Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Roger Pielke, Junior.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Roger is a professor at the University of Colorado, where
he teaches at the very, very fascinating intersection of science
and public policy.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good to see you again, Roger.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Thanks Ross, good to be here. Do you want to.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Elaborate on or refute anything I just said?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah, let me elaborate a bit.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
I mean science works really well, and I mean our
modern society is built on the backbone of science. And
every one of us, you me, everyone who's listening now,
we trust science. Every time you go into the supermarket
or a pharmacy and you get a bottle of advil,
you don't take it home and do chemical tests to
make sure that what's in there is what they say
(00:41):
is in there.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
We trust.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
So that feeling you have when you buy some drugs
at the supermarket, that's trust in science.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
And the problem is exactly as you say.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
There are a few occasions it's particularly highly politicized science
where things go caddy wampus and it makes everybody look bad.
So if it's COVID or a certain areas of climate
change science, when people get a little forward on their skis,
it undercuts the entire enterprise, right.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
And and folks start to wonder can they trust quote
unquote the science, and what is the motivation of folks
who are who are doing this stuff. So I believe
that close to a year ago, as part of a
conversation you and I are having on the air, we
talked briefly about a data set about hurricanes, and you
(01:29):
just posted a new piece on your substack, and folks,
you've got to go to Roger Pielka Junior, that's Jr.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
You just look up Roger.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Pilka substack actually and you will find it. It's called
The Honest Broker and subscribe to Roger's substack. It's one
of the great substacks out there with honest information on
a really interesting range of topics. But anyway, you're one
of your newest is called we found an Excel file online,
which is which is really funny.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
And you talk about.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
This essentially fake data set being used as the basis
for a new quote unquote scientific paper that makes some claims.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Yeah, I mean, this is one of those situations where
I've been around too long and I know too much.
One of the areas of research I've been active in
for almost thirty years is hurricane damage and tracking how
much damage hurricanes caused since nineteen hundred up to the
present day, and we've done the leading research and kind
of assembling the economic costs. Long story short, About fifteen
(02:34):
years ago, a local insurance company partnered with me and
one of my students to create a really cool online
tool that you could visualize historical hurricanes and their damage,
and it was based on.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Our peer reviewed research.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Well, that company got sold off and my student moved
on to his career, actually Joelgrats of open Snow. Everyone
should sign up to open snow, and I moved on
to other things. Is somehow the data set that was
part of that got into the hands of some interns
who used it for marketing purposes for the next company.
They updated it with who knows what data from where
(03:10):
and put it online. Well, long story short, ten years later,
some researchers found it online, downloaded it and said, hey,
let's do some research with it. And one of the
things that makes science great is we practice data integrity.
Every number that we use in our studies, we have
to know where it came from. We took the measurements,
we ourselves, or we have the historical providence in this case, literally,
(03:36):
this was an Excel file found online that was research. Unfortunately,
it's the bad I call it a fake data set.
It's just bad data, and it's now appeared in about
two dozen studies and it's a problem because it is
contrary to.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
What the official data actually says.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So what do you mean that it contains bad data?
Can you define bad for us? Is it made up?
Is it unverified? Where is it on that spectrum?
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Yeah, the most charitable interpretation is to say that the
latter forty years of the dataset were replaced with new
and different data that accounted for hurricane losses in a
much more maximalist, expansive manner.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Everything in the kitchen sink was thrown in there.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
So you have eighty years of data that uses apples,
and then you depend on forty years of data with oranges.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
And people look at the data and they say, oh,
my gosh, there's a.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Rising trend in what we call normalized hurricane damage and
that must be due to climate change.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Well, the answer is simple.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
You have a rising trend because you put a bunch
of oranges at the end of a bunch of apples.
It's a data problem, not something really going on out
in the real world.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So and these and this particular paper that you reference,
this particular the newest paper is making that same kind
of claim. They're claiming massive increases in hurricane damage, and
they're attributing it to climate change, and.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
They based it on a data set that you call fate, right.
