Black magic is hard to master.
But once you do, you can concoct potions that can cure what ails you.
I'm just kidding.
Take a look at this.
It's a magic potion.
No, it's not.
It's ferrofluid.
It's a fluid with iron in it that responds to this magnet that I'm moving around
under this clear, plastic table.
So, ferrofluid is from the word ferro, which is for iron,
and fluid, which is for, uh, fluid.
So, we call it an iron fluid, and it's reacting to the magnetic field.
And let's face it. Magnets are just cool.
They can do all sorts of amazing things, because they exert an invisible force.
Things like keeping a 30-ton maglev train above the track.
Or sticking a positive affirmation on the fridge.
I am a good person...
even though I think those thoughts.
But one thing magnets can't do is help you heal your knee.
These things do not work.
Welcome to the show.
I'm Bill Nye, and I'm here to save the world.
There are all kinds of treatments like the magnetic knee band
that claim to help you get well.
It's an alternative medical treatment.
Meaning it's an alternative...
to actual medicine.
With magnets, the idea is that because blood has iron in it,
magnets can draw blood to parts of your body to help them heal.
But, surprise, they don't work.
Here is an ordinary bar magnet.
Here are some paper clips.
They stick to the magnet as if by magic.
But it's not magic, it's...
- Science. - Yes.
And then here is some iron oxide, which you may know as rust.
The rust doesn't stick to the magnet, because the iron is bound to oxygen.
And that just changes things.
It's not necessarily magnetic.
Now, right before the show, I pricked my own finger
and got some of my own blood.
When I take a magnet to my own blood, nothing happens.
It doesn't move it at all, because although there's iron in my blood,
it's bound to a complex hemoglobin molecule,
so it's not magnetic.
I don't make the rules, people. This is science.
Magnetherapy is just one example
of an alternative medicine that doesn't work.
How do we know it doesn't work?
I'm so glad you asked.
It's by means of the process of science.
In medicine, we use double-blind experiments.
Now, that might sound tedious...
because it is.
It's time-consuming and meticulous,
because we wanna make sure a treatment really works.
Here's what we do.
We need to find volunteers
that are willing to try a new type of treatment.
That way, we divide them into two groups.
In the case of medicine, the researchers wanna make sure
that the medicine doesn't just work,
that it actually works better than a pill or some sort of medicine...
that isn't real medicine.
It's just what we call a placebo.
Placebo is from the Latin placere, "to please."
So, the researchers tell neither of the patients
nor the doctors which pill is which.
That's where we get the term double-blind.
So, I have two types of pills.
I don't know which is the drug and which is the placebo...
or the drug and the placebo.
We get these orange pills and these blue pills.
So, we give these patients the orange pills.
In this case, it'd be a lot of orange pills.
And then we see how they feel.
We give the blue pills to a different set of patients
and see how they feel.
It's real.
Now...
we asked the patients how they feel, and I gotta say, based on these emojis,
our orange pills really worked, because these people are smiling
and not as many people over here are smiling.
And by the way,
sir, if that condition persists for more than four hours,
I'd call a doctor.
So, let's see what these pills really were.
We'll have a look at the orange ones, and it was real medicine.
And we'll have a look at the blue ones.
Oh, one more, maybe that would've done it. Yeah.
And...
Oh, steady, steady.
And that was the placebo.
Who knew? I didn't know. I really didn't know.
Now, notice that some people who took the placebo felt better.
That might be due to the placebo effect,
when something makes you feel better even though it's not medicine.
We don't really understand it, but the placebo effect is real.
And it can be used to convince people to buy "alternative treatments."
But alternative medicines aren't tested or regulated.
So, you know what?
I need a minute.
Tell them how you really feel, Bill.
Think about what this means.
If you take a medicine that is unregulated,
you don't really know what's in it.
You could be doing yourself harm and no one would be the wiser.
All sorts of things are sold as dietary supplements
that aren't tested, that don't need to be tested.
And it wouldn't matter, except billions of dollars are spent on these things
by people who are just hoping
that this thing will do some magical thing.
