Something You Should Know
Science You Believe That Isn't True & The Story of The Lie Detector - SYSK Choice
Sat, 15 Mar 2025
This may be hard to imagine but trees can fight crime. Not all types of crime but they the fight some crime – and no one really knows how they do it. Listen to hear the explanation. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/04/trees-crime-cincinnati-philadelphia-ida-b-wells-chicago/ People believe things like goldfish have a 3-second memory. Or that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. And I bet you believe that water is a good conductor of electricity. None of these things are true. They are examples of the many science myths that a lot of people believe. In this episode, we are going to debunk these and others with my guest, science writer Brian Clegg. Brian is the author of over 40 books, one of which is titled Lightning Often Strikes Twice: The 50 Biggest Misconceptions in Science (https://amzn.to/41sY3jK) I’m sure you’ve seen a polygraph machine in movies or on TV. This device can supposedly tell if someone is lying. But does it actually work? If it is so reliable, why do most courts refuse to allow the results of polygraph tests as evidence? Yet, if it is unreliable, why is it still being used? The story of the polygraph or lie detector is fascinating. Here to tell it is Amit Katwala an award winning journalist, a senior writer at Wired and author of the book Tremors in the Blood: Murder, Obsession, and the Birth of the Lie Detector (https://amzn.to/3Zngu7C) Are men better drivers than women? It really depends on your definition of “better.” However, in terms of accidents, moving violations and parking ability, there is a difference between men and women. Listen and I’ll reveal which gender scores better. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/well/live/car-accidents-deaths-men-women.html PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off QUINCE: Indulge in affordable luxury! Go to https://Quince.com/sysk for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING SHOPIFY: Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: How do trees contribute to crime prevention?
Hi, welcome and thank you for joining me for another episode of Something You Should Know. And we're going to start today talking about trees. If you live in a neighborhood that has a lot of nice big trees, it's a little safer than neighborhoods without them. According to the U.S. Forest Service, less crime occurs in neighborhoods with big trees in the front yards and along the street.
So what exactly makes having trees a deterrent to crime? Well, for the most part, it's an unexplained phenomenon, but researchers have come up with a few ideas. Some say trees signal that the area is well cared for, similar to the broken windows theory, which suggests that disorder invites crime. Some say green spaces make an area inviting and can lead to more informal surveillance.
Other theories point to the well-documented calming effect of vegetation and nature, or that the idea that greenery promotes trust in the community. Whatever the reason, trees fight crime. And that is something you should know.
Chapter 2: What are some common science myths?
I'm sure you've heard statements, scientific-y kind of statements, like lightning never strikes the same place twice, or your blood is red because of the iron in it, or that the Big Bang Theory explains the beginning of the universe. But these are actually examples of statements that are not true. And there are a lot of them. Things that you may believe that just aren't so.
And here to reveal several of them and explain why they're not true is Brian Clegg. Brian is a science writer and speaker who has written over 40 science books. One of them is called Lightning Often Strikes Twice, The 50 Biggest Misconceptions in Science. Hi, Brian. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks for having me.
So what made you decide to tackle this, to try to explain that a lot of things that we perhaps believe about science are in fact not true?
I spend a lot of time talking to people about science, and all too often what comes up is it's a bit more complicated than we thought, that science tends to be a little more complicated than we think about it. And what I'm looking at here, in a fairly light way, a fairly fun way, is...
areas where we think that science is different from the way it really is, or where we simplify it so much that actually we don't really understand what's happening. So it's just trying to open up a little bit. It might be urban myths, it might be folklore, or it might just be not quite getting the science right in what I hope is an enjoyable way.
Well, let's get specific. And one that you talk about that I have always believed is that water is a very good conductor of electricity. And, you know, you see in the movies, somebody throws a toaster that's plugged in into a bathtub to kill somebody. To me, I've always thought water was a very good conductor of electricity.
