Skeptics Guide #1008

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #1008 September 4th 2024 Segment #1. Quickie with Bob Predicting Earthquakes https://phys.org/news/2024-08-geophysicist-method-months-major-earthquakes.html Segment #2. News Items News Item #1 – Cell Phones and Brain Cancer https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/who-systematic-review-of-rf-and-cancer/ News Item #2 – Gold from Earthquakes https://www.science.org/content/article/shake-rattle-and-gold-earthquakes-may-spark-gold-formation News Item #3 – Plastic in the Brain https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/23/health/plastics-in-brain-wellness/index.html News Item #4 – Quantum Neural Network https://techxplore.com/news/2024-08-quantum-neural-network-optical-illusions.html News Item #5 – Marmosets Have Names https://theness.com/neurologicablog/marmosets-call-each-other-by-name/ Segment #3. Your Questions and E-mails Question #1: Beetles Hi guys, In a recent show, you highlighted that beetles are by far the most diverse insect group (and animal group on this taxonomic level). Well, I have a correction, that is not really a correction for you, but might be of interest. Since SGU is about science progress, I thought about writing anyway. Beetles indeed currently are the most diverse, but will not stay so much longer. Biologists are lately realizing, in large part thanks to molecular methods (yay science!), that there is a big bias in what we know. You can guess it perhaps - if it's small, it's less known. There are two groups that biologists agree on will easily surpass beetles - wasps and kin (Hymenoptera) and flies (Diptera). Both have a crazy amount of tiny species that nobody studied and are super tough to taxonomically treat based on morphology. These are called "dark taxa" and there's a lot of research attention on these recently (yay science!). So, as is the consesus today, flies are the largest insect order, followed by wasps, beetles are third (although species descriptins are slow, so formally it will take a while). There is a similar thing in arachnids with mites. Mites are an order of mostly sub-milimeret animals, the true diversity is likely tens to a hundred times higher. Best, Matjaz Segment #4. Name That Logical Fallacy Love the show, listened since the beginning. What do you call it when a claim is technically true, but deceptive. Example: someone claims that "I have never lost a game of chess". That gives the impression they are a great chess player, but it's simply because they have never played a single game of chess in their life. Is that a logical fallacy, or simply a lie by omission? Mario 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: Science Literacy Item 1: A 2020 National Science Board survey found that 68% of Americans believe that “all radioactivity is man-made”. Item 2: In a 2014 NSF survey, 26% of Americans stated that the sun revolves about the Earth, rather than the other way around. Item 3: A 2015 YouGov online survey found that 41% of people believe dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, while only 25% answered that they definitely did not. Segment #6. Skeptical Quote of the Week "Auditors and journalists and scientists are all supposed to be trained in critical thinking. But they are subject to the same sorts of biases that we all have. And the fact that we get some training about this doesn't necessarily immunize us against all of the ways in which we can make mistakes." Daniel Simons, experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois.