This is your one and only warning.
Your screen will soon be filled
with dramatized stories of scientific research
that some people may find controversial or disturbing.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Ask yourself, does progress always come at a price?
Are some experiments too risky or just wrong?
A little curiosity can't hurt anyone...
Can it?
Dark Matters: Twisted but True 2x11 Pavlovs Children; Raining Aliens; Glow Girls Original Air Date on December 12, 2012
== sync, corrected by elderman ==
I'll introduce you to a mysterious red rain.
Is it animal, vegetable, mineral...
or something out of this world?
And a bunch of factory girls
who radiate health and a good work ethic.
Glowing in the dark is only fun for a while.
But first, sit, stay...
roll over --
simple tricks to teach a dog,
and we're just animals, too, right?
So, can you train a human like a dog?
Or more importantly, should you?
Heard of Pavlov and his dogs?
Well, meet Pavlov's children.
Always ensure that the cannula fits tightly
over the salivary gland.
Physiologist Ivan Pavlov
is introducing freshmen medical students
to his experimental techniques on dogs.
He has developed equipment to collect the dog's saliva
via tube in its mouth or a hole in its cheek.
When the dog is presented with food,
its level of salivation is measured
by an electromagnetic chart recorder.
Thus, we know exactly how much Raisa has salivated.
Am I boring you, Krasnogorskii?
Professor -- of course not, Professor Pavlov.
It is fascinating.
This is science, and you are privileged to be a part of it.
When I was your age, I had never seen a laboratory.
I was in a seminary, training to be a priest.
One book changed my life,
and it was not the word of God as the priests hoped --
"The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin.
I opened that book, and I knew myself.
I knew who I was.
I was an animal among other animals.
To understand myself,
I need not explore my immortal soul.
I only needed to explore other animals.
Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution
very much embedded humans in the natural world.
He showed that we were part of the natural world,
not separate from it,
that we'd been produced by the same processes
that have produced the rest of the diversity of life.
Pavlov is fascinated by the reflex responses of animals.
All animals have reflexive responses, right?
If you put your hand
really close to your eye really quickly,
you'll get a blink response.
If you tap part of your leg, you get a kick.
Those are automatic, unconscious.
But Pavlov noticed something interesting
about how a dog's salivation reflex is triggered.
So, tell me, what is so fascinating
about the dog's saliva, hmm?
Well, gentlemen, the saliva of a dog
can tell you more than you think.
It can tell you how you think.
One day, I entered the room
when my assistant, Tolochinov,
was feeding the dogs as usual,
and I noticed the dogs were salivating
before there was a scrap of food in the bowls.
The dogs were drooling at the mere presence of their keeper.
So, what makes the dogs salivate?
Previous to this,
we thought that a dog's digestion
would just be completely automatic.
They eat something -- they salivate in response.
But he discovers
that the body is responding in this automatic way
to things they're seeing in the environment.
Pavlov believes that the sight of his assistant
has replaced eating as the automatic trigger
for salivation.
If he's right,
the dog's reflex responses could be trained
to respond to anything...
even a bell.
Now, Raisa here has heard this bell
every time she receives food.
Already, her mind should be preparing her body
as if the food were already before her.
The salivation rate is rising.
This proves a profound fact --
what the mind believes becomes fact for the body.
Pavlov discovers
you can actually induce reflexive automatic responses
in response to things that the mind perceives.
These are "condition responses," he calls them.
This groundbreaking work earns Pavlov the nobel prize in 1904.
It's mind-blowing
because it means that the dogs' minds
are actually radically influencing things
that, before, we thought were just automatic.
Could this also apply to humans, Professor?
One only needs to say the word "blinis"
and Smolenski starts salivating.
That is the great question --
the biggest question, Krasnogorskii.
Does the dog control its drooling,
or can't it help itself?
Can Viktor Mikhailovich Smolenski
help himself?
Nikolai Krasnogorskii starts to wonder,
"How much are we humans
"controlled by our unconscious impulses?
"How much of our lives are merely reflexes
triggered by signals we aren't aware of?"
Excuse me, Professor.
May I speak with you?
Of course.
Would a human experiment
not prove Darwin's contention that we, too, are animals?
An interesting question, Nikolai Ivanovich.
