The Reality Check Episode 86

Snakes + Shampoo + Michael Jackson vs Sonic the Hedgehog

Cows, monkeys and dogs are revered by some cultures yet consumed as food by others. So, too, snakes are respected in some parts of the world and despised in others. The way that people feel about snakes is heavily influenced by cultural beliefs and mythology.

Some cultures held snakes in high esteem as powerful religious symbols. Quetzalcoatl, the mythical "plumed serpent," was worshipped as the "Master of Life" by ancient Aztecs of Central America. Some African cultures worshipped rock pythons and considered the killing of one to be a serious crime. In Australia, the Aborigines associated a giant rainbow serpent with the creation of life.

Other cultures have associated snakes with medicinal powers or rebirth. In India, cobras were regarded as reincarnations of important people called Nagas. Our modern medical symbol of two snakes wrapped around a staff, or 'caduceus,' comes from ancient Greek mythology. According to the Greeks, the mythical figure Aesculapius discovered medicine by watching as one snake used herbs to bring another snake back to life.

Judeo-Christian culture has been less kind to snakes. Tales of the Garden of Eden and the serpent's role in "man's fall from grace" have contributed to a negative image of snakes in western culture. In Appalachia, some Christians handle venomous snakes as part of ritual ceremonies, relying on faith to protect them from bites. Among Catholics, Saint Patrick is credited with ridding Ireland of snakes, a feat celebrated by many as a good thing.

Deep rooted cultural biases may be responsible, in part, for widespread fear and disdain for snakes. However, modern myths, from folk tales to plain old misinformation, also contribute to their negative image

Modern Myths

Size. Snakes are almost always described as larger than they really are. Stories about New England water snakes eight and ten feet long are simply not true.Northern water snakes rarely exceed three and a half feet in length, with the largest stretching only four and a half feet. While the black rat snake, our largest native snake, can reach lengths of just over eight feet, most New England snakes are less than three feet long.

Poisonous Snakes. The regularity with which people kill a snake first and ask questions later might lead you to believe that the world is overrun with venomous snakes. In fact, venomous snakes only make up about 10 percent of snake species worldwide, and in Massachusetts only two of the state's fourteen species of snakes are venomous (timber rattlesnake and northern copperhead). Both are rare, reclusive and generally confined to isolated areas.

Folk Tales. Folk tales about snakes are handed down from generation to generation and include such things as snakes that charm prey, swallow their young for protection, poison people with their breath, roll like hoops, and suck milk from cows. These folk tales could be just interesting and amusing stories except that many people still believe them. As we learn more about the true nature of snakes, we can begin to base our perceptions of them on fact rather than fiction.

Hoop Snakes

Myth: When frightened, hoop snakes will bite their tails and roll downhill like a wagon wheel.

Reality: Anatomically, snakes are not well equipped for rolling and there are no reliable accounts of this ever occurring. The hoop snake myth may have been associated originally with mud snakes found in the southern United States. Mud snakes will occasionally lie in a loose coil shaped like a hoop, but they slither away from danger like other snakes.

Swallowing Young

Myth: When confronted with danger, mother snakes swallow their young, spitting them out later once danger has passed.

Reality: Parental care is not very well developed in snakes and there is no evidence that mother snakes protect their young in this way. The myth may result from the fact that some snakes eat young snakes of their own species or of other species, though usually not their own brood.

Charming Snakes

Myth: Snakes have the ability to charm prey, especially birds, so they cannot flee.

Reality: There is no evidence that snakes charm their prey. Small animals may become "frozen with fear" when confronted by snakes but they are not charmed. Birds may flutter about in front of a snake in an attempt to lure it away from their nests; occasionally a bird may actually be captured by the snake, giving the impression that it was charmed. The fact that snakes never blink may also have played a role in this myth's origin.

Sucking Milk

Myth: Milk snakes are so named because of their ability to suck milk directly from the udders of cows.

Reality: Although milk snakes are common around barns that house cows, they completely lack the anatomy necessary to suck milk (or anything else for that matter). Barns are attractive to milk snakes because they provide abundant food in the form of small rats and mice.

Poisonous Breath

Myth: Puff adders (hognose snakes) mix poison with their breath and can kill a person at a distance of twenty-five feet.

Reality: Although the bite of a hognose snake can produce swelling and a burning sensation, these snakes rarely bite people and are not considered venomous. When confronted, they do puff themselves up and hiss, but their breath is harmless.

Cottonmouths in New England

Myth: Swimmers in New England are advised to watch out for venomous cottonmouths, also known as water moccasins.

Reality: Simply put, there are no water moccasins in New England. The cottonmouth, or water moccasin, is a venomous snake of the southeastern United States that occurs no farther north than the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia. Many people mistake non-venomous water snakes for water moccasins.

