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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And hey, if you are

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Speaker 3: new to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, I

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Speaker 3: thought we do a brief explainer of who we are.

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Speaker 3: We don't usually do a bumper at the beginning of

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Speaker 3: our shows to say like, here's who we are, this

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Speaker 3: is our deal, but we thought we might have some

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Speaker 3: new people on board because we just recently added a

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Speaker 3: new video component of our podcast. We've been running a

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Speaker 3: long time. Got how many years.

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Speaker 2: At this point, We've always been here.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I've been on this show since twenty

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Speaker 3: fifteen or so, Rob, you've been doing it significantly longer

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Speaker 3: than that. But as an audio format podcast, so for

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Speaker 3: many years we've covered topics, a lot of topics related

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Speaker 3: to science, a general nexus of kind of science and culture.

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Speaker 3: But we have interdisciplinary tastes. We like to talk about

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Speaker 3: stuff where science connects to literature or mythology, all kinds

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Speaker 3: of stuff like that. So that's who we are. We've

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Speaker 3: been around a long time, and the video thing is new.

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Speaker 3: So if you are here watching us, on Netflix here

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Speaker 3: at the beginning of a new phase.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and as you hear us refer back to old episodes,

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Speaker 2: you might wonder, well, where are these episodes? I do

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Speaker 2: not see them. Well, you may be able to hear them.

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Speaker 2: Just go to wherever you get your podcast, look for

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Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow your Mind. Go ahead and subscribe. You'll

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Speaker 2: also find all of our podcast episodes there from years

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Speaker 2: and years back.

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Speaker 3: That's right, So end bracket on the prelude there. Today,

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Speaker 3: on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, we're going

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Speaker 3: to be talking about a substance called polywater. And I

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Speaker 3: think the first thing we need to establish about polywater

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Speaker 3: is that polywater does not exist. So this is not

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Speaker 3: going to be one of those episodes where we're talking

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Speaker 3: about an interesting, hypothetical, maybe existing substance. It's not like

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Speaker 3: the you know, the various candidates for dark matter, like

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Speaker 3: axions or weekly interacting massive particles. You know, these substances

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Speaker 3: where there's a reasonable debate about whether they exist or

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Speaker 3: there's a theoretical reason to keep looking for them and

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Speaker 3: tests to see if they exist. Polywater is not like that. Today,

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Speaker 3: no credible scientist thinks polywater is real, and there's really

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Speaker 3: no theoretical reason to think it might be real or

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Speaker 3: to keep looking for it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I do want to throw out, just to avoid

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Speaker 2: any confusion, this is polywater lowercase P. There is also

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Speaker 2: polywater capital P. So what we're talking about here not

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Speaker 2: to be confused with the American Polywater Corporation, the name

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Speaker 2: of which comes from a nineteen seventy three water based

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Speaker 2: cable pulling lubricant. Basically, the idea is that this was

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Speaker 2: trademarked under the name polywater as an odd to what

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Speaker 2: we're talking about here today. So which just to avoid

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Speaker 2: confusion there.

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Speaker 3: That will become increasingly hilarious the more you learn about

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Speaker 3: the scientific polywater controversy, like why would you name a

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Speaker 3: product after this?

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Speaker 2: Supposedly the creator just considered polywater. Polywater that we're talking

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Speaker 2: about here is kind of like the Holy Grail. It's

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Speaker 2: kind of like a unicorn, and he just was really

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Speaker 2: attached to the idea, like I'm going to name it polywater,

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Speaker 2: and okay, it has stuck. It's the name of the corporation.

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Speaker 3: So if lowercase P polywater never existed, why are we

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Speaker 3: talking about it? Well, because, as with many cases in

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Speaker 3: history where people got something very wrong, there's actually a

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Speaker 3: lot you can learn by looking at the ways people

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Speaker 3: came to incorrect conclusions and sort of following their logic

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Speaker 3: and seeing where they went astray. So polywater has been

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Speaker 3: used in many interesting books and articles over the years

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Speaker 3: as a great example of what is called pathological science,

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Speaker 3: certain types of patterns of behavior that can lead researchers

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Speaker 3: into dead ends where they delude themselves into believing things

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Speaker 3: that are not based in fact. And one thing I

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Speaker 3: think we should really emphasize about polywater is that it

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Speaker 3: was not just some obscure little rabbit hole that a

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Speaker 3: few people went down at one point in history. For

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Speaker 3: a period of a few years, beginning in the nineteen

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Speaker 3: sixties and stretching into the early seventies, polywater was a

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Speaker 3: huge deal. A bunch of people all around the world,

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Speaker 3: including many leading scientists on the cutting edge of physical chemistry,

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Speaker 3: became convinced that it did exist, and some even became

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Speaker 3: quite obsessed with it, because if polywater did exist, it

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Speaker 3: would be a revolutionary, potentially world changing discovery. In one

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Speaker 3: of the sources I was reading, there is a quote

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Speaker 3: attributed to the Irish physicist John Desmond Bernal, who was

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Speaker 3: famous for pioneering the use of X ray crystallography. There's

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Speaker 3: some dispute about whether he actually said this or not,

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Speaker 3: but it's at least widely attributed to him secondhand that

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Speaker 3: he said, this is the most important physical chemical discovery

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Speaker 3: of the century.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 3: And the popular media, by the way, went crazy for polywater.

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Speaker 3: So you know, once this leapt out of the scientific

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Speaker 3: conferences and journals into the popular press, people were speculating

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Speaker 3: wildly about how polywater might drive all kinds of astounding

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Speaker 3: new technologies, from machine lubrication to new designs for nuclear reactors.

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Speaker 3: Maybe it's the key to understanding the secrets of life.

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Speaker 3: It's like what drives cell biology. Maybe it will unlock

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Speaker 3: eternal longevity. You know, we can live forever because of polywater.

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Speaker 3: There's a great There was a Wall Street Journal article

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Speaker 3: that I found quoted in a book that said, quote,

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Speaker 3: a few years from now, living room furniture may be

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Speaker 3: made out of water.

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Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I would love that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. But by around the year nineteen seventy three, basically

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Speaker 3: everyone had figured out, oh, this was never real. So

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Speaker 3: we've been talking about how its hypothetical existence was processed.

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Speaker 3: But what was it? What was polywater supposed to be

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Speaker 3: Polywater was claimed to be not just some weird, obscure,

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Speaker 3: newly discovered molecule, but rather the until now hidden liquid

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Speaker 3: form of a very familiar molecule. Polywater was supposed to

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Speaker 3: be water. It was chemically identical to regular water. It

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Speaker 3: was H two oh, but it was allegedly a new

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Speaker 3: liquid structure of water discovered in a lab in the

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Speaker 3: Soviet Union, with a polymerized structure at the molecular level.

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Speaker 3: There were different ways of imagining what this polymer structure

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Speaker 3: looked like. Maybe these arrangements of squares or arrangements of hexagons.

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Speaker 3: Maybe we can talk more about that later in the episode.

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Speaker 3: But this polymerized arrangement of the water molecules was said

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Speaker 3: to give the water different characteristics, like a higher boiling point,

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Speaker 3: lower freezing point, and at room temperature, a thick, viscous consistency,

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Speaker 3: often compared to petroleum jelly. It was said to be

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Speaker 3: roughly forty percent denser or up to forty percent denser

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Speaker 3: than liquid water.

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Speaker 2: Thicken your suits, I guess exactly.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, just so even better than wondra, you know. So

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Speaker 3: imagine a form of water with no additives. Its just

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Speaker 3: plain water that has rearranged itself so that it feels

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Speaker 3: and behaves kind of like vasileine.

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Speaker 2: Okay, all right, hard to imagine, but which is weird,

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Speaker 2: you know, because we're not talking about like sentient water

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Speaker 2: or anything. It's just but still it's like, it's hard

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Speaker 2: to imagine. Yeah, I have a hard time imagining water

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Speaker 2: that behaves like basoline without thinking of just being some

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Speaker 2: basoline type substance.

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Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, you'd think it was something else, But no,

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Speaker 3: this is the idea. This is just another form water

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Speaker 3: can take. And what's more shocking is that some researchers

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Speaker 3: working on polywater, certainly not all, but some of them

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Speaker 3: came to the conclusion that actually it was the most

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Speaker 3: stable form of water, more stable than the regular, thin,

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Speaker 3: sloshy water all around us and all throughout the environment,

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Speaker 3: raising the question of whether polywater was not actually the

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Speaker 3: true form of water, the water to which our form

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Speaker 3: of water wanted to return. So one interpretation take by some,

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Speaker 3: again not all, but some, was that it was possible

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Speaker 3: all the water around us could, given the right circumstances,

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Speaker 3: be turned into polywater, and it might be extremely difficult

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Speaker 3: or impossible to turn it back.

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Speaker 2: All right, All the water around us includes everything, it

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Speaker 2: includes us. Yeah, so this is what neat that yea, yeah,

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Speaker 2: this is a pretty dire outlook, yes, yeah.

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Speaker 3: So I want to emphasize this was not the consensus

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Speaker 3: of polywater proponents at the time, but it was a

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Speaker 3: view being talked about in public. And just to set

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Speaker 3: the tone of how seriously some people took this idea,

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Speaker 3: I want to read an excerpt from a highly alarming

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Speaker 3: letter published in the journal Nature in nineteen sixty nine.

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Speaker 3: So this is not in some you know, crank publication.

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Speaker 3: This is like the premiere scientific journal. It's in Nature,

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Speaker 3: written by a chemist named F. J. Donaho of Wilkes

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Speaker 3: College in Pennsylvania. So here's some excerpts from note. Donaho writes, quote,

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Speaker 3: after being convinced of the existence of polywater, I am

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Speaker 3: not easily persuaded that it is not dangerous. The consequences

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Speaker 3: of being wrong about this matter are so serious that

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Speaker 3: only positive evidence that there is no danger would be acceptable.

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Speaker 3: Only the existence of natural ambient mechanisms which depolymerize the

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Speaker 3: material would prove its safety. Until such mechanisms are known

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Speaker 3: to exist, I regard the polymer as the most dangerous

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Speaker 3: material on Earth. Every effort must be made to establish

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Speaker 3: the absolute safety of the material before it is commercially produced.

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Speaker 3: Once the polymer nuclei become dispersed in the soil, it

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Speaker 3: will be too late to do anything. Even as I write,

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Speaker 3: there are undoubtedly scores of groups preparing polywater treat it

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Speaker 3: as the most deadly virus until its safety is established.

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Speaker 2: Oh wow, keep watching the sky energy amazing.

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Speaker 3: Note very firmly again that not everyone agreed with this

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Speaker 3: level of alarm, and the next issue of Nature published

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Speaker 3: several replies from prominent experts arguing that this warning was

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Speaker 3: grossly exaggerated and misguided, and they offered some good arguments

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Speaker 3: why polywater was not dangerous in the way Donahoe suggested.

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Speaker 3: We'll get more into that later. And of course there's

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Speaker 3: an added level of absurdity in that the substance they

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Speaker 3: were arguing about turned out to have never existed at all,

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Speaker 3: or at least not in the way that was understood.

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Speaker 3: But given what was believed at the time, these researchers,

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Speaker 3: I think had good arguments against Donahoe's level of alarm,

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Speaker 3: But I want to be sympathetic to people who would

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Speaker 3: have been really freaked out by this. When I put

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Speaker 3: myself in the place of a non expert in nineteen

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Speaker 3: sixty nine who maybe reads a newspaper article about this

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Speaker 3: note published in a leading scientific journal, and I don't understand,

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Speaker 3: or I maybe don't even encounter the soothing counter arguments

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Speaker 3: against it. It is a terrifying proposition. The feeling to

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Speaker 3: me when reading this note was kind of like when

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Speaker 3: Sarruman says, you know, the hour is later than you think.