Is that a good summary?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
That's that's exactly Yep, you got it.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Okay, So I want to stick with this topic for
a second, but not the fake data set for just
hurricane damage, hurricanes, stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
So, I mean, you know, I tend.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
To be pretty skeptical of a lot of the more
extreme claims about climate change. You are You are a
little bit more sympathetic, or maybe a lot more sympathetic
than I am, to the idea of climate change being
a significant problem. At some point, we both say the
climate is changing, I'm not. You're a little more worried
(05:53):
about it than I am. I think would be a
fair way to put it. But I don't want to
over characterize you. I will let you characterize yourself health,
So go ahead and do that, and then I'll ask.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
You the rest of my question.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah, I mean, we are changing the climate.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
We're altering the energy balance of the Earth, and that
poses some risks, and those risks could be significant, and
in twenty twenty four, there is no way for us
to say, well, those risks are small and inconsequential, or
they're the end of the world apocalyptic.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
They're probably somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
So my view very much is if we can take
actions that you keep economic growth going, expanding energy access,
and decarbonize the global economy, well then that makes a
lot of sense. And I'm very confident we can implement
those sort of policies, right And you.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Know, this is a bigger conversation for another day, So
I think I think where we would end up getting
I don't mean so much eat you and me, but
just the big picture conversation about this stuff is the
the cost of proposed solutions to these issues versus the
benefits of them. And I love that you mentioned you know,
we have to keep economic growth going because there are
(06:58):
people out there who are extremists and you would call
them extremists too, not just me, who say we must
be willing to slash economic growth in order to reduce
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that's just not reasonable.
So let's stick with the hurricane thing now for a minute.
I can imagine a valid scientific answer if the underlying
(07:24):
data were there that would say such and such changes
in climate are causing such and such changes in water temperature,
which are causing such and such changes in hurricane either
frequency or intensity.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
So my first question is that chain theoretically possible?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And then secondly, is that chain demonstrated in actual data?
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Now, yeah, those are exactly the right questions. And there
are some interesting, fascinating hypotheses out there about how hurricane
behavior change into the future. So the storms might intensify,
they might get stronger, faster, they might dump more rain
when they make landfall.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
They might make landfall further north.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
They might be overall more intense, but there might be
less of them. These are all hypotheses that if you
take a look at the scientific community and the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, that are expected to play out
over a century. So if we were to be observing
these things today, that would mean that our leading scientific
(08:34):
assessments have things wrong.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
That would be a big problem. So yes, one of the.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Problems is that that, particularly in the media, people confuse
hypotheses of what we expect in the future with what
just happened yesterday.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
And that's a big, big mistake in science.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So it is there anything that you see in the
current data that says right now climate change is causing
changes of any type to hurricanes that are a significant
contributing factor to the financial and property losses we are
(09:13):
seeing from hurricanes.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
So the good news is nobody has to depend on
what I say. We're fortunate that the world's scientists have
gotten together Internet Intergovernmental Panel and climate change. There's a
nice web page at what's called the GFDL web page
of Noah government agency, and they updated it just ten
days ago, and it says clearly, and this is just
(09:37):
a paraphrase, that we do not have reason for high
confidence and changes to Atlantic hurricanes that go beyond.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
What we've observed historically.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
So where the scientific community is now, forget about where
the media is and advocates are, but where the scientific
community is. It's possible that in the future we'll detect
changes to hurricanes, but to this point, over the last century,
those changes have not been detected. And that's just what
the science says, and it may evolve in the future.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
But that's where we're at.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And therefore the massive losses insured and uninsured from hurricanes
are being caught. And the trend of that increase over
the last twenty thirty years is being caused by the
fact that we're building lots and lots and lots more
houses in places where hurricanes tend to go, and the
(10:32):
cost of construction and value of houses is going up
at the same time. So it's not changes in hurricanes,
but changes in what people are doing that's increasing these losses.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Is that right, Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
I mean, not only is there such a thing as
climate change, there's societal change. And anyone who's been around
more than a half a minute can look around and
see development, property, population growth, more wealth. Sarasota, Florida, which
just had Milton go through, has seen enormous population growth
as people have moved to Florida and build along the coast. Asheville,
(11:09):
North Carolina with Helene also you know, massive flooding, but
has enormous population growth since the last time they had
huge flooding. So whatever the climate is doing, we are
changing how we live, where we live, how much money
we have, how we build in a way that's much
more profound and impactful. That's what accounts for the entirety
(11:30):
of the increasing disaster losses.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
We're talking with Roger Pilica, professor at the University of Colorado.
