We Solve the 49ers Viral Conspiracy Theory

28:19You've got nerve stimulation where you might feel a bit tingly or twitchy. that's happening at hundreds of thousands of milligaus. And so this now brings us to, again, the 49ers general manager, John Lynch, who, when he announced this independent study by an independent scientist that has very few details publicly otherwise, he did say, You know, we're safe. Like, we're in a safe place at work. The levels are, like I read in there, 400 times less than unsafe zones. And so it's... And I guess, Wendy, if you're taking that at face value, he's saying that whatever your threshold is for safe, we're 400 times below whatever that would be.

28:59Yeah, exactly. And so to this, Peter would say, I don't like these levels because they're not including perhaps more subtle effects like oxidative stress. The erosion of our tendon and ligaments with the collagen stuff from before. That's Peter's argument. And so then my question became, And I think it's a good question is, so what do we know about whether electromagnetic waves at this power level, this thereabouts, can actually cause oxidative stress? And you can go online right now and find scores of studies showing that electromagnetic waves at this basic power level, they do increase oxidative stress.

29:49These are the kinds of studies that Peter is pointing to and that he's worried about. The issue is they are not studies in people. Wait a minute. What are we studying, Wendy? We are studying cells, a cell in a dish. What these studies do is they take a cell, a blood cell, maybe sperm, and then they will expose it to electromagnetic waves and then measure for markers of oxidative stress. And sometimes they say, yes, look, we found it. Right. But the thing is, you can also find studies that find the exact opposite. They'll do basically the same thing and find that now it lowers oxidative stress.

30:30These electromagnetic waves are helpful. So you're saying that this is bad, but it's also good. What I'm saying is you need to be careful when you're looking at science and that you don't cherry pick your data. So what you find is that people who really are worried about electromagnetic waves, They will dismiss the studies that show, look, it's actually helpful. They collect the studies that show that it's harmful and say, look, get all this data. But the broader point is that these are studies in cells. And cells are not people. Even you take a study in rats, and if we think about, say, you know, drug development, we're constantly curing cancer in rats.

31:13And then you take that whatever chemical they're testing and you try it out in humans, and the chance it's going to work is so, so low. What I'm finding out is that the lab rat has it pretty good. The lab rat has it so bad. Long maligned, the lab rat has it better than us people. But I think the broader point is you really need to look at studies in people. If you want to make a claim like electromagnetic waves are harming collagen, increasing the risk of injuries, increasing oxidative stress. The cell studies, the animal studies, they can help you out, but you need the studies in people. I did ask Peter, what studies do you have in people that really prove your point that these waves cause oxidative stress?

32:05And he sent us a couple of papers, and I want to go through them a little deeply here. So you want to grade some papers right now? No, I want to have some fun with science, Pablo. So, all right, study one comes from India. And basically what the researchers did is they got people that worked at a substation, they were doing maintenance or installing power lines. Then they took some blood samples from them, measured markers of oxidative stress inside their blood, and found that workers installing the power lines had higher levels of oxidative stress than a group of admin workers. Which follows Peter's theory.

32:46Follows Peter's theory, yes. People are being dosed with EMF waves and look what's happening. Right, okay. But then if you actually read the guts of the paper, you go deeper than that, you know, abstract. Yeah, we're getting out the all 22 feet. We're examining all the angles of the play here. You'll notice the researchers didn't actually measure how much of these electromagnetic waves anyone in this study was exposed to. And Ken said this is a problem because instead what they did is they just based it on someone's job title and made an assumption. Sometimes somebody might have job title as maintenance, but they might be the boss, just work in the office, you know.

33:27Right, yes. So again, job titles are, people use it as a de facto, as a de facto measure of exposure. Yeah. But studies have shown that they're really poor. So Ken said that's a bad idea. because we know from other research that you might have a job title that's like power line installer, but you're actually a manager and you sit in an office all day. Or you might look like your admin staff, but actually you are on site all day. Yeah, this is like how a podcast producer is not getting credit for actually being your therapist. Similar, yes. And then there are some bigger issues that Ken pointed out.

