Episode #736
News Items
Who's That Noisy
- Answer to last week – Liberty Bell
Science or Fiction
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Item #1
Science
A study of investment decisions made by non-experts finds that they intuitively pick more risky portfolios and would be better off picking stocks at random. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597817305770?via%3Dihub
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Item #2
Fiction
The most accurate estimate to date indicates that Earth-like planets orbiting around sun-like stars in the goldilocks zone should occur on average in one out of every 10,000 stars. https://phys.org/news/2019-08-earth-like-planets-sun-like-stars.html
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Item #3
Science
Scientists have discovered a way to make some existing antibiotics hundreds of times more effective against resistant strains of bacteria. https://www.cell.com/cell-chemical-biology/fulltext/S2451-9456(19)30240-5?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2451945619302405%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
Skeptical Quote of the Week.
‘Scientific thinking is being inquisitive, skeptical, and taking nothing for granted. Prestige, fame, success are irrelevant. Perfect theories are irrelevant. The smallest piece of contradictory evidence can refute your grand unifying theory. And science encompasses all that. It is an emergent concept. And this is what is self-correcting.’ Sam Schwarzkopf, cognitive and systems neuroscientist, blogger (NeuroNeurotic Blog)