I mean, understand, cigarettes,
which I think are demonstrably bad for you,
are far more regulated than a great many of these dietary supplements
and "alternative medicines."
It's a big deal, so you guys pay attention.
The reason we have these regulations is to protect us.
They're not arbitrary. It's not The Man.
It's a real thing.
When they tell you "doctors don't want you to know about this,"
or "this will cure you in a weekend,"
it's probably not true.
Get your heads in the game. Protect yourselves,
and... save your money.
To help understand bad medicine,
here's a handy checklist to help you tune your quack-o-meter.
Does the treatment use dramatic stories?
Does it claim to cure everything?
Does it invoke ancient wisdom or ambiguous cultural references?
Does it claim to be better because it's natural?
Does it advertise with the phrase, "What doctors don't want you to know"?
These should raise red flags. Big, red flags.
To practice finding these red flags,
let's play along with our correspondent Joanna Houseman
who looked into an interesting new... treatment.
I'm here with David Gibson, who's teaching me how sound can heal.
I'm feeling really chill right now.
Every organ and every cell has a specific vibration
that it prefers to vibrate at.
So, you might say, "Oh, I'm feeling fear."
- Yeah, like, "Oh, I'm so scared." - Well, if you did a sound like this:
Now you do it.
Whoa!
It's more:
I feel like that would scare a mugger.
What negative things can happen to your organs
- if you don't have them at peace? - You die.
- Yeah. - I don't... I don't wanna die.
Is this kind of like telling my muscles, "Get on this level"?
Yeah, it's really like a, um, massage.
And these are really well-researched by the Germans years ago.
- In the war? - Yes.
Like, the Nazis?
We'll work on some stuck energy in your stomach.
Okay.
I know a guy who claims that he's gotten rid of cancer
in over a hundred people.
And the sound he uses to get rid of the cancer is really intense.
It's like, "Agh!"
He is actually breaking up the emotional blockage
that's holding the cancer, and the cancer goes away on its own.
We did research with a dozen Parkinson's patients
and put them on our sound lounge,
and they're able to not take meds for that day.
- Like, can they get off their medication? - Yeah, it helps get rid of symptoms.
- We can't say it cures anything, but... - Right. So, you can't say, but can it?
Yeah, it does.
It's like, imagine. "We're gonna listen to music and the disease will go away."
It's like, "Whoa."
We've toned, we've forked.
Yeah.
What else is there, you know?
Do a hug with sound.
Hug with sound?
Wow. Wow.
Wow, indeed.
Okay, I don't need to know, but you are amazing.
How did you keep a straight face?
I had to think of really, really sad things in my head.
When he was yelling at this area, I was like...
"I'm gonna offend him if I start laughing."
So, I just started thinking of, like, really sad puppies.
- Oh, sad puppies. - That helped.
That's it. Just that level. Nothing bad happened to the puppies in my head.
Thank goodness.
Does this guy really make a living? What does he charge for this?
So, for what I did, I think it was $148.
Not 150?
No. You get $2 off, I guess. They didn't round up.
But there's other things that you can buy, like the sound forks.
And I saw some for hundreds and hundreds of dollars,
and, like, these big crystals that, like, make sound
and those were thousands of dollars.
So, there was, like, a lot of money around.
I feel like everything was super-expensive, weirdly.
How many of these people are in the world?
So, when I was there,
there were, like, three or four other people that worked with him
that were very, very excited that we were there,
and that told us, you know, that this stuff helped them
- in one way or another. - That's very troubling.
It was troubling, but that wasn't the most troubling part.
What is the most troubling part?
It really freaked me out
that he said that people got off their medication.
- Yeah. - I was like...
"What? Like...?"
'Cause it's like, he's healing cancer with, like...
- But no, he isn't. - with maracas.
How long has he been in business? Did he tell you?
I think several years, at least ten.
And sound therapy is a guy yelling at you.
Yeah. Exactly.
So, I mean, I know that music therapy is a thing.
