Episode #017, feat. Marko Kovic

Featuring a short interview with Marko Kovic, president of the Swiss skeptical organisation Skeptiker Schweiz. We talked about the recent developments of the status of alternative medicine in Switzerland.
 
Segments:
Intro; Greetings & Listener feedback; On this day; What’s on in Europe?; What’s hot in Europe?; Interview with Marko Kovic; Logical Fallacies; Really Wrong; True or False?; Quote
 
Show notes:
00:00:00
INTRO music
 
00:00:36
Greetings & Listener feedback

• Contact us!
• Troythulu’s blog post about the podcast
• ComCept’s ‘Flying Unicorn’ Awards in Portuguese (English summary)
• Self-correction (András): Robert de Niro was NOT involved financially in the making of ‘Vaxxed’

00:13:35
On This Day: 6^th April
Jules Jean Baptiste Vincent Bordet (Died 6 Apr 1961 at age 90): Belgian bacteriologist and immunologist who discovered (1895) the complement, a complex of proteins in the blood that causes the destruction of foreign cells in an immune response. In 1906, he isolated the bacterium responsible for
whooping cough, which is named after him – Bordetella (Haemophilus) pertussis – and for which he developed a vaccine. He also isolated a number of other pathogenic bacteria. For his discovery of immunity factors in blood serum, he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1919. This development was vital to the diagnosis and treatment of many dangerous contagious bacterial diseases. For example, it is the basis of the Wassermann test for syphilis.

• About Jules Bordet on Wikipedia
• Jules Bordet biography on the Nobel Prize website

00:18:23
What’s on in Europe?

• Please, check out the Skeptic Calendar of Events in Europe!

00:23:07
What’s Hot in Europe?

1. Acupuncture, chiropractic and osteopathy no longer recommended by NICE for lower back pain in the UK
   • Press release on the website of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the UK
   • The Guardian (2009): Back pain sufferers to be offered acupuncture treatment on the NHS
   • Edzard Ernst: NICE no longer recommends acupuncture, chiropractic or osteopathy for low back pain
   • NHS: Info page about Chriopractic
   • NHS: Can I see a chiropractor on the NHS?
2. Switzerland embraces alternative medicine
   • Swissinfo.ch: Swiss to recognise homeopathy as legitimate medicine
   • Skeptiker Schweiz blog: Complementary and alternative medicine on public health insurance: Evidence-Based Medicine to suffer (in German)
   • Edzard Ernst: It’s official: Switzerland is going holistically round the bend
3. Hoaxes related to Brussels bombing
   • BuzzFeed: Brussels attacks: rumors and false information (in French)
   • IBT: Brussels attack: Did Russian spies warn Belgium of terror plot?
   • Mimikama.at: “Crisis Actor” – The rumor spread again (in German)
   • Snopes: Crisis Actors Uncovered?

00:38:09
Interview with Marko Kovic

• The Skeptiker Schweiz website (in German)

01:03:07
Logical Fallacies – Stolen concept fallacy

• Stolen concept on Logically Fallacious

01:09:47
Really Wrong: András
 
01:10:03
True or False

1. Study shown that Expensive placebos and cheap placebos have the same effect
2. Coffee drinkers are more likely to see dead people
   • https://www.dur.ac.uk/news/research/?itemno=7403
3. A blind person can get his sight back by implanting a tooth in his eyes
   • http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197256/Blind-man-sees-wife-time-having-TOOTH-implanted-eye.html

01:21:42
Quote
“The invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes.”
/Douglas Noel Adams, author of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’/
 
01:23:28
Outro
 
01:24:44
Out-takes