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Speaker 3: He's got that line. Even as I write this, groups

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Speaker 3: around the world are creating this stuff, that microscopic quantities

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Speaker 3: of a substance that, if it escaped containment, could turn

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Speaker 3: Earth into a lifeless wax world. So many things about

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Speaker 3: this are so frightening if you don't if you imagine

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Speaker 3: yourself without the benefit of hindsight and maybe not understanding

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Speaker 3: the expert arguments against them, like the threat is microscopic.

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Speaker 3: Once it escapes, it is too late. I have no

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Speaker 3: control over this. Other people are doing it that I

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Speaker 3: can't stop them. They're making it right now. Also, imagine

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Speaker 3: this in the context of Cold War paranoia and the

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Speaker 3: nuclear arms race. You know, everybody's got a mindset of

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Speaker 3: you know, races to achieve new types of weapons and

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Speaker 3: potentials on either side of the Cold War. And then finally,

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Speaker 3: just the specific image of catastrophe conjured up here is

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Speaker 3: so weird and grotesque, Like, imagine all of our water

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Speaker 3: is now transformed into some kind of waxy substance or gel.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the oceans turning into some sort of grotesque jell

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Speaker 2: o product, or our bodies suddenly transforming into some sort

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Speaker 2: of I'm only imagining here, but like a denser sludge

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Speaker 2: body that of course is also lifeless because it would

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Speaker 2: it would kill us. Yeah, crazy, crazy to imagine. And

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Speaker 2: then I think the atomic tie in is key because

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Speaker 2: at this point we are well aware of the fact

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Speaker 2: that the Cold War competition and other drivers in our

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Speaker 2: culture have certainly proven that we will totally race toward

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Speaker 2: complete and collective annihilation. Yeah, so it's not you know,

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Speaker 2: it's not like we would all say, whoa hold on,

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Speaker 2: let's not do polywater. It would be like, oh, if

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Speaker 2: you're doing polywater while I'm doing polywater, I'm gonna do

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Speaker 2: polywater even harder, right, and then.

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Speaker 3: We're all sledge Yeah, And we can talk about some

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Speaker 3: analogies to this later on. One thing I'm sure lots

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Speaker 3: of people listening or watching out there are already thinking

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Speaker 3: of is the connection to Cat's Cradle. Tons of authors

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Speaker 3: writing on this subject have compared Donahoe's polywater doomsday scenario

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Speaker 3: in this letter to a famous literary analog, and that

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Speaker 3: is the fictional substance known as ice nine from Kurt

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Speaker 3: Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, which is responsible for the apocalyptic

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Speaker 3: ending of the book. People made this comparison, I want

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Speaker 3: to emphasize at the time the novel was already out.

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Speaker 3: It was published in nineteen sixty three, so this is

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Speaker 3: not just a retrospective comparison we're making now and people

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Speaker 3: were writing about it in nineteen sixty nine.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is fascinating. We've touched on Einstein before

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Speaker 2: because we did some episodes on different forms, different types

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Speaker 2: of ice.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So, first of all, it is totally fictional. There's no

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Speaker 2: such thing as ice neine, But within the context of

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Speaker 2: the novel, it's said to be a polymorph of water

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Speaker 2: with a much higher freezing point, and it converts all

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Speaker 2: water to ice nine upon contact. So it could be

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Speaker 2: the ocean, it could be the water inside a human

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Speaker 2: body if it makes contact it's going to change that

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Speaker 2: water into this new form of water, and that is

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Speaker 2: going to be disastrous for all concerned.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it would be acting as what's called a seed crystal.

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Speaker 3: The idea is it goes in and it provides a

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Speaker 3: nucleation point that all of the water around it around

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Speaker 3: it to rearrange into the ice nine form. Yeah, and

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Speaker 3: so would change all of the water in the biosphere

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Speaker 3: into this form that is frozen up to I think

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Speaker 3: like one hundred and fourteen degrees fahrenheit they say in

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Speaker 3: the novel. So obviously that's not good and it is

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Speaker 3: apocalyptic in the story. In fact, I have my copy

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Speaker 3: of Kat's Cradle right here. I got it off the shelf.

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Speaker 3: I was trying to find a good passage at the

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Speaker 3: end here that describes it. I didn't. I don't know,

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Speaker 3: maybe there is one I didn't dig up. There's one

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Speaker 3: part where so at the end of the story spoiler

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Speaker 3: alert for Kat's Cradle. But at the end of the story,

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Speaker 3: the ice nine does get out and it transforms all

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Speaker 3: of the water in the natural environment into ice nine.

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Speaker 3: And so the main character talks about like peeking up

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Speaker 3: out of a bunker into the world and he says.

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Speaker 3: He says, there were no smells, there was no movement.

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Speaker 3: Every step I took made a gravelly squeak and blue

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Speaker 3: white frost, and every squeak was echoed loudly. The season

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Speaker 3: of locking was over. The earth was locked up tight.

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Speaker 3: It was winter now and forever.

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Speaker 2: Yeah that's bleak. Yeah, So I actually have not read

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Speaker 2: Cat's Cradle. This is not one of the Vonnegut books

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Speaker 2: I've read. Do people get ice nined in this as well?

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Speaker 2: Or is it just the.

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Speaker 3: Yes, it works out badly for people. Not a happy ending.

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Speaker 2: Now. I did look up the origin story, or at

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Speaker 2: least what is said to be the origin story of

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Speaker 2: this novel, and the story here goes that you had HG. Wells,

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Speaker 2: the noted author, legendary author science fiction during the nineteen thirties.

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Speaker 2: He visits GE Labs and while there he meets Irving

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Speaker 2: Lagmir who were actually going to come back to His

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Speaker 2: work included some ice based cloud seating. I think he

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Speaker 2: did some de icing research as well, and he pitched

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Speaker 2: the idea to HG. Wells. He's like, hey, you should

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Speaker 2: do a story about some sort of room temperature stable ice,

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Speaker 2: and Wells of course never wrote anything with that concept,

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Speaker 2: but people overheard this exchange. Apparently it included Kurt Vonnegut's brother,

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Speaker 2: his older brother, who apparently worked at G E. Labs

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Speaker 2: at the time, as did Kurt Vonnegut, I believe, And

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Speaker 2: so again, Wells never used it, and after both Lagmuir

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Speaker 2: and Wells had passed away, Kurt figured, hey, it's fair game.

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Speaker 2: I can take this and run with it now, and

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Speaker 2: he did. How much of that is true? I don't know.

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Speaker 2: That's the story anyway.

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Speaker 3: And we should note that there actually is a form

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Speaker 3: of ice known as ice nine, but it does not

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Speaker 3: have any of the properties described.

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Speaker 2: And I think cannot exist on Earth given the pressures

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Speaker 2: that we have on Earth. So it's yeah, for many

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Speaker 2: different reasons, this does not exist, and nothing like ice

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Speaker 2: nine in the novel exists.

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Speaker 3: Kind of like the polywater doomstay scenario for multiple reasons.

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Speaker 3: Not something to worry about.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, now, are there things like polywater to maybe worry about. Well,

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Speaker 2: maybe we'll get back to those, either later on in

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Speaker 2: this episode or in a subsequent episode.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, Robert, you cool if we jump here into

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Speaker 3: sort of a historical sketch of the polywater affair.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do.

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Speaker 3: It, Okay. So I'm going to try to run through

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Speaker 3: a basic timeline of the polywater craze, and I want

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Speaker 3: to mention a couple of my main sources here. One

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Speaker 3: is an article called case Studies in Pathological Science published

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Speaker 3: in American Scientist in the year nineteen ninety two. The

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Speaker 3: author of this article is Dennis L. Rousseau, a PhD.

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Speaker 3: Physical chemist who was a longtime technical staff member at

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Speaker 3: Bell Labs. I looked him up and it looks like

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Speaker 3: now he's affiliated with Albert Einstein College of Medicine in

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Speaker 3: New York. But Rousseau is a great source on this

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Speaker 3: because he not only has he's not only done the

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Speaker 3: research to give this historical sketch and couch it in

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Speaker 3: the framing of pathological science, he was also personally involved

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Speaker 3: in polywater research on the skeptical side. He was the author,

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Speaker 3: the lead author of one of the main experiments that

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Speaker 3: really put the nail in the coffin of the polywater program.

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Speaker 3: That was kind of the final embarrassment to it.

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Speaker 2: I killed polywater.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. And I don't frame it like that, like he's

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Speaker 3: trying to crow over it or be mean like that.

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Speaker 3: I mean he approaches the subject, I think with some humility,

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Speaker 3: but yes, he did put out an experimental result that

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Speaker 3: was potentially kind of humiliating to polywater, even if it

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Speaker 3: wasn't meant to be. The other source that I found

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Speaker 3: really useful is a fantastic chapter in a book called

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Speaker 3: H two OO, A Biography of Water by the British

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Speaker 3: science writer Philip Ball, great science writer who I always

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Speaker 3: like his work. This book was first published in nineteen

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Speaker 3: ninety nine, and Ball has a really good historical overview

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Speaker 3: of polywater and again frames it within the context of

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Speaker 3: pathological science. So research on polywater began in the Soviet

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Speaker 3: Union in the early nineteen sixties, and it's worth pointing

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Speaker 3: out that it was not initially called polywater. For the

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Speaker 3: first few years, publications on this subject mostly referred to

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Speaker 3: it as anomalous water. And I think that difference in

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Speaker 3: naming may be more important than you might assume at first.

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Speaker 3: We'll maybe come back and discuss that later, but I

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Speaker 3: want to start off here kind of framing this within

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Speaker 3: the environment of global science in the nineteen sixties. So

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Speaker 3: obviously at this time, huge advancements were being made in

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Speaker 3: a bunch of fields, you know, computer science, aerospace, molecular biology,

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Speaker 3: and Philip Ball really flags this as well. Scientists were

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Speaker 3: constantly making discoveries that they, in many cases correctly predicted

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Speaker 3: would change the world. So it's a frothy time in

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Speaker 3: the sciences. But the global advance of science at this

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Speaker 3: time was made sort of awkward by the Cold War.

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Speaker 3: For the most part, Western scientists published in British and

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Speaker 3: American sometimes continental European journals, the majority of which were

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Speaker 3: in English, while Eastern Bloc scientists mostly published in Russian

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Speaker 3: language journals, And there was transmission of scientific information back

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Speaker 3: and forth, like there was translation of journals going from

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Speaker 3: each side to the other, but the transmission of information

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Speaker 3: between the two spheres was limited in certain ways, for

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Speaker 3: both intentional and unintentional reasons. And these reasons included everything

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Speaker 3: from certain types of government restrictions on travel and communication

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Speaker 3: across the Iron Curtain to simple things like the language

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Speaker 3: barrier and the financial costs of acquiring Western journals in

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Speaker 3: the Soviet Union. And it seems to me that motivations

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Speaker 3: and outlook throughout the scientific community were very mixed. Like

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Speaker 3: some scientists on both sides had a more global view

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Speaker 3: of worldwide cooperation, very you know, for the good of

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Speaker 3: humankind kind of approach to scientific work. Others were more

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Speaker 3: partisan or nationalistic, you know, trying to advance their side

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Speaker 3: in the Cold War and kind of jealous or suspicious

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Speaker 3: of the other side. So while communication of cutting edge

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Speaker 3: science between East and West did happen, it was sometimes

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Speaker 3: limited or delayed, and in certain fields that were seen

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Speaker 3: as more crucial for national security, it was more often

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Speaker 3: tightly constrained or not shared at all, And a lot

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Speaker 3: of times when new discoveries were shared between the two spheres,

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Speaker 3: it happened at these international conferences, through lectures or even

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Speaker 3: just individual chance meetings between scientists.