And it seems crazy to say water doesn't conduct electricity, but actually it's a really bad conductor of electricity. But what is happening is it's the impurities in the water that enable it to do that conducting. So if you take totally pure water, it's a really bad conductor. And sometimes there's little things like that, or for that matter, toast. Toast falling butter side down.
You know this thing, you drop a slice of toast, it falls on the floor. It's always the butter side that hits the floor. Or is it? Can that really be true? And a number of TV shows have actually tried to demonstrate it's not true. But unfortunately, what they've tended to do is toss toast in the air, a bit like tossing a coin.
But the reality is when you drop a slice of toast, you don't throw it up in the air like a coin, it slides off your plate or it slides off the work service. And they're just about the right height that when something slides off and starts to turn, it has enough time to turn
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Chapter 3: Does water really conduct electricity well?
So since it's the title of your book, Does Lightning Strike Twice?
Yeah, it certainly does. I think one of the reasons for this is, you know, lightning is probably the most dramatic natural occurrence that most people have experienced. You know, there are bigger things out there, more horrific things like earthquakes and so forth. But the fact is most people have experienced lightning. It's pretty frightening stuff if it's fairly close.
And if you ever see an actual lightning strike where it hits a tree or something like that, it's very dramatic. And certainly, over the centuries, most people would not have seen lightning strike in the same place twice. And because of that, a kind of folklore built up around it. But the fact is, it does happen, and it happens a lot.
Any one time around the world, there may be 20,000 lightning storms, thunderstorms happening. And somewhere where there's a nice, big, pointy thing, you will get more than one strike. So the classic is the Empire State Building. It's typically struck I think about 25 times a year and it has been struck as many as 15 times just in a single storm.
The fact is lightning really does strike more than once on the same location but it's almost become a way of referring to something. So we don't necessarily literally mean lightning doesn't strike fires, but rather more metaphorically, it's not likely to happen.
In fact, there's even one guy, there was a US park ranger called Roy Sullivan, who's been struck by lightning seven times in his career, thankfully survived them all.
Wow. He's either really... Lucky or really unlucky? I mean, just in terms of the odds, that seems like, like he must have to be trying to be struck by lightning because nobody can, that just seems impossible.
I'm not sure he's still with us, but when he was around, the kind of job he was doing, he was out there, out in the wilds a lot, out in places where you may possibly get struck by lightning more than most of us are.
One of the fun ones, because I've always wondered how you would ever know this, is that a goldfish has a three-second memory. How would you ever test that in the first place?
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Chapter 4: What is the truth about lightning striking twice?
There just is no good scientific evidence. When you treat it scientifically, which means you have to separate off all the different influences, put people in a controlled situation so that you can actually separate off what is causing something, there is no good evidence that consumption of sugar actually makes them hyper.
You claim that the Big Bang theory does not explain the beginning of the universe, but I thought that's exactly what it did explain. So sort that out for me.
That's quite a nice little example of the it's a bit more complicated than that. The Big Bang theory is a theory of how the universe works. grew from practically nothing all the way up to what we have today. And we think that has taken about 13.8 billion years for it to go from a very tiny, pretty practically nothing up to what we have now.
And the Big Bang Theory is very successful at explaining that. But we tend to kind of associate it with literally the beginning of everything. And that's the one thing the Big Bang theory doesn't do for us. It doesn't actually explain why or how the universe came into being initially. That very first start, it has to already have, if you like, the laws of physics have to be there already.
It doesn't explain where they come from. And the actual initial start of the whole thing requires, if you like it, to be there already for it to then start expanding. So it's not quite made it. And the other thing about it is we have a problem just seeing back that far. Now, the universe is really quite generous to us because light takes a long time to get to us from very distant places.
So the further out you look in the universe, the further back you see in time. And we can see back until maybe 300, 400,000 years after the beginning. But beyond that, we can't see because the universe wasn't transparent before then. Light couldn't get through it. So what that does mean is that those first years, we struggled a little bit to be sure exactly what happened then.
And certainly the Big Bang doesn't give us any insights of the initial beginning. So it's just a slight tweak, if you like. It's a great theory. It explains a lot. It gives us a timescale for the universe. But what it doesn't do is say how the universe came into being.
