Fixing a Flood of Flaws

by Brian Dunning
November 26, 2024

It's time once again to go back to previous shows and correct errors that I made. I keep a document and every time someone points out an error in a recent show, it gets added to that doc; then, when there's enough of them to fill a show, you get one of these episodes. I also have episodes dedicated to followups and feedback, where there's new information that's come out or someone has some interesting context to add, or some such tidbit. That document's getting full too, so we'll probably have one of those shows coming up soon. But for now, let's fix some errors!

We'll get started with a pretty recent show:

Episode #961: The Man from Taured

I have to apologize deeply for this one: I mistitled a member of the British Parliament. In the episode, an MP (Member of Parliament), Robert Mathew gave a speech that ended up steering the course of the urban legend of the Man from Taured. A number of times, I referred to him as MP Mathew, and received the following email from listener Stuart:

I'm sorry to inform you that the way you refer to Robert Mathew as "MP Mathew" is incorrect on two different levels, and though this is minor, as a British person it just sounds plain weird.

Here's a quick, albeit nerdy, rundown of why:

But I'll spare you the lengthy nerdy rundown. Suffice it to say that the correct way to refer to a sitting MP would simply be Mr. or Mrs. The only time MP is used is in writing, when it would appear after their name, e.g., Robert Mathew MP. So the transcript is now correct, at least according to tradition.

Now, if the person also has some royal title — Sir, Lord, Dame, Baronet, Duchess, and so on ad nauseam — well then I respectfully resign any further duty to give instruction in this regard.

Episode #959: Finding the Black Olmec

In this episode we talked about a particular article published in a supposedly refereed journal. The article proposed school curricula based on the completely false belief that the Olmecs, one of the earliest Mesoamerican cultures, were Black Africans. No peer reviewer who'd ever picked up a book would have let this one slide. In the inevitable retraction, the editors wrote:

After post-publication peer-review, it was found that the theory that Olmecs were Black Africans on which the lesson plan is based is not substantiated according to current Mesoamerican archaeology and genetic evidence.

I immediately blasted that post-publication peer review is not even a thing, peer review should happen before publication; that's how we avoid publishing articles that are wrong. Listener Martin wrote:

I strongly disagree. [post-publication peer review] is absolutely a thing and is becoming ever more so. It is not as formalized a thing as the pre-publication peer review you refer to, but discussions on already published papers are happening all the time on dedicated platforms like PubPeer, ResearchGate etc, but also in journals such as BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine that allows comments directly on the article website.

He is of course correct. One of the weaknesses with pre-publication peer review is that it very often doesn't catch everything, so more and more, journals are allowing — and even inviting — people to discuss papers post-publication, or after online publication and before print publication. Such review is public and everyone's name and affiliation are attached to their comments for accountability. A benefit is that such an open process is nearly always going to get more knowledgeable experts on the subject than just a few invited anonymous experts in traditional pre-publication peer review.

Episode #949: Hunting the Graveyard of the Elephants

Just a quick one next. In the episode tracking down the origins of the myth of the graveyard of the elephants, I talked about the 1932 movie Tarzan the Ape Man starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Hara. I quickly heard from listener Julian:

O'SULLIVAN NOT O'HARA!!!
That is all.

What we learn from this is that if you're me, and you're staring directly at the old movie poster and reading the names of the stars, you will still type the wrong name.

Episode #940: The Stephenville Lights

This was a really neat case, where first the public affairs guy at an Air Force base said they had no planes in the air on a certain date and time, and then later changed the story and said they did after all. But in fact both answers were correct; the first time, the guy who checked the logs was in the wrong time zone. The Air Force, and most other air forces around the world, log flight times in Zulu time, another name for Greenwich time, aka GMT, aka UTC; and the guy checked the records for the time he was asked about, unaware that it was a civilian asking who gave it in the normal time zone instead of in Zulu time like the officer was used to. Listener Dennis wrote:

The segment about the confusion over the time of the incident was instructive (I am familiar with ZULU Time and UTC), however, some listeners in the U.S. may not be aware that there is NO such thing as 'Greenwich Meridian Time', and never has been. GMT is 'Greenwich Mean Time', the mean (average) solar time at the Greenwich (Prime ) Meridian. Also, the term GMT is still used in Britain today.