34:10When you look at all the tables, the numbers don't add up. Oh, no! Just silly things like that. It's a really big red flag. Yeah, where are these missing people? Where are all these missing numbers? So in the abstract, for example, they tell you that there's 142 substation workers that they're studying. Then you start looking at the tables. They've only got blood samples for 130 workers. So you're like, where's the other 12? Maybe you couldn't get blood samples from them. sure, but then you look at the actual things they were measuring in the blood, the so-called markers of oxidative stress, and now all of a sudden you're losing more samples.

34:51There was in one of them, there was only 117 workers. And without explanation in the paper of where are the missing numbers, it's tasting poisonous. What you're saying is that it is conspicuous when a nice abstract summarizes neatly a phenomenon, but the numbers don't actually justify those findings. That's exactly right. I wouldn't be using this study even as a hypothesis. Okay. Okay, moving on to the other study. Please. So that was the Indian study. You're shaking your head. You said you weren't grading papers, and you guys are violently grading papers. But we're also having fun with science, aren't we?

35:34You are. Like football, science can be violent and fun. So this other paper, this is actually an error that you see in a lot of stuff online. Super important people understand it. This paper got power plant workers measured various markers of oxidative stress again, but then they went further and they also gave everyone a test to see how depressed and burnt out they were. Then they compared that data to hospital admin staff and ultimately reported that the power plant workers had higher rates of depression and what they called burnout syndrome. And they said this, quote, may be caused by exposure to magnetic fields, possibly from oxidative stress.

36:20I am but a humble sociology major. But it does feel like correlation and causation not quite the same thing. Yes, yes. That's it. That's it. So we basically have no idea from a study like this if electromagnetic waves caused the depression and the burnout syndrome had anything to do with these symptoms. With a study like this where you're just capturing people at one point in time, it's actually impossible to make a claim like that. But there are things that you can do statistically to rule out what else might be causing the burnout. You know, are we sure it's the oxidative stress or perhaps could it be?

37:01It could be that working in a power plant is actually quite, you know, it gives you a burnout. Yes, it's stressful. Stressful and you get, you know, quite a stressful job. Yes. And that then leads to oxidative stress in your body. Well, maybe. Nothing to do with the electromagnetic waves. So both of these studies are examples of they're just rubbish. Yeah. What should we do with them? Not consider them. Not even. My mom would say you can wipe your ass with them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, maybe you should do that. I mean, I do like how the big insight is. Maybe your job just sucks. In this case, the power plant workers were shift workers.

37:41And the admin staff at the hospital weren't. There was so many things I could reach to before I go to EMF waves. The confounding variables are also just lingering in the air somewhere. Exactly. And meanwhile, we do have good quality studies where people have looked at power plant workers and substation workers and looked for various issues with their health, including cardiovascular issues, which is also related to oxidative stress, by the way, and they're really not finding much. And when you look at studies in people, let's go to collagen. What we actually find is that if you use electromagnetic waves in this particular way where you pulse them, you can actually boost collagen production, not harm it.

38:31The complete opposite to what this theory is. So here's Ken on that. You've got to remember, when it comes to collagen, there's actually more studies showing an improvement. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. So there's actually more studies showing a therapeutic effect. So I asked Ken. Okay, so knowing what you know, would you feel comfortable playing football for the 49ers? I would be ecstatic. Imagine how much money. I could make way more money than sitting here talking about the adverse effects of life. What about your Achilles? No, I wouldn't be worried. I talked to Peter about, it's kind of more broadly that I just didn't think the evidence was there, that substations were...

39:18I mean, you said you'd wipe your ass with the studies. It's very gentle of you to now say that you approach Peter delicately with evidence, but you wipe your ass with his evidence. I mean, look, the anus is a delicate tissue of the body. So let me play a bit of Peter's response. I'm not wedded to it being EMF, honestly. I'm not. I would say that to a certain extent, I've staked my reputation on the fact that it needs... more study, that it's important to look into it, and that I am not certain of anything. I'm not— So, I don't want to be serious here for a second, because it's really important—I love that you did this—that you went to him and said, hey, the evidence is lacking, and you are the guy that we are all citing here, so how do you reconcile this?

40:10And his answer is, we need more study, and I suppose like it raises the follow-up question of like, what about the thing he was caring about the most this whole time? The thing that he wanted us all to study and care about, which is the whole, you know, we might be getting cancer from this stuff. How about that part of it? Here is where we actually do have good quality studies and it's not just garbage. and maybe we take a break. Is this half time? You're learning how football works so quickly.