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Speaker 2: We've discussed before on the show how this competitiveness in

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Speaker 2: the Cold War it led also led to things like

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Speaker 2: paranormal research on both sides, where a lot of it

393
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Speaker 2: seemed to have been fueled by the idea that, like,

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Speaker 2: there may be nothing to this, but if there is

395
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Speaker 2: something to yes, we want we want to at least

396
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Speaker 2: be on equal footing with the enemy. And of course

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Speaker 2: there was nothing to any of it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, if the Soviets are training psychic assassins, we better

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Speaker 3: check that out too and see if there's something going

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Speaker 3: on here.

401
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:23,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, even if in reality we might maybe we're even

402
00:24:23,760 --> 00:24:26,520
Speaker 2: we're even falling into a trap, wasting our time, and

403
00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:29,720
Speaker 2: that was the whole point. So yeah, we've discussed that

404
00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:33,000
Speaker 2: on the show before, so similar energy in some of this, I imagine.

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Speaker 3: So the timeline for polywater within this context starts in

406
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Speaker 3: the early nineteen sixties. I think the first research would

407
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Speaker 3: have been around nineteen sixty two when a Soviet researcher

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Speaker 3: named Nikolai Fedyakin made a discovery while working at the

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Speaker 3: Polytechnical Institute in Kostroma, which is a city on the

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Speaker 3: Volga northeast of Moscow. And what Fedyakin found was that

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Speaker 3: when you put water inside a very narrow glass capillary tube,

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Speaker 3: so imagine like a tiny, tiny glass straw where the

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Speaker 3: tube is only about as wide as a human hair,

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Speaker 3: or even narrower. When you did that, it appeared that

415
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Speaker 3: the water would somehow separate into two different columns of liquid.

416
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Speaker 3: So think about like you ever mix up a salad dressing.

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Speaker 3: You're mixing up oil and water. If you don't have

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Speaker 3: a good to mulsifier in there, you might shake it

419
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Speaker 3: up and it'll get all mixed up, but then over

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Speaker 3: time the suspension will separate and the oil will float

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Speaker 3: to the top. Fadyakin was watching something like this happen

422
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Speaker 3: over a period of days or weeks inside these extremely

423
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Speaker 3: tiny glass tubes, except it wasn't oil and water, it

424
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Speaker 3: was just water. So it was like pure water was

425
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Speaker 3: separating into water and question marks something else. What could

426
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Speaker 3: it be? And this anomolus secondary substance would tend to

427
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:06,000
Speaker 3: appear at the top of the column in the tube,

428
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Speaker 3: and it seemed to grow in volume proportional to a

429
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Speaker 3: loss of water at the bottom of the tube. It

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Speaker 3: wasn't like all of the water became the stuff at

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Speaker 3: the top, but it looked to Fedyakin like some of

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Speaker 3: it turned into this water at the top. So it

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Speaker 3: really seemed like what was happening was that the regular

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Speaker 3: water was evaporating from below and then condensing above, having

435
00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 3: been transformed into something else. But there was no physical

436
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:37,960
Speaker 3: reason it should have been evaporating and condensing somewhere else,

437
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:41,160
Speaker 3: because the temperature and the pressure in the tubes were

438
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:45,800
Speaker 3: supposedly held constant throughout. So the only way this would

439
00:26:45,800 --> 00:26:49,480
Speaker 3: really make sense was if the secondary water was somehow

440
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:54,000
Speaker 3: different from the primary water, with a lower vapor pressure

441
00:26:54,600 --> 00:27:00,160
Speaker 3: meaning a higher boiling point, and Fedyakin believed this secondary

442
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 3: liquid was still water, but it was a new form

443
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 3: of water, chemically identical irregular water, so still h two oz,

444
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:10,600
Speaker 3: but with a different physical structure that gave it different

445
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:14,440
Speaker 3: properties at scale. For example, it seemed to be denser

446
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 3: than normal liquid water. And I'll come back to those

447
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:20,320
Speaker 3: properties in just a minute. But here we have the

448
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:23,760
Speaker 3: intervention of a figure who will become incredibly important in

449
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:28,639
Speaker 3: the history of polywater. After Fedyakin publishes his findings in

450
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 3: a Russian journal, they catch the attention of an extremely

451
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:38,320
Speaker 3: distinguished and important Soviet chemist and named Boris V. Der Yagan. Deryagan,

452
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 3: working out of Moscow, believed this anomalous water to be

453
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:46,959
Speaker 3: of immense scientific and technological importance, so he started a

454
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:51,000
Speaker 3: collaboration with Fedyakin, and then it seems he effectively took

455
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:54,520
Speaker 3: over research on the subject. So for a while, Derriagan

456
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:57,760
Speaker 3: would become sort of the anomalous water guy. He's the

457
00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:01,720
Speaker 3: main advocate for this program, and he and his colleagues

458
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:05,040
Speaker 3: published ten papers on the anomalous water by the time

459
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:08,760
Speaker 3: he presented on this subject at a conference in nineteen

460
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:13,960
Speaker 3: sixty six. So we mentioned earlier what some of the characteristics,

461
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:17,560
Speaker 3: the alleged characteristics of this anomalous water were, but I

462
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:20,399
Speaker 3: just want to run through them briefly again here. The

463
00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 3: numbers cited tend to be different in different sources, and

464
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:27,560
Speaker 3: I think this probably reflects a range of reported results

465
00:28:27,600 --> 00:28:30,439
Speaker 3: in the primary literature, so I'm trying to kind of

466
00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:34,199
Speaker 3: put them all together here. This water somehow did not

467
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:37,360
Speaker 3: boil at the regular boiling point of water, so did

468
00:28:37,359 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 3: not boil at one hundred degrees celsius. It had a

469
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 3: much higher boiling point. Some sources place it at about

470
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 3: two hundred degrees cee. Others say more like three hundred degrees.

471
00:28:47,360 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 2: That's going to definitely hurt your soup thickening applications here.

472
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, some problems here. Its freezing point seem to also

473
00:28:55,680 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 3: be more of a range, beginning at about negative thirty

474
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 3: degrees celsia, and then I've seen other sources say negative

475
00:29:02,800 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 3: fifty degrees celsius. And again it was said to be

476
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 3: more dense and viscous than normal water. So we get

477
00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:11,959
Speaker 3: a range of figures, but it's up to like forty

478
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:17,280
Speaker 3: percent denser than normal water and fifteen times more viscous.

479
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:21,360
Speaker 3: Sources describe its consistency as similar to that of petroleum

480
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 3: jelly like vacilline, or sometimes compare it to paraffin wax.

481
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:29,640
Speaker 3: I want to emphasize though here there was very little

482
00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:31,920
Speaker 3: of it being made, So this wasn't like they were

483
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 3: making bowls of it and sticking their hands into it

484
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 3: and saying, oh, it's like vacoline. They were making microscopic

485
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:45,160
Speaker 3: quantities and then extract extrapolating from those microscopic quantities into

486
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 3: what they thought the macroscopic qualities would be.

487
00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:52,400
Speaker 2: Okay, reminds me a little bit of our recent episode

488
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 2: on the idea of manufacturing gold and what is currently

489
00:29:57,560 --> 00:30:00,400
Speaker 2: possible like small unstable amounts so forth.

490
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, this is a somewhat

491
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 3: similar It is a manufacturing program of this very interesting

492
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:11,240
Speaker 3: and potentially quite valuable new material. But they can only

493
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 3: make tiny, tiny amounts at a time. So this anomalous water,

494
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:31,480
Speaker 3: if it really existed, would have bizarre and fascinating implications.

495
00:30:31,600 --> 00:30:34,920
Speaker 3: For one thing, Philip Ball explains this in his chapter,

496
00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 3: it might not even make sense to call this new

497
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 3: water anomalous water, because really this form of water, with

498
00:30:42,840 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 3: the lower vapor pressure would potentially be the more stable

499
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:51,840
Speaker 3: form of water. So really it would be the regular water,

500
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 3: and the water that we know would be the weird

501
00:30:54,920 --> 00:30:57,760
Speaker 3: water that would be it would be the unusual form.

502
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:03,400
Speaker 3: It might be what can mists call meta stable. Meta

503
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:08,880
Speaker 3: stable would mean it's in a semi stable form occupying

504
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 3: a local energy minimum, which, given the right conditions to

505
00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 3: get past that energy barrier, will hop down and transform

506
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:23,080
Speaker 3: into the more stable lower energy form. As a rough analogy,

507
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 3: you can think of meta stability as the chemical equivalent

508
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:29,320
Speaker 3: of like a ball sitting in a bowl on the

509
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:32,680
Speaker 3: edge of a table. So the ball is stable sitting

510
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 3: in the bowl. It's not going to suddenly fall through

511
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:38,720
Speaker 3: the bottom of the bowl and through the table onto

512
00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 3: the floor. But if it's somehow perturbed, like if it

513
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,120
Speaker 3: is knocked over the lip of the bowl and off

514
00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:48,240
Speaker 3: the edge of the table, gravity will act on it

515
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:50,000
Speaker 3: and pull it all the way down to the floor.

516
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:53,520
Speaker 3: So in this analogy, the bowl is the liquid water

517
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 3: we know and the floor is the anomalous water. Here

518
00:31:56,800 --> 00:31:58,400
Speaker 3: we get back to that scary image.

519
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:02,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, scary is a good description because it does

520
00:32:02,400 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 2: remind me of a number of the concepts that you

521
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 2: encounter in cosmic horror. You know, where there's generally some

522
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:12,360
Speaker 2: sort of a scenario by which reality, be it inner

523
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 2: reality or outer reality as we know it turns out

524
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:20,840
Speaker 2: to be in a lot more fragile a place. Yes,

525
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 2: and just by knowing about its fragility, you put it

526
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 2: at risk.

527
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 3: Yes. Yes, that the horror of what you thought was

528
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:32,480
Speaker 3: normal is actually the brief exception, and we were about

529
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:36,520
Speaker 3: to return to the more normal state of reality, which

530
00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 3: is horrifying to us.

531
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:38,920
Speaker 2: Yeah.

532
00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:41,440
Speaker 3: So I feel like I need to emphasize again that

533
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:44,719
Speaker 3: this was by no means agreed on by all proponents

534
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:48,840
Speaker 3: of the new water. But to some it seemed possible

535
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:53,920
Speaker 3: that thermodynamically all water wanted to be the anomalous water,

536
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 3: and with the right push, like some kind of seed crystal,

537
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 3: it could turn into polywater. So what would have been

538
00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:08,120
Speaker 3: the theoretical reason that water took this different form. Philip

539
00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 3: Ball's account here again has a great section explaining the reasoning.

