Academic Publishing is Making Bank
Academic publishing is meant to share knowledge, but a lot of it now looks like a toll system where scientists do the work, reviewers do the work, universities pay for the work, and publishers still charge huge fees to let anyone read it.
Big publishers can pull in enormous sums through article processing charges, with names like Elsevier sitting right in the middle of it. The frustrating bit is that this money often comes from public funding, meaning taxpayers are paying for the research and then paying again to access it. It’s a strange business model where the product is “knowledge”, but the profit is in controlling the gate.
Rapunzel Syndrome, Or: When Hair Stops Being Just Hair
Then we pivot to something that sounds like a Disney reference, but is less saccharine and more horrifying. Rapunzel Syndrome is linked to compulsive hair eating, where hair builds up in the stomach and intestines and can cause serious, even life-threatening, problems.
It’s confronting because it sits at the intersection of mental health and physical consequences. It’s not a quirky habit. It’s a behaviour that can quietly escalate into a medical crisis, and it’s a reminder that the brain can drive the body into some truly extreme places.
Babies, Crying, And The Expectation Of Comfort
Next up: babies, and the surprisingly deep question of what they “expect” from the world. Research suggests that most infants do anticipate being soothed when they cry, and you can see the stress response when that expectation isn’t met.
Watching footage of caregivers staying indifferent isn’t just uncomfortable because it feels cold. It’s uncomfortable because it highlights how early social rules form. Before a baby can speak, they’re already testing whether the world responds to them, and they notice when it doesn’t.
Out-Of-Body Experiences, And The Experiments That Keep Coming Up Empty
Then we get into out-of-body experiences, which sit right on the line between neuroscience and belief. People report them with absolute certainty, and the stories can be vivid and consistent, which makes them hard to dismiss emotionally, even if the evidence doesn’t back the supernatural explanation.
When researchers try to test these experiences in controlled ways, the results tend to land around chance. The experiments can get creative, but so far they don’t show reliable “astral perception.” If anything, it suggests the experience is real to the person having it, but it’s likely coming from the brain, not from the soul floating around the room.
Psychiatry, Diagnosis, and The Limits Of Labels
Finally, we look at psychiatry, where diagnosis is often less like measuring blood pressure and more like interpreting a complicated story. If clinicians only agree on diagnoses around 55% of the time, it’s a sign that the categories aren’t as solid as we’d like them to be.
That doesn’t mean mental health care is pointless. It means the system is trying to map messy human lives onto rigid labels, and it doesn’t always fit. The better direction might be less obsession with perfect categories, and more focus on what actually helps people function, cope, and improve.
So that’s the week: a publishing system that profits off access, a fairy-tale-named syndrome with very real consequences, babies showing us social expectations start early, out-of-body claims that don’t survive testing, and psychiatry reminding us that humans don’t come in clean diagnostic shapes. If you want the full ride, listen to the episode, and if you’ve got a topic you want us to pull apart next, send it through.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
00:41 Publishing Paywall Racket
03:47 Rapunzel Syndrome Explained
09:15 Babies Expect Comfort
12:59 Out of Body Claims
16:33 Tennis Shoe Case Debunked
18:43 The Astral Lab
21:18 AI Scoring Fails
25:12 Psych Diagnosis Reliability
28:48 Why Categories Break
33:10 Rethinking Mental Health Boxes
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Will: [00:00:00] It is time for a little bit of science. I'm will grant an associate professor in science communication at the Australian National University.
Rod: and I'm Rod Lambert. I'm a 30 year science communication veteran with a mind of a teenage boy.
Will: and today. Well, we've been at the Beach Large Hadron Collider.
Rod: Yeah. Drinking in swimming cocktails. In fact, I'm still there. I dunno where you
Will: are of, uh, isotopes and science and stuff like that. So rather than giving you our regular pile of science, we've
Rod: saved you something delicious. We've been scrolling away little snippets throughout the millennium and you're gonna get a bunch of those right now.
Rod: It's gonna be fab.
Will: Enjoy.
Will: I just got a little bit of, uh, inside baseball. This is about the academic game, but I just wanted to infuriate those of you who hope that the money that we spend on science and research goes to science and research. Oh. Oh. No,
Rod: it doesn't, does it?
Will: There's a bunch of researchers and they've been doing, doing [00:01:00] a running examination of how much the big journal publishers- Oh
Will: not make, 'cause they ha- make money from other things as well as this. Mm. But how much they take on article processing charges. In science, you submit an article to somewhere- Mm ... and, and remember, you've done all of the work of that- Mm ... that article. And,
Rod: and you've probably worked to find the funding from another source-
Will: Totally
Will: to
Rod: do that research.
Will: You've, you've worked... and, and worked all that. Yep. And then it's sent out to a few people to peer review it, and they do it for free.
Rod: Absolutely.
Will: They do it for free. Yeah. An editor will help do that for free, but the journal says, "All right, cool, that's gonna be $8,000," or something like that to then, once you're accepted, to-
Rod: To submit it
Will: well, not to submit Or to, to have it
Rod: published ...
Will: to have it published. So you don't necessarily have to pay. And there's a bit of me that goes, "So what do you do for this?"
Rod: We provide the journal.
Will: Yeah.
Rod: You dipshit.
Will: Some might say they're parasites that leech off the entire sci- scientific industry Some
Rod: might, but I could only name 100,000 people who'd say that.
Will: So they've now reached $3.7 billion a [00:02:00] year, US, in article processing charges that they're charging approximately. Th-
Rod: this is what the, the big folks-
Will: The, the big folks are doing, some of the big publishers. So Elsevier makes over a billion US. Wow. Uh, Springer Nature, nearly a billion, 860 million. Ah. MDPI, which most people, uh, consider- Ah
Will: a bit of a scam journal. And so the thing to just flag here is annual spending quadrupled from just under a billion dollars a year to, in 2019, so six years ago-
Rod: Yeah ...
Will: um, six years to 2025, to $3.7 billion. Wow. So any- anything that is- Wow ... growing at four times the, four times in five, six years-
Rod: That's good
Rod: phwoar. That's a good thing to invest in. None of them are publicly listed though, are they, are they?
Will: Uh, I, I don't know. Like, they, they are-
Rod: I'm gonna call my superannuation people and say-
Will: But you know, and, and maybe that's the thing. Look, if, if they need to pay for some of the things they do, of course they do.
Will: But, uh, remember, the [00:03:00] scientists are not getting paid for all of the things they devote to this system. Nope. There is a parasitical industry- Yep ... that just sits on top of scientific industry, and they make billions and billions of dollars, and that is our taxpayer money that could go to just do the science.
Will: No, it goes to the people that make the PDFs look pretty.
Rod: And look, honestly, in this, in this instance, part of me gets mad 'cause everyone's to blame because we've created a system where people are beholden to it.
Will: Yep.
Rod: Instead of saying, "You know what?" No major institution academically has said, "We will not do this," because they can't.
Rod: They can't. All of them have to do it, or none of them can do it.
Will: Yeah. Well, absolutely. And, and you couldn't say that because, you know, every, every early career researcher, they need to go and get a job somewhere else. We are stuck, and they are leeching off us.
Rod: So Rapunzel syndrome sounds kind of Disney-like and adorable
Will: It's the syndrome where you let people climb into your tower based on the length of your hair
Rod: I don't let just anyone
Will: climb into my
Rod: tower Climb into your tower.
Will: That is, is definitely a euphemism
Rod: So [00:04:00] people with, uh, trichotillomania feel compelled to pull out their hair, often to the point of visible hair loss, which isn't, isn't great You, you are gonna make me sad right now,
Will: aren't you?
Will: Oh, God, yeah,
Rod: this is terrible. So it's very common for people to play with their hair, pull at it, and then remove some strands. That's not uncommon in this situation. And then they might kinda go, well, as they play, they might nibble the root of the hair or kind of run their lips across it 'cause they like the way it feels.
Rod: That's just your generic trichotillomania. But it's no surprise that related to this is trichophagia, which as we all know is- That's the
Will: gobbling ...
Rod: that's the eating part That's the
Will: gobbling
Rod: Yeah, it is the gobbling, which is a terrible movie That's
Will: the scientific term
Rod: Welcome to the gobbling
Will: The go- the gobbling
Rod: It's M.
Rod: Night Shyamalan's latest movie, The Gobbling The Gobbling. It's when turkeys go crazy. So yeah, trichophagia is eating... It seems to be eating your own hair, but, uh, I think it could be eating any hair. But this, in this case, it's more about eating your own hair, 'cause, you know, why wouldn't you? Uh, but don't worry, not all people have trichotillomania eat the hair they pull out, and not all people who eat hair necessarily eat their own hair [00:05:00]
Will: Great Isn't that
Rod: good
Will: news?
Will: You said
Rod: don't worry
Will: Don't worry I, I don't know if I was worried- In case you were ... or if that made me less worried
Rod: So whatever your reasons for eating your own hair, the guesstimate is about 25% of people who do eat their hair are at risk of Rapunzel syndrome. And this is when I was reading, I went, "Why is eating and Rapunzel joined together?
Rod: I mean, I get there's hair involved, but it makes no sense to me." So what is it? Basically, our digestive system is really bad at digesting hair, as we all know.
Will: Fair, 'cause no, no human has been tricked by some sort of mass of hair on the ground that we'll go, "Ooh, yummy hair" Fuck, I'm
Rod: hungry I'll
Will: just eat some hair.
Rod: I'll put some peanut butter on it.
Will: Ugh. '
Rod: Cause it's basically made of keratin, and we don't have the enzymes to break down keratin. That's just not what we're designed to do. So it means hair can lurk in your stomach and other areas of your digestive tract. Eh, and it can get caught in the folds of your stomach-
Will: Mm-hmm
Rod: and cause h- hairballs-
Will: Mm-hmm ...
Rod: which is not always a problem. You know, they get passed through, whatever. But in extreme cases, like this one, study published last month in the Journal of Medical [00:06:00] Case Reports, 16-year-old US girl admitted to a hospital emergency department, vomiting all day, like vomiting like a monster.
Rod: No history of mental illness, and, you know, often the hair things, et cetera, are related to OCD and other such matters. She had no history of that. She had no visible baldness or hair loss that would be a giveaway for trichotillomania. They did a CT scan. It revealed something unusual in her abdomen, a trichobezoar, which is the technical term for hairball, tricho meaning hair and bezoar meaning any mass that gets trapped in the g- gastrointestinal system.
Rod: So yeah, they found this, uh, hairball stuck in her digestive tract, and it was, the quote runs, "Large enough to span her stomach and duodenum," or duodenum for our American friends, which is the first part of the small intestine.
Will: Wow.
Rod: It ex- completely obstructed her gastrointestinal- Filled- ... tract. Stomach and ran into the upper parts of the intestine Filled
Will: up stomach and a bit more.
Rod: Yeah.
Will: So not a ball anymore.
Rod: No, it's a long tubular, like, like it's... It... Horrifying. It's horrifying.
Will: Why
Rod: do you,
Will: why do you tell me these things? '
Rod: [00:07:00] Cause I like you, and I'm, I'm trying to keep you strong. Like, they, they tried to use a scope to get to it, so like your- Yeah ... Arthur. But it's too big. They had to go to surgery to get it out.
Will: Oh.
Rod: And it was... Yeah, it was a big bastard. It was many, many, many, many, many centimeters long, and it did not look pretty. So why do people do this is a big part of the question. In some cases of Rapunzel syndrome, hair pulling and hair eating stop, weirdly, after people are treated for iron deficiency or celiac disease.
Rod: Oh,
Will: wow. So- So then, so it could be a chemical thing that leads-
Rod: Possibly. This is a speculation. Th- 'Cause the speculation runs, and it's unconfirmed, that it might be 'cause hair contains trace elements of iron and minerals and stuff. Mm. So maybe there's a biological drive to eat it. And I'm like- Hmm ... there are other ways to get that.