We're talking about science myths, things that a lot of people believe that just don't happen to be true. My guest is Brian Clegg. He is author of the book, Lightning Often Strikes Twice, The 50 Biggest Misconceptions in Science.
Hello, I am Kristen Russo. And I am Jenny Owen Youngs. We are the hosts of Buffering the Vampire Slayer once more with spoilers, a rewatch podcast covering all 144 episodes of, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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Chapter 5: Does sugar make kids hyperactive?
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So, Brian, what about blood? People say that the reason your blood is red is because it has iron in it and iron makes it give it that red color. But you say that's not true.
Blood is red because of haemoglobin. So there's substance in the stuff that carries the oxygen around the body. And that haemoglobin does contain iron. And so it's quite easy to get a little bit confused and think, OK, well, iron usually makes things reddish. So rust is iron oxide. It's an iron compound. Mars looks red because there's a lot of iron in the surface.
So we tend to associate iron and redness. But it happens, the reason hemoglobin is red is actually due to the shape of the molecule, the way it interacts with light. It's nothing to do with the fact the iron's in there. So that's one aspect of it. It's not actually caused by the iron. And the other thing is the blue blood thing is not about the color of the blood itself.
It's about the way that light interacts with your veins. It's quite separate from the colour of the blood in them. Colour is quite interesting. Sometimes it's caused by a pigment. So sometimes it's caused by the colour of stuff, but sometimes it's structural. So actually the shape of something can change the appearance or the way light interacts with molecules.
If you look up at the sky, the sky is blue, but there's no blue colour. pigment in the sky. There's nothing up there that is blue. It's literally the way the light is interacting with the molecules of air. And similarly, when you see the blue veins in your arm, it's not that the blood in them is blue. It's the way the light interacts with the material that makes up the veins.
Something I've heard, and I think a lot of people have heard this in one form or another, that that you can't explain how a bee flies, that a bee flies in defiance of the laws of physics. It's just impossible to explain. It's a mystery. And you say, it's not a mystery.
The reality is that bumblebees don't fly the way you might think. So if you think of a bird flapping its wings, it's fairly obvious what's happening. It's flapping its wings up and down. That pushes the air down, effectively pushes the bird up as it pushes the air down.
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Chapter 6: What misconceptions exist about the Big Bang theory?
You say that it's a false statement to make that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But I've always heard that the speed of light is the absolute limit. Anything can travel. So I'd like to hear that explanation.
It's another of those little, it's a little bit more complicated. We're oversimplifying when we say the speed of light is the limit. The real thing is the speed of light in a vacuum is the limit. So the fastest anything can go is the speed that light goes through empty space. but light can also go through other stuff. It can go through water, it can go through glass.
And when it does, it slows down. So light goes considerably slower through water or through glass or another solid transparent substance. And when it does that, it's closed down sufficiently that physical objects can move faster than the speed the light's going. And there's something called Cherenkov radiation that happens in nuclear reactors.
Have you ever seen a video of one of the old nuclear reactors that had water surrounding the nuclear pile? it glows blue. And the reason it's glowing blue is that little particles that are coming off out of the nuclear reactor are actually going faster through the water than the speed of light through the water.
And that produces a kind of optical equivalent of a sonic boom, which produces this blue glow. So yes, it's true. The speed of light in a vacuum is the absolute limit. But if we just say the speed of light is as fast as you can go, it's not true if you're not in a vacuum.
I remember this one, that supposedly there were subliminal messages in movies, like just a still frame of a drink or a snack or something that didn't register consciously with you, but would make you want to go to the lobby and buy a drink or some popcorn or something. And I remember people talked about that.
