked and I think this was a mistake I said, but you know the way that we're going to do this test is will ask you to do it barefoot now this of course unfortunately gave away that I knew what the Game was and that's the last I heard of him But he had planned to come back to Montreal a month later Because he had lined up all kinds of appointments and he was charging a hundred dollars for a 15-minute quote treatment Well, he never came back to Montreal. So that was somewhat He is traveling and He even can do his magic from the air as you can see on the trip to Israel He was at advertising that he would be having a healing session from the air and you could sign up for this Well, I wrote about this in my newspaper column and that invites all kinds of other interesting people So I got an email from a lady. This was quite recent Who told me that she was authentic? She had real power. She didn't know how but she was willing to be tested So I talked to her at quite some length and I said what you know, what is this all about? What is it that you can do? She says I can see inside the body Says for example, if someone has chlorine in them, I see this as yellow bubbles If someone has radon inside of them, I see this as blue bubbles and said well, what else can you see? She says I can see germs and I can prove it to you So I was thinking you know, well, how can we come up with a test, you know That is somewhat reliable that she can demonstrate her abilities and I said well Can you also see these these germs in in water and she says oh absolutely I can see it in living water. She says what is living water? She says living water is lake water River water and I said what is non-living water? She says oh, that's the stuff that comes out of your tap or that's in bottles That's dead water. She said you can tell the difference. She says yes, I can look at it I can tell you the difference. So I said well, we got something here So we set up a test we attack water bottled water lake water I didn't know which was which nobody knew which was was it was all done by a third person and I said look We're going to randomly put one of those waters into each one of 15 glasses We're gonna throw a die for each one and someone else who was totally objective It's going to put the water in into those and I said look It's gonna be a quick test Just to see if you can have if you have some ability and if you do we'll go further and I said look I looked into the statistics a little bit said look if you get 10 out of 15 right that makes it interesting That means that we should proceed further to see if there's anything here So she comes and we do the test and she gets eight out of 15 right I must say I was a little bit surprised. It was a bit more than what one were predicted But it was short of the time Of course, she starts coming up, you know with the usual reasons that you know the skepticism aura in the room was interfering or error and You know just as I was about to to kind of explain to her that I really thought this was quackery She came up with another line of reasoning she says well Yeah, but you know, this is not what I really do what I really do is scan people for for disease I can look at them and I know what's going on inside of their body So I said, you know, what what is it that you do? Is it like a cat scan and Now she says it's totally non-invasive. I can just look at you and tell you what's going on inside So I said, okay, let's give that a shot. We'll give it a shot with me my my colleague and Assistant, let's see what you've got So I sit down and she starts scanning me not touching or anything she closes her eyes And she starts looking me up and down The first thing she says to me, you're full of carbon I'm thinking to myself. Well, you got that right But then she says well, that's because in Previous years you were a smoker Well, I've never smoked a cigarette in my life ever Then she goes on and says well I also see that you have lead in your lungs and we usually see this in welders Well, I think I've soldered one wire once in my life. That's the closest I came to to any kind of such Activity and then she goes on She says I see worms in your blood vessels And then she goes on then describes these worms and it kind of sounded like schistosomiasis Which is a real disease people really do get those worms, but not in North America. I've not been in Africa I don't think I have this But she says that I have worms and then she is looking further down She says your red blood cells are too big Kind of hard to verify that and then she looks even further down starts looking at an uncomfortable spot And she says your prostate gland Well, you know now I'm getting kind of You know anxious here because you know you reach an age where stuff happens your prostate gland She says your prostate gland is growing mushrooms Well this time, you know, I'm thinking to myself why maybe you've been into the mushrooms So I Don't know what on earth she meant. Maybe she meant some sort of fungal infection or whatever I mean, I don't think I have mushrooms going there But I was a bit better off than my colleague Ariel because she told him that he had a tumor in his left testicle Now that's not funny. I mean he doesn't but to say something like that You know to a person is not funny I mean we had a hard time kind of keeping a straight face with with all of this But but she was very very serious and then she said that she can do something else She can communicate with the spirit world now. This was getting really really interesting and So I said well, what evidence do you have for that? So she says, you know, I know that you are always losing your keys Well, actually, I don't I don't remember ever having lost my keys and But I was still sleeping a straight face and say and Why what what's the reason says I know it's a mischievous spirit of a former girlfriend that you left for your wife and She is hiding your keys all the time Well at this point, you know, I started to explain Why I didn't think that this was really