Skeptoid #1055: Caught in the Feedback Loop

Opening listener feedback

0:00Once again, we open the mailbag here at Skeptoid and see what feedback we've gotten lately. Let's see. Here's some spam, some catalogs, credit card pre-approval, some more spam. You may have already won. Another spam. Aha! Here's five pieces of genuine listener feedback with excellent and insightful content to enhance past shows. What fascinating things we are about to learn.

0:32And in our extended content for premium members, one more piece of feedback that might be a little too much for the free public show. That's coming up right now on Skeptoid.

0:49Hey everyone, Brian here. Before we get started, a quick word about how you can support Skeptoid directly. If you've ever wanted your name permanently attached to an episode of this show, for example, one you might suggest, now you can. For a one-time fee, I'll read your name at the top of an episode of your choice, burned into the recording forever. It's a personal sponsorship, and honestly, one of my favorite ways listeners can connect with the show they love. And if you have a business, product, or service you'd like to reach our audience with, we offer commercial sponsorships, too.

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2:29That's O-D-O-O dot com. You're listening to Skeptoid. I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com. Caught in the feedback loop. Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience, real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real and what's not. Today, we're enhancing some past episodes with your listener feedback. These aren't error corrections so much as they are important context or additions.

3:03I do have shows dedicated purely to error corrections, but this isn't one of them. My shows are short, and although I do sometimes have to cut stuff out to keep them that way, sometimes there's a branch of research that I missed or chose not to go down for brevity, and occasionally, the thing that I left out has turned out to be important. Today, we've got all of your most recent enhancements. Oh, and a quick request. If you've emailed me a correction or some other information that should be included in a feedback or corrections episode,

3:37and I never covered it, always feel free to email me at brian at skeptoid dot com to ping me. I might have passed on it. This happens where the feedback is trivial, too abstruse, or is itself wrong. But it might also still be buried in my inbox and deserving of a resurrection.

Interrogation drugs and sodium pentothal

3:55So, let's go ahead and get started with some particularly torturous feedback. Episode number 1050 was about interrogation methods, specifically torture. Does it actually produce useful intelligence from its victims? In the course of discussion, I also ran down a list of drugs that have been tried as potential truth serums over the decades. And one of those I mentioned was sodium pentothal. Listener David, who is a pathologist, wrote in.

4:27Quick note. Pentothal is the brand name of sodium thiopenthal. Note the ending AL, which indicates an aldehyde group. The ending OL, on the other hand, indicates an alcohol group. Most people use the long-standing and incorrect sodium pentothal. Understandable, but incorrect. Any harm done? Not likely. David is correct. I did use the brand name pentothal instead of the chemical name thiopenthal.

4:57This is a convention that I've followed pretty consistently since the beginning of Skeptoid. If I were to mention Kleenex or Velcro in passing in an episode, I would likely say Kleenex or Velcro instead of multi-ply disposable facial tissue or hook-and-loop fastener strips. I do this so that people know what I'm talking about and to avoid interrupting the flow with a superfluous explanation. If the item I refer to is not, in itself, germane to the subject, I will generally use a familiar term whenever one exists.

5:31It turns out that the phrase sodium pentothal is far more common on the internet and in print, and certainly in movies, than the phrase sodium thiopenthal. Even the Wikipedia article on it begins with, Sodium thiopenthal is well known in popular culture, especially under the name sodium pentothal. Now, if the episode included any factual discussion of thiopenthal, such as its effects, its intended usage, or certainly its chemical composition,

6:02then I would have, of course, used its chemical name, or at a minimum, given it alongside its more common name. But in this case, I was merely reading off a list of three or four drugs that have been given as truth serums to interrogation subjects throughout history. And although I don't know, I'd lay odds that the brand pentothal is indeed what the CIA actually administered, so my usage was probably literally correct as well.

Catholic doctrine and the reality of ghosts

6:31Episode number 1018 was about the existence, or rather the non-existence, of ghosts, and how no theory allows for the possibility of any such entity with the properties typically given to them by ghost believers. This included a brief discussion of Christianity, and how the Bible has a number of scriptures which, taken together, leave no possible way for the spirit of a deceased person to remain on earth in any way.

7:01However, my lack of knowledge of Catholicism called attention to itself loud and clear. Listener Edward, who also happens to be about as high an authority on Catholic doctrine as anyone, added a possibility which, I freely admit, I had not been aware of. Listening to your ghost episode, entertaining as always, I get the feeling you don't interact a lot with Catholics, because while I am thankful you quote the Bible against the existence of ghosts, and respectfully too, you don't seem to realize that for us Catholics,

7:34there is a third option, between up and down. And that option has often been used as an explanation for ghosts. I am talking, of course, about purgatory. The place where you are technically already close to heaven, but still have to get cleansed from the traces sin has left on your soul. As Catholics believe that prayer for the deceased will speed their transition to heaven, it has been supposed that ghosts could be souls from purgatory, permitted by God to ask for prayer for their souls.

8:05There are hundreds of such stories through the centuries. As far as I know, there is no document of the Catholic magisterium on ghosts, or the possibility they are souls in purgatory. But it is a real concept in the Catholic Church, and something I would account as a real explanation for a vision of ghosts, should such entities exist. This is, by the way, the main reason why Catholics are terrified of going to English castles. The ghosts know they will pray for them if asked,

8:36and therefore will appear.