Two great thinkers.
Darwin, right? -- Bridging the gap between animals and man.
Pavlov -- bridging the gap
in animals in the mind and body,
connecting the two.
But what hasn't been done yet is Pavlov's work in humans --
bridging the gap between mind and body in humans.
Krasnogorskii believes he's the man to make that leap.
He needs human test subjects to experiment on at will,
subjects who cannot complain.
He finds them in an orphanage.
Now...who wants to help make a great scientific discovery?
These days, experiments involving human subjects,
but specifically children,
are very tightly regulated
to make sure that the subjects and the children
are protected at all costs.
Back in those days,
scientists could do almost anything they wanted.
So, you see, children,
science is the future for Russia and the world.
Now let's get to work.
Krasnogorskii decided to work with children instead of adults.
Adults are more likely to try to figure out
what the experiment is all about,
which was not something he wanted
to interfere with his work.
Krasnogorskii treats the children
like Pavlov treated his dogs.
He straps them into a machine
and locks the child's head in a metal cage.
Keep still.
What Krasnogorskii did
was to essentially reproduce Pavlov's experiments,
but this time, using children instead of dogs.
The children are left alone in the booth
for an hour or more,
made to lie perfectly still.
Krasnogorskii believes he can prove these children
are nothing more than animals...
And neither are you.
Nikolai Krasnogorskii is attempting to train
the subconscious minds of orphans
to react at his command
just like his mentor, Ivan Pavlov, did to dogs.
Instead of the bell Pavlov used for his dogs,
Krasnogorskii applies pressure to the boy's wrist
to signal that food is coming.
The machine immediately feeds the child a cookie.
He records the child's salivation levels.
And repeat.
When he believes that the child's unconscious mind
has learned to associate the signal with food,
Krasnogorskii gives the signal but no food.
Just like Pavlov's dogs,
the boy salivates and swallows --
not because of food,
but because of Krasnogorskii's signal.
Krasnogorskii has proven a human mind can be trained
as easily as a dog's
to react to a signal with an unthinking reflex.
It's working!
For over a decade, Krasnogorskii experiments on dozens of orphans
strapped inside his machine.
He discovers differences
between the reactions of dogs and humans.
150 strokes per minute -- condition stimulus.
Unlike dogs,
humans can separate subtle changes in the stimulus.
Predicted response.
Children trained to salivate
when hearing a metronome beat one rhythm
automatically ignore it when the rhythm is changed.
78 strokes per minute -- unconditioned stimulus.
The child's conscious mind associates clicks with food,
but the unconscious reflex of salivation
can differentiate one rhythm from another.
No response.
It worked.
Well, as it turns out, humans are much more sophisticated
in our responses to stimuli than are animals.
We can, for example,
distinguish between very fine differences
in a stimuli,
and we learn things faster and retain them longer.
Nikolai Ivanovich.
What you are doing here -- it's...
...it's inspired.
Ivan Pavlov is captivated by the results.
Fascinating.
So, the question is,
"at what stage of development does the reflex become active?"
Krasnogorskii concluded
that there was a mechanistic explanation of the mind.
All behavior was the result of either innate responses --
like salivating to food, for example --
or learned responses,
which we had accumulated throughout our lives.
So, once you work out the details,
it's conceivable that if you could record
all of the events that someone had undergone,
then you could completely predict behavior.
We'll need more children and a whole range of ages,
from infancy through...
Pavlov and Krasnogorskii's work becomes hugely influential...
in unexpected areas.
Pavlov studied associations -- in his case, with dogs,
between seeing people delivering food
and salivating.
Well, any time we turn on the computer or our television
or even just leave our houses,
advertisers try and help us
associate one thing with another.
Usually, it's, you know,
power and fame with driving a certain car
or athletic prowess with a certain kind of sneaker.
Pavlov's work is alive and well.
Pavlov's research helps Madison Avenue
sell us trillions of dollars' worth of products.
It also helps treat anxiety, substance abuse,
and other problems of the mind.
It was the inspiration
behind the most popular form of therapy today,
cognitive behavioral therapy,
which treats psychological disorders
by training patients in learned responses,
which bears a similarity to conditioning.
We do not know the fate of Krasnogorskii's test subjects...
Keep still.