540
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:16,440
Speaker 3: One thing that is absolutely true is that molecules of

541
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:22,320
Speaker 3: liquid water behave weirdly and assume new structures when they

542
00:33:22,360 --> 00:33:26,480
Speaker 3: come into contact with a surface or a wall. At

543
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:30,880
Speaker 3: the interface with a surface, several layers of liquid water

544
00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:36,920
Speaker 3: molecules nearest the surface will often form unusual patterns and arrangements,

545
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:40,479
Speaker 3: so they'll act differently than water. Just in the center

546
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:43,800
Speaker 3: of a mass of liquid water, right up at the wall,

547
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:48,680
Speaker 3: they start to arrange themselves in different ways. Boris Deriagan

548
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 3: knew something about this and proposed that something about the

549
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:58,720
Speaker 3: interaction with the glass surface on the inside of the

550
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:04,040
Speaker 3: capillary tube caused the water to assume this new structure

551
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 3: and then, even more remarkably, somehow remember or retain this

552
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:16,160
Speaker 3: new structure even after evaporating and condensing again. So Derriagan

553
00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 3: and his team they started, you know, they fired up

554
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 3: production and started making samples of this anomalous water. They

555
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 3: came up with a faster system than Fidyakin had used,

556
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 3: though the amounts they were able to produce it at

557
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:31,760
Speaker 3: a time were still very, very small, because the tubes

558
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 3: were tiny, Like the tubes were like a tenth of

559
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 3: a millimeter in width, and the columns of this anomalous

560
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:40,640
Speaker 3: water they were making, you know, might only be a

561
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:45,439
Speaker 3: millimeter tall. So you're talking tiny, tiny amounts. And one

562
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:48,600
Speaker 3: thing we're thinking about is that when you've got that

563
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:52,120
Speaker 3: little of a sample to work with, with these tiny,

564
00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:55,600
Speaker 3: tiny amounts, you really need to be conscious of the

565
00:34:55,680 --> 00:35:00,200
Speaker 3: dangers of contamination. Philip Ball flags this and Rousseauta talk

566
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:03,120
Speaker 3: about this in his paper as well. You're making so

567
00:35:03,640 --> 00:35:07,760
Speaker 3: little of it that even a tiny amount of contamination

568
00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 3: in total in the capillary tubes would be a significant

569
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:18,799
Speaker 3: part of the final product and could change its properties significantly. So,

570
00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:22,720
Speaker 3: you know, there were all these efforts made to ensure

571
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:26,759
Speaker 3: that the samples were of the highest possible purity, Like

572
00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:31,840
Speaker 3: Derriogan and colleagues they used. They made sure that the

573
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 3: silica used to make the glass capillary tubes was made

574
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:38,440
Speaker 3: was very pure. It was made from pure quartz, and

575
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:42,440
Speaker 3: this was to prevent like trace inorganic materials getting mixed

576
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:44,799
Speaker 3: in with the glass and then some leeching into the

577
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:47,879
Speaker 3: water in the tubes. And they also worked very hard

578
00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:50,720
Speaker 3: to ensure that the water used in the experiment was pure.

579
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:53,440
Speaker 3: So they're of the you know, if you suggest to

580
00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:56,399
Speaker 3: them that their samples are contaminated, they're like, no, look

581
00:35:56,440 --> 00:35:58,879
Speaker 3: at all these links we go to to make sure

582
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 3: that the samples cannot be contaminated. It's very very pure.

583
00:36:03,239 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 3: But at the same time, it was still quite laborious

584
00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 3: to produce the anomalous water and very little was available,

585
00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:12,799
Speaker 3: which limited the testing that could be done on it.

586
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:15,960
Speaker 2: So this is happening kind of in a bubble for

587
00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:19,719
Speaker 2: a while, right, but eventually polywater is going to leak out.

588
00:36:19,600 --> 00:36:22,840
Speaker 3: That's right. So the Western scientists start catching on to

589
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:28,560
Speaker 3: polywater beginning in around nineteen sixty six, Derriagan gave some

590
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:31,879
Speaker 3: conference presentations on it. Gave one in nineteen sixty five

591
00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 3: in Moscow, another in England in sixty six. Some scientists

592
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:42,680
Speaker 3: did attend these, but not many took notice, but a

593
00:36:42,719 --> 00:36:46,600
Speaker 3: few did so ballflags a few scientists who got interested

594
00:36:46,640 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 3: from these earliest talks. One was named Brian Pethica, who

595
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:54,680
Speaker 3: was a director of Unilever Research Laboratory at Port Sunlight

596
00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 3: in England. And another one is a figure I mentioned

597
00:36:57,640 --> 00:37:01,400
Speaker 3: earlier in the episode, John Desmond Bernal, very famous and

598
00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:06,719
Speaker 3: respected crystallographer, and supposedly after one of these I think

599
00:37:06,719 --> 00:37:10,399
Speaker 3: it's the presentation in England, Bernal took der Yagan back

600
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:13,719
Speaker 3: to his lab at Birkbeck College in London and they

601
00:37:13,760 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 3: had a talk where they were talking they were like

602
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 3: talking about the procedure for making the anomalous water. And

603
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:24,200
Speaker 3: this was at this meeting. This was when Bernal allegedly

604
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:25,919
Speaker 3: said that this is going to be, you know, one

605
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 3: of the most important discoveries of the century. So the

606
00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 3: two scientists I just mentioned in their associates, they start

607
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:37,719
Speaker 3: cranking on trying to do polywater research. It's not called

608
00:37:37,719 --> 00:37:41,600
Speaker 3: polywater yet though, it's still anomalous water. And then meanwhile

609
00:37:41,640 --> 00:37:47,040
Speaker 3: some American scientists get interested as well. You have Robert

610
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:51,520
Speaker 3: Stromberg of the National Bureau of Standards in Maryland, and

611
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:56,160
Speaker 3: then also Ellis Lippencott of the Center for Materials Research

612
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:59,840
Speaker 3: at the University of Maryland. They start cranking on polywater

613
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 3: search as well. I think this was roughly nineteen sixty eight,

614
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:07,319
Speaker 3: and then anomalous water really started to break out into

615
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:10,799
Speaker 3: the open in sixty nine, when you had Pethica's team

616
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:14,440
Speaker 3: publish a paper in Nature. They reported their attempts to

617
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 3: recreate the substance via dir Yogan's methods, and they started

618
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:22,239
Speaker 3: talking about the properties of the new water. Very importantly.

619
00:38:22,360 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 3: Their publication included photographs, so now there's something to look at.

620
00:38:26,719 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 3: You can see these microscopic columns, something that had condensed

621
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 3: in the tubes. But one thing here is that Pethica's

622
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:39,000
Speaker 3: team offered some reasonable caveats For example, they said, we

623
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:41,799
Speaker 3: can't rule out that something is leeching out of the

624
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:44,959
Speaker 3: pyrex glass tubes and mixing with the water to form

625
00:38:44,960 --> 00:38:49,240
Speaker 3: a gel. That's possible, but they thought that might explain

626
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:52,560
Speaker 3: our results. But it doesn't explain Deryogan's results because they're

627
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:56,319
Speaker 3: not using just like normal pyrex glass. They're using this

628
00:38:56,400 --> 00:39:02,920
Speaker 3: special pure quartz silica glass. And then also they mentioned

629
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:05,960
Speaker 3: that their attempts to figure out what this stuff was

630
00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:09,200
Speaker 3: were severely limited by how little of it could be produced.

631
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:13,000
Speaker 3: Microscopic amounts are hard to study. There is a quote

632
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:17,360
Speaker 3: attributed to one of JD. Bernell's students saying, if only

633
00:39:17,440 --> 00:39:21,520
Speaker 3: we could make a thimbleful, but the anomalous water would

634
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:26,279
Speaker 3: really become a sensation. A few months later, when Stromberg

635
00:39:26,320 --> 00:39:30,760
Speaker 3: and Lippincott published their own research in the journal Science,

636
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:33,560
Speaker 3: and their research was a big deal because it used

637
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:39,760
Speaker 3: the technique of infrared spectroscopy. So spectroscopy is a powerful

638
00:39:39,760 --> 00:39:42,440
Speaker 3: tool of analysis that lets you study a substance by

639
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:46,520
Speaker 3: measuring how it absorbs, emits or scatters various kinds of

640
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:51,439
Speaker 3: electromagnetic radiation, like infrared or UV light or visible light.

641
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:56,279
Speaker 3: Each molecule has its own special pattern of absorption or

642
00:39:56,320 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 3: emission or scattering, determined by things like the atomic makeup

643
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:04,000
Speaker 3: and the chemical bonds within it. So you can make

644
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:07,319
Speaker 3: a spectrum graph of a substance and that will tell

645
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:10,359
Speaker 3: you things about its molecular makeup and structure which are

646
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:13,400
Speaker 3: too small to see with the naked eye. Spectroscopy is

647
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 3: used all throughout various kinds of sciences. It's not just

648
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:19,600
Speaker 3: in chemical analysis, you know, it's used in like astronomy.

649
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:22,799
Speaker 3: We use spectroscopy to try to figure out what elements

650
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:25,759
Speaker 3: are in the atmosphere of another planet we're looking at,

651
00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:29,800
Speaker 3: or something like that. Stromberg and Lippincott publish their paper

652
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:32,799
Speaker 3: in the journal Science in nineteen sixty nine, and they

653
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:36,720
Speaker 3: were building on some previous research that had also used spectroscopy,

654
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:40,520
Speaker 3: but they were trying to show that the anomalous water,

655
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:44,800
Speaker 3: because it produced this different spectrum, had a different structure

656
00:40:44,840 --> 00:40:48,360
Speaker 3: from familiar water, and they proposed that it was something

657
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:52,359
Speaker 3: like a stable polymer. And this paper is where we

658
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:57,200
Speaker 3: get the term polywater. It was the paper's title. And

659
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:00,400
Speaker 3: I think we should pause here to think of this,

660
00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:04,240
Speaker 3: because I think it's wise not to overlook the power

661
00:41:04,760 --> 00:41:10,320
Speaker 3: of giving something an intriguing name. Naming is persuasive. Naming

662
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:13,680
Speaker 3: is rhetorical. I think in a lot of cases, giving

663
00:41:13,719 --> 00:41:17,680
Speaker 3: a concept an evocative name really affects how it is

664
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:21,200
Speaker 3: received in multiple ways. For one thing, if there's a

665
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 3: name for something, instead of just talking about something in

666
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:28,879
Speaker 3: descriptive terms, like anomalous water, if there's a specific new

667
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 3: name for it feels like it's something that really exists,

668
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:34,160
Speaker 3: doesn't it. You know, why would it have a name

669
00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:37,520
Speaker 3: if it didn't exist? And then the qualities of the

670
00:41:37,600 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 3: name affect how we think about the thing. To me,

671
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:45,480
Speaker 3: when I hear polywater sounds new, sounds exciting, sounds like

672
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:49,320
Speaker 3: a product almost. In fact, that may be one reason

673
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 3: why it could have been appealing to adopt as the

674
00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:54,600
Speaker 3: name of a product line actually, which you were talking

675
00:41:54,600 --> 00:41:55,240
Speaker 3: about earlier.

676
00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:58,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a great point though. Yeah, once you've

677
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:01,719
Speaker 2: given it an intriguing name, polly water, it's like a

678
00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:05,880
Speaker 2: like the brain kind of chews on it when it

679
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:09,640
Speaker 2: absorbs the term, because you know, water as mundane as

680
00:42:09,680 --> 00:42:12,680
Speaker 2: it and as it gets also being you know, essential

681
00:42:12,719 --> 00:42:18,479
Speaker 2: to pretty much everything. But that what does polywater mean?

