Speaker 1: Today we're going to be speaking with Erica Englehart, who's a science journalist
living in Washington, D.C., and also author of the book Gory Details Adventures from the
Dark Side of Science.
Erica, really great having you on.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Nice to be here.
Speaker 1: So, you know, we've spoken over time about everything from, you know, homeopathy
to drinking silver, faith, healing, all sorts of medical treatments that may be kind of
worked at one point.
But there are now better options compared to out and out scams, etc..
One of the things you talk about in the book is the relation between medical myths, misconceptions
and irrational health fears and this sense of disgust that as humans, we could say, has
been developed or has been bred in, or how however you sort of want to say it.
Let's maybe start there.
Talk a little bit about the tendency towards disgust and how it might predispose people
to some of these medical misconceptions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, you know, disgust is one of those kind of overlooked emotions,
something that we don't necessarily think about or talk about a lot.
But, you know, some psychologists would say that it's one of the basic human emotions
that seems to be universal, at least the feeling of disgust.
You know, there are certain particular signs of disgust that people around the world give,
you know, that kind of squished up face, you know, kind of expelling something out of your
body like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like 80% of the way to gagging, we might say.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Exactly.
And that's something that, you know, people around the world experience that feeling of
disgust.
But in terms of what things are considered disgusting, that's really kind of up for grabs
culturally.
So that is something that we we tend to learn as we grow up.
So there may be something where humans as a species have evolved, the sense of disgust,
probably as a protective mechanism, because a lot of the things that disgust us are things
that can hurt us, right?
Things that could make us sick, for example.
So, you know, we we learn we teach most of our children around the world, you know, not
to eat their poop.
And, you know, maybe as babies, they they're not disgusted by poop and they'll stick their
hands right in it.
But we we you know, we teach our kids to be disgusted by the smell and appearance of poop.
And most of us around the world get that at some point in our lives.
So but there are a lot of other things that vary from place to place, culture to culture,
especially when it comes to things like food.
So every culture has some food that it thinks is delicious and that other cultures think
is totally disgusting.
Yes.
So that's so it's relative.
So there are things that are pretty universally disgusting.
Those tend to be the things that can hurt us or make us sick.
And then there are other things that are just, you know, we decide basically that something
is disgusting and something is not disgusting.
Speaker 1: And so then what's the connection from that to the medical myths and misconceptions?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
So disgust is a really powerful feeling.
And so since we have this, you know, strong aversion to certain things, that means that
it can really kind of guide our decisions and shape our thinking about things.
And a lot of the things that we're disgusted by involve our bodies, you know, a lot of
things involving bodily functions.
You know, all of our bodily secretions and excretions.
Blood, sweat, tears, you know, snot.
These are things that you don't necessarily you know, they're very intimate and they're
generally considered disgusting if they're coming from a stranger.
Right.
Sure.
So we're not necessarily disgusted so much by our own body fluids and so forth, but we're
certainly disgusted by those of strangers.
And so when you think about, you know, some of the different kinds of medical treatments
and products, things that people are trying to sell to us, it's very easy to play into
that sense of disgust.
For example, there is a huge industry built around the idea of detoxifying our bodies.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: Purifying.
Cleansing.
All of these things are basically meant to make us less disgusting.
We all want to be less disgusting, right?
We all want to have this idea of being, you know, clean and pure, but.
When it comes down to it, you know, a lot of these things are playing on our disgust
of our of our bodies or other people's bodies and really are not selling us something that's
real.
You know, again, you know, it's easy to play on that disgust and say like, oh, this is
going to detoxify you.
Yeah.
And and that sounds good.
And if we see, for example, if you you know, there are certain kinds of sweat therapy that
that people are selling really hard.
And the idea is that you can sweat out the toxins.
And if people see something coming out of their bodies, it feels like satisfying.
Right.
Getting something bad out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
I've told stories of I don't do it often because I find it painfully awkward.
But I've had like, professional massages before and the massage goes great.
And at the end they say, you know, the massage will loosen a lot of the toxins in the body,
so you should drink a lot of water.
And I'm thinking, wait a second.
So the water is processed in the kid.
What's the mechanism here that's going on?
But it's sort of that same idea where that sounds.
It sounds generally good.
Yeah.
Like, I mean, I could kind of go for that.
You know, Jonathan Haidt has written about the connections between disgust and political
leanings and predispositions.
Yes.
And I'm wondering whether when it comes to medical myths, misconceptions, quack cures
and openness and this sort of thing, whether there are other maybe personality traits or
whatever, that that we may be able to overlay on whether it's politics or upbringing or
whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah.
I mean, definitely people there's a range and how easily disgusted people are.
Some people are very sensitive to disgust and are very easily triggered to feel disgusted.
Others not so much.
I seem to have a pretty high tolerance for disgust, for example, because I write about
gross things.
Yes.
But, you know, a lot of people don't.
And there have been some studies like what you're referencing that link those traits,
how easily disgusted you are to various other kinds of opinions that we form.
And so some in general, I don't want to make this any kind of hard and fast rule, but some
studies have found a connection between people who are more easily disgusted and people who
tend to be more conservative political leaning.
Yes.
And it kind of makes sense if you think about the idea of, you know, that a person who is
very easily triggered to feel disgust might be kind of sensitive and afraid of things
that could cause that feeling.
And so things that are different, things that are outside, you know, may be more triggering
to some people than to others.
I think the same kind of thing happens, you know, perhaps with these kinds of health beliefs
and misconceptions.
Some people seem to be just more sensitive and more triggered by the idea of being contaminated
by something by, you know, things that are dirty.
And that can also be.
Likewise, that can be played back into politically.