Rod: You're not a fucking dog. No, no, no, no. Like, you know, probably you could- Anyway, but there's counter evidence. In some cases, the hairball blockage was the root cause of the iron deficiency. Oh,
Will: okay.
Rod: So you remove the thing that's-
Will: Yeah, what we need is some sort of random control- We do ... test beforehand- Yeah
Will: to see who's gonna get into it.
Rod: Which, which group you wanna be in. [00:08:00] So the reason this case of this poor girl stood out was 'cause there were lack of symptoms. There was nothing- Yeah ... that you would expect with this kind of thing. Af- so she came in doing the puking, they scan and the... After her surgery, she said she started to pull her hair out and consume it a couple of years ago, but she only did it maybe once a week and only pulled out a couple of hairs at a time, and there was no visible hair loss.
Rod: So it was like- But
Will: each time, you
Rod: know- It just happened to accumulate ... the hairs add
Will: up.
Rod: They do. So it snuck up on her. And Rapunzel syndrome is potentially fatal. Also, the problem with this is, and this is the reason I think it's important to, to pay attention to this, there's a huge social stigma and shame about this kind of condition.
Rod: Just pulling your hair out at all-
Will: Yeah ...
Rod: deeply shameful, apparently. Eating it, no. Related to OCD and other behaviors- Yeah, sure ... which people who have them are very good at masking, and for reasons we can all understand. So the lengths they go to conceal it could be setting them up for something horrific.
Rod: Um, so the warning is don't overlook this diagnosis, particularly in adolescent females who are more likely to have these [00:09:00]
Will: conditions. So this is a public service
Rod: announcement. This is a public service announcement. Yeah. Just 'cause if someone comes in puking, severe adomin- abdominal pain, no other particular symptoms, check for a giant hairball anyway, I think is the message to all the young doctors listening out there right now.
Will: That's great.
Rod: You're welcome
Will: Today in I had never thought to ask that news, when a baby begins to cry-
Rod: Mm ...
Will: do, do you expect its caregiver to soothe it?
Rod: Yes, especially on a plane.
Will: Yeah. But the question is, do the babies themselves expect this? And, uh-
Rod: I'm gonna say the whole reason for crying.
Will: Indeed. I'm no expert. But anyway, I, I wanted to, I wanted to explore this because this is a, the, it uses some interesting methods- Uh-huh
Will: to demonstrate something that potentially many of us had thought in advance, but it is nice to get those- Uh-huh ... the, the, the clarification. Confirmatories. Uh, spoiler result, most babies do expect, um, caregivers to soothe.
Rod: Why do these false reports? You can't trust a baby. They're fucking liars.
Will: So what they did, the researchers got a bunch of [00:10:00] kids- Who-
Will: who are babies. They're literally babies. Six months, nine months, 12 months old. So- Babies, yeah. Not, not kids ... so they're, they're, they're, they're solidly pre-verbal. Many are... Well, they're not in your crawling phase. They're, these are- Yeah ... these are, they're, they're- Blobs ... sitting there and look- Blobs
Rod: with hands and-
Will: Yeah, exactly
Will: feet ... sleeping and eating and not a whole lot more, maybe a bit more, but, um- Yeah, shitting and
Rod: pissing ...
Will: what they did, they played them some videos and- Sorry,
Rod: Ghostbusters? That's- No.
Will: No? No. First, uh, set of videos to familiarize the infants with watching videos. Yeah. It's just of women performing household chores.
Will: Yes, there is a, there is a- Ki- kids love that ... gendered element to this study. Kids love that. But anyway, so the little babies are watching women perform household chores. They're like, "Okay, th- this could be the equivalent of watching a mother doing stuff around the house" which- Po- pottery ... which, which would be a thing many babies would be used to.
Will: Now- Yeah ... then the infants were given some test videos where in these test videos, a baby cries, and either the woman continues with the household chores or the woman goes to soothe the baby [00:11:00] in the video. I like the idea of these, these little babies watching these, these like -
Rod: Your mum sucks ...
Will: these babies being traumatized videos basically.
Will: So there's a... In a lot of this sort of monitoring babies, we, you know, we don't have a, we don't have verbal reports. They can't press a button. They can't say, "This is- No ... the sucky one." That's
Rod: why we use pigeons normally.
Will: So what they determine things with a, what's called a, a violation of ex- expectations, which basically, if a baby, uh, sees something that is unexpected-
Rod: Yeah
Will: so for example, something defying gravity or a human body that looks very different to what... Then they'll look at it longer- Yeah ... which, which we would do as well.
Rod: Yeah.
Will: But it's, it's a way of saying, okay, something violates their expectations. Yep,
Rod: yep. Okay. Yeah.
Will: So it's, it's, it's wrong according to their schema of the world.
Will: And
Rod: therefore longer attention paid.
Will: So- Okay ... they're saying here is they're watching- When the mother doesn't attend or the, the woman doesn't attend to the, to the baby, these other babies are watching it longer. They're like, "Something is going wrong here" This ain't right. "This [00:12:00] ain't right. I'm expecting caregiving to that baby."
Will: But
Rod: that doesn't mean they desire it.
Will: They're expecting it. No. Study participant babies are watching on-screen babies- Yeah, yeah ... and they, they're expecting certain sort of things to happen, and they're like, "No, something's gone wrong here" It's like, what the fuck is
Rod: wrong with
Will: you? The kid's crying What, what is go- So there you go.
Will: I had never thought to ask, do babies themselves expect other babies to be comforted by- No ... uh, caregivers?
Rod: No, I wouldn't have either, and if you'd said to me, "What do you think the results were?" I feel like I might have predicted. The method is interesting. I'll give it that. The meth- I'll give them that.
Will: So that's, that's all.