Part 2:

In the USA, the FDA mandates that shampoo containers accurately list ingredients. The government further regulates what shampoo manufacturers can and cannot claim as any associated benefit. Shampoo producers often use these regulations to challenge marketing claims made by competitors, helping to enforce these regulations. While the claims may be substantiated however, the testing methods and details of such claims are not as straightforward. For example, many products are purported to protect hair from damage due to ultraviolet radiation. While the ingredient responsible for this protection does block UV, it is not often present in a high enough concentration to be effective. The North American hair Research Society has a program to certify functional claims based on third party testing. Shampoos made for treating medical conditions such as dandruff are regulated as OTC drugs in the US marketplace. In other parts of the world such as the EU, there is a requirement for the anti-dandruff claim to be substantiated, but it is not considered to be a medical problem.

Vitamins and amino acids

The effectiveness of vitamins, amino acids and "pro-vitamins" to shampoo is also largely debatable. Vitamins are substances that are essential for chemical processes that occur within the body, chiefly inside living cells and in the bloodstream. They cannot have the same beneficial effects on dead tissues like grown hair. However, the physical properties of some vitamins would have a temporary cosmetic effect on the hair shaft while not having any bioactivity.

The proteins that make up the strand are chains of amino acids connected in very specific sequences, and are tightly packed in interlocking arrangements. Proteins are unable to penetrate the skin or the hair, and even if they stick to the outside of the hair they will not help strengthen it. Amino acids cannot penetrate cells through the skin, either; they may be able to enter the dead strands, but without the complex protein-building machinery of the living cells they will not actually return damaged hair proteins to their undamaged state.

Science Myth of the Week:

So, did Michael Jackson write a song for the game Sonic the Hedgehog 3?

He did write the song for Sonic the hedgehog 3, but it was because of various reasons why no one knew about it. One, he finished it, and didn’t feel satisfied with the music. Two, it was that time he was courted for the sexual assaults. Three, he wanted to play a prank on his family, getting an impostor to sing the song. 

The Reality Check Episode 85

Do Violent Video Games Lead To Violence? + Alcohol in Soft Drinks + Hangover Cures

Part 1: 

So, do violent video games lead to violence? 

One of the most common criticisms of video games is that they allegedly increase violent tendencies among youth. However, several major studies by groups such as The harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health, The Journal of Adolescent Health, and The British Medical Journal have shown no conclusive link between video game usage and violent activity." One study did find an increase in reports of bullying, noting, "Our research found that certain patterns of video game play were much more likely to be associated with these types of behavioral problems than with major violent crime such as school shootings. One of the first widely accepted controversial video games was developer Exidy’s 1976 title Death Race, in which players controlled cars that ran over pixelated representations of "gremlins". The game caused such an outcry that it was pulled from store shelves and profiled on 60 Minutes. Long Island PTA president Ronnie Lamm pushed for legislation in the early 1980s to place restrictions on how close video game arcades could be to schools, asserting that they caused children to fight. Portrayals of violence allegedly became more realistic with time, and so politicians such as U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman conducted hearings during the 1990s regarding what he referred to as "violent video games" which, in his opinion, included such games as Mortal Kombat . His sentiments have been echoed by certain researchers, such as Dr. Craig A. Anderson who testified before the Senate, "Some studies have yielded nonsignificant video game effects, just as some smoking studies failed to find a significant link to lung cancer. But when one combines all relevant empirical studies using meta-analytic techniques it shows that violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased pro-social (helping) behavior.” Anderson himself was later criticized in a 2005 video game court case for failing to cite research that differed from his view. Much of the research has been criticized for overstating effects, ignoring negative results and using unstandardized and unreliable measures of aggression.

Disbarred attorney Jack Thompson has filed lawsuits against the makers of violent games, alleging the simulated violence causes real-world violence.

An example of video game controversy Grand Theft Auto: Vice City came under similar criticism, also for implying allegedly racist hate crimes: The game, taking place in "Vice City" in 1986, involves a gang war between Haitians and Cuban refugees, and the player often serves both gangs to plot against one another. Haitian and Cuban anti-defamation groups highly criticized the game for these actions, including using phrases such as "kill the Haitian dickheads". After the threat of being sued by the Haitian-American Coalition, Rockstar removed the word "Haitians" from this phrase in the game's subtitles.

Lt. Col. David Grossman, a former West Point psychology professor, has written several books that pertain to the subject of violence in the media, including On Killing and Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill. During heights of video game controversy he has been interviewed on the content of his books, and has repeatedly used the term "murder simulator" to describe first-person shooter games. He argues that video game publishers unethically train children in the use of weapons and, more importantly, harden them emotionally to the act of murder by simulating the killing of hundreds or thousands of opponents in a single typical video game.