And that music helps things like...
Helps people, for example, with communication
if they have problems communicating.
And there's scientific proof behind that, but that's music therapy.
This sound therapy thing was very odd to me,
because it's just like a speaker solves things in your kidney.
I'm like, "How?"
I understand neurological things,
'cause when you hear music, you think about the music, the lyrics,
but the kidney, what is...?
- What? What? - Dude. Dude.
This is what we call exercising our critical thinking skills.
- Exactly. Very much so. - Nicely done.
- Thank you so much, Joanna. Fabulous. - Thank you, Bill.
Carry on.
Fantastic report.
Thanks for hanging in there.
Using alternative medicines can make some people feel better.
But it's hard to tell if they work, or if it's just a placebo effect.
So, to discuss this, we have another expert panel.
I am joined by filmmaker Donald Schultz,
Cara Santa Maria, a skeptic and science communicator.
And some disclosure, we go back as good skeptics.
- We do a little bit, yeah. - And Chris Beedie,
professor of applied sports and exercise
at the Canterbury Christ Church University.
And you study the placebo effect in sports.
I do.
So, with all this said...
the placebo effect fascinates me.
I mean, that's how all this alternative medicine works, right?
You get people who think it's gonna work.
Just about the sound thing real quick, right?
We sometimes throw the baby out with the bath water.
We're like, "Well, sound can't heal unless it's music."
And I have to go against that. We actually destroy kidney stones
and stones in the bladder with ultrasound.
That's a common Western medicinal practice.
But that's not sound. That's ultrasound.
It's still sound. Just 'cause we're not hearing it doesn't mean it's not there.
Just the fact that we can't hear ultrasound doesn't take away from...
- There is a key difference. - Yes.
You can look at an x-ray before the ultrasound,
look at it after, and the kidney stone is shattered.
- Yes. - Broken up.
But I don't think there's any, uh...
x-ray, or MRI, or ultrasound
that would show any difference after this guy screams at her.
It looked like there was more of a negative response there, you know?
She probably left with a negative gain. A nocebo effect, really.
- Nocebo? - A nocebo.
- This is a word. It's fabulous. - It's a good one.
A nocebo effect is a negative outcome
from expecting something negative to happen.
So, for example, you mentioned clinical trials earlier.
If people believe they're in the experimental group...
they don't just expect to get the benefit, they expect to get the side effects.
So, in a lot of clinical trials, you get people in the placebo group
who experience a nocebo effect. They get side effects from a placebo.
Regarding the question you asked.
Is this just a placebo effect, if there's any effect at all?
Is placebo any different than what we think of as alternative medicine?
I would say absolutely, especially with pernicious types of alternative medicine.
Lead on.
You know, homeopathy, for example. There's no evidence...
Describe homeopathy.
So, homeopathy is when you take a key ingredient
that actually does something important,
and then you water it down, and then you water it down again.
You keep watering it down until there's almost none of that ingredient left.
- It's 11 times? Is that...? - It's something crazy to where...
Anyway, two to the 11th is a big number.
- Imperceptible. - One over two to the 11th
is a very, very small number.
And so, what you end up with is water, or a sugar pill, or something like that.
You take this, and then you think you feel better.
That is the placebo effect.
It's only a placebo effect. There is no other effect.
There's been no evidence that shows that that has an effect.
I think Donald's point, however,
does hint at the idea that we do use sound in clinical medicine.
Well, there's nothing makes you happier than the blues.
- Well... - And talking about depression.
One of the things about research is the research has to be done.
And I don't like alternative medicine,
'cause that means it's alternative to Western medicine.
I think it's complementary.
And one of the best examples is magic mushrooms.
Now, for a long time, woo, woo, mushrooms make people high.
But recently, Johns Hopkins did three amazing studies.
They did a study with depression.
This was high doses in a lab
where they had music, and they had someone watching the people.
And out of the 51 study people, after one year,
more than 60 percent of the people
had a profound change in their personality.