very very rational and started to explain to her about cold reading which I Was into and she after this time had been very polite We've given her a nice lunch and everything and then now all of a sudden of course She comes up with all the reasons why this this didn't work and she got off Huffed and puffed and walked out. That's how this episode ended but interesting enough, you know These episodes breathe other episodes. I get a letter from a gentleman Who had read about, you know, my encounter or I actually talked about her radio And he said that yes, there are a lot of charlatans out there, but he's the real thing Max the healer So Max turned out to be a very nice guy and we invited him down to the office and asked him, you know What is it that that you can do and I know what you know when I told us at home, you know, they said well, you know Anyone who invites this guy down to the office maybe should have his head examined But I did I had my head examined by Max the healer because he said that I would feel the energy I Would feel it wherever there was any problem in the body. It would get warm Of course, I didn't feel anything But that's you know an equal one we went on and my my colleague tried it as well. He didn't feel any sort of energy But this was a pretty clever guy interesting enough because as we were doing this this experiment one of my assistants came in and she started to take a coffee and we had a machine brewing the coffee and Took one of the cups off of the shelf it happened to be a very interesting cup because it's a cup that that's Made with liquid crystals and it gets hot when it gets hot the color changes. She didn't know that she just picked up a cup random she puts on under the coffee machine and Of course as soon as the hot liquid starts to go into it the cup starts to change color She was very surprised and says look who what's going on and he right away looks up and says I think I did that But then he learned something about liquid crystals and he took it pretty good Naturedly so of course the question is What do we do with all of this information? I mean it's nice to entertain fellow skeptics and fellow critical thinkers, but what is it that we do? How do we get? Disbelievers to start to believe in our type of thought well, I write newspaper columns every week and They have a large following and I very often focus on this kind of stuff. Of course not exclusively I focus on all kinds of science stuff and These columns appear in my 13 books along with many many other ideas of course and most of them have been bestsellers The last one just came out. It's called the right chemistry Which has which I think is one of the best ones, but the sales have not been great because the word chemistry in the title It's not very seductive to most people Unfortunately, and I thought that you know after having been in this business 35 40 years made Peckett of all to that Do a lot of TV stuff? very often focusing on separating the myths from the facts and You know some of it is local, but some of it is national a Couple of months ago. I was on date line and this was all about this finale and phthalates all the endocrine disruptors And they interviewed me for three hours three hours Translated to 58 seconds on the program, which is as you well know is par for the course is There is is the you know the man bites dog is what gets to the story the dog bites men Doesn't and even though you know, I gave thorough explanations of all of this stuff They hammered it down to to 58 seconds We also give lectures to to to public lectures to all kinds of groups senior citizens They're very interested of course usually in the alternative health business and the other extreme Of course we speak to students because if you get them interested well You know that that curiosity is the science for the spark is to a flame And if we can generate curiosity we can get them to be skeptical thinkers We also have a set of courses at McGill University called the world of chemistry Which we teach to about a thousand students every year on drugs on food cosmetics and the environment and We are going to launch a new venture with these courses very soon The so-called MOOCs the massive online Courses so that's that's been very fruitful. We also have a website of course and everyone Should these days because that's the major way of communicating. I've been asked to testify in front of Senate in Canada about chemical issues and very often I launch into the critical thinking business I've also done it in in the US. It was a bit more difficult Here I must say although when I was asked to speak to the congressman two of them were actually chemists And they were glad they told me that they can finally come out of the closet Admit that they are chemists so anyway, it's a difficult job and I'll leave you with one last little story here is one day on the radio I was talking about vitamin O and Be reading this product as it deserves to be because it's total quackery It's nothing but water and I went on for about five minutes Talking about this stuff and how important it was to be a critical thinker and you know I explained the chemistry and all that and then we go to the lines because it's a it's a phone and show I mean I've been doing this show now as I said for 30 years. It's the longest running Phone and show on chemistry in the history of the world Of course, it is the only History of the world you say we are a deputy cherry picking data too. So anyway, what happens? I finished my my arguments my venomous attack about vitamin O. I go to the phones the first caller says Where can I buy it? You can't win I don't have an answer Because we scientists do not have an answer to everything there are some questions to which there just are no answers but We mustn't we mustn't give up We must search for them and we've got to be out there and fostering the critical thinking and Hopefully I've given you a couple of ideas that maybe you can use when you meet some of your colleagues who need to be skepticized