You know.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting things about this that you're making me think of is, you
know, there's a lot of I think we can all understand how if indeed this higher sense
of or this more easily triggered disgust aligns with political conservatism, we could see
how that might make people against immigration.
Right.
We hear stories about I mean, Tucker Carlson once overtly said immigrants make the country
dirtier and poorer.
That's literally something that you would be disgusted by the dirt that he said that
that one's super clear.
It's been interesting to see with the pandemic, you would think germs around.
You would you would think that with a more easily triggered disgust response, the right
would have been more sensitive to the idea of the germs of COVID.
But for political reasons and for other reasons, it hasn't actually been the case.
Speaker 3: Right.
Yeah, I think that's an interesting point, too, you know, but disgust can cut a lot of
different ways.
And, you know, we have to remember that it can be discussed, can also be weaponized.
Right.
You know, it can be turned against certain groups of people.
Like you were saying.
It's often turned against immigrants saying, oh, they're disease and dirty and they're
coming in here and they're contaminating our population in some way.
Yes.
You know, the same kind of thing can happen with COVID where there.
You know, marginalizing of certain groups because they're seen as the cause.
You know, so we saw that with with Asian Americans earlier in the pandemic and so forth.
And so, you know, I think that the disgust can be weaponized in whatever way is convenient
for particular, you know, political groups interests.
So sometimes you get things that are sort of nonsensical, you know, where it seems like
people are really acting against their own best interests.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Or even their predispositions.
But interestingly, there was a sense of disgust about the masks by some of the folks who did
not see.
Right.
The feeling of the mask.
And it's restricting my breathing and I'm re breathing my own carbon dioxide.
Related to this, does one's willingness to accept a medical myth treatment, you know,
scam treatment or whatever the case may be, relate to how disgusted or put off they are
by whatever it is they are trying to treat, if that makes sense.
In other words, when you maybe learn more about something, you would be less likely
to fall for the misinformation and the quack cures.
Speaker 3: I think that's probably true, and I don't think that we have necessarily hard
data to demonstrate that.
But it's it's pretty logical.
And I will say it an example of kind of a more extreme version.
Yeah.
So, for example, people who are already easily sensitized are disgusted by insects and afraid
of, you know, people some of us are totally freaked out by insects or spiders.
Some of us, you know, not so much.
There's a condition called Delusions of Infestation that I have have worked on for for several
years now.
And it's it's really upsetting.
It's where people develop the idea that insects or other small creatures have and have literally
infested their bodies.
Right.
And and it often starts with something real.
Like an itch could be as simple as a skin condition that's causing an itch.
But because people some people are already kind of worried about insects or just sort
of more prone to to feel disgust about insects, if they happen to see an insect in the environment,
they may make the connection that, oh, I think that's what's going on here.
I think that I've got these insects attacking me.
Right.
And so I think that's kind of an extreme example of where someone who maybe is already kind
of predisposed to a certain kind of of disgust or feeling about about insects, you know,
may be more likely to develop this extreme delusion which can be, you know, completely
devastating, where it takes over people's lives and, you know, their lives really become
about trying to prove to everyone else, yeah, that this infestation is real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my dad's a psychiatrist and he's he's dealt with that and talked to me
about it.
So sometimes that that that does respond quite well to medication, interestingly enough.
Now, the interesting thing is that relates to something else I've said before, which
is, you know, we've talked a lot about conspiracy theories on the show and will sometimes say,
you know, how does someone fall into is it flat earth or is it, you know, more recently
with relation to COVID stuff about vaccines, how is it they end up with that as opposed
to something else?
And very often it's sort of environmental and circumstance, circumstantial.
It's listen, because of the media environment and the people that they're around and where
they live, they're into.
Does injecting bleach cure COVID as opposed to something about the build the birds or
flat Earth?
So there's like an invite, but they are predisposed generally to this type of thinking.
It seems that with some of the things you're talking about, there might also be a similar
idea where it's not I mean, I don't know.
It seems that someone who falls into what you just described about the insects would
be predisposed to something else if it was environmental or or around them culturally.
Speaker 3: Right, exactly.
And, you know, we have to keep in mind, too, that all of us experience some kind of what
psychologists call magical thinking.
Yes.
You know, we none of us are perfectly logical beings.
And so we all have these kinds of beliefs and misconceptions going on all the time about
something.
About something and, you know, magical thinking it can be.
You know, psychologists talk about the the law of similarity and the law of contagion,
which relate to disgust, because, you know, the law of similarity says the image is the
object.
And so that's the that's the kind of thinking that makes.
For example, burning an effigy, a very powerful statement, because it you know, in our minds,
deep in our lizard brain somewhere, it really feels like when you burn the symbol of the
person, you're harming the person.
It's what makes a voodoo doll satisfying to stab.
And it's also related to disgust.
It's what makes poop shaped chocolates.
Not a big hit.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Right.
Because we associate the the disgusting thing of poop with the chocolate.
Even though the chocolate is perfectly fine to eat.
And so, you know, those kind of that kind of thinking can come in to our basically our
beliefs about health and wellness and and all of these things as well.
And and certainly I think that indicates something about our belief systems more broadly.
And so certainly I think it makes sense to me that, you know, there are there are these
kind of deeper reasons in our thinking that we're all vulnerable to why we might be susceptible
to certain myths and misconceptions.
And then our environments and our society, you know, our culture, the people that we're
around shape the details of those things.
Speaker 1: The book is Gory Details Adventures from the Dark Side of Science.
We've been speaking with the book's author, Erika Engelhart, who's a journalist living
in Washington, DC.
Erika, really appreciate your time and insights today.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Great to be on.