...but they changed our world,
proving that conditioning the subconscious human mind
is no more challenging than training that of an animal.
In the end, we're all Pavlov's children.
Remember that as you watch the commercials.
It is human nature to see freak weather as a sign from the Gods.
But when the heavens open in India
and rain is the color of blood,
scientists hunt for a rational explanation.
In this case,
the most rational explanation sounds completely crazy.
Where did life begin?
In some primordial goo billions of years ago
on the volcanic surface of the young earth?
It's an incredible idea...
Yet the truth may be still more astonishing.
Is it possible all life on our planet fell from the sky?
Are aliens still falling?
Are you seeing this?
This rain -- it is red.
Red rain.
It is some kind of magic, I'm telling you.
Godfrey Louis -- Professor of solid-state physics.
Apologies, Professor. You wanted to see me?
George from crystallography sent this to me.
Well?
Santhosh Kumar -- doctoral student.
It is a red liquid.
Let me help you. Have you see this?
Red rain -- unexplained.
I thought it might be, uh, fun to try and find the answer.
It would be an honor.
Then the game is afoot.
So, Mr. Kumar, what is your first working hypothesis?
Dust blown from a desert or a volcano, perhaps.
In science, we have something called "Occam's Razor."
Sometimes, the simplest solution is the correct one.
So, when we have this red rain from the heavens,
perhaps it's dust clouds.
For example, dust from the Gobi Desert,
the Sahara Desert,
swirls over Europe
and even lands in the United States
in your backyard.
So, it was no accident, therefore,
that some scientists said,
"aha, let's look at dust clouds."
Professor, it's definitely not dust.
These look like living cells.
Hmm...most fascinating.
Well?
Living cells in rain --
most likely, it must be contamination.
Then you must go to Changanassery.
More of the rain has fallen.
Get new samples.
Is there something I can be helping you with?
I am, uh, Santhosh Kumar.
I'm looking for samples of the red rain.
Is this what you are looking for?
And what is it you think caused it?
Bats? Bats.
They believe a flock of bats exploded
and that the rain is their blood.
Should we test for blood?
Perhaps there's a simpler question to ask first --
have you ever seen evidence that bats can explode?
No, Godfrey, never.
Every sample of red rain
contains the same strange microscopic objects.
They look like some sort of organic cell,
but they test negative for blood.
The cell-like structures they were observing
were very unlikely to be red blood cells.
Because the interior of the cell is salty,
they would have absorbed
or taken in the rainwater around them
and probably burst.
The cell-like objects
contain proteins only found in living organisms,
but they lack a fundamental component
of nearly all cells --
there is no nucleus.
They are like cells,
yet, at the same time, they're not.
We need to find out more about the rainfall.
Back to Changanassery, I think.
It sounded like an explosion.
The whole house was shaking,
then blood was falling from the skies.
Come on, we have to go.
A single deafening explosion
high in the sky,
followed by red rain --
witness after witness tells the same story.
That's the fifth one -- all the same.
So, your first thought is...
Thunder...but you do not hear a single clap,
even in the monsoon.
I thought, perhaps, a supersonic jet,
but there are no air bases near here.
But not supersonic -- hypersonic.
It could be a shock wave...
an asteroid.
Every day, rocks from space -- asteroids -- hit the Earth.
Now, for the most part,
they simply burn up high in the atmosphere,
leaving no trace.
But the larger ones -- when they come in,
they create a shock wave in front.
And when the asteroid goes faster
than the speed of the shock wave,
it creates a sonic boom,
going in at 40,000 to 70,000 miles per hour.
Boom!
The cells were on the asteroid.
I mean, where on Earth could you find a cell
with such strange properties?
The answer is... nowhere on Earth.
But, surely...
I mean to say, is that likely, possible even?
You are suggesting... Alien life?
When you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable,
must be the truth.
Physicists Godfrey Louis and Santhosh Kumar
believe they have discovered alien life.
They think living cells survived the deadly vacuum of space
on the back of an asteroid
and fell to Earth in a bizarre red rain.
Cells living in space is not as crazy as it sounds.
When the Surveyor spacecraft was first created by workers
on the planet Earth,
it was slightly contaminated by microbes.
It was then shot to the Moon.