Will: If a baby is crying, yes, science has finally proved that they are expecting some sort of comfort. Excuse me,
Rod: science never
Will: proves or disproves. Or, no, I guess, I guess actually other babies are expecting it to be comforted. So if you're on a flight- Oh ... and baby one is crying, baby two is like, "Hurry up, man"
Rod: Jesus.
Will: "Some shit's going down" Well, yeah, yeah. Like, "Could you tend to baby there?" So-
Rod: We will, we will think that
Rod: So out-of-body [00:13:00] experiences, I mean, we've all had them. We've all remote sensed, you know, people on the other side of the world through our government agencies.
Will: Yes or no.
Rod: Yeah. Uh- One or, one or the other ...
Will: one or the other.
Rod: But you know what they are, you know. You kind of-
Will: You know what they are. No, I don't.
Rod: Well, they, they, they call it astral projection, remote sensing, all these other things. The idea
Will: that- Deliberate or not- Mm ... this is people going, "All right. I'm willing my, my essence, my presence, my soul-" Yeah ... my, my bit to get out of my-"
Rod: Yeah ... "
Will: physical cells."
Rod: And go and spy on the next-door neighbor.
Will: Why would that be the thing?
Will: Or the
Rod: Kremlin.
Will: Okay. Well, okay. There might be a reason- ... to do that. Like,
Will: I'm spying for the Kremlin by flying there.
Rod: Yeah.
Will: Like
Rod: Out of my body.
Will: That's slightly more legit than spying on your neighbors. Um-
Rod: They could be spies, though. They could be Russian spies.
Will: I just, you know, this is weird. Uh, you know, you know, I, uh, uh, astral projection, why don't you just be where you are?
Rod: So does that mean you should never leave physically either?
Will: I'm not saying that.
Rod: I think you are, though.
Will: No, I, I ... Look, I'd go and, I'd go and check out Mercury. That's what I'm astral projecting.
Rod: Oh.
Will: Or the sun.
Rod: To a hellish [00:14:00] landscape.
Will: Inside the sun.
Rod: Isn't- That'd be cool ...
Will: isn't this just a pile of like, just it's your imagination, and they're like, "Oh, no-" Listen to you
Will: "it's not my imagination. I'm better." You're so
Rod: skeptical.
Will: Yes, I am skeptical.
Rod: There's been science on this for decades.
Will: There's been attempts at, at what?
Rod: There've been a few things. Uh, these might not help.
Will: I am open to some- Of course ... paranormal.
Rod: Yeah.
Will: But-
Rod: But once we get a scientific explanation- I'm
Will: not actually open to m- much paranormal, but
Rod: anyway But it's no longer paranormal when you just make it normal with your science.
Will: It's a big move when someone says, "You know what? In my science career, from my legitimate university-"
Rod: Yeah,
yeah ...
Will: I'm gonna investigate the paranormal."
Rod: Y- you'd be shocked to hear this is more in the realm of psychology. So in 1968, a guy called Charles Taite, he did an out-of-body experiment research thing with a woman they just know enigmatically as Ms.
Rod: Z. Probably Ms. Z. This is the 1960s. They
Will: made sure that she was unmarried. If we are to report this, nothing else about you- No ... just your marital s-
Rod: Hair color? How dare you. So they strap her to an EEG, and they put a, I love this, a [00:15:00] five-digit code placed on a shelf above the bed on which she was lying, above the bed, so she couldn't see it.
Will: Not within her eyeline.
Rod: Yeah, duh.
Will: Okay, so I, I, I'm just trying to clarify. She's lying down-
Rod: Mm-hmm ...
Will: and there's a shelf above behind her head-
Rod: Yep ...
Will: and she can't turn around
Rod: That she can't see.
Will: She can't turn around and look at.
Rod: Not lying down with the EEG on, no.
Will: And-
Rod: First three nights she said, "No, I couldn't, couldn't see the numbers."
Will: Jesus, can you imagine signing up for a four-day experiment where you're just like, "Okay, lie in bed-"
Rod: Sleep here "...
Will: and, and tell us what numbers are." What are the numbers?
Rod: Fourth night, though, she gave the correct numbers.
Will: She got jack of it, and she's like, "I'm gonna sneak a look at these things."
Rod: No, no, that's very unkind of you.
Rod: So some people critique the experiment.
Will: Yes.
Rod: For example, you know, there was no visual monitoring of the woman, Mrs. Z, to see if she was moving around.
Will: Oh, so literally she could have been.
Rod: Why don't you trust people?
Will: This is a trust-based experiment.
Rod: Why don't you trust people? So cynical. That's supposed to be my job.
Will: I'm just saying that science generally is [00:16:00] not a trust-based sort of insti- Like, we trust things, but we measure things.
Rod: So apparently someone else, a critique of this said, "Oh, look, couldn't she have just peeked at the numbers when Tart wasn't looking?" And a third one said, "Yes." If she tried to climb up, though, the brainwave record of the EEG would've- Oh
Rod: revealed that.
Will: We would've detected climbing.
Rod: Yeah.
Will: That's the climbing brainwave. Yeah.
Rod: Oh, that's- And, and, and it did. So that one didn't go well.
Will: So some researchers invested four days in this.
Rod: It was the '60s. It was a different time.
Will: Did they have nothing else to do?
Rod: Nothing. Oh, well, the Vietnam War. How about this one?
Rod: 1977, tennis shoe on the third floor window ledge. So Maria was in a medical center. She claimed to have experienced an out-of-body experience. She declared she floated outside her body at the hospital and said she saw this tennis shoe on the third floor window ledge. She wasn't on the third floor, and it was there.
Rod: That shoe was there.
Will: Sure.
Rod: An account of this was published in 1986, and many apparently in certain communities took this as evidence for out-of-body experiences.
Will: [00:17:00] Oh, okay. So the experiment was in the hospital, and she
Rod: walked into the hospital? Well, it wasn't ex- It was not so much an experiment as an account.
Rod: She was there anyway, I think, and she happened to go, "Oh my God, I had an OBE," and, um-
Will: And there was a tennis shoe ... a
Rod: tennis shoe on the third floor, and people went, "
Will: Holy shit." Couldn't happen to have seen that on the way in or anything. Why does no one go, like, underground or shit like that? Like, do, do something weird.