8:40I would respond to this final point with, OMG, if there's a way to make ghosts appear on command, I'm all in. Can we please arrange this? I'll bring the Jameson. Regardless, this omission has now been added to the episode transcript. Many thanks to Edward for the additional information, and I voluntarily walk back my declaration about the permissibility of ghosts in Christendom from no possibilities to one possibility. Hey everyone, Brian here.

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10:19Hope to see you there.

Elephant behavior and carcass burial

10:22Episode number 949 considered what truth there might be behind the fabled Graveyard of the Elephants, a mythical place so familiar in fiction where the elephants all go to die. Elephant behavior has been very well studied, and the lives of many thoroughly documented. In addition, both Africa and India have been thoroughly explored, we can say for a certainty that elephants do not go to a particular place to die. Thus, the elephant graveyard is purely a myth.

10:54However, an email from listener Simon brought to my attention an article, which, though it did not claim an elephant graveyard, discussed something so similar, it absolutely would have warranted a mention. This was a discovery in India of five elephant calves buried in drainage dishes between 2022 and 2023, having been dragged there and pushed in, according to interpretations of marks on the ground. They were then partially covered with dirt. The article also mentions that elephants have been seen covering the carcasses of their dead

11:29with leaves, branches, and other debris. To the casual reader, it would seem that this does indeed prove that elephants bury their dead. But alas, it is not so. It turns out there's essentially no academic support for that. Many, many papers have been written documenting elephant behavior toward the dead, and I dug up a number of them. Elephants do appear to grieve, even gathering to do so. They do spend time with the deceased.

11:59They do visit the bones. But in all these studies, nobody has ever happened to mention burial of any kind. The scattering of branches and debris upon a carcass has been recorded in only a few cases. As amazing as elephants are, in so many ways, they're not always as anthropomorphic as we'd like them to be.

California giant salamanders and hellbenders

12:20Episode number 903 was about a mythical creature, the California giant salamander, an amphibian said to be the size of an adult human living in the remote mountain streams of California's giant coastal redwood country. The speculation by cryptozoologists who believe these creatures exist is that they are relatives of the Japanese giant salamander, which is a real animal and actually is that big. It's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis,

12:52as the latitudes and climatic conditions are virtually the same. In the episode, I mentioned that some confusion might result from the fact that California already has a giant salamander that's a known real animal, a couple subspecies of dicamptodon, called the coastal giant salamander and the California giant salamander, the exact same name given by the cryptozoologists to their hypothetical monster-sized one. Dicamptodon grows to be only about 13 inches or 33 centimeters long.

13:26Listener Brian wrote in, no relation. Dear Brian, I must have missed 903 on the giant California salamander, because I surely would have noticed an omission in that article. You probably have heard about it since the article was published, but just in case, North America does have a much larger salamander than dicamptodon, and it is the North American relative to the Asian species of Andrius, Cryptobranchus the hellbender. Your speculative historical biogeography is correct,

13:58and there are multiple clades that have an Eastern, North American, Eastern Asian distribution, like alligators, for example. Good old plate tectonics driving unusual species geographic distributions. Thanks for the great Skeptoid series. And yes, the hellbender is indeed a North American giant salamander that's nearly twice the size of dicamptodon. It's the biggest salamander in North America, but still much smaller than the Japanese one.

14:28In fact, the hellbender is even more closely related to the Japanese giant salamander than it is to the dicamptodon species. Obviously, I was well aware of the hellbender, as my research for the episode included learning way too much about the species distribution of various salamanders than anyone should ever have to know. The reason I didn't mention the hellbender is simply that its range is on the other side of the country from California, so it was not a candidate to explain the cryptid. Also, like dicamptodon,

15:00it's nowhere near the size of the Asian species, so it wasn't really worth bringing up. However, a number of people wrote in and advised me that I should have mentioned it, so I have added a mention to the transcript. Thanks to everyone for the additional context.

Early references to the Shroud of Turin

15:17Episode number 795 was about the Shroud of Turin, a piece of fabric believed by some to have been the burial cloth of Jesus Christ and to have an image of his face stained upon it. According to all scientific and historical evidence, it was made by six clergymen in France in 1353, essentially as a sideshow gaffe to encourage donations. Only a few Christian researchers claim it is authentic.

15:47That episode came out in 2021, but in 2025, a new piece of evidence surfaced. It was announced in an issue of the Journal of Medieval History, and it was the discovery of the earliest known print reference to the Shroud, written by the Norman scholar Nicol Orym, sometime between 1355 and 1382, possibly while the Shroud was still on display by the clergyman charging admission to see it. It's from Orym's unpublished manuscript in Latin,

16:20Problemata, the fourth in a series he wrote on strange phenomena. Translated, it says, I need not believe anyone who says, so-and-so worked such a miracle for me, because many churchmen deceive others this way, so that offerings will be made to their churches. This is plainly evident in the case of the church in Champaign, where the Shroud of our Lord Jesus Christ was said to be, and of the nearly infinite number of people who have faked such things. The discovery of this text doesn't really change any of today's conclusions.

16:56It merely adds context, and shows that even at the time it was made, it was considered a fake, at least by this one scholar, and probably by others as well.

17:06Well, that's all we have for you today. As always, please keep the feedback rolling in. Just email to brian at skeptoid.com, or if you have a correction, please go to skeptoid.com slash corrections to submit it. Thanks, and see you next time.

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20:38From PRX.