A study by Craig A. Anderson et al. says "The 14-year-old boy arguing that he has played violent video games for years and has not ever killed anybody is absolutely correct in rejecting the extreme “necessary and sufficient” position, as is the 45-year-old two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker who notes that he still does not have lung cancer. But both are wrong in inferring that their exposure to their respective risk factors (violent media, cigarettes) has not causally increased the likelihood that they and people around them will one day suffer the consequences of that risky behavior.”

Other studies, however, reach the conclusion that violence in video games is not causally linked with aggressive tendencies. This was the conclusion of a 1999 study by the U.S. government, prompting Surgeon General David Satcher to say, "We clearly associate media violence to aggressive behavior. But the impact was very small compared to other things. Some may not be happy with that, but that’s where the science is."A meta-analysis by psychologist Jonathan Freedman, who reviewed over 200 published studies and found that the "vast and overwhelming majority" did not find a causal link, also reached this conclusion. A US Secret Service study found that only 12% of those involved in school shootings were attracted to violent video games, while 24% read violent books and 27% were attracted to violent films. An Australian study found that only children already predisposed to violence were affected by violent games.

In Grand Theft Childhood: The surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do, researchers/authors Lawrence Kutner, PhD, and Cheryl K. Olson, ScD, refute claims of violent behavior increase caused by violent video games. The researchers' study shows that adolescents that don't play video games at all are most at-risk for violent behavior (but without statistical significance), claiming that video game play is part of an adolescent boy's normal social setting. However, they do not completely deny violent (M-rated) video games' negative influences on pre-teens and teenagers.

It is also worth noting that violent crime rates in the USA have declined dramatically since the early 1990s, among both juveniles and adults, even as sales of violent video games exploded and such games became increasingly graphic over time.

According to media scholar Henry Jenkins:

According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population. It's true that young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also been game players. But young people in general are more likely to be gamers — 90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play. The overwhelming majority of kids who play do NOT commit antisocial acts. According to a 2001 U.S. Surgeon General's report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure. The moral panic over violent video games is doubly harmful. It has led adult authorities to be more suspicious and hostile to many kids who already feel cut off from the system. It also misdirects energy away from eliminating the actual causes of youth violence and allows problems to continue to fester.

Some researchers believe that while playing violent video games leads to violent actions, there are also biological influences that impact a person's choices. According to Sean P. Neubert of Rochester Institute of Technology, a person who is biologically predisposed to aggression will be more strongly influenced by violent scenes and thus will have a greater risk for carrying out destructive actions. For example someone with Antisocial personality disorder, like Charles Manson, has a greater risk of going out and shooting someone after playing hours of Grand Theft Auto or a game of a similar nature. By exposing someone to violence who is already predisposed to lack a sense of judgment and be reclusive is like turning on a switch and giving them the fuel to go out and perform dangerous acts of violence on themselves and others around them.

Part 2:

So, are there alcohol in soft drinks? 

The story is that a student found out that a soft drink that he was drinking said it has less than 0.05% of alcohol in it. The student panicked and told teachers, who told the principal, who told someone else, and then it was all over the news.

Read Full Report here: The Colbert Report: Nailed 'Em - Fentiman's Victorian Lemonade - American Link

Science Myth of the Week:

So, can you cure a hangover?

The answer is sadly no.

The Reality Check Episode 122

Prosecutor’s Fallacy + Queueing Theory + 2011 Predictions

Part 1:
The prosecutor's fallacy is a fallacy of statistical reasoning made in law where the context which the accused has been brought to court is falsely assumed to be irrelevant to judging how confident a jury can be evidence against them with a statistical measure of doubt. If the defendant was selected from a large group because of the evidence under consideration, then this fact should be included in weighing how incriminating that evidence is. Not doing so is a base rate fallacy. - Wikipedia

The opposite from the prosecutor's fallacy is the defense attorney's fallacy. Let's say that there is 1/1000000 chance of match that the accused is innocent. The prosecutor would say that there's 1/1000000 chance of innocence. But if everyone in a community of 10000000 people is tested, there will be 10 matches even if everyone is innocent. The defense fallacy would say that 10 matches were expected, so that this kind of evidence says that 90% of the chance that the accused is innocent, and has little relevance to the case. 

Part 2: 
I'm sure we all have experienced this queueing trouble. It feels like every time we need to stand in a line for something, the line we stand in always takes the longest. It just frustrates us that it's so unfair when you are just standing there and watching other lines finish. So, is there a better way to do things? There are a few ways to solve this problem. The most popular one is to have just one line, like when we go through customs. We all wait in one line, and the next person will go to the next counter that finishes first, so no matter what the person behind you will always be slower, which is quite fair. But that might cause other problems in some situations, such as supermarkets. There is no way that there will be enough space for all those shopping carts to stay in just one lines, it's quite impossible. That's why there's another method, which is having different lines doing different things. There will be lines with fewer than 5 items, a normal amount, and a large amount of stuff. That way the people that just want to buy a few items can move faster.