Will: Go where you can't go
Rod: otherwise. Agreed. But then how do you prove, "Oh, I saw the center of the Earth"?
Will: Way more green than you expect.
Rod: Kind of like your Ferrero Rocher when you leave it out of the fridge.
Will: Yeah, yeah, not a lot of light down there. It's pretty dark.
Rod: So that was in, uh, '77, published '86. 1996, some people went, "Huh, let's test this."
Rod: They put a tennis shoe on the same ledge and found that it was visible from within the building and could easily have been seen by the patient lying in the bed.
Will: Wow.
Rod: I know, right? They also discovered you could see it from outside of the building if you looked up. Luckily, there's been a recent study.
Will: Yeah, okay
Rod: So they, they've noted that in the past these experiments, I love the quote, "Tend to produce mixed, contested, and often inconclusive results."
Will: Mm.
Rod: But now this team from University of [00:18:00] Virginia, they ran a carefully blinded experiment with 21 experienced out-of-body practitioners.
Will: According to themselves.
Rod: So the method, they described the, the design as an out-of-body obstacle course spread across three rooms.
Will: Well, indeed.
Rod: Yeah, right.
Will: This is what you would do. It's
Rod: already rigorous.
Will: I want Ninja Warrior.
Rod: I want
Will: rigor. I want you to out of body, do the flip, climb on the, the weird dangly thing, and-
Rod: The stuff where you hold the bar with your arms and then flick up to the next thing.
Will: Yeah, exactly. I want you to do that.
Rod: So room one, this is the room where the participant individually would be placed, hooked up to an EEG to record their brain activity. Otherwise, they could move around, fiddle with... They could sit, stand or- Oh,
Will: so we've got movable EEGs now.
Rod: Movable EEGs. Like we're not- Like your portable EEGs.
Rod: Yeah,
Will: yeah. We're not strapped to the bed anymore.
Rod: It's the 21st century, mate. I know. 21st century.
Will: Okay.
Rod: Are they in there for four- So room one, that's where they
Will: are ... there for four days?
Rod: No, 60 to 90 minutes.
Will: Okay. All right. This, it's a bit more 21st century as well. Like
Rod: we don't- It is. It is. It's like, "Four days?
Rod: How about an hour?" "Cool. Yeah, I can do an hour." Um, in the second room, the researchers were in there. They had the door closed, and they were doing what they do in the second room. The [00:19:00] third room was seven meters down the hallway from room one, where the participants
Will: are. So are these the only three rooms in existence?
Will: So they've erased the rest of the rooms in the- The rest of
Rod: the world doesn't exist.
Will: Okay. Just knowing that they couldn't have traveled in another direction.
Rod: Well, they were given specific instructions here, you see. Oh,
Will: if, if one is to astral travel.
Rod: They wanted to make it focused. They wanted these people to have a task to do.
Rod: Oh, okay. So the task was in the room, the third room, there was a laptop which would, uh, randomly select an image from a pool of 100 objects, and the screen was turned towards the wall. So if you open the door, I don't know, with your mind or otherwise, you wouldn't see it.
Will: Oh.
Rod: So you couldn't get an inadvertent glimpse.
Will: So you have to not only open the door with your mind, but go in and go further. Exactly, yeah. So if you, if you can only astral project
Rod: like 15 meters- And, and put yourself between the wall and the laptop ...
Will: not enough.
Rod: So what happened was the researcher would go into this room. They would initiate the randomization program to pick one of the 100 images, turn the laptop towards the wall, and leave before the image appeared.
Will: Oh, really quickly.
Rod: And apparently no one knew until the analyses were run. So they, they, they didn't know what the images were. And
Will: they're [00:20:00] definitely not wasting time.
Rod: Definitely not wasting time. So then the participants, they hung in the room 60 to 90 minutes. What happened? 13 of the 21 participants reported impressions they believed were related to the hidden target.
Will: Yeah, they're like, "I can detect a broom."
Rod: Or, "I reckon I know there's something on a
Will: laptop." And down the hall, it's probably the same tiles as the one I'm in now, and-
Rod: It's all about the image on the laptop though.
Will: Oh, yeah. Image on the
Rod: laptop.
Will: And the image on the laptop... Oh, I can only see the keys. Like I, I can see all the keyboard.
Rod: Yeah, yeah,
Will: yeah. Can see the key- It's got like QWERTY. Um-
Rod: It's a MacBook Pro.
Will: Yeah.
Rod: Or a-
Will: Or a Dell ...
Rod: or a PC.
Will: Yeah. Yeah. One of the two. It's kinda gray. Like-
Rod: Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's, it's modern-ish.
Will: Yes.
Rod: No, so they, um, yeah, 13 to 21, so two-thirds said they saw something. Eight of the 13, eight of these people, they had actually experienced an out-of-body experience, so they'd actually traveled either-
Will: So hang on.
Will: So
Rod: the others- I don't know what the other five
Will: did ... the others were, they just like, they, they said yes to the-
Rod: I got an impression, but I didn't leave my body for it.
Will: Oh, okay.
Rod: The other five described something more like an internal mental screen or inner [00:21:00] vision. So they would see clues to the target without feeling as though they'd left their bodies, so they just somehow- Oh,
Will: okay
Rod: could tell.
Will: Yeah.
Rod: Researchers asked participants then to describe their impressions of the target. So like if they said red and round-
Will: It could be a cricket ball. I, I feel like I need a bit more accuracy on my astral projection.
Rod: Well, it's okay, they used AI. See?
Will: Why?
Rod: They wanted to remove subjective human judgment.
Rod: They used AI to compare each participant's description against descriptions of all 100 possible target images-
Will: What? ...
Rod: to rank them how closely they matched.
Will: Why can't we do that with humans?
Rod: Can't trust humans, 'cause AI can't be biased. Duh.