682
00:42:18,680 --> 00:42:20,440
Speaker 2: Like you have to sort of like break down what

683
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:22,600
Speaker 2: the con what it even means and it doesn't sound

684
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:26,400
Speaker 2: overtly evil or anything. It's not like they called it

685
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:30,759
Speaker 2: doom water or and it's also not super goofy. They

686
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:33,480
Speaker 2: didn't call it like, I don't know, ranch water or something,

687
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:39,320
Speaker 2: but polywater. It just it begins to raise questions in

688
00:42:39,360 --> 00:42:41,360
Speaker 2: the mind. And it does kind of feel like the

689
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 2: sort of thing like like it's like it's it's hiding,

690
00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:47,160
Speaker 2: you know, like it's it could be secretly bad, but

691
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:50,040
Speaker 2: we just don't know how to feel about it. Just

692
00:42:50,080 --> 00:42:51,759
Speaker 2: based on that that that term.

693
00:42:52,040 --> 00:42:54,319
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, these authors, I think we're not making the

694
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:55,600
Speaker 3: case it was secretly bad.

695
00:42:55,719 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 2: You know.

696
00:42:56,280 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 3: They were not one of the ones saying, oh, it's

697
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:00,399
Speaker 3: gonna it's gonna take over the earth and and olar

698
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 3: water into vasoline.

699
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 2: Yeah.

700
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 3: So, now that the substance had an and I should say,

701
00:43:06,120 --> 00:43:08,440
Speaker 3: by the way, that at this point a bunch of

702
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:15,480
Speaker 3: people writing about anomalous water now polywater, were proposing physical

703
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 3: molecular structures for the polymers. Some of them were saying, oh,

704
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:24,960
Speaker 3: it's a square form with four linked water molecules. Others

705
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:29,080
Speaker 3: were saying it's a hexagon form forming these sheets of

706
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 3: water molecules. This was, again without having actually established firmly

707
00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 3: that it was water, but they were you know, they

708
00:43:37,160 --> 00:43:40,400
Speaker 3: were moving on quickly to the theoretical stage and trying

709
00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 3: to say like what can how does it work before

710
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:47,040
Speaker 3: firmly establishing that it actually is something.

711
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:49,080
Speaker 2: Well, and then also the fact that it's being picked

712
00:43:49,160 --> 00:43:54,760
Speaker 2: up increasingly by science communicators, by writers, right, yeah, because

713
00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:58,080
Speaker 2: in bringing a concept like this to a wider audience,

714
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:00,760
Speaker 2: you you kind of do have to to get beyond

715
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:04,839
Speaker 2: like just the pure chemistry and speculative structure of the thing,

716
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:07,960
Speaker 2: and you have to end up talking about the practicalities

717
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:11,759
Speaker 2: or hypothetical practicalities in order to make people understand like

718
00:44:11,800 --> 00:44:13,600
Speaker 2: what you're talking about, you know, you have to sort

719
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:18,439
Speaker 2: of work back from that to communicate the chemistry that's right.

720
00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 3: So yeah, now that it had been named I think,

721
00:44:22,239 --> 00:44:26,080
Speaker 3: very importantly and had been given credibility by respected scientists

722
00:44:26,120 --> 00:44:28,800
Speaker 3: in a Western journal, it was kind of polywater fever,

723
00:44:29,120 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 3: you know. In nineteen sixty nine, a lot of researchers

724
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 3: in relevant fields took notice. They started talking and writing

725
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:39,000
Speaker 3: about the subject. There was a division of opinion. Some

726
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:41,480
Speaker 3: were skeptical about it. Some were like, are we sure

727
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 3: this isn't just contamination or impurities? Others were more bullish

728
00:44:46,600 --> 00:44:48,280
Speaker 3: on it. You know, they're like, no, this is real.

729
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 3: You know, this is going to change the world. There

730
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:54,360
Speaker 3: was this proliferation of theoretical work on the structure of

731
00:44:54,400 --> 00:44:58,360
Speaker 3: poly water, but as you alluded to by it was

732
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:00,799
Speaker 3: by the summer of nineteen sixty nine really that the

733
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 3: mainstream press caught wind of it and started going going bananas.

734
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:11,080
Speaker 3: So Philip Ball mentions that once the subject move from

735
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 3: professional and scientific journals into the mainstream press, the mainstream

736
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:20,239
Speaker 3: press kind of became the preferred venue for even the

737
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 3: scientists themselves to communicate on the subject. Maybe not all

738
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:26,239
Speaker 3: of them, but some of them, the most you know,

739
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:29,719
Speaker 3: the most eager to argue, wanted to go straight to

740
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:32,640
Speaker 3: the mainstream press. And you know what, you still see

741
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:35,839
Speaker 3: versions of this phenomenon today, don't you. Like, somebody has

742
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:39,640
Speaker 3: a revolutionary new idea, it's not really getting traction with

743
00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:43,400
Speaker 3: their professional colleagues. So you can just bypass your expert

744
00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:46,040
Speaker 3: colleagues and take your claims straight to the daily mail,

745
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:48,239
Speaker 3: or you know, you go straight to some kind of

746
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:52,319
Speaker 3: blog or popular press, or now even easier, you go

747
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:54,720
Speaker 3: to social media or the podcast circuit.

748
00:45:55,160 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, then you're you're avoiding then the the

749
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:04,879
Speaker 2: peer of scrutiny that you would otherwise go through, and

750
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 2: you're also throwing out, you know, what may be just

751
00:46:08,719 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 2: a very loose hypothesis into the public arena where there

752
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:19,239
Speaker 2: may be less of an understanding at times regarding you know,

753
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:22,600
Speaker 2: the nature of hypothesis and and how these ideas work.

754
00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:26,160
Speaker 2: And indeed, the enterprise of science that that every scientific

755
00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 2: idea that is presented is not is not one solidified yet,

756
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:33,759
Speaker 2: that we go through this process. So so, yeah, you

757
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:35,399
Speaker 2: can see where the problems emerge here.

758
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:39,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, process is so important that that science is a

759
00:46:39,160 --> 00:46:44,880
Speaker 3: process of gradual understanding and clarification that you know, over time,

760
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 3: you you bring things into sharper focus and you figure

761
00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:52,440
Speaker 3: out you're able to weed out what you thought yesterday.

762
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 3: You know, the things you thought yesterday, some of them

763
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:57,160
Speaker 3: actually do make sense and are are borne out by

764
00:46:57,200 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 3: results and some are not.

765
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:02,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when you do realize that, okay, polywater never existed,

766
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:05,120
Speaker 2: like that is part of the scientific process. That is

767
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 2: like a natural part of it. That's not like ohe

768
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:11,080
Speaker 2: science messed up. Yeah, you know, the mistakes are part

769
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:12,680
Speaker 2: of the of the whole process.

770
00:47:13,080 --> 00:47:15,120
Speaker 3: Though I think it's important to be fair and be

771
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:17,520
Speaker 3: clear about the fact that polywater was not something that

772
00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:22,880
Speaker 3: was roundly rejected as fringe crankery by by prestigious scientists

773
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:26,399
Speaker 3: at the time. A lot of very respected scientists were

774
00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:28,960
Speaker 3: buying into it. Certainly not all the were sceptics too,

775
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:33,240
Speaker 3: but it was treated as a legitimate, lively debate.

776
00:47:33,600 --> 00:47:33,799
Speaker 2: Yeah.

777
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:36,960
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, in the popular media, you had all this you know,

778
00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:39,920
Speaker 3: wild stuff. We mentioned earlier, the idea that you know,

779
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:41,279
Speaker 3: they were saying, we're going to use it as some

780
00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:43,320
Speaker 3: kind of super lubricant or it's going to be in

781
00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:47,040
Speaker 3: nuclear reactors. Philip Ball highlights that quote from the Wall

782
00:47:47,040 --> 00:47:49,560
Speaker 3: Street Journal about how our furniture is going to be

783
00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:50,560
Speaker 3: made out of polywater.

784
00:47:51,480 --> 00:47:53,120
Speaker 2: How is that? How would that even work?

785
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:54,239
Speaker 3: I don't know.

786
00:47:54,840 --> 00:47:56,239
Speaker 2: It's like waterbeds sort of.

787
00:47:56,480 --> 00:47:58,080
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't dig in and get to the

788
00:47:58,080 --> 00:47:59,799
Speaker 3: bottom of that, but I would like to know more.

789
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 2: I'm guessing stuffing of couch cushions with polywater.

790
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:07,840
Speaker 3: But anyway, here's one detail. This is also mentioned in

791
00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:11,399
Speaker 3: Ball's account that I love the idea came up in

792
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 3: some popular media that, h what if the lunar regolith

793
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:19,399
Speaker 3: that was that was sticking to the astronaut's boots during

794
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 3: the moon landing was actually a kind of polymer moon mud.

795
00:48:24,120 --> 00:48:28,000
Speaker 3: It was lunar soil with polywater mixed in. Like, wouldn't

796
00:48:28,040 --> 00:48:30,160
Speaker 3: that be a cool way that the Moon could have

797
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:32,960
Speaker 3: retained water over the past billions of years.

798
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:37,960
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's just like essentially oceans of water pudding.

799
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:44,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, moon mud, polymud, And again other articles we're

800
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:46,080
Speaker 3: talking about, Oh, it's it's going to be the key

801
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:49,840
Speaker 3: to understanding how how life works, or it's going to unlock,

802
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:53,759
Speaker 3: you know, the secrets of eternal life. Maybe it plays

803
00:48:53,800 --> 00:48:57,960
Speaker 3: some role in cells. And this is also, of course,

804
00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:00,880
Speaker 3: the time we get to that letter Thatajo sends to

805
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:04,719
Speaker 3: Nature about how polywater is potentially the most dangerous substance

806
00:49:04,719 --> 00:49:18,799
Speaker 3: on Earth and its containment was of absolute necessity. Now

807
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 3: we already explained early on what Donahoe's reasoning was there

808
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:25,200
Speaker 3: that okay, so a bit of a bit of this

809
00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:29,359
Speaker 3: polywater acts as a seed crystal. It transforms all of

810
00:49:29,400 --> 00:49:32,560
Speaker 3: the water in the environment into the more stable form

811
00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:35,920
Speaker 3: of water, which is polywater, and then if there is

812
00:49:35,960 --> 00:49:39,680
Speaker 3: no ambient mechanism to turn it back, then we're really

813
00:49:39,800 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 3: in a bad situation. There However, in the next issue

814
00:49:43,680 --> 00:49:48,400
Speaker 3: of Nature, Donahoe's note was rebuked by responses from multiple

815
00:49:48,520 --> 00:49:52,640
Speaker 3: esteemed scientists, including Bernal who I mentioned earlier, who is

816
00:49:52,680 --> 00:49:57,520
Speaker 3: a very very dogged proponent of polywater, very much a believer,

817
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:02,839
Speaker 3: also by a British chemist named Douglas Everett, and their

818
00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:06,240
Speaker 3: point was like, well, you are getting way ahead of yourself,

819
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:08,680
Speaker 3: and there are good reasons for thinking that this is

820
00:50:08,719 --> 00:50:12,680
Speaker 3: not going to happen. So they've pointed out, for example,

821
00:50:13,440 --> 00:50:17,279
Speaker 3: we've seen polywater in contact with regular water already. We've

822
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:20,320
Speaker 3: seen that in the laboratory, and we have not observed

823
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:23,520
Speaker 3: it transforming the normal water through touch alone. So it's

824
00:50:23,560 --> 00:50:26,880
Speaker 3: not like water comes into contact with polywater and then

825
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:30,600
Speaker 3: is all transformed. That's not what we observe. And then

826
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:33,920
Speaker 3: second they say, you know, if polywater exists, it must

827
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:38,399
Speaker 3: occur sometimes in nature because there are natural quartz surfaces,

828
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:42,120
Speaker 3: some must have pores and capillaries like the tubes in

829
00:50:42,160 --> 00:50:46,799
Speaker 3: our experiments. And it is not already the case that

830
00:50:46,920 --> 00:50:50,120
Speaker 3: all of Earth's water has been transformed into polywater. So

831
00:50:50,160 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 3: if that were going to happen through exposure to poly water,

832
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:55,120
Speaker 3: it would have already happened in the past four and

833
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:57,839
Speaker 3: a half billion years. If it hasn't already happened, it's

834
00:50:57,840 --> 00:50:58,920
Speaker 3: not going to happen.