And then several years later,
our astronauts picked up panels from the Surveyor
and brought it back to Earth.
We were shocked
to find that there was evidence of microbial life
that actually survived several years
of living on the Moon.
Professor Louis puts the cells
through a series of brutal tests.
He bathes them in sulfuric acid.
He heats them to more than 300 degrees.
He exposes them to ultra-low pressure
and ultraviolet radiation.
These extreme conditions
would kill almost any known cell from Earth,
but these unearthly cells don't merely survive,
they thrive.
Kumar.
The cells -- they do reproduce.
They are alive.
But at room temperature,
the effect is almost invisibly slow.
But, surely, cells should reproduce easily
at room temperature.
Not these ones, it would seem.
It only happens at extremely high temperatures.
In fact, I could still see reproduction at 300 degrees.
Most cells that we know of cannot divide and reproduce
at temperatures of 100 degrees centigrade and above.
There are certain cells that have evolved
to cope with high temperatures.
These are cells, called "extremophiles,"
that live at very high temperatures
and have developed elaborate mechanisms
to allow them to divide and reproduce.
There are no cells that we know of that can survive
temperatures of 300 degrees centigrade and above.
That's about 600 degrees Fahrenheit,
almost hot enough to melt lead.
Also, I have tested for DNA. I cannot find any.
There is no DNA, yet they reproduce.
What does this mean?
An essential component of any free living organism is DNA.
DNA is the blueprint of life
and allows that cell to survive and function.
More importantly, it allows that cell to divide and reproduce.
So, if I was handed a tube of cells
that didn't contain DNA
but were able to divide and reproduce,
I would have to question
whether they were part of life on this planet as we know it
or whether they came from somewhere else.
Thank you.
Godfrey.
This could even bigger than I thought.
What could?
Have you ever heard of panspermia?
The conventional theory of how life started on the Earth
is that life started
as amino acids and primitive DNA molecules
in the ocean, in tidal pools,
or perhaps at the bottom of the ocean near volcano vents,
where you have energy.
The panspermia idea says, "Not so fast.
"Perhaps, from outer space, we have spores,
"spores that could survive the rigors of space
"for millions of years,
"and they would then land on the Earth
"in the form of meteorites
and then basically seeding the Earth as a consequence."
Godfrey Louis and Santhosh Kumar publish their strange findings
in a respected astrophysics journal.
Scientists around the world are intrigued,
and British researchers request a sample to test for themselves.
Good morning.
It is 3:00 a.m.
It is fine, please.
So, you have seen it replicate at hot temperatures?
Definitely.
But the cells are biological.
They are alive?
Excellent.
Of course.
First thing.
Santhosh, I think we're really onto something here.
The British researchers
found that these cells could only divide
at the higher temperatures
and not at the lower temperatures,
and this had not been observed previously
for any other cell population.
But the British find something inside the cells
that Professor Louis did not.
They say they have found DNA when we found none.
Did we make an error?
Though British scientists detect the chemical signature of DNA,
they are unable to observe it directly.
Perhaps it is like DNA, but not identical.
It will appear on their test, but not on ours.
Extraterrestrial? Or more down to earth?
The case remains open.
The evidence for these cells from the red rain
being, in fact, of extraterrestrial origin
has been far from proven
to the satisfaction of the scientific community.
While the Indian researchers
said they couldn't find DNA in it,
they were physicists
who were not used to dealing with plant cells
and didn't have the equipment for it.
Perhaps the red rain did not come from an asteroid,
or perhaps it did.
As yet, there is no other proven explanation.
Do you honestly believe
that the red rain contains cells from outer space?
Absolutely.
I think alien life may be raining down on us
from space every day.
Or should I say,
it's the best working hypothesis we have.
The truth, as they say, is out there.
Girls just want to have fun, at work or at play.
But when the factory workers are kept in the dark,
it won't be long before someone gets hurt.
An employee and her employer make a trade --
the workers' time and skill for the business owner's money.
What else comes into the bargain?
Does the company owe its employee the truth?
Does the worker owe the factory her life?
I am so sorry we're late.
Hi, girls.
Hi.
You hear about Jane?
Wrote her address on the back of a watch...
Katherine Schaub and her cousin Irene
paint glow-in-the-dark clock and watch faces for a living.
