Can You Hear a Seashell In Your Soundproof Room?

I was arguing with someone about this, and they pulled up several websites where it was said that you couldn't hear a seashell in a soundproof room. I think this is bogus nonsense myself. Every one of those websites all used the same language, so it's apparent they've all gotten their information from the same source (whatever it may be).
 
There are two divergent opinions as to what the source of the sound is that you hear in a seashell. One says that it's the sound of air passing through the shell with the ambient noise of the room. The other says it's the sound of blood surging through your ears. Oddly enough, most of these websites say that there was supposed to have been a scientist (unnamed) who did some experiment (undocumented) who brought a seashell into a soundproof room and said he couldn't hear anything in it, yet the same scientist is supposed to have said he could hear his own heart beat in that room. Obviously, if the sound in a shell is the blood flowing through your ears, and your ears are in the room with you, then you should be able to hear the sound in the shell just like you could hear your own heart beating. Even if the sound in a shell is air flowing through it, as long as there is air in the soundproof room, I would assume you would be able to hear it pass through the shell.
 
So, anybody got a soundproof room and a seashell? I'd love to be able to put an urban legend to rest.

I realize that the only room truly soundproof would be in a vacuum (useless if you want to go on living), but I of course mean soundproof in the way we all use the term, which should technically be called something else like sound minimizing. But hey, we've called it soundproof for a hundred years, so who am I to ask the world to change the term--.

The blood running through the ear thing is new to me. For years and years they always said it was air passing through the shell. But I thought the same thing as you. If it's bloodflow through the ears, the sound should probably be louder and more focussed if there's very little outside noise present. Thus, I think it's got to be ambient noise that's going through the shell. As long as there's air, there's got to be some ambient noise.

Ah, I have walked the globe and finally found an honest man. :)
 
Hey, there must be someone here with a soundproofed vocal chamber that can give this seashell thing a try. How about it?

That's kinky.

Testing the seashell in a soundproof room is easy.  Mopping up all of that saltwater in your studio is much harder.

Ahhhh, nothing like a google search to shine the light of reality on a topic.... THE ANSWER...according to somebody else.

"Ahhhh, nothing like a google search to shine the light of reality on a topic"

How about not repeating the very stupidity we're trying to refute?

How about pretending you've got an IQ and sticking to the topic sissy?

Can I spoil the speculation by saying - been there, done it. Many years ago. OK, it was a plastic cup, not a shell, but the principle's the same. You don't even need a silent/anechoic chamber to hear it, just put a bunch of pillows over your head to cut out background noise and stick a cup next to your ear.

Even simpler, just put on a set of closed-back phones with good attenuation of external sound (in ear monitors are even better).

What you hear in a shell/cup is ambient noise being amplified by a resonant cavity. Your body makes noise - blood flow, heart, breathing, muscles moving, air moving through sinuses (and even air moving through earwax and sinuses). That's what gets amplified. All that noise is normally filtered out by our brains, but in an otherwise silent room or with sufficient amplification to raise it above the "normal" level it becomes very obvious.

It's called the occlusion effect I believe - the sound reaches the shell/cup/phones and is reflected straight back at the eardrum.