835
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:02,640
Speaker 2: Right, Right, because to be clear, like, it's not like

836
00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:05,360
Speaker 2: the invention of glass and putting water in glass tubes

837
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:09,000
Speaker 2: created a drastically different environment that it never existed on

838
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:10,759
Speaker 2: Earth before, right, And.

839
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:13,759
Speaker 3: These seem like reasonable arguments to me, though again it's

840
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:17,560
Speaker 3: this double confusion to sort through when you're trying to

841
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:20,719
Speaker 3: figure out whether it's reasonable to fear a doomsday scenario

842
00:51:21,120 --> 00:51:24,719
Speaker 3: from a substance that within a few years everyone would

843
00:51:24,719 --> 00:51:26,319
Speaker 3: agree does not exist at all.

844
00:51:26,680 --> 00:51:30,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really fascinating to think about, especially the scientist's

845
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:32,840
Speaker 2: point of view and all of this at the time.

846
00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:36,000
Speaker 2: And you see this in various other scenarios that are

847
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:40,440
Speaker 2: similar to the poly water scenario that we'll get to later,

848
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:43,960
Speaker 2: where you know, how do you proceed if you're faced

849
00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:49,360
Speaker 2: with even a slim possibility of a disastrous consequence? Do

850
00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:53,520
Speaker 2: stop researching? Do you put up you know, you know,

851
00:51:53,600 --> 00:51:57,959
Speaker 2: blockers and you'd refuse to go forward? Do you run

852
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:01,879
Speaker 2: more tests? Like how how does science proceed? Because we've

853
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:04,080
Speaker 2: talked about before, like science, you know, we think of

854
00:52:04,120 --> 00:52:06,600
Speaker 2: it as kind of like a slime mold and a maze,

855
00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:09,720
Speaker 2: and it's branching out and it's going through the different

856
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:12,360
Speaker 2: corridors of the maze. But then if you say no

857
00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:14,960
Speaker 2: slime mold, you don't go down this corridor, like that's

858
00:52:15,239 --> 00:52:18,960
Speaker 2: that's you know, that kind of runs against the whole scenario.

859
00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:21,640
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, like there are definite there

860
00:52:21,680 --> 00:52:24,759
Speaker 2: are definite times and places where you where we as

861
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:27,320
Speaker 2: a culture have to say no, we can't, we can't

862
00:52:27,360 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 2: test like this, We can't, we can't or shouldn't go

863
00:52:30,680 --> 00:52:35,640
Speaker 2: after this. But it becomes a very nuanced conversation regarding

864
00:52:35,680 --> 00:52:36,920
Speaker 2: some of those corridors.

865
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:41,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard to know where the line should be,

866
00:52:41,360 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 3: especially I think when you're dealing. I mean, it's clear

867
00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:47,080
Speaker 3: if it's like there's a pretty good chance of very

868
00:52:47,160 --> 00:52:50,359
Speaker 3: catastrophic danger, Okay, then it becomes very clear we should

869
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:52,920
Speaker 3: do what we can to limit this research. What if

870
00:52:52,960 --> 00:53:00,200
Speaker 3: it's like the danger would be absolutely apocalyptic if if

871
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:03,319
Speaker 3: it became real, but the chance of it happening is

872
00:53:03,800 --> 00:53:07,400
Speaker 3: considered very very low. What do you do there?

873
00:53:07,680 --> 00:53:09,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and then yeah, what are the potential of

874
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:13,160
Speaker 2: positive outcomes and so forth. So again we'll come back

875
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:17,480
Speaker 2: to some other scenarios that also have these parameters in place.

876
00:53:18,160 --> 00:53:21,520
Speaker 3: By the way, while all of this media frenzy is

877
00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:23,759
Speaker 3: going on and all of this debate is raging back

878
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:27,080
Speaker 3: and forth, Philip ballflags something that I think is really

879
00:53:27,239 --> 00:53:30,319
Speaker 3: worth noting. He says, while all this is happening, there

880
00:53:30,560 --> 00:53:34,920
Speaker 3: still has not been a single high quality chemical analysis

881
00:53:34,960 --> 00:53:39,680
Speaker 3: of polywater published anywhere. So while we're arguing about what

882
00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:43,839
Speaker 3: its polymer structure is, about whether or not it's dangerous,

883
00:53:44,840 --> 00:53:49,600
Speaker 3: nobody has actually shown definitively that it is water. There's

884
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:52,560
Speaker 3: been no experiment that has demonstrated this, and again it's

885
00:53:52,600 --> 00:53:56,279
Speaker 3: difficult because of how little of it there is. So

886
00:53:56,440 --> 00:53:59,000
Speaker 3: let's check in with the polywater skeptics at the time,

887
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:04,160
Speaker 3: mentions one named Arthur Cherkin of the Veterans Administration Hospital

888
00:54:04,160 --> 00:54:09,400
Speaker 3: in Sepulvada, California. Churkin is out there suggesting, are we

889
00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:12,520
Speaker 3: sure this is not just contamination from the glass tubes,

890
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:15,600
Speaker 3: Like what if particles of silica from the glass or

891
00:54:15,640 --> 00:54:18,520
Speaker 3: getting into the water turning into a kind of gel

892
00:54:18,640 --> 00:54:21,600
Speaker 3: or being dispersed in the water, and that is affecting

893
00:54:21,600 --> 00:54:25,160
Speaker 3: the properties of the water. Of course, again, the polywater

894
00:54:25,239 --> 00:54:28,000
Speaker 3: advocates were as they often said. They were like, well,

895
00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:32,680
Speaker 3: maybe your samples are contaminated, but ours are pure. So

896
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:35,919
Speaker 3: you know, the fact that you might find a contaminated

897
00:54:35,960 --> 00:54:39,839
Speaker 3: sample doesn't show that there's anything wrong with ours. Also

898
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:43,120
Speaker 3: want to mention a polywater skeptical researcher named Robert Davis

899
00:54:43,160 --> 00:54:46,360
Speaker 3: of Purdue University. He had his own theory about the

900
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:50,920
Speaker 3: origins of polywater. He said, I think it's sweat, and

901
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:55,920
Speaker 3: he actually this wasn't original to him. He highlighted a

902
00:54:56,080 --> 00:55:00,360
Speaker 3: previously little notice finding that had been public in a

903
00:55:00,480 --> 00:55:04,760
Speaker 3: Russian language journal years earlier in nineteen sixty eight, which

904
00:55:05,480 --> 00:55:08,680
Speaker 3: tried to create the anomalous water and had determined that

905
00:55:08,760 --> 00:55:14,240
Speaker 3: it was almost entirely made of organic contaminants, which Davis

906
00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:19,400
Speaker 3: interpreted as mostly sweat. Oh wow, And here's where the

907
00:55:19,440 --> 00:55:23,359
Speaker 3: author of the case Studies in Pathological Science paper comes in.

908
00:55:23,680 --> 00:55:27,399
Speaker 3: The author Dennis Rousseau. He talks in the paper about

909
00:55:27,440 --> 00:55:30,719
Speaker 3: how he started studying polywater when he was an associate

910
00:55:30,760 --> 00:55:33,879
Speaker 3: of the professor Sergio Porto at the University of Southern

911
00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:38,640
Speaker 3: California around nineteen sixty nine. They initially they got very

912
00:55:38,680 --> 00:55:43,440
Speaker 3: excited about polywater. They thought, actually, I'm going to read

913
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:47,160
Speaker 3: a quote from his paper, he said, quote could polywater

914
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:51,839
Speaker 3: alter biological processes? We wondered if polywater could extend longevity,

915
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:56,319
Speaker 3: possibly being the long awaited fountain of youth. So they

916
00:55:56,320 --> 00:56:01,040
Speaker 3: got excited, but they started their own experiments. They tried

917
00:56:01,080 --> 00:56:04,759
Speaker 3: to do a Raman scattering measurement. This is another type

918
00:56:04,760 --> 00:56:08,280
Speaker 3: of spectroscopy experiment where you're going to try to measure

919
00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:12,160
Speaker 3: vibrational modes of the molecule. So you shoot the sample

920
00:56:12,239 --> 00:56:14,719
Speaker 3: with a laser and then you examine the spectrum of

921
00:56:14,760 --> 00:56:19,239
Speaker 3: the scattered light. However, they hit a snag here. I'm

922
00:56:19,239 --> 00:56:21,960
Speaker 3: going to read from Rousseau. Quote as soon as we

923
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:25,680
Speaker 3: directed our laser on polywater, it turned into a black char.

924
00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:28,640
Speaker 3: Doesn't seem right?

925
00:56:28,840 --> 00:56:29,440
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah.

926
00:56:29,719 --> 00:56:32,120
Speaker 3: He goes on to say, quote, this was no polymer

927
00:56:32,200 --> 00:56:36,560
Speaker 3: of water, but more likely a carbonaceous material. We quickly

928
00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:42,359
Speaker 3: abandoned our grandiose plans for exploiting polywater's immortal qualities. So

929
00:56:42,480 --> 00:56:44,920
Speaker 3: something has gone wrong here. Water is not supposed to

930
00:56:44,920 --> 00:56:47,760
Speaker 3: burn up and turn into a carbon soot under a laser.

931
00:56:47,840 --> 00:56:50,640
Speaker 3: Obviously the polywater they had was not water.

932
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:55,280
Speaker 2: Yeah. Even the worst chefs among us have not managed

933
00:56:55,280 --> 00:56:56,480
Speaker 2: to burn water like this.

934
00:56:56,719 --> 00:56:59,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, So they talk about how they also did

935
00:56:59,400 --> 00:57:03,920
Speaker 3: some research trying to do some chemical analysis of supplied

936
00:57:03,960 --> 00:57:08,560
Speaker 3: polywater samples, and they discovered that the samples were heavily

937
00:57:08,640 --> 00:57:13,080
Speaker 3: contaminated with sodium. In fact, so heavily contaminated that they

938
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:17,720
Speaker 3: were mostly contamination. Somewhere between twenty and sixty percent of

939
00:57:17,760 --> 00:57:22,120
Speaker 3: their polywater samples were by weight were sodium. They also

940
00:57:22,280 --> 00:57:26,200
Speaker 3: had some potassium, some sulfate, chlorine, and trace amounts of

941
00:57:26,240 --> 00:57:29,280
Speaker 3: other stuff. So it wasn't just that it was contaminated,

942
00:57:29,320 --> 00:57:33,720
Speaker 3: it was like almost all contamination. So Rousseau goes on

943
00:57:33,760 --> 00:57:36,480
Speaker 3: to explain that his experience did not end after the

944
00:57:36,560 --> 00:57:40,720
Speaker 3: laser incident. He moved on in his career and became

945
00:57:40,760 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 3: a researcher at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the summer of

946
00:57:43,560 --> 00:57:48,320
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine, where he there found his colleagues and

947
00:57:48,360 --> 00:57:51,680
Speaker 3: managers in a state of excitement about polywater. They were

948
00:57:51,720 --> 00:57:54,080
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what all this meant, and he

949
00:57:54,200 --> 00:57:58,000
Speaker 3: recounts being invited to one meeting to discuss whether polywater

950
00:57:58,680 --> 00:58:04,240
Speaker 3: could be to blame for dielectric losses in transatlantic telephone cables, Like,

951
00:58:04,400 --> 00:58:07,360
Speaker 3: was polywater somehow is it seeping into the cables? And

952
00:58:07,480 --> 00:58:10,280
Speaker 3: changing the properties of the cable or the insulating material.

