Skeptics Guide #1079

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #1079 March 12th 2026 Segment #1. Back to Basics Fundamental Attribution Error Segment #2. News Items News Item #1 – Improved Photosynthesis https://theness.com/neurologicablog/improved-photosynthesis/ News Item #2 – Birth of a Magnetar https://phys.org/news/2026-03-astronomers-capture-birth-magnetar-link.html News Item #3 – US Bioweapons Research https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/declassified-documents-link-u.s.-bioweapons-program-to-lyme-disease-outbreak-5c74964b News Item #4 – False Health Information from Chatbots https://www.livescience.com/health/rectal-garlic-insertion-for-immune-support-medical-chatbots-confidently-give-disastrously-misguided-advice-experts-say Segment #3. Your Questions and E-mails Question #1: Consistency Good day, I said GOOD DAY! I have to preface this by saying I started listening at episode one, am at episode 1000 currently, and haven’t listened to anything past that. In aforementioned episode, Steve was talking about climate change, and made a point of saying the oil companies “research” didn’t look at 30 year trends, so their data was incomplete. In the next breath, he says that “the last 10 years have been the hottest in recorded history”. How is that not picking and choosing? Also, what logical fallacy would “picking and choosing” be? I agree 100% that climate change is real, and man made. I’m just curious as to why one is fine, and the other not. Also, George made a point of saying something to the effect that, and I apologize for not remembering the exact topic, maybe it was alternative medicine, if you have to re brand, or rename your chosen topic, then you know it’s bullshit. But we’ve gone from “global warming”, to “climate change”, and multiple other terms for the problem. I’m just trying to understand the difference between, what appears to me to be, identical tactics. I get one has empirical data backing it, and the other doesn’t. Which is perfectly fine for me. It’s just the examples listed seem hypocritical. I was raised Jehovah’s Witness, so thank you for helping me sharpen my mind, and start seeing all the bullshit in the world around me, Joel. P.S. hopefully I’ll get to episode 8000 or whatever y’all are at, soon. It was pretty funny listening to conversations on how bad it may be if Trump gets elected in 2016, and again in 2024, knowing how bad it really is currently. Poor Jay. Joel, Austin TX Segment #4. Name That Logical Fallacy I don't know if you guys are aware of Clint Laidlaw, an evolutionary biologist who runs the Clint's Reptiles YouTube channel. I enjoy his videos, most of which are about modern cladistic taxonomy, sometimes about wild reptiles as well as reptiles as pets, and once in a while about reacting to creationist talking points. Clint does, I think, a great job when he addresses these, and one thing he talks about doing, and to my mind seems to do, is steel man the arguments from the other side before explaining why they're just wrong. In a recent one of these videos Clint for some reason showed a clip of Charlie Kirk debating a college student in one of his campus events. It wasn't about creationism and Clint wasn't arguing against him, he was saying Kirk was an example of good argumentation because he steel manned the students argument and was nice to him. I'm not sure this is really a logical fallacy. When Kirk makes his point, he clearly just has some unstated major premises that are false, but I'm curious if there is a fallacy as well, or a better way to describe what he does. It seems to me Kirk is ambushing the kid. Using an apparent steel man and kindness to put him off guard, before he makes an argument that the kid isn't ready to confront. Did Kirk build a steel man of the kid's argument, or really just oversimplify it so that his argument looked like it falsified it? He certainly was dishonest (the stats he cites are simply wrong), but I'm curious on your take on this, if it's something you're interested in. Maybe it's just my personal bias against Kirk that made this put me off. Here's the link with timestamp: https://youtu.be/wO2qV3HEP04?t=1664 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. Item 1: A study of spousal bereavement in Japan finds that widowers have an increased risk of dementia and mortality, while widows do not and, in fact, have increased happiness and life satisfaction long term. Item 2: A recent study of patients taking a GLP-1 drug to treat obesity found that, after stopping treatment, more than half gained back more than half of the weight they lost within a year. Item 3: Researchers have developed a technique for making brains in living mice transparent so that the deep layers can be imaged with fluorescence imaging with minimal affect on brain function. Segment #6. Skeptical Quote of the Week "Facts alone, no matter how numerous or verifiable, do not automatically arrange themselves into an intelligible, or truthful, picture of the world. It is the task of the human mind to invent a theoretical framework to account for them." - Francis Bello, prominent American science writer and editor known for his work at Fortune (1945–1960) and Scientific American (1960–1982), where he specialized in molecular biology and high-energy physics.