Skeptics Guide #1042

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #1042 June 25th 2025 Segment #1. What’s the Word Eco Segment #2. News Items News Item #1 – Vaccinating the World https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-life-childhood-vaccination-coverage-stalled.html News Item #2 – How Children vs AI Acquire Language https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(25)00142-1 News Item #3 – Vera Rubin Observatory https://www.space.com/astronomy/vera-c-rubin-observatory-reveals-1st-stunning-images-of-the-cosmos-scientists-are-beyond-excited-about-whats-coming News Item #4 – Visible Nova https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/a-new-star-has-exploded-into-the-night-sky-and-you-can-see-it-from-north-america News Item #5 – Effects of Chat GPT on the Brain https://theconversation.com/mit-researchers-say-using-chatgpt-can-rot-your-brain-the-truth-is-a-little-more-complicated-259450 Segment #3. Who’s That Noisy Segment #4: Name That Logical Fallacy I’m currently attempting a thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, and I’m in the Sierras currently and it is recommended that people car try an ice axe for the snowy areas so people can self arrest if they fall. I have heard a lot of people say they won’t bring an ice ax into the Sierras because they “don’t know how to use it anyways”. This feels like they are mostly trying to convince themselves that they don’t need to spend the money on an ice axe and they don’t need to carry the extra weight. But this argument of “I don’t want to bring it because I don’t know how to use it” feels like a logical fallacy to me. Though it is true that there are more effective ways to use an ice ax than others, it does feel like its main use is relatively simple in its design. The best analogy I can think of for this argument is like if you were in a boat and someone didn’t know how to swim well and had never been shown how to use a personal flotation device (PFD). So you hand them a PFD without any explanation on how to use it. The person then looks at the PFD and looks at you and says, no thanks, because I don’t know how to use the PFD perfectly I would just rather not have it with me. What logical fallacy do you think this would be? Alex Smith Segment #5. Science or Fiction Each week our host will come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake – and you can play along. Theme: Item 1: Scientists have discovered a new organelle inside human cells they are calling the hemifusome. Item 2: Researchers have been able to genetically engineer immune cells to produce a protein that induces long term dormancy in HIV. Item 3: A recent graph of marine biomass over time shows that total biomass is mostly stable over geological time, punctuated by mass extinctions and later return to the longer term baseline. Segment #6. Skeptical Quote of the Week “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” - Werner Heisenberg


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