953
00:58:11,000 --> 00:58:14,560
Speaker 3: So he was put in charge of investigating polywater at

954
00:58:14,560 --> 00:58:16,560
Speaker 3: Bell Labs or I don't know if he was the

955
00:58:16,600 --> 00:58:18,960
Speaker 3: head guy in charge, but he was given he was

956
00:58:19,000 --> 00:58:23,840
Speaker 3: tasked with investigating it, and he kept he was By

957
00:58:23,840 --> 00:58:26,280
Speaker 3: this point he was pursuing the idea, I think we've

958
00:58:26,320 --> 00:58:30,400
Speaker 3: got a serious impurities and contamination problem, and that may

959
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:34,000
Speaker 3: be to explain what's going on with polywater. Again, he

960
00:58:34,040 --> 00:58:36,680
Speaker 3: got the response we've mentioned earlier, these these kind of

961
00:58:36,720 --> 00:58:40,320
Speaker 3: handwaving responses from the polywater proponents that are like, well,

962
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:44,320
Speaker 3: maybe the sample you tested was contaminated, but our samples

963
00:58:44,320 --> 00:58:50,360
Speaker 3: are not contaminated. So Rousseau attacked to this in several directions.

964
00:58:50,360 --> 00:58:54,760
Speaker 3: One experiment he did was that he he tried to

965
00:58:54,920 --> 00:58:59,400
Speaker 3: make polywater using not regular water but heavy water. We've

966
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:02,080
Speaker 3: done episodes on heavy water in the past, but heavy

967
00:59:02,120 --> 00:59:05,800
Speaker 3: water is made with the hydrogen replaced with a heavier

968
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:10,160
Speaker 3: isotope of hydrogen known as deuterium. And when he made

969
00:59:10,240 --> 00:59:14,120
Speaker 3: polywater following the standard method with heavy water, and then

970
00:59:14,240 --> 00:59:18,080
Speaker 3: he did infrared spectroscopy on it, he got the same

971
00:59:18,240 --> 00:59:22,840
Speaker 3: line that they had showed in the original polywater spectroscopy experiment.

972
00:59:23,440 --> 00:59:26,120
Speaker 3: So that shouldn't be right, you know, it shouldn't be

973
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:30,080
Speaker 3: looking the same with heavy water, So it kind of

974
00:59:30,080 --> 00:59:33,240
Speaker 3: makes it look like the stuff we're calling polywater isn't water.

975
00:59:34,240 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 3: And then he writes quote, Determined to understand polywater's infrared spectrum,

976
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:43,040
Speaker 3: I turned to my athletic passion handball. After a lively game,

977
00:59:43,080 --> 00:59:45,640
Speaker 3: I returned to the laboratory with my sweaty t shirt

978
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:48,880
Speaker 3: and wrung the perspiration into a flask. When I placed

979
00:59:48,920 --> 00:59:52,919
Speaker 3: the sweat in an infrared spectrometer, the spectrum looked strikingly

980
00:59:53,040 --> 00:59:56,000
Speaker 3: similar to that of polywater. And then he shows the

981
00:59:56,040 --> 00:59:59,960
Speaker 3: graph side by side and they look almost exactly the same.

982
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:04,120
Speaker 3: So what did this mean? This was some pretty strong

983
01:00:04,200 --> 01:00:08,920
Speaker 3: evidence that polywater was not water. It was probably in

984
01:00:09,000 --> 01:00:13,840
Speaker 3: different experiments, different things, but at least in the experiment

985
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:18,640
Speaker 3: that had produced this famous spectrum graph that everybody was

986
01:00:18,720 --> 01:00:21,000
Speaker 3: using as proof that this is really different than the

987
01:00:21,040 --> 01:00:24,640
Speaker 3: structure of regular water. In that case, it was probably

988
01:00:24,680 --> 01:00:28,280
Speaker 3: a result of organic contamination of the capillary tubes where

989
01:00:28,280 --> 01:00:31,600
Speaker 3: it was being condensed, and that contamination may well have

990
01:00:31,680 --> 01:00:35,160
Speaker 3: been sweat. And he says, you know, after he published

991
01:00:35,160 --> 01:00:39,440
Speaker 3: this result, research on polywater really pretty quickly started to

992
01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:43,200
Speaker 3: grind to a halt. There was still some stuff going

993
01:00:43,240 --> 01:00:45,720
Speaker 3: through the peer review process that would continue to kind

994
01:00:45,720 --> 01:00:48,200
Speaker 3: of trickle out over the next couple of years, but

995
01:00:48,360 --> 01:00:53,680
Speaker 3: new research stopped pretty quick and eventually even borister Yagan

996
01:00:53,800 --> 01:00:57,280
Speaker 3: and the pro polywater Associates they admitted that the entire

997
01:00:57,320 --> 01:01:01,280
Speaker 3: phenomenon was probably just a mistake. Is probably a result

998
01:01:01,360 --> 01:01:06,800
Speaker 3: of biological contaminants like sweat being mistaken for a type

999
01:01:06,840 --> 01:01:07,280
Speaker 3: of water.

1000
01:01:07,920 --> 01:01:09,960
Speaker 2: Given the amount of time and energy invested in it,

1001
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:13,560
Speaker 2: I think it's like this noble though, yeah, to say,

1002
01:01:13,720 --> 01:01:16,000
Speaker 2: you know, actually we got it wrong and not like

1003
01:01:16,160 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 2: double down and then enter into like a realm of

1004
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:21,080
Speaker 2: true ignorance on the topic. You know.

1005
01:01:21,680 --> 01:01:24,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like they took some mighty convincing, but

1006
01:01:24,480 --> 01:01:26,760
Speaker 3: they did eventually admit it, and that's more than you

1007
01:01:26,800 --> 01:01:29,080
Speaker 3: can say for you know, a lot of people out

1008
01:01:29,120 --> 01:01:31,640
Speaker 3: there today pushing their own pet theories. Who are They're

1009
01:01:31,680 --> 01:01:33,640
Speaker 3: never going to admit that they were wrong, you know, right,

1010
01:01:34,640 --> 01:01:36,880
Speaker 3: So hats off to der Augen for finally getting there

1011
01:01:36,920 --> 01:01:39,040
Speaker 3: saying like, yeah, it looks like this was a mistake.

1012
01:01:39,840 --> 01:01:41,880
Speaker 2: Now as we get closer to the end of this episode.

1013
01:01:42,120 --> 01:01:48,200
Speaker 2: Joe We mentioned pathological science earlier, what what is pathological

1014
01:01:48,320 --> 01:01:50,800
Speaker 2: about the polywater scenario here?

1015
01:01:51,520 --> 01:01:56,280
Speaker 3: Well? So, Rousseau in his article compares the history of

1016
01:01:56,320 --> 01:01:59,560
Speaker 3: polywater with other cases of what he calls pathological science,

1017
01:01:59,600 --> 01:02:04,320
Speaker 3: like cold old fusion and infinite dilution. He says, in

1018
01:02:04,400 --> 01:02:11,360
Speaker 3: all cases, these were research programs where proponents could have

1019
01:02:11,720 --> 01:02:17,480
Speaker 3: performed definitive experiments that would have immediately answered the question

1020
01:02:17,720 --> 01:02:21,040
Speaker 3: once and for all, that would have shown whether the

1021
01:02:21,080 --> 01:02:25,520
Speaker 3: discovery was real or an illusion, but that these definitive

1022
01:02:25,520 --> 01:02:30,440
Speaker 3: experiments were always kind of avoided somehow, with proponents preferring

1023
01:02:30,480 --> 01:02:34,200
Speaker 3: to expand on and nibble around the edges of whatever

1024
01:02:34,280 --> 01:02:39,120
Speaker 3: initial result inspired the craze. And he takes that as

1025
01:02:39,240 --> 01:02:43,160
Speaker 3: kind of a a fear of confronting, you know, the

1026
01:02:43,800 --> 01:02:47,680
Speaker 3: final Like there is some indication that there's a fear

1027
01:02:47,760 --> 01:02:50,440
Speaker 3: of what if I'm wrong about this, and so you

1028
01:02:50,480 --> 01:02:53,200
Speaker 3: don't want to just like find out once and for all.

1029
01:02:53,840 --> 01:02:54,280
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1030
01:02:54,480 --> 01:02:56,480
Speaker 3: So for you know, like I mentioned, for so long

1031
01:02:56,520 --> 01:03:01,600
Speaker 3: with poly water, there were these seriments or not experiments,

1032
01:03:01,640 --> 01:03:05,000
Speaker 3: theoretical work trying to get into the polymer structure of

1033
01:03:05,040 --> 01:03:09,920
Speaker 3: it when no one had fully done a like rigorous

1034
01:03:10,000 --> 01:03:12,840
Speaker 3: chemical analysis to prove yes, this is h two OZ.

1035
01:03:13,920 --> 01:03:17,800
Speaker 3: So maybe we can save some of Rousseau's core ideas

1036
01:03:17,840 --> 01:03:22,640
Speaker 3: about like the characteristics of pathological science for the next episode.

1037
01:03:22,640 --> 01:03:26,280
Speaker 3: But there are a couple of peripheral pathological science related

1038
01:03:26,320 --> 01:03:29,080
Speaker 3: ideas I want to visit here right before we wrap

1039
01:03:29,200 --> 01:03:31,560
Speaker 3: up today. One thing I want to say is, I

1040
01:03:31,600 --> 01:03:36,200
Speaker 3: think the wrong takeaway from the Polywater episode is that,

1041
01:03:36,680 --> 01:03:38,440
Speaker 3: you know, we should look at these people and think, oh,

1042
01:03:38,480 --> 01:03:40,680
Speaker 3: what a bunch of idiots, you know, that we should

1043
01:03:40,760 --> 01:03:44,640
Speaker 3: feel superior to them because they fell for an erroneous enterprise.

1044
01:03:45,520 --> 01:03:48,720
Speaker 3: I think it's a lot more useful to acknowledge that

1045
01:03:48,800 --> 01:03:51,720
Speaker 3: these are smart people. They knew what they were doing

1046
01:03:51,760 --> 01:03:56,160
Speaker 3: in various ways, but they they got tricked, they fell

1047
01:03:56,280 --> 01:03:59,200
Speaker 3: for something that wasn't true, and so it's much more

1048
01:03:59,400 --> 01:04:01,919
Speaker 3: useful to look for ways that we can all learn

1049
01:04:02,000 --> 01:04:04,439
Speaker 3: from this episode because we're all fallible in this way.