He teaches about the intersection of public policy and science.
Let's do something completely different in one of your other
recent substacks. And again, folks, if you look up Roger
Pilka p I E l K E substack, you will
find his substack called The Honest Broker. Then you should
(11:53):
absolutely subscribe to it. You have a multi topic other
substack called the warming Sir climate Model, biases fewer golf, hurricanes,
and super shoes. And I want to talk about super shoes.
So what's the super shoe?
Speaker 4 (12:08):
So people are probably familiar with the fact that Nike
over the last decade or so has developed running shoes
that have they have an advanced technology carbon fiber plate
in them, and they interact with the physiology of runners
and propel them forward faster. And so we've seen all
sorts of records dropping in distance and middle distance run
(12:32):
races over the last decade.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
And the super shoes, as they're called, are one of
the big reasons for that.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
How how confident are you that the super shoe is
causation rather than correlation with something like better training regimens
and better diets among athletes.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Yeah, I mean it's a great question, and it's I
want to note, it's the exact same question we were just
talking about with hurricanes. How can you detect the affect
act of a signal in data? And in this case,
some of my colleagues and University Colorado Boulder were the
first academics to study runners running on the super shoes.
And people may remember there was the Nike vapor Fly
(13:17):
four percent that was one of the first super shoes,
and it was named that because it was supposed to
give or runner a four percent running advantage.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
So there's pretty good evidence.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Both in actual races and in the lab that these
SuperShoes are effective in propelling runners faster. Where it gets
really interesting is that women have benefited much more than
men from the super shoes, or apparently so and so
when I wrote on Suspect, I talked about a recent
paper that tried to explore this. Why is it that
(13:48):
women are gaining so much faster times compared to men
using the same super shoes?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, so This is fascinating stuff, and of course it's
probably relatively easy to tease out that signal from the noise, because.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
You can have.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Runner John Doe run in super shoes and regular shoes,
and if you do that enough times, with enough runners,
you will be able to tell if there is signal there.
For sure, you will be able to tell. So let's
go back to the woman thing. So do you, first
of all, is the data pretty clear on that that
women are benefiting more? And do you have a theory
(14:25):
as to why women might benefit more?
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yes, I mean, so that's a great question.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
I mean that the women's marathon was just shattered and
the differences between men and women have actually shrunk because
of this. In this recent paper, they they complain that
most of the studies we do of running are of men.
It's like many areas of you know, medicine or elsewhere,
that there's a bias towards studying men rather than studying women.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
So we don't have all the data that we need.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
There are some hypotheses that the unique physiology of women
helps them to benefit from the shoes, but that's again
a hypothesis, and they speculate also that women are not
monitored as closely for doping as men are, So maybe
there's a confounding factor in there that's only coming to light.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
So this is something that's again it's clouded.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
By uncertainty, but it certainly is a fascinating development in
an elite sport.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
I don't follow running closely, but I did hear the
headline recently that the woman just set a new marathon
record and it was by a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
It was like by twelve minutes or so.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
You know, usually you break a record by by seven seconds,
and this was some enormous thing. Was she definitely wearing
these shoes?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Oh? Yeah, she was wearing the shoes.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
She broke the record by seven minutes and the marathon.
It's kind of strange they they keep world records for
races that are just women and races that have women
and men in it. So she was in a race
with women and men, and so that's in one category,
and the women's only world record is still about seven
minutes slower.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Wow. Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I wonder if there's a psychology thing.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
I wonder, if you're racing with men who are faster
than you are, you will run faster you are than
you would when you're running with slower competition with just women.
I have no idea, but that's part of what makes
us all all so interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Folks.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
If you just search for Roger peel Cup p I
E l K E substack, you'll find his substack.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
It's called The Honest Broker.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
It's one of the great great things that you can read,
and I encourage you to do so. Roger is so
great to have you a fabulous conversation, and I look
forward to talking to you again soon.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Thanks for having me, Ross up, great day, all right,
you too.