When the U.S. Army entered the first World War,
it needed instruments that could be read at any time,
day or night, even in dark trenches.
By painting the numbers and dials of instruments,
the U.S. Radium Corporation was catering to the army's needs.
Well, looky here, girls --
rare as a hen's teeth, an eligible bachelor.
Say hi to Fred, girls.
Hi, Fred.
Got any of those gloves for us, Fred?
Aww, he's a worrier, see?
Leave him, Katie. I think he's a dream boat.
Well, Irene, you could do a lot worse
than bagging a smart chemist from upstairs.
The corporation has turned the new science of radioactivity
into a profitable business.
They call their glowing paint "undark."
Its key ingredient is radium.
Radium is an amazing material.
Because it's radioactive, it emits particles.
And if you mix it
with a substance like zinc sulfide,
it'll cause the zinc sulfide to fluoresce.
It'll glow in the dark,
and that'll last for a long time -- 1,500 years.
After World War I ends,
business remains brisk for the U.S. Radium Corporation.
The girls are kept busy painting undark watch dials
to meet growing public demand.
I'm beat.
Beat? You can't be beat.
You and me are going out dancing, Miss Irene Rudolph.
Dancing? After today?
How do you do it, Katie?
Why, it must be the invigorating power of radium.
They say it cures every ill.
With our job, you should be jumping like a cricket.
Come on. Let's get ready.
So, at the end of World War I,
people are looking to science to solve their problems,
and radium is part of the dawn of this new age,
and they're very enthusiastic.
So, you find radium in all kinds of products.
You could have toothpaste with radium.
You could drink a glass of radium water.
You could go to a radium spa
where you could experience the benefits
of instant sunshine.
Wall Street millionaires would have radium-sniffing parties,
thinking that this cosmic energy
would help to inspire even more millions
to be made on the stock market.
Hey, Irene, want to see my new secret weapon?
Turn the light off, quick, now.
I'm the radium girl.
What do you think?
Oh, yeah?
What have you done to your mouth?
Borrowed a trick from that Italian girl, Analisa.
Think we'll stand out to the boys now?
Let's go!
I don't know that we need all the makeup.
You're glow-in-the-dark all over.
You're glowing with health yourself.
It's the undark dust. Ain't you never noticed?
Janey goes out dancing in her work clothes,
says it wows everyone.
Who dances in their work clothes?
Hi.
The corporation has told the dial painters
there is no risk from the radium.
What I can't figure out
is what all these lead screens are for.
They say it's all so safe,
so why are the guys with the brains
hiding behind this stuff?
Scientists and chemists didn't have a lot of information,
but they did have concerns about the radium,
so they would take precautions.
They would use lead shields.
They would handle radium with tongs.
But they didn't share those concerns
with the dial painters.
This place gives me the creeps.
Can we go home now? I'm beat.
You sure are washed out a lot.
Seems like your get-up-and-go has got up and gone, young lady.
The girls quit their dial-painting jobs
at U.S. Radium in 1921.
But a year later,
Irene is in a hospital with fevers
and violent pains in her bones and jaw.
The doctors...
say they don't know what's causing it.
Well, I'll tell them. It's the undark paint.
If it wasn't so dangerous,
why'd they have lead screens
and breathing masks in the labs?
I promise you, Irene,
I'm not gonna let them get away with this.
After two years of suffering, Irene dies.
18 months after Irene's death,
Katherine is hospitalized with identical symptoms --
fevers, fatigue,
and agonizing pain deep in her bones.
She's seen by a specialist...
How are you feeling, my dear?
...Dr. Frederick Flynn.
Well, I've looked at everything.
Your blood works, your physiology --
It's the radium, isn't it, Dr. Flynn?
I'm afraid not.
The U.S. Radium Corporation were so concerned,
they commissioned a study from Harvard.
Harvard?
The best of the best, scientifically.
They concur with my findings.
This terrible illness -- it's not the radium.
I know that's not what you were hoping for.
How else did I get like this?
Well, it's not easy to accept, I know,
but some of your symptoms
are consistent with angina bacterial infection
and, uh, quite possibly...syphilis.
I'm sorry.
Katherine Schaub spent three years painting clock dials
with glow-in-the-dark paint.