And he's correct, turns out I did incorrectly say Greenwich Meridian Time, that was my own mistake. But the funny thing was that I talked to probably half a dozen people with military flight backgrounds, and yes they do all use Zulu time for flight operations, but I got multiple different stories on what everyone calls it. One guy said times were always given as "14:50 Greenwich," another guy said they were always given as "14:50 GMT," and I think everyone else said "14:50 Zulu."

Episode #939: A Visit to Lemuria

In this one we talked about a 19th century hypothesis to explain perceived similarities in speciation on Madagascar and India, and this was that a land bridge must have once existed between them, which subsequently sank beneath the ocean. One scientist, Philip Sclater of the Royal Society, proposed calling this ancient land Lemuria, and I said he picked the name because that's how lemurs got back and forth from India to Madagascar. Lister Simon wrote in:

As you rightly said, there are significant biogeographical similarities between Madagascar and India (mainly among plants and invertebrates), due to their shared origin when a continental block split from East Africa in the Jurassic (c.180Ma). However, India subsequently drifted away from Madagascar about 90Ma, in the Cretaceous, at which time lemur ancestors had yet to reach Madagascar - they did so about 40-50Ma (Tertiary). For this reason, and contrary to what you said in the episode, there are NO lemurs in India, or anywhere else apart from Madagascar.

I had misstated Sclater's hypothesis. He didn't believe there were living lemurs in India; he believed there were lemur fossils in India. This is not the case, as lemurs evolved independently on Madagascar while it was separate from any other landmass. Although you'll occasionally find mentions of fossil lemurs in India (notably a 2016 discovery in a mine in India) but these are not lemurs; they are probably tiny protoprimates, possibly a distant evolutionary ancestor of the Madagascar primates that evolved into lemurs. Regardless, I said there were lemurs in India, and that was definitely incorrect. It's fixed on the episode transcript.

Episode #929: The Trinity UFO Crash of 1945

Another terrible name flub by me. In this old UFO hoax, I gave the name of the governor of Washington state back at the time, and quickly heard from listener Roger:

Hi Brian, me and Sally are sitting here on "Brian Tuesday" listening to the Trinity UFO story. I'm afraid I have to give my very first correction. You stated that the WA Governor's name was Dixy Ray Lee. It's actually Dixy Lee Ray. I bet I'm not the only one to catch this. Anyway, I know it's silly, but as a lifelong resident of WA state, I just had to say something.

What can I tell you, no excuse on that one. Again, it's fixed on the transcript. Apologies to all fans of the state's first female governor.

Episode #922: Testing Alcubierre's Warp Drive

After my UFO movie came out I was deluged with negative comments that I didn't mention how we already have a warp drive and so interstellar travel is easy. So I really had to do this episode explaining how and why the Alcubierre drive is really little more than a thought experiment that cannot actually exist. This required a quick discussion of the expansion and contraction of space, and as an example, I mentioned how the universe is currently expanding and called this inflation. Listener Alain wrote in:

You say (lifting the text from the website) "It's really hard to wrap your head around expansion and contraction of space. Think of the fact that the universe is currently expanding, a phenomenon called inflation."

I'm afraid you have "inflation" wrong here. Inflation is used to denote a period of really rapid expansion in the early universe (like between 10^-35 seconds and 10^-32 after the Big Bang). The term for what is presently going on is "expansion".

And of course he is absolutely correct, and I did indeed misuse the term. Pro tip for anyone trying to explain physics to people: Get your terminology correct!

And with that, we'll end another error correction episode. It is very important that we correct our errors wherever we can find them. Facing factual fallacies fearlessly fortifies followers' faith, fostering foundational fidelity. Fastidious fixation on fixing falsehoods facilitates fresher, fuller, factual frameworks. Finally, fervently finessing former failings furthers factual fortitude and fair, free-flowing facts.

By Brian Dunning
Follow @BrianDunning