Sunday, October 25, 2009

Are We Alone for 10/26/09 - Skeptic Check: Mind Your Body

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Are We Alone - Skeptic Check: Mind Your Body

Popping a pill may help when you’re sick… but maybe not for the reasons you think. Sugar pills – placebos – cure illness better than prescription pills in as many as half of all cases in clinical trials … and the placebo effect is getting stronger.

Plus, the safety – or otherwise – of electromagnetic waves, and the “electro-sensitive” refugees who have built a camp to protect themselves from waves they say are causing pain. Is it all in their minds?

And, New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye joins Phil Plait on the latest lapse in critically-thinking brains – a wild idea that may not be so loony: namely, could a cosmic censor from the future be thwarting efforts to find the Higgs boson?

It’s Skeptic Check … but don’t take our word for it! You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Are We A Blog?, the companion blog to the radio show.

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