Will: Ah.
Rod: Duh. So the, apparently the system, when the same system was given accurate descriptions of the images, it had no trouble picking the target.
Rod: So when you fed it to the AI, given accurate descriptions, it would go, "That's an apple, that's a giraffe"
Will: So-
Rod: The AI will pick it
Will: very accurately ... the AI system can look at the pictures and say, "That's an apple"?
Rod: Yeah, and or, or get descriptions of them, and it would go, "That's definitely this, that's definitely that."
Rod: Proving, I believe, there was a di- clear distinctions [00:22:00] between the different objects that could have been generated for these people to detect.
Will: And we couldn't have just done that with humans?
Rod: No, you need AI.
Will: This is so stupid.
Rod: Oh, we're not done. So in principle, the real target should have been unusually highly ranked if they'd accurately- Sure
Rod: perceived it.
Will: So- Yeah ... if they actually saw it, they would describe the
Rod: image. Yeah, and it would mesh with the AI description, and you're like, "Okay, so how'd it go?" Uh, none of them succeeded.
Will: What a surprise.
Rod: Not one. Whenever the participants thought they'd perceived, there was no evidence it was the object on the laptop.
Rod: Results were no better than guessing. But there was a twist This is where it gets proven.
Will: Oh,
Rod: yeah. Are you ready?
Will: No, I'm not.
Rod: So two participants said they saw something else that should have been impossible, and the researchers couldn't explain it.
Will: Oh my God.
Rod: I know, right? This is science. Participant seven described one researcher sitting to the left.
Rod: This is, remember, they're in the, in a second room. Sitting to the left, focused- So they
Will: flew through this room to get to the laptop there.
Rod: Apparently.
Will: Yeah, okay.
Rod: They describe the researcher sitting to the left, I assume of the room, focused on a computer screen while the other sat [00:23:00] further back in the corner reading a book, a configuration that hadn't occurred in any other of the experiments.
Rod: That's exactly where they were during participant seven's attempt. Huh? Huh?
Will: Did the researchers document these, these positions?
Rod: I'm gonna assume yes.
Will: Oh my God, this is so tedious.
Rod: Participant 13 saw one researcher on the right taking notes and the other on the left at the computer, again, un- unconventional, exactly what the researchers were doing when the participant session was going on, and again, unusual from their normal arrangements.
Will: So the fact that they know, like on the way in, they know that there's two researchers that are gonna be sitting in the next room, uh, once they're all hooked up to the EEG- I don't know if they
Rod: know there are two.
Will: They might not- And they're like, "Oh-
Rod: They might not know ...
Will: the researchers that-
Rod: Was on the-- One was on the left
Will: I mean, if they guessed the researcher was riding a, a unicycle and juggling, and they were- Exactly ... I'd be like, "Okay." Exactly. But a researcher using a computer- Snogging a
Rod: clown ...
Will: like, I feel like that's not even, that's, that's, that's default state for 94% of the time.
Rod: No, there was a third one making crepes.
Will: Yeah, give me something weird, and then I'll be interested.
Rod: Well, they weren't, they weren't asked to look for that. Reading
Will: a [00:24:00] book.
Rod: I mean, that's- They weren't asked to look for that. It was an unusual configuration. You're not- On the left or the right ... you're not seeing the science, man.
Will: Oh my God, this is, ugh.
Rod: So here's, here's the conclusions, though. Like, you got to-- This is, this is where it's important. It raises the interesting possibility that the targets used in out-of-body experience studies might be part of the problem. Oh. Maybe it shouldn't be a static screen.
Will: Yeah, no, no.
Rod: It's not salient
Will: enough. I can, I can only detect humans.
Will: I, I detect- Yeah ... souls. Like, I, that's it. I astral project for souls.
Rod: Or movement.
Will: Well.
Rod: Maybe just movement.
Will: No, I'm
Rod: better than that. A still picture of an apple's nothing, but a person waving their arms, that I can see. No,
Will: I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm soulless. Don't-
Rod: You are. You are. But you're, you're an advanced version of me.
Rod: Oh,
Will: this is so tedious.
Rod: And my favorite, the lead researcher says here, this is a quote, "At its deepest level, this research is not only asking whether out-of-body experiences are real. It is asking what we mean by real in the first place."
Will: Oh, no, it is not. "
Rod: And whether our current understanding of reality is broad enough to account for everything human consciousness can experience."
Rod: Are you
Will: convinced? Do, do the researchers want to say what university [00:25:00] they're from, or, or has the university vetoed that?
Rod: Oh, no. Maybe. Did I not mention it? Did I write it down?
Will: That's okay. It's okay. We can keep it quiet.
Rod: University of Virginia.
Will: Oh, well, there you go. Love it.
Rod: I do too. I think it's great
Rod: So psychiatry Its diagnostic categories have always been-
Will: Precise and fixed for all
Rod: time ... exactly 100% perfect. So you've got the American Psychiatric Association who created the DSM, Diagnostic- Yep ... and Statistical Manual. There've been many versions. I think we're up to the DSM 5-TR. TR. I don't, I don't know what TR means.
Will: That's because DSM 6 cannot be done, like-
Rod: It's true, because it was the DSM 5 something when I was studying psych- Yeah,
Will: yeah,
Rod: yeah ... 20 fucking years ago- Yeah ... it was still the DSM 5. And there's also the World Health Association, Organization, apologies. They've done one called the ICD, the International Classification of Diseases.
Rod: They're up to number 11. Took them a long time, 'cause again, 10 was around for a very long time. But anyway, so these things can change when they try to create these diagnostic categories. They [00:26:00] can change as new information comes to light- Yeah,
Will: and changes in
Rod: society ... experience. Yeah, exactly, so you know. So it's a very messy world, even though there are these two sort of, Bible is too strong a word, but these clear-
Will: Yeah, def-
Will: um, tomes ... definitely not, not Bible.
Rod: Not Bible, no. They haven't been around as long. So, uh, University of Copenhagen did some research recently. Just over 1,000 psychiatrists and doctors who work in psychiatry from 19 different countries.