When we talk about alternative medicine under a big umbrella,
sometimes it's a little dangerous,
because there are types of what we think of as alt, CAM,
complementary and alternative, um...
integrative medicine, which to me are all kind of the same thing.
- You know, it's... - Do you agree with her?
Unfortunately, with alt medicine, people often say,
"That guy is obviously crazy, and he's not doing anything good.
- "Therefore, everyone's crazy." - All right.
So, you're talking a little bit about drugs.
We started out talking about the placebo effect,
and I wanna ask about the placebo effect in sports.
- That's your business? - That's my business.
Now, athletes use a lot of substances to improve their performance.
Many of these substances don't have a particularly strong evidence base.
So, to a certain extent, they fall under that category
- of complementary... - Can you give an example?
Caffeine's a good example.
- Caffeine? - Caffeine is used widely in sport.
We know that caffeine has a few effects,
but the evidence for its effects on performance
are not as strong as a lot of athletes would believe.
What's an example of one that you feel is ineffective?
Well, we get to the scale of sort of magnetic bracelets.
- Magnetic bracelets? - Where athletes actually swear
that "this has made profound effects on my performance."
Yet there is no evidence for this, other than the athlete's belief.
I mean, we are creatures of anecdotes.
We tend to... We like our own stories.
"This worked for me last time, so it's gonna work for me next time."
But athletes like the stories of other athletes, so athletes use a lot of things.
We thought we'd investigate this,
but with slightly more sort of rigor around it.
So, we give athletes capsules which contain nothing but placebo,
and tell them various stories
- about these capsules. - Good placebo?
Well, sometimes bad placebos. Sometimes nocebos as well. Yeah.
And what we find... It's a very simple story.
Firstly, good placebos make athletes go faster.
Even good athletes go faster when they're taking a good placebo.
- How can you tell they're not trying hard? - We measure their lactate,
we're measuring their oxygen uptake, their heart rates.
We can see no significant physiological change
between the pre-trials and the post-trials.
So, the athletes, they're going faster, their physiology is the same,
but they say afterwards, "Yeah, I felt that.
That was the trial when I had a high dose of caffeine."
Is it confidence?
It's belief.
It's belief that they have had...
- An edge. - But what's interesting
is it's less effective if the athlete doesn't know they're taking it.
Whoa!
Knowing that you've taken something
is a part of the effectiveness of that something.
- Certain things. - Some things. Of course.
Let's not make great claims. I'm talking about sport.
What I mean is things that have a subjective measure.
So, we know that the placebo effect exists, and is effective as a...
I don't like using the umbrella term, because it has many effects.
In things like pain measures. We can see a strong placebo effect.
Pain is a big part of sports performance.
Pain is a big part, but in things like mortality after cancer treatment,
there is no placebo effect.
That's an objective measure that has no subjective component.
- Placebo effect doesn't exist there. - No, I would agree.
Auras? Is there anything to life auras?
- You're asking me? I'm with you. - I'm asking you, plural.
We know there's nothing to the aura.
We've seen... We've seen studies where psychics and mystics
are meant to put their test subject behind a wall
and find them based on the aura that's supposed to go
above a certain height of a wall, and they never can.
There's no evidence supporting the idea that there's such a thing as an "aura."
- You can get a migraine aura. - There was a gentleman, Lyall Watson.
He was head of Johannesburg Zoo, and went on to have a show on BBC.
He says we perceive the world through five narrow slits.
- One of the things that's interesting... - Five what?
Infrared, ultraviolet, subsonic, ultrasonic.
All of this stuff is stuff we cannot perceive.
The fact that we're not seeing it does not mean it's not there.
And there are people that are more perceptive than we are.
- Just because our machinery... - So, your claim is you can see auras?
But we don't have the machinery to see it, even if it were there or not.
If you take a large dose of ecstasy, or LSD, or mushrooms...
So, those five narrow slits...
That doesn't prove whether or not the aura exists.
Those five slits are slightly opened
and we are able to perceive things that machinery can't.
One guy's open is another guy's "not there."
- So, that's why I said we... - So, okay.