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41:26The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends and now that's next level. Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today.

41:55So you left us with a hell of a cliffhanger. Are we all getting cancer? I believe was the gist of what I was left wondering about what these electromagnetic waves are actually doing to us. So what should we know? So all over the internet right now is this claim that the World Health Organization has classified these electromagnetic waves as possibly carcinogenic. And this is true. So over 20 years ago, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, did classify these waves as possibly carcinogenic, and they never reclassified them. So, in fact, we should be worried about this.

42:41Let me just explain everything, because I really don't want people to be freaked out. So, this all started in 1979, when a study came out showing that kids in Colorado who had died from childhood cancer, especially leukemia, were more likely to have lived near power lines and substations compared to other kids. And since then, since this time, 1979, long time ago, scientists took this very seriously and started researching it over and over again all around the world. And curiously, the link, it does keep popping up. And not all studies find it, it's important to say, and it's not a strong link.

43:26So it's not like everyone living near a power line is going to get leukemia. Far, far from it. So some research suggests that power lines and substations could maybe explain 1 % to 4 % of childhood leukemias out there. Another way to think about that number is a German researcher did this rough estimate saying that in a country like Germany, which has 13 million children, at the time of this assessment. And it said out of those 13 million children, maybe six cases of childhood leukemia might be attributed to electromagnetic fields. You have put a podcast host in a tricky position now because one child, of course, suffering from this is way too many.

44:17That's my political position. I want that on the record, Your Honor. Yes. But at the same time, I'm doing the math of six in 13 million. And that is a small number. Researchers don't see a connection between electromagnetic fields and any other type of cancer, by the way. Not even adult leukemia. They have looked and they cannot find a link here. Right. But let's go back to the 49ers. So I think one of my favorite kinds of, let's call it a conspiracy theory online, is where you have a little bit of truth and then a whole lot of not truth. So we've got a seed of doubt here. But now it's time for our touchdown.

45:11That was so… It's painful. So smooth. So thanks. So smooth. That's a segue. So, all right. You know how one reason that this caught the internet's attention is because of the timing of the substation getting an upgrade with when the 49ers injuries start ratcheting up, right? Around 2014. As we know, there were renovations done on this substation in 2014. It's officially called the Mission Substation. Right, no, 2014 is the year that we've circled as like the turning point. Exactly, exactly, exactly. The timing is very, very important because if the substation didn't get an upgrade in 2014, then it really doesn't make sense why it could have ticked off these injuries.

46:01Right. So, like I said, we fact-check everything. And so, senior producer of Science vs. Rose Rimler was looking into, did the substation get an upgrade in 2014, as has been reported ad nauseum. And this took Rose on one hell of an adventure. Come on down, Rose. Hello. Hi, Pablo. Hello. I do like how this is a truly global operation you guys have running. Oh, yeah. With Wendy in Australia, Rose is now sitting next to me. what was your adventure? All right. So widely reported that the substation was expanded in 2014. Yes. I first Googled that, right? I came across this podcast saying exactly this.

46:51They called out the website for a contracting service who built a substation in Santa Clara where the 49ers play in 2014. The mission substation and 60KV underground extension was the largest substation undertaken by Silicon Valley Power. And I read that note about what they did when they built the substation, and they said that they put in some of the equipment running under California's Great America. ...was installed along the maintenance road of California's Great America Park, which had to remain open during construction. So California's Great America is the amusement park. It's an amusement park.

47:30I had my senior ditch day there. I'm from the Bay Area, but that's neither here nor there. But it's not really that close to Levi's Stadium or the practice field. No, I've never enjoyed the Panda Express there on a senior ditch day. But it does seem that Google Maps is making very clear not close. No, so I was like, well, then why would the lines go that far south to the substation that's right next door? Then I found a presentation by Silicon Valley Power. That's the utility that owns the substation. And it has a map of all the different substations. and the substation in question that was expanded.