Will: Mm-hmm.
Rod: They were given written patient case descriptions based on the ICD, the World Health Organization's version 10 diagnostic system.
Will: Yep.
Rod: So nine different patient case descriptions based on these categories. Each of the 1,000 odd psychiatrists, et cetera, was assigned two cases and asked to determine the most appropriate diagnosis. So here's a couple of cases as classified or- Yeah, what, what
Will: would you, what would you say this
Rod: is? What would you, yeah, what, what do you got?
Rod: And the grand result was, and according to one of the, the senior researchers, a professor of psychiatry, Julie Nordgaard, our study shows that when two [00:27:00] psychiatrists diagnose the same patient, they will agree about 55% of the time. It's not great.
Will: Yeah, but it's not bad.
Rod: Depends what a, the diagnosis leads to.
Rod: Well,
Will: well, uh, uh, but I was actually, you know, 'cause I was, I was gonna ask and provide a treatment plan.
Rod: Mm.
Will: Because you could be much more agreed on sensible treatment plans and not necessarily agreed on diagnosis.
Rod: Depending on how divergent the diagnoses are.
Will: And, and the point is not necessarily categorization, but achieving the good life for the, for the patient to live.
Will: This
Rod: is true. This is true, but you have a very holistic and decent view of the world. Oh,
Will: yes. Thank
Rod: you. And you know, a big ... Well, you do in general. But a, a big part of the reason for these categories, you know, is driven by the insurance industries. Yeah,
Will: I get it. Yeah.
Rod: So that's an issue.
Will: Yeah.
Rod: You need to be put in a box so we can insure you or not.
Rod: Um, according to Julie Nordgaard, uh, the 55% they consider worryingly low. They're not happy with that. In fact, it's similar to the levels reported in some of the studies conducted in the late 1970s, which prompted the call for doing these [00:28:00] diagnostic criteria in the first place, the DSMs and the ICDs. So there, there's concern.
Rod: So the details, big differences in agreement across different mental disorders. So it depends on what it is they're diagnosing.
Will: Yeah, okay.
Rod: So the accuracy of diag- diagnosis was much lower for schizophrenia and similar type disorders. So we're talking between 37 and 54% agreement. 37% disagreement or agreement- Mm
Rod: on a disorder, depending on what's required afterwards, could be a big deal.
Will: Yeah, totally.
Rod: Uh, the highest and the most close to good agreement, bipolar disorder was 94%, OCD, obsessive compulsive, 92%. Yeah. So those apparently easier to at least agree on. No significant differences were found between more and less experienced clinicians.
Rod: Yeah. So this is not a byproduct of experience.
Will: The, but, but to be honest, to me, this smacks of... I'd like, I'd love to see a comparison in a biomedic- like a diseases of the body.
Rod: Yeah, it's a good point.
Will: And, and, and you could go, well, actually, we can diagnose a broken leg [00:29:00] really easily. We can diagnose a blood disorder really easily.
Will: We can get these hard markers. And- Yeah ... and to let our psychologist and psychiatrist friends off the hook here, they're reading a persona here.
Rod: I agree
Will: with that. They can't sniff a belly button here.
Rod: They can't. Well, they could, but that's not part of the diagnosis. But I, I, I agree. But like the physical one, it remind me, years ago when I was doing a, a, what was it?
Rod: It wasn't... It was called abnormal psychology back then.
Will: Yeah, sure.
Rod: You can't call it that anymore. No. Psychopathology. But I remember one of the things our lecturer told us was there was a study that he was part of organizing heart, um, specialists diagnosing often they, at the time, they diagnosed by listening to heartbeats, heart murmurs, and the way- Yeah, okay
Rod: things sounded. And they did a similar thing to this. So they paired people up. They were given, um, a bunch of, uh, sounds to listen to, and they were asked to diagnose according to what they heard, which was common practice. And what happened was not only did they get vastly different diagnoses, they didn't notice that the dataset, I think it was 16 total sounds, was two lots of eight repeated.
Will: Yeah. I was wondering that.
Rod: And they [00:30:00] didn't even notice
Will: that.
Rod: How you would trust that. Yeah. They didn't even notice that. And at first, you know, we all went, "Oh my God," you know, "Heart specialists are monsters, and it's complete bullshit." The thing is, they tend to get things right anyway.
Will: See, th- this is the thing, so often these studies, let's pull things completely out of context-
Rod: Yeah
Will: and see how you perform when it's in a weird sort of slice of your job- Yeah ... as opposed to-
Rod: Yeah ...
Will: all of the, the aspects where you are looking at a whole, you know, a whole body, uh, a whole- Yeah ... system of life, everything. Uh,
Rod: just- And also you're assuming the diagnostic category X versus Y has very different requirements for treatments, et cetera- Yeah,
Will: exactly
Rod: when they may be quite similar.
Will: Little bit of CBT and some drugs.
Rod: Exactly. Exactly So anyway, professional experience didn't matter apparently. So psychiatric conditions we know, they're messy and symptoms also can overlap dramatically- Mm ... between categories. So obsessive thoughts could occur, uh, in a OCD person-
Will: Yeah,
Rod: sure
Rod: but also in someone suffering from versions of schizophrenia.
Will: Yeah.
Rod: So if you focus on the, the particular obsessive thoughts, [00:31:00] you could be driven down one trajectory, but if you p- focus on some other elements- Yeah ... you could go down towards schizophrenia. So the lead author says, "Look, there are patterns to the disagreements," which I find comforting, to be honest.
Will: Yeah.
Rod: And they say, "This likely reflects the fact that diagnostic categories are not as clearly defined as we have assumed when experienced psychiatrists can interpret the same symptom presentation so differently."
Will: So, so the result is the, the diagnostic categories are still really quite weak, and that our understanding of the brain and when it goes wrong- Yeah
Will: and if the brain is, you know, brain's only part of this-
Rod: Yeah ...
