Skeptics Guide #1060

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #1059 October 30th 2025 Segment #1. News Items News Item #1 – Therapeutic Nanoparticles https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/10/251029100154.htm News Item #2 – What Killed Napoleon’s Forces https://www.sciencealert.com/dna-finally-reveals-what-really-killed-napoleons-forces News Item #3 – Making Better Photosynthesis https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65307-9 News Item #4 – Second Generation Black Holes https://phys.org/news/2025-10-gravitational-events-hint-generation-black.html News Item #5 – More on 3I/ATLAS https://www.ladbible.com/news/science/3iatlas-alien-spaceship-earth-comet-359926-20251029 Segment #2 Who’s That Noisy Segment #3. Your Questions and E-mails Question #1: Human Instinct Here is my paraphrase of what a psychologist said on a radio program many years ago: humans have reflexes, drives, and urges, but humans do not have (or act on) instinct. At the time I simply accepted the comment as accurate but what are your thoughts? I thought that this might be an interesting segment for the show. Norbert Alwast Segment #4. Name That Logical Fallacy Argument from Ignorance https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaylogic/video/7564860024363732238?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc 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: Good News Item 1: Engineers have created a form of gallium-doped germanium, materials already used in electronics, that is superconducting at ambient pressures and in the temperature range of liquid nitrogen. Item 2: A new framework for deep learning models trains faster and uses <1% of the energy of current methods, while achieving equal or better results. Item 3: Researchers demonstrate that a liposomal delivery system can be used to safely deliver a previously unusable anticancer drug with 1000 times the toxicity of similar drugs, resulting in highly effective treatments for even drug-resistant cancers. Segment #6. Skeptical Quote of the Week All interpretations made by a scientist are hypotheses, and all hypotheses are tentative. They must forever be tested and they must be revised if found to be unsatisfactory. Hence, a change of mind in a scientist, and particularly in a great scientist, is not only not a sign of weakness but rather evidence for continuing attention to the respective problem and an ability to test the hypothesis again and again. — Ernst Mayr


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