48:07Did you make this graphic? No, no. I got this from the PowerPoint presentation. You look so disgusted by this graphic. Look, they're not the Silicon Valley graphic design. I was going to say, this is a bunch of triangles. It looks like they just, this is like made in like Microsoft Word. Yeah, but I was so happy to find this because it actually names where all the substations are because there's substations everywhere, right? So there's the one right next to Levi's Stadium. It clearly says it's called the NRS. Mostly it's called the Northern Receiving Station. But the one that we just read this whole thing about like, oh, it was this big expansion, da-da-da, the mission substation, it's all over there.

48:42So people were saying a substation upgraded in 2014, but it is a different substation. It's a different substation. This admittedly terribly made graphic does make clear that the thing that apparently has expanded, which is called mission substation, is off in the bottom left-hand corner and not at all the substation or either of the substations near Levi's Stadium. It's not the same one. How far away is that? It's like a mile away, which is really far in the world of electromagnetic radiation because that field drops off extremely quickly with distance. The final thing I can tell you, I did find, and Peter helped me with this, and by the way, Peter has been very gracious and also working with this.

49:25And he's like, oh yeah, I guess I did get that wrong because he wrote some of this stuff on the substack. That's really encouraging that Peter is like working with the fact checkers to make sure that like, yeah, I should admit that I didn't get this right. And he actually found this graph. It's from a slide presentation about data center use in Silicon Valley from Silicon Valley Power that shows basically the growth of the use of power and electricity in the area. And you can see it's going up. But what I would look for to explain some change that happened in 2014, I would look for some kind of inflection point in this graph.

49:57And I don't see that. So I think from all of this adventure, we've learned that all of this reporting about the substation expanding, they were talking about the wrong substation. It's not the one near the 49ers. And you have to not have a clear moment where power cranks up at the substation near the 49ers practice area. Bam! Injuries start plaguing the 49ers. We do not have that. And as we kept looking into the lore around this story, you know, it wasn't the Achilles tendons that were rupturing. It was the whole story here.

50:50This episode is brought to you by Didi's Discounts. Back to school season is officially here, and DeeDee's has everything on your list. I'm talking bold styles, cool kicks, backpacks, and even dorm room essentials. All the prices that won't hurt your wallet. So don't sleep on DeeDee's. Whether you've got a second grader or a sophomore, DeeDee's has your whole family covered. Find a DeeDee's discount store near you and go check it out today.

51:19The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends and now that's next level. Suddenly the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today.

51:48It's time to blow the whistle, and it's time for you to meet Dr. Zachary Binney. He's an assistant professor of epidemiology and data science at Emory University in Atlanta, and he has been looking into the injuries of the 49ers. Are you a 49ers fan? I am not. I am a Miami Dolphins fan, God help me. So it's been a dry couple of decades, especially relative to the Niners. So Zach doesn't have pigskin in this game. He doesn't hold a 40-year grudge from when the Dolphins met the 49ers in the Super Bowl in 1985. Don't say I didn't try to care about NFL, Pablo. Thank you for doing research. There's so many more things to be depressed about if you're a Dolphins fan than losing to the Niners in 85.

52:32Right. So Zach is the curator of FTN Fantasy's NFL injury database. It's this huge spreadsheet. It's been tracking injuries in football stretching back to 2007. Basically, most football injuries have to get publicly reported, which is important for betting and fantasy football. Yes. And so Zach and his team take those public reports and then pop them into a spreadsheet, including who got injured, their position, the kind of injury, yada, yada, yada. And so I just asked him, over the years, Have the 49ers even had more injuries than other teams? So if you're just talking about the raw number of injuries, like the number of players getting hurt, they actually don't.

53:20They're a little bit above average. Oh. But they actually don't have the most players, the most injuries happening. I just like how we're now realizing that everything about this story is a paper that needs to be regraded. It is a mess. It's bad. And over the past decade, if you are looking at games lost due to all injuries, Zach said the Giants lead the way. San Francisco is second. Yeah, I got to say, like, as a New Yorker, this feels like a missed opportunity for the Giants to also be deeply aggrieved. Well, I mean, Zach said there's an obvious reason why no one seems to be crying about the Giants?

54:06Frankly, there have also been a worse team over that time period. So I think fans don't feel as much pain when the players on a team that's already kind of struggling get hurt as they do when the Niners, who have competed for and in Super Bowls in the last decade, suffer these injuries. So how wrong is the data on the Niners then? Like, how do you even arrive at that mistaken conclusion? I mean, I can hear fans saying, what is she talking about? Like, we know this. We know the 49ers are the worst. I've seen stats saying that. And so we looked around as well. Yeah. And we contacted Aaron Schatz, who's the chief analytics officer at FTN Fantasy.