And the fascinating thing about this one is it was, if you like, a deliberate urban myth. So a guy who was in advertising and marketing produced a fake paper, effectively, saying that this was the case. And he used this to try to sell the idea that these subliminal messages would make people want to drink
more of a particular beverage or want to go out and have a hot dog or whatever and the fact is it just wasn't true there is no good evidence that these subliminal messages work but the fact is you know so many people have heard this that we still today in a number of countries for instance it's illegal to use subliminal messaging interestingly there are very subtle effects that do seem to happen as a result of it but what certainly isn't true is that it will suddenly turn people you know
into the urge to drink a particular drink or eat a particular substance.
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Chapter 7: Can subliminal messages in movies influence behavior?
The most recent estimates I have suggest that there are about 3 million lie detector tests a year in the United States. It's used much more heavily in some countries than others. So the US is a very, very heavy user of the polygraph. Japan is another one. So, yes, it was used and it is used. It's still used by government departments, you know, intelligence agencies and things like that.
But it's also used by police departments where they want to get a confession from someone. without necessarily having to take a case to trial. It's a much cheaper way of extracting a confession from someone if you think they're guilty than having to go through this sort of expense and process of actually taking them to trial. So it is still used quite widely.
And you see this in kind of true crime documentaries all the time where the polygraph invariably pops up at some point in the investigation. Its heyday was really in the kind of 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, I think. So after Larson did these tests on women in college dorms, then they quickly started testing suspected murderers.
And then it kind of snowballed from there with the help of a guy called Leonard Keeler, who was a high school student who really helped to popularize the machine.
Well, how accurate is it? If you take all the results of a polygraph, I mean, are you ever able to say, well, you know, it's 50-50. I mean, and if it's 50-50, what good is it?
Yeah, so the estimates range from as high as 85 to 90 percent to as low as 60 to 65 percent. So it's not much better than tossing a coin. And studies show that actually, as individuals, we can get it. We can tell when someone's lying about 54 percent of the time. So it's only slightly better than just human intuition.
And I guess this comes to the second point, which is it's not really possible to actually assess how accurate the polygraph is when it comes to criminal investigations, because you never actually know what really happened. Say someone gets found guilty with the polygraph, then gets found guilty by a jury and gets sent to prison. That doesn't necessarily mean they were guilty.
So you can never really know. All you can really tell is that in this case, the polygraph agreed with the jury. In this case, the polygraph didn't agree with the jury. But juries are fallible as well. So you can never really tell how accurate the polygraph actually is in the real world rather than lab studies.
Well, what are the things that a polygraph machine is measuring? When we see the little needle on the paper, what's sending the needle up and down or not moving much, or what's it measuring?
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Chapter 8: Why do some science myths persist?
It's very, very subjective. So, yes, you can give two different examiners the same chart to examine and they could come up with completely different answers as to whether the person was lying.
It almost sounds like because it is so subjective and because people are so different that it's basically worthless.
Yes, essentially. That would be my contention. I mean, I think that the machine has obviously helped to put criminals away. There's no getting around that. But the problem is that it's also perpetrated serious miscarriages of justice. Essentially, the reason the polygraph has been so successful is because of the theatre around it, right?
It works because people believe it works so that the mere threat of being attached to a polygraph can compel someone to confess to the crime before the exam even takes place because they're so worried about being found out because they believe the machine works even if it doesn't actually work.
Yeah, that sounds like that's the real secret to the polygraph, that if somebody refuses to take one, maybe we better give this guy a closer look.
I mean, you don't even need a polygraph machine some of the time. So there's a great story from David Simon's book about policing in Baltimore where he describes the situation. And I think it's recreated in an episode of The Wire, actually, where the police officers didn't have a polygraph available. So they used a Xerox machine.
And they put the subject's hand on a Xerox machine and told the subject that it was a lie detector and then just got the machine to print out a piece of paper with he's lying written on it. And that was enough to kind of trick the suspect into actually, you know, believing that the machine could read their mind.
Well, it does the job. It gets the guy to confess because he thinks he's in a corner, basically.
Exactly. Yes, it does the job. It's all about the theater of it. And actually, they realized this very early on, the inventors of the polygraph, that it was largely about the theater. So they did take steps to amp that up.
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