Roger Pielke, Junior.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Roger is a professor at the University of Colorado, where
he teaches at the very, very fascinating intersection of science
and public policy.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good to see you again, Roger.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Thanks Ross, good to be here. Do you want to.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Elaborate on or refute anything I just said?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah, let me elaborate a bit.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
I mean science works really well, and I mean our
modern society is built on the backbone of science. And
every one of us, you me, everyone who's listening now,
we trust science. Every time you go into the supermarket
or a pharmacy and you get a bottle of advil,
you don't take it home and do chemical tests to
make sure that what's in there is what they say
(00:41):
is in there.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
We trust.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
So that feeling you have when you buy some drugs
at the supermarket, that's trust in science.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
And the problem is exactly as you say.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
There are a few occasions it's particularly highly politicized science
where things go caddy wampus and it makes everybody look bad.
So if it's COVID or a certain areas of climate
change science, when people get a little forward on their skis,
it undercuts the entire enterprise, right.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
And and folks start to wonder can they trust quote
unquote the science, and what is the motivation of folks
who are who are doing this stuff. So I believe
that close to a year ago, as part of a
conversation you and I are having on the air, we
talked briefly about a data set about hurricanes, and you
(01:29):
just posted a new piece on your substack, and folks,
you've got to go to Roger Pielka Junior, that's Jr.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
You just look up Roger.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Pilka substack actually and you will find it. It's called
The Honest Broker and subscribe to Roger's substack. It's one
of the great substacks out there with honest information on
a really interesting range of topics. But anyway, you're one
of your newest is called we found an Excel file online,
which is which is really funny.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
And you talk about.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
This essentially fake data set being used as the basis
for a new quote unquote scientific paper that makes some claims.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Yeah, I mean, this is one of those situations where
I've been around too long and I know too much.
One of the areas of research I've been active in
for almost thirty years is hurricane damage and tracking how
much damage hurricanes caused since nineteen hundred up to the
present day, and we've done the leading research and kind
of assembling the economic costs. Long story short, About fifteen
(02:34):
years ago, a local insurance company partnered with me and
one of my students to create a really cool online
tool that you could visualize historical hurricanes and their damage,
and it was based on.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Our peer reviewed research.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Well, that company got sold off and my student moved
on to his career, actually Joelgrats of open Snow. Everyone
should sign up to open snow, and I moved on
to other things. Is somehow the data set that was
part of that got into the hands of some interns
who used it for marketing purposes for the next company.
They updated it with who knows what data from where
(03:10):
and put it online. Well, long story short, ten years later,
some researchers found it online, downloaded it and said, hey,
let's do some research with it. And one of the
things that makes science great is we practice data integrity.
Every number that we use in our studies, we have
to know where it came from. We took the measurements,
we ourselves, or we have the historical providence in this case, literally,
(03:36):
this was an Excel file found online that was research. Unfortunately,
it's the bad I call it a fake data set.
It's just bad data, and it's now appeared in about
two dozen studies and it's a problem because it is
contrary to.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
What the official data actually says.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So what do you mean that it contains bad data?
Can you define bad for us? Is it made up?
Is it unverified? Where is it on that spectrum?
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Yeah, the most charitable interpretation is to say that the
latter forty years of the dataset were replaced with new
and different data that accounted for hurricane losses in a
much more maximalist, expansive manner.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Everything in the kitchen sink was thrown in there.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
So you have eighty years of data that uses apples,
and then you depend on forty years of data with oranges.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
And people look at the data and they say, oh,
my gosh, there's a.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Rising trend in what we call normalized hurricane damage and
that must be due to climate change.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Well, the answer is simple.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
You have a rising trend because you put a bunch
of oranges at the end of a bunch of apples.
It's a data problem, not something really going on out
in the real world.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So and these and this particular paper that you reference,
this particular the newest paper is making that same kind
of claim. They're claiming massive increases in hurricane damage, and
they're attributing it to climate change, and.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
They based it on a data set that you call fate, right.