Let's move on to the other one. Crystal therapy.
I am totally down with science on this one,
that if there is an effect,
generally, it's gonna be a measurable effect.
- It's something we can detect. - And crystal has no effect?
- I've not seen any research that says... - He's dying. Now, what about reflexology?
There's one in my neighborhood that say they can press your feet
- and affect your gallbladder. - Our entire computer systems...
All of our computers are based off of crystals.
Like, to say that crystals have no effect whatsoever.
- Like... - You're making a straw-man argument.
Just because we don't understand something yet doesn't mean it doesn't work.
And I think crystals... If you go to places like Sedona that sit on a crystal bed,
- and if you are, like, in a... - I've been to Sedona.
Dude, I'm, like, picking up what you're putting down,
and I'm not seeing it.
- Thanks very much. - Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I think... I think we all feel better now.
Alternative medicines have a lot of problems,
but there's a big one we haven't talked about.
I'll let Prashanth Venkat, one of our writers on the show, explain.
Prashanth?
Thank you, Bill. Now, I know what you're thinking.
Indian guy, might be into alt medicines and stuff,
but I actually hate them.
I especially hate how they're marketed.
Remember sound therapy guy David Gibson?
Did you happen to notice these little gems peppered around his place?
Why are there three random Buddhas and an om symbol?
Is Wes Anderson about to shoot a movie there?
Sound therapy has nothing to do with Buddhism or Hinduism.
This happens a lot, so I'm just gonna come out and say it.
White people, I love you,
but stop using Asian wallpaper for street cred.
I see what you're doing, and it's stupid.
Look, I get it, white people.
It's hard selling incense without weed.
So, you say it's magic, and that it cures gout,
and you throw in a Ganesh statue
just to give it this ancient, wisdom-y feel.
Suddenly, business is booming.
It's the oldest trick in the book. Half-nonsense, half-Indian.
It's called the Deepak Chopra.
Then again...
it's not entirely your fault, white people.
Which is why I wanna say something to my fellow Asians.
Asians, lend me your ears.
Stop convincing white people it is real.
This is as much on you as it is on them.
You know how gullible they are.
You know they just wanna fit in.
Look, I know. I know. We all had a lot of fun watching white people
get Chinese tramp stamps throughout the 2000s.
But this is different.
When they see Asians doing Reiki to cure cancer,
or South Asians marrying people based on astrology, they see truth.
And they wanna copy us. And that's when it gets really dangerous.
But more importantly, that's when it gets really tacky.
I mean...
look what they've done to yoga.
Yoga was badass. Yoga is actually good for you.
But white people got their lululemon hands on it...
and turned it into the smooth jazz of the fitness world.
Can't we just come to a ceasefire?
Asians, stop selling unregulated remedies with no scientific basis.
And, white people, stop using Asian culture
to sell unregulated remedies with no scientific proof.
Let's just get back to the good old days.
Put the Ganesh statue in the storage
and just go back to telling me how much you love samosas.
- Thank you. - Prashanth Venkat, man. That was great.
- Bill Nye. - Nicely done.
There's an old joke medical researchers tell.
What do you call alternative medicine that's proven to work?
You call it medicine.
A lot of the effective medicine you can buy
started off as a natural cure
or some other form of alternative medicine.
Anecdotes about how well it worked got around,
piqued a researcher's interest, it got subjected to lots of tests,
including double-blind studies, and when...
This is the important part, people.
And when it was found to work, it got approved...
and became real medicine.
It's cool.
We're back in the lab.
That's what I'm talking about, people.
Now we can get something done.
And then there is this alternative remedy
that says it's for heartburn. But does it work?
To help me test it, I have my friend Steve Aoki.
Steve makes a living making albums with sound.
And he's waiting in my lab for six hours.
Hey, man. It's good to see you again, dude.
All right, this is gonna be very dangerous, so better suit up.
Thanks for coming. How are you feeling?
Uh...
I feel sick in my stomach about what we're about to do.