1050
01:04:04,520 --> 01:04:08,200
Speaker 3: We can all get wrapped up in an idea that

1051
01:04:08,240 --> 01:04:12,200
Speaker 3: we're stuck on for some reason, for maybe emotional ego reasons,

1052
01:04:12,320 --> 01:04:15,440
Speaker 3: or we just found ourselves really convinced of it, you know,

1053
01:04:15,600 --> 01:04:18,000
Speaker 3: at a certain time and place in which you know,

1054
01:04:18,320 --> 01:04:22,400
Speaker 3: we wanted to hear something like this, and for whatever reason,

1055
01:04:22,440 --> 01:04:26,240
Speaker 3: we're stuck on it and we can't see the good

1056
01:04:26,320 --> 01:04:29,960
Speaker 3: reasons for doubting it, and so like, are there patterns

1057
01:04:29,960 --> 01:04:31,840
Speaker 3: to be aware of, to watch out for so we

1058
01:04:31,840 --> 01:04:35,120
Speaker 3: don't find ourselves falling for the next polywater. That's a

1059
01:04:35,120 --> 01:04:38,640
Speaker 3: big part of what the pathological science idea is about.

1060
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:40,360
Speaker 3: And again we can come back to that next time.

1061
01:04:40,920 --> 01:04:43,480
Speaker 3: But another thing I want to talk about is something

1062
01:04:43,480 --> 01:04:47,280
Speaker 3: that Philip Ball mentions in his chapter. He highlights some

1063
01:04:47,320 --> 01:04:50,520
Speaker 3: comments by a scientist and named Felix Franks, who wrote

1064
01:04:50,560 --> 01:04:54,240
Speaker 3: a book about the polywater controversy in nineteen eighty one,

1065
01:04:54,360 --> 01:04:57,920
Speaker 3: and Franks argues that part of what made the polywater

1066
01:04:57,960 --> 01:05:02,840
Speaker 3: illusions so powerful and so irresistible was the role of

1067
01:05:02,880 --> 01:05:07,040
Speaker 3: the mass media. It was because it wasn't just happening

1068
01:05:07,080 --> 01:05:10,240
Speaker 3: in the scientific journals and with you know, written correspondence

1069
01:05:10,280 --> 01:05:13,840
Speaker 3: going back and forth there, that it's spilled over into

1070
01:05:14,080 --> 01:05:18,480
Speaker 3: the mainstream press and the popular media. And there were

1071
01:05:18,680 --> 01:05:22,400
Speaker 3: multiple problems with this, Like, of course people in the

1072
01:05:22,400 --> 01:05:25,840
Speaker 3: media without expertise or understanding of the subject would engage

1073
01:05:25,920 --> 01:05:29,520
Speaker 3: in their own wild speculation, but they would also encourage

1074
01:05:29,560 --> 01:05:32,560
Speaker 3: scientists to do the same sort of encouraging the worst

1075
01:05:32,600 --> 01:05:37,520
Speaker 3: tendencies of certain scientists involved in this controversy. It also

1076
01:05:37,720 --> 01:05:41,480
Speaker 3: provided an outlet with a less discerning audience. You know,

1077
01:05:41,560 --> 01:05:44,120
Speaker 3: that's not to insult people like us, you know, the

1078
01:05:44,280 --> 01:05:49,480
Speaker 3: regular readers, non scientists, but we don't have the expertise

1079
01:05:49,520 --> 01:05:54,520
Speaker 3: always to understand whether what a supposed authority says is

1080
01:05:54,680 --> 01:05:59,920
Speaker 3: reasonable or not. So instead of talking to knowledgeable, skeptical peers,

1081
01:06:00,240 --> 01:06:02,760
Speaker 3: you're now talking to people who have no idea if

1082
01:06:03,760 --> 01:06:07,000
Speaker 3: they should take what you're saying seriously. And then one

1083
01:06:07,000 --> 01:06:11,160
Speaker 3: thing that I think is especially probably toxic about this

1084
01:06:11,360 --> 01:06:13,600
Speaker 3: and is very relevant I think to the world today

1085
01:06:14,200 --> 01:06:18,840
Speaker 3: is the increasing velocity of public comment. How Like, if

1086
01:06:18,880 --> 01:06:22,040
Speaker 3: things are going back and forth in scientific journals, there

1087
01:06:22,120 --> 01:06:25,440
Speaker 3: is a delay, and that can have some downsides, like

1088
01:06:25,480 --> 01:06:29,520
Speaker 3: it can slow down scientific progress obviously, but it also

1089
01:06:29,560 --> 01:06:32,800
Speaker 3: has a lot of upsides, like you are more considered

1090
01:06:32,960 --> 01:06:35,480
Speaker 3: in your responses if you have to wait, you know,

1091
01:06:35,520 --> 01:06:39,240
Speaker 3: there's a waiting period before you can get your comment

1092
01:06:39,320 --> 01:06:43,240
Speaker 3: in response out in public. And if you speed up

1093
01:06:43,360 --> 01:06:46,720
Speaker 3: the ability to respond back and forth between you know,

1094
01:06:47,000 --> 01:06:50,000
Speaker 3: between people who are criticizing each other or arguing about something.

1095
01:06:50,640 --> 01:06:53,280
Speaker 3: I think a lot of times that degrades the quality

1096
01:06:53,320 --> 01:06:57,880
Speaker 3: of the argument. It increases the likelihood of people making

1097
01:06:58,160 --> 01:07:00,800
Speaker 3: responses and arguments that really, if they had time to

1098
01:07:00,800 --> 01:07:03,840
Speaker 3: think about it, they would know or not great or

1099
01:07:03,880 --> 01:07:05,120
Speaker 3: not the best way to reply.

1100
01:07:06,480 --> 01:07:09,360
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. And really, like the

1101
01:07:09,440 --> 01:07:13,480
Speaker 2: media often ends up filling that space between the peer

1102
01:07:13,600 --> 01:07:18,840
Speaker 2: viewed correspondence and the more scientific correspondence. This is happening.

1103
01:07:18,880 --> 01:07:20,680
Speaker 2: I mean, like, I just think of various cases where

1104
01:07:20,720 --> 01:07:25,640
Speaker 2: there'll be some sort of amazing headline grabbing the finding,

1105
01:07:26,320 --> 01:07:28,800
Speaker 2: and you know, there's going to be kind of a

1106
01:07:28,840 --> 01:07:32,960
Speaker 2: balancing that occurs in the aftermath of something like that usually,

1107
01:07:34,000 --> 01:07:36,960
Speaker 2: but if it just hits the headlines, then it kind

1108
01:07:37,000 --> 01:07:39,920
Speaker 2: of solidifies out there for so many different people, people

1109
01:07:39,920 --> 01:07:43,600
Speaker 2: who may not tune in for the follow up studies

1110
01:07:43,720 --> 01:07:44,919
Speaker 2: and so forth.

1111
01:07:45,240 --> 01:07:48,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, well, should we wrap it there for today

1112
01:07:48,640 --> 01:07:51,760
Speaker 3: and then come back in our next core episode to

1113
01:07:52,000 --> 01:07:55,800
Speaker 3: talk some more about the relationship of polywater to the

1114
01:07:55,840 --> 01:07:59,800
Speaker 3: idea of pathological science and then also maybe to other

1115
01:08:00,240 --> 01:08:05,280
Speaker 3: cases where there have been proposed containment dangers of speculative

1116
01:08:06,320 --> 01:08:12,240
Speaker 3: technologies or scientific experiments, some that might be more actually

1117
01:08:12,360 --> 01:08:16,080
Speaker 3: dangerous or more potentially actually dangerous than the polywater scare

1118
01:08:16,160 --> 01:08:16,720
Speaker 3: turned out to be.

1119
01:08:17,160 --> 01:08:19,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely. I mean there's some that

1120
01:08:19,880 --> 01:08:22,840
Speaker 2: we're living through right now and others that are maybe

1121
01:08:22,840 --> 01:08:25,639
Speaker 2: a little bit more far fetched. But we again come

1122
01:08:25,680 --> 01:08:28,280
Speaker 2: back to the scenario we're talking about with polywater researchers,

1123
01:08:28,280 --> 01:08:33,639
Speaker 2: where hindsight is twenty twenty on all of these things,

1124
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:36,519
Speaker 2: and like when you're in the moment and you're staring

1125
01:08:36,600 --> 01:08:42,120
Speaker 2: down some potential catastrophe in the future based on new

1126
01:08:42,200 --> 01:08:46,799
Speaker 2: avenues of research, new scientific findings, like, how do you respond?

1127
01:08:47,280 --> 01:08:49,519
Speaker 2: And so in the next episode we'll get into some

1128
01:08:49,560 --> 01:08:52,919
Speaker 2: of that as well. Now, as for how you respond

1129
01:08:53,040 --> 01:08:56,720
Speaker 2: a listener, you can certainly email us. We would love

1130
01:08:56,760 --> 01:08:58,120
Speaker 2: to hear from you. We're going to throw out that

1131
01:08:58,120 --> 01:09:00,559
Speaker 2: email address in just a minute here, but yeah, if

1132
01:09:00,600 --> 01:09:02,479
Speaker 2: you're new to the show, people write in all the time,

1133
01:09:02,840 --> 01:09:08,240
Speaker 2: and we love it if you have additional insight based

1134
01:09:08,280 --> 01:09:11,559
Speaker 2: on your profession or your passions, your travels, or just

1135
01:09:11,600 --> 01:09:15,000
Speaker 2: your day to day reality. Yeah, right in, tell us,

1136
01:09:15,160 --> 01:09:19,200
Speaker 2: tell us what's up. We also take episode suggestions and

1137
01:09:19,360 --> 01:09:22,120
Speaker 2: just you know, just right in to say hi if

1138
01:09:22,160 --> 01:09:24,040
Speaker 2: you like. As well, just to remind you here that

1139
01:09:24,040 --> 01:09:26,120
Speaker 2: the stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science

1140
01:09:26,120 --> 01:09:29,240
Speaker 2: and culture podcast. Again, we've been around for years. You

1141
01:09:29,280 --> 01:09:31,960
Speaker 2: can find all of our episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

1142
01:09:32,000 --> 01:09:33,760
Speaker 2: Just look for Stuff to Blow your Mind. We have

1143
01:09:33,800 --> 01:09:37,280
Speaker 2: our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays usually, and on

1144
01:09:37,280 --> 01:09:39,679
Speaker 2: Wednesdays we do a short form episode and on Fridays

1145
01:09:39,880 --> 01:09:42,120
Speaker 2: that's when we set aside most serious concerns and we

1146
01:09:42,200 --> 01:09:44,519
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird movie on episodes that we

1147
01:09:44,600 --> 01:09:45,880
Speaker 2: call Weird House Cinema.

1148
01:09:46,080 --> 01:09:50,160
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.

1149
01:09:50,800 --> 01:09:52,439
Speaker 3: As Rob said, if you would like to get in

1150
01:09:52,560 --> 01:09:54,519
Speaker 3: touch for any reason, if you want to suggest a

1151
01:09:54,600 --> 01:09:56,639
Speaker 3: topic for the future, if you want to give feedback

1152
01:09:56,640 --> 01:09:59,120
Speaker 3: on this episode, or if you just want to give

1153
01:09:59,160 --> 01:10:02,120
Speaker 3: us a friendly hello, you can email us at contact

1154
01:10:02,240 --> 01:10:12,200
Speaker 3: at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.

1155
01:10:12,240 --> 01:10:15,200
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1156
01:10:15,280 --> 01:10:18,040
Speaker 1: more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1157
01:10:18,200 --> 01:10:35,400
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.