Is that a good summary?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
That's that's exactly Yep, you got it.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Okay, So I want to stick with this topic for
a second, but not the fake data set for just
hurricane damage, hurricanes, stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
So, I mean, you know, I tend.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
To be pretty skeptical of a lot of the more
extreme claims about climate change. You are You are a
little bit more sympathetic, or maybe a lot more sympathetic
than I am, to the idea of climate change being
a significant problem. At some point, we both say the
climate is changing, I'm not. You're a little more worried
(05:53):
about it than I am. I think would be a
fair way to put it. But I don't want to
over characterize you. I will let you characterize yourself health,
So go ahead and do that, and then I'll ask.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
You the rest of my question.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah, I mean, we are changing the climate.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
We're altering the energy balance of the Earth, and that
poses some risks, and those risks could be significant, and
in twenty twenty four, there is no way for us
to say, well, those risks are small and inconsequential, or
they're the end of the world apocalyptic.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
They're probably somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
So my view very much is if we can take
actions that you keep economic growth going, expanding energy access,
and decarbonize the global economy, well then that makes a
lot of sense. And I'm very confident we can implement
those sort of policies, right And you.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Know, this is a bigger conversation for another day, So
I think I think where we would end up getting
I don't mean so much eat you and me, but
just the big picture conversation about this stuff is the
the cost of proposed solutions to these issues versus the
benefits of them. And I love that you mentioned you know,
we have to keep economic growth going because there are
(06:58):
people out there who are extremists and you would call
them extremists too, not just me, who say we must
be willing to slash economic growth in order to reduce
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that's just not reasonable.
So let's stick with the hurricane thing now for a minute.
I can imagine a valid scientific answer if the underlying
(07:24):
data were there that would say such and such changes
in climate are causing such and such changes in water temperature,
which are causing such and such changes in hurricane either
frequency or intensity.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
So my first question is that chain theoretically possible?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And then secondly, is that chain demonstrated in actual data?
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Now, yeah, those are exactly the right questions. And there
are some interesting, fascinating hypotheses out there about how hurricane
behavior change into the future. So the storms might intensify,
they might get stronger, faster, they might dump more rain
when they make landfall.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
They might make landfall further north.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
They might be overall more intense, but there might be
less of them. These are all hypotheses that if you
take a look at the scientific community and the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, that are expected to play out
over a century. So if we were to be observing
these things today, that would mean that our leading scientific
(08:34):
assessments have things wrong.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
That would be a big problem. So yes, one of the.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Problems is that that, particularly in the media, people confuse
hypotheses of what we expect in the future with what
just happened yesterday.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
And that's a big, big mistake in science.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So it is there anything that you see in the
current data that says right now climate change is causing
changes of any type to hurricanes that are a significant
contributing factor to the financial and property losses we are
(09:13):
seeing from hurricanes.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
So the good news is nobody has to depend on
what I say. We're fortunate that the world's scientists have
gotten together Internet Intergovernmental Panel and climate change. There's a
nice web page at what's called the GFDL web page
of Noah government agency, and they updated it just ten
days ago, and it says clearly, and this is just
(09:37):
a paraphrase, that we do not have reason for high
confidence and changes to Atlantic hurricanes that go beyond.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
What we've observed historically.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
So where the scientific community is now, forget about where
the media is and advocates are, but where the scientific
community is. It's possible that in the future we'll detect
changes to hurricanes, but to this point, over the last century,
those changes have not been detected. And that's just what
the science says, and it may evolve in the future.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
But that's where we're at.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And therefore the massive losses insured and uninsured from hurricanes
are being caught. And the trend of that increase over
the last twenty thirty years is being caused by the
fact that we're building lots and lots and lots more
houses in places where hurricanes tend to go, and the
(10:32):
cost of construction and value of houses is going up
at the same time. So it's not changes in hurricanes,
but changes in what people are doing that's increasing these losses.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Is that right, Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
I mean, not only is there such a thing as
climate change, there's societal change. And anyone who's been around
more than a half a minute can look around and
see development, property, population growth, more wealth. Sarasota, Florida, which
just had Milton go through, has seen enormous population growth
as people have moved to Florida and build along the coast. Asheville,
(11:09):
North Carolina with Helene also you know, massive flooding, but
has enormous population growth since the last time they had
huge flooding. So whatever the climate is doing, we are
changing how we live, where we live, how much money
we have, how we build in a way that's much
more profound and impactful. That's what accounts for the entirety
(11:30):
of the increasing disaster losses.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
We're talking with Roger Pilica, professor at the University of Colorado.