54:53And he said that when you change the way you analyze the stats and you adjust them, So you just focus on the starting players, important players. You also consider if maybe a player is injured and they're going to be on the field, but they're not going to be playing at their best. If you start sort of adjusting for that sort of stuff, then the 49ers do look the worst over the last decade. But, and this is critical, it's not by a lot.

55:28I should acknowledge, however, that it is pretty funny and admittedly quite suspicious that the 49ers, according to The Athletic, earlier this year are, quote, exploring a possible nearby relocation for their now infamous practice facility. Although the given reason there is that the Niners are running out of space at their current address as opposed to running out of patience for memes about how the substation is looming over the practice field like the Eye of Sauron, which may not be great for attracting free agents. But in fairness to the substation, I suppose, that stat Aaron Schatz was just referring to, adjusted games lost, which gives more weight to losing starters due to injury, that statistic itself opens the door to other confounding variables.

56:18Variables like, you know, playing time and other undeniably human decisions that put human ligaments in jeopardy. There could be other, much cleaner explanations, like, I don't know, culture, coach. Or both. For instance, how many practices in a row 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was mandating during training camp in 2025? The best way to build your body to make it through a year is building that callus. All right? I really believe in three practices in a row as we go through camp. I can't always do it, all right, because of scheduling and stuff, but that's what our goal is. All right? The more we can practice three days in a row and fight through soreness and stuff, is the more you build that callus.

57:04But this is yet another human decision that Kyle Shanahan now says is becoming a bit more relaxed because the 49ers are no longer practicing three days in a row. Kyle Shanahan is changing his mind. He's now limiting it to two. Now, it is worth noting, of course, that the most narratively inconvenient variable of all in this story is fundamentally sheer randomness. As Shanahan himself is aware at this point, as well as anybody, given that he survived a now infamous car accident just last month. And while that accident in Palo Alto triggered even more jokes about the substation's power, it also raised lingering questions about human error and how lucky Kyle Shanahan is to have survived.

57:59I do think that the backdrop of all of this is the randomness of life. That is unsatisfying, Randy. I find it super satisfying because I think part of the reason that theories like the substation thrive is because it gives you a singular thing to blame. And it gives you comfort. And it gives us this something to focus on. But the truth is that sometimes shit just happens and injuries just happen. And, you know, you look at the stats, the 32 teams, 16 of them, are going to be at the bottom half. That's just stats, right? There is this concept, Pablo, in psychology called the deep story. And it's basically the story that everyone believes, this emotional story that everyone's pulled into, whether it's true or not.

58:56And so I think the deep story here is that the 49ers are plagued year after year after year with crazy amounts of injuries. When really, when you look at the stats, they're not doing great. I'm not out here saying that they're the best in the league, healthiest in the league. Absolutely not. But they are not doing crazy bad, crazy enough that we need to reach for substations to explain what's going on. You are, as a non-NFL expert, getting to explain the NFL in ways that might be cutting to the core of the psychology of the people who love America's foremost cultural institution. I'm doing my best.

59:38So I think, bottom line, we could safely say the substation, the evidence just isn't there that that is to blame for the injuries the 49ers have had. This feels comprehensive in a way that a blowout loss tends to feel in this very American game. And also, I kind of feel dizzy. So the full NFL experience. Yeah, we've done our job. We've hit you over the head with the facts.

1:00:19This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

1:00:29I hope you liked this episode that we made with the team at Pablo Torre Finds Out. If you do, share it with someone who's into the NFL, into science, into Taylor Swift, conspiracy theories about EMF waves. Let people know. And I really do want to hear what you thought about this episode. So let us know. You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. All the links are in the show notes.

1:01:01This episode is brought to you by Didi's Discounts. Back to school season. is officially here and Didi's has everything on your list. I'm talking bold styles, cool kicks, backpacks and even dorm room essentials. All the prices that won't hurt your wallet. So don't sleep on Didi's. Whether you've got a second grader or a sophomore, Didi's has your whole family covered. Find a Didi's discount store near you and go check it out today.