Episode #966

Episode #966

News Items

• Dual Sympathetic Reset
• Peregrine Moon Mission
• Solar Eclipse
• Boy Beats Tetris
• Fertility Pseudoscience

Who's That Noisy

• Answer to last week: Glider ranging

Science or Fiction [ Show Answers ]

• Item #1 Science

  Cigarette smoking has decreased dramatically among US teens between 1991 and 2021, with daily use declining from 9.8% in 1991 to 0.6% in 2021, a greater than 16-fold decline. https://www.ochsnerjournal.org/content/23/4/289

• Item #2 Fiction

  The global literacy rate has almost tripled since 1990, from around 30% to 89%. https://www.statista.com/statistics/997360/global-adult-and-youth-literacy/

• Item #3 Science

  Extreme poverty is on the decline – there are over a billion fewer people living below the international poverty line today than in 1990.https://ourworldindata.org/poverty

Skeptical Quote of the Week.

‘I’m not sure why I enjoy debunking. Part of it surely is amusement over the follies of true believers, and partly because attacking bogus science is a painless way to learn good science… Another reason for debunking is that bad science contributes to the steady dumbing down of our nation. Crude beliefs get transmitted to political leaders and the result is considerable damage to society.” —Martin Gardner