Now she is slowly dying from a mysterious illness.
She's not alone.
In December 1923,
Katherine began to suffer from something
that the dial painters had begun to call "jaw rot."
A health official began a second investigation into U.S. Radium.
She found three women dead and further two critically ill,
but the Labor Department objected
and said there was still not enough evidence
to warrant action.
The sick dial painters' fight
against their former employer gains momentum.
Katherine Wiley,
an activist from the National Consumers League,
has taken up their cause.
So, Dr. Flynn is certain it's not the radium?
Yeah.
Well, I guess he's an expert, but...I don't understand.
He's treating you for free, right?
Uh-huh.
It's awfully generous of him.
How'd he get in contact with you?
You gave him my name. He told me.
No, I didn't.
I'd never heard of Dr. Flynn until you mentioned him.
Dr. Flynn, I presume.
I, uh, don't believe I've had the pleasure.
Katherine Wiley.
You're not actually a medical doctor at all,
are you, Dr. Flynn?
You're a...physiologist.
I, uh --
a physiologist in the employ of U.S. Radium Corporation.
They pay you for your research, do they not, Dr. Flynn?
They're paying you to lie, aren't they?
U.S. Radium commissioned a study from Harvard.
It said radium isn't responsible.
I managed to get ahold of a copy, Dr. Flynn,
and that is not what it says.
That is not what it says at all.
So, the difference between what U.S. Radium is saying
and what the scientific report really said
is an underhanded piece of industrial skullduggery.
The Harvard scientists set up an experiment
to find out how radium gets absorbed into the body,
and they feed radium to cats,
and they find out that the cats are absorbing the radium
and depositing the radium in their bones.
And they figure out from this
that the dial painters also are ingesting radium
and the radium is also lodging in their bones.
The corporation lied, didn't they?
It is radiation poisoning, isn't it, Dr. Flynn?
I'm dying, aren't I?
How long do I have left?
We now know Katherine Schaub was suffering
from what's known as "chronic radium poisoning."
The way in which you get radium poisoning is to ingest radium.
To paint these small watch faces accurately,
you need a very sharp point on the brush.
And what women figured out pretty quickly,
especially because they were being paid by the piece,
was they could do this more swiftly and more accurately
if they drew the paintbrush to a point in their mouth.
So they would dip the brush into the radium paint,
bring it to their mouth and point it,
and then apply it to the watch dial.
As a result, they were ingesting a lot of radium
every single day.
Now, your body thinks of radium as being like calcium,
and your body incorporates the radium into your bones
and into your teeth.
The problem with this is that it damages the bones and teeth,
and it can actually weaken your jaw so much
that your jaw literally falls off.
So many patients who had radium poisoning
actually had to have their jaws bandaged up
to support them, to keep them as part of their face.
Five of the dial painters, including Katherine Schaub,
sued the U.S. Radium Corporation
for giving them a lethal illness.
Medical experts are called to give evidence.
This is the X-ray film
that I held up against Katie's jaw for just 10 minutes.
She's so radioactive that, as you can see, the film is fogged.
Her bones are lethally radioactive.
It is unlikely that she or the other plaintiffs
will see out another year.
Katherine became the public face of this court case.
And even when she was dying,
she pledged herself as an experimental subject
to understand the disease.
In modern-day terms, she was a true working-class hero.
Place your right hand on the Bible.
U.S. Radium Corporation tries to argue
that the statute of limitations has passed for these women
and that they've known all along about their problems,
but the court doesn't buy that argument
and things were moving forward to trial.
Do you swear to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
I do.
At that point, U.S. Radium Corporation says,
"We need a postponement.
Our expert witnesses are going to Europe for the summer."
And this is what really outrages people.
Here are these poor women dying for justice,
and the doors of justice are barred to them.
The public outcry is so intense
that a federal court judge
forces the corporation to the table.
They've settled, Katherine -- $15,000
and $600 more for every year you live.
I won't be collecting too many of them, I'm guessing.
Under public pressure,
the corporation shuts down the factory
where Katherine worked.
They've admitted they're wrong,
and they're gonna make the painting safer.
Safer?
They told us it was safe in the first place.
How do we know they've got it right now?
Think we'll stand out to the boys now?
== sync, corrected by elderman ==