He teaches about the intersection of public policy and science.
Let's do something completely different in one of your other
recent substacks. And again, folks, if you look up Roger
Pilka p I E l K E substack, you will
find his substack called The Honest Broker. Then you should
(11:53):
absolutely subscribe to it. You have a multi topic other
substack called the warming Sir climate Model, biases fewer golf, hurricanes,
and super shoes. And I want to talk about super shoes.
So what's the super shoe?
Speaker 4 (12:08):
So people are probably familiar with the fact that Nike
over the last decade or so has developed running shoes
that have they have an advanced technology carbon fiber plate
in them, and they interact with the physiology of runners
and propel them forward faster. And so we've seen all
sorts of records dropping in distance and middle distance run
(12:32):
races over the last decade.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
And the super shoes, as they're called, are one of
the big reasons for that.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
How how confident are you that the super shoe is
causation rather than correlation with something like better training regimens
and better diets among athletes.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Yeah, I mean it's a great question, and it's I
want to note, it's the exact same question we were just
talking about with hurricanes. How can you detect the affect
act of a signal in data? And in this case,
some of my colleagues and University Colorado Boulder were the
first academics to study runners running on the super shoes.
And people may remember there was the Nike vapor Fly
(13:17):
four percent that was one of the first super shoes,
and it was named that because it was supposed to
give or runner a four percent running advantage.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
So there's pretty good evidence.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Both in actual races and in the lab that these
SuperShoes are effective in propelling runners faster. Where it gets
really interesting is that women have benefited much more than
men from the super shoes, or apparently so and so
when I wrote on Suspect, I talked about a recent
paper that tried to explore this. Why is it that
(13:48):
women are gaining so much faster times compared to men
using the same super shoes?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, so This is fascinating stuff, and of course it's
probably relatively easy to tease out that signal from the noise, because.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
You can have.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Runner John Doe run in super shoes and regular shoes,
and if you do that enough times, with enough runners,
you will be able to tell if there is signal there.
For sure, you will be able to tell. So let's
go back to the woman thing. So do you, first
of all, is the data pretty clear on that that
women are benefiting more? And do you have a theory
(14:25):
as to why women might benefit more?
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yes, I mean, so that's a great question.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
I mean that the women's marathon was just shattered and
the differences between men and women have actually shrunk because
of this. In this recent paper, they they complain that
most of the studies we do of running are of men.
It's like many areas of you know, medicine or elsewhere,
that there's a bias towards studying men rather than studying women.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
So we don't have all the data that we need.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
There are some hypotheses that the unique physiology of women
helps them to benefit from the shoes, but that's again
a hypothesis, and they speculate also that women are not
monitored as closely for doping as men are, So maybe
there's a confounding factor in there that's only coming to light.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
So this is something that's again it's clouded.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
By uncertainty, but it certainly is a fascinating development in
an elite sport.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
I don't follow running closely, but I did hear the
headline recently that the woman just set a new marathon
record and it was by a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
It was like by twelve minutes or so.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
You know, usually you break a record by by seven seconds,
and this was some enormous thing. Was she definitely wearing
these shoes?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Oh? Yeah, she was wearing the shoes.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
She broke the record by seven minutes and the marathon.
It's kind of strange they they keep world records for
races that are just women and races that have women
and men in it. So she was in a race
with women and men, and so that's in one category,
and the women's only world record is still about seven
minutes slower.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Wow. Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I wonder if there's a psychology thing.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
I wonder, if you're racing with men who are faster
than you are, you will run faster you are than
you would when you're running with slower competition with just women.
I have no idea, but that's part of what makes
us all all so interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Folks.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
If you just search for Roger peel Cup p I
E l K E substack, you'll find his substack.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
It's called The Honest Broker.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
It's one of the great great things that you can read,
and I encourage you to do so. Roger is so
great to have you a fabulous conversation, and I look
forward to talking to you again soon.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Thanks for having me, Ross up, great day, all right,
you too.
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!