You're in luck, really, because...
maybe you've gotten a little too much acid in your stomach.
Maybe from all that screaming.
- Sure. - So, you need an antacid.
- Okay. - Now, over there,
we have conventional milk of magnesia.
Here, we have... this, uh...
fancy remedy from a store.
I won't say the name, but it's, um...
It's whole and there's... They sell food.
Okay.
Now, what we wanna do is put in some universal indicator...
You may remember the expression litmus paper?
Very similar, this is the modern stuff that works with acids or base.
One, two, three, four. That's a big squirt. Give it a big squirt.
Now, what we'll do, reach around in front and turn this on,
and the little magnetic stirrer will magnetically stir.
There we go.
Turn it up to magnetic stir-ness.
- You got it going? Oh, man. - Whoa. I gotta turn mine down.
Oh, yes. Let's turn it down a li... Yeah, yeah. Just a little tornado.
Now, I'll put in a lot more of this stuff till we get a nice green color.
And green is neutral.
That's where it's neither an acid nor a base.
You remember this expression acid and base?
- Slightly. Slightly. - Sort of? Slightly?
Well, one donates a proton and the other receives a proton.
You know how they do.
Okay, Bill, keep it going. That's good. Yes, that should do it.
Yes. No. More, more, more.
All right. They're about the same color.
They're pretty good. Now, what we're gonna do
is make them acidic just as your stomach is,
and we will use this hydrochloric acid,
which is the fi... No.
Which is the same acid in your stomach.
- Take your eyedropper. - Okay.
And don't put it in your eye. That's just an expression.
And let's get them where they have the same amount. Give it one squeeze.
There we go. They're pretty even.
Okay. Three, two, one.
And they turn acid red.
Scary red.
Put in another drop so yours is as red as mine.
Just this one little drop there.
Yes.
I'm sorry. Just thinking.
So, now...
you have... There, seal it up.
Nicely done. We got gloves. We're cool. We got safety glasses.
Now, shake your antacid.
So, what we have, for those of you scoring along with us,
when it's acidic, it's reddish.
When it's neutral, it's green.
And when it's basic, when it's the opposite of acid,
it turns blue.
If it gets crazy base, it goes all purple-y.
But I am shaking up the fancy-schmancy,
very expensive per milliliter or ounce...
fancy, organic food store antacid.
And you have time-honored milk of magnesia,
which has magnesium and...
and oxygen.
So, I guess it's MgOH2.
Ha, ha. So, now...
Pour in... What do you think? What are you taking?
- A capful? - I have no idea.
- A capful of milk of magnesia. - Okay, here we go.
Fill it up. Fill that cap up. Fill it up real well.
- All right, it's right at the tip. - Dump her in there.
Ooh...
It's still pretty pink.
- There it goes, turning green. - Oh, it's shading.
Whoa.
All right, this stuff works.
This stuff works.
- Good old milk of magnesia. - Good old milk of magnesia.
Here is hippie juice...
uh...
antacid.
Now, to get the same amount as a... I would say I need two of these.
One.
Two.
Do you see any change?
I don't see any change. Three.
- It's bright red still. - Should I put in three?
- Yes. - Ha, ha!
No, it doesn't work. Even three.
Or four. Or this.
Because in this, you guys,
this hippie stomach treatment,
it has extract of elm,
peppermint, and vinegar.
Yeah, that's right. Vinegar.
Acetic acid. Have you ever had sweet-and-sour anything?
The sour is the vinegar.
So, they want you to put vinegar in your stomach when it's upset.
People, no.
This stuff, as I understand it, was $50 a bottle.
This is time-honored and really works.
This is not, and does not.
This is a classic example
of an alternative medicine that just doesn't work.
It's not magic, people. It's...
- Science! - Yes.
So, the reason we call it real medicine is 'cause it's medicine, and it's real.
Thank you all very much.
Together we can... Dare I say it?
- Save the world. Thanks, Steve Aoki. - Thanks. Thank you.
Let's go get them. Thanks for taking the time.
Save the world, Bill...
Nye.