Will: this thing, is, is, is murky and a long way from simple binary perfection.
Rod: Look, I totally agree, and this is why that study, you know, you read the headline and you kind of go, "Oh, shit," but then i- if you're not paying attention- Ah ... or you don't know the background.
Rod: And what I, what I think is really important here, a different professor, Mads Gram Henriksen, they say, "In research it's essential," this is the research part, which I think matters, "it's essential that we know exactly what we are studying." So if a considerable part of participants enrolled in a study for treatments [00:32:00] on personality disorders are actually suffering from schizophrenia, the results may become murky.
Rod: Like what exactly are you studying? What are you dealing with here? So is the condition you're trying to treat having an effect on personality disorders, schizophrenia? Like the idea about how it might affect research, he's not saying these need to be better or worse- Yeah ... he's just saying, this could be an issue.
Rod: You're trying to categorize people, do research on them, and then make recommendations about what you should do afterwards, when in fact if you're not able to diagnose people well-
Will: Yeah ...
Rod: what the fuck are you actually dealing with? Yeah. That's problematic. And the, um, the Julie Nordgaard, again, the consultant psychiatrist professor, she said, "This is not about psychiatrists doing a poor job," and I think that's important to remember.
Rod: It reflects the fact that despite the existence of these systems, clinicians continue to differ in how they interpret symptoms, and what they prioritize is important.
Will: Yeah.
Rod: Which is again, I think quite reasonable, but they do say, look, we need to step back maybe, develop more precise descriptions. But what I think- Wow
Rod: is more interesting ... Yeah, I know, exactly. Like what the fuck?
Will: [00:33:00] What, what ... Th- this idea that- This is still- ... that what we need is more precision.
Rod: Yeah.
Will: It's just, it's just the- Yeah ... wrong approach.
Rod: Yeah, exactly. Let's make it, let's deconstruct it more and more and more and more and more. Like it's not gonna work.
Rod: But what I did like is she says, uh, "It might also be necessary to reduce the number of diagnostic categories." And I'm like, ugh, at least reducing them is a different approach, 'cause reducing them is not something that's been popular. Yeah. But the whole lot of it, I, I mean, there's so much to unpack with this.
Will: But, but, I, you know, actually I think, I think it, you know, you said it before, insurance companies need categories here. Mm-hmm. I think, I think what that points to is not that the insurance companies are smart or anything like that.
Rod: No, no.
Will: But instead-
Rod: No, they're designed to make money ...
Will: but well, no, that we are driving a system based not on how do we achieve care for people, or how do we understand the, the human brain- No, how do we pay
Rod: for
Will: it
Will: how do we pay for it? And so you could have, you could have a system that is li- like scientific. How do we understand the human brain? Mm. That's, and that's a big, hard quest.
Rod: Mm.
Will: [00:34:00] And you wouldn't necessarily have to use these sorts of categories. Yeah. You might use other sorts of things going on. Yeah. And flipping it around, if you just go for how do we care for people, maybe you also do something radically different and we just go, "Well, it's bespoke and individual, and we're trying to build a system that- Ah
Will: around the person might support them to live a life that they want."
Rod: You with your idiosyncratic medicines and sc- I, you know, you know- ... your performed ... I, I thoroughly agree.
Will: I just,
Rod: I- This is, this is not an indictment of the profession. This is actually-
Will: I just, I just- Speaks to
Rod: bigger
Will: things ... this, this for me, like I have always been angry at Immanuel Kant for this.
Will: Um-
Rod: Well, who hasn't been?
Will: I know. But no, h- one of his famous arguments is the categorical imperative, and, and it's actually about something important, but it's the wrong use of the term categorical imperative. I've always thought-
Rod: Can you give me any version of the use of the term?
Will: No, it's like, it's basically a do unto others as, as you would do unto each other.
Will: But it's, it's a useful philosophical rule, and I probably got the wrong one here. Mm. It doesn't really matter. Mm. But it's n- I, I wish there was someone that talked more about the drive for categories. [00:35:00] Like it's like- Oh, God, yes. God, yes ... the dri- the drive to go, "What if we put everything in boxes?" And, and it's like, yeah, sure, for some things.
Rod: Which we've done a lot all over the place, and it turns out as often as not, that didn't work so well.
Will: It, yeah, there, there are many pl- and, and I, I would suggest that the human brain may be tricky to put into categories.
Rod: Ah, it's, you know, the thing that people forget, I used to do this a lot lecturing on methods and stuff, but the process of categorization removes information.
Will: Indeed.
Rod: That's the bottom line. It removes information, and there are reasons for doing that- Yep ... in certain circumstances. Yep. However, if you assume what you're doing, and I think a lot of people do this implicitly, they assume categorization increases your information, your knowledge about a thing. It doesn't.
Rod: No. It removes. Yeah. It simplifies, it makes things easier, particularly bureaucratically, but I don't think people think about that.
Will: Useful for some things, not for everything.
Rod: Yeah, like us
Will: Well, that was your little bit of science for the [00:36:00] week.
Rod: holiday edition. You're special by the pool wearing a bikini edition.
Will: But because you're on holiday, you know that you still have the power to give us the rating that you need to give us. Yeah,
Rod: seven stars on every app. Even things that don't do podcasts.
Rod: Yeah.
Will: Go out there and write it on like a recipe app
Rod: an Uber and Yelp. Is it Yelp still a thing?
Will: I think so. I'm
Rod: I don't know. I'm at a restaurant where Don't ye
Will: listener, if you've got some topics that you want us to explore,
Rod: tell Will.
Will: How would you tell Will his
Rod: number is? 0 4 0 5 oh. Uh, cheers. At a little bit of science Do com
Will: au.
Rod: au
Will: Do that. We want your stories.
Rod: we wanna hear from you.
Will: Lovely listener. Enjoy the pina colada.
Rod: Oh and the
Will: col. Pin colada.
Rod: Pini Kaia Pina Pia
Will: Pina Kaia of
Rod: of the Clade
Will: Penai. Cate.
