MaxPlanck

Rage bait is the Oxford Word of the Year and that cannot be a a good sign of the times we live in. In TWISH we acknowledge the genius of Ada Lovelace while recognizing that she had some flaws as well, especially when it came to phrenology and mesmerism… Then we take a look at the news:

• EU: Proposal to allow plants modified using CRISPR
• HUNGARY: Government campaigns against opposition party with fake election program
• INTERNATIONAL: Influencers promote bogus health advice
• UK: Persuasion through chatbots leads to inaccurate assessments

This week’s Really Right Award goes to researcher Rebecca Sear for her commitment in tracking down all studies based on the infamous National IQ database.

Enjoy!

Segments: Intro; Greetings; TWISH; News; Really Right; Quote; Outro; Outtakes
 
0:00:27 INTRO

0:00:52 GREETINGS

0:11:45 TWISH – THIS WEEK IN SKEPTICAL HISTORY

• 10 December 1815: Birth of mathematician and pioneer of the Analytical Machine, Ada Lovelace
  • Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

0:24:03 NEWS

• EU: Proposal to allow plants modified using CRISPR
  • Genetic Literacy Project: https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2025/12/08/crispr-is-coming-europe-takes-a-giant-step-forward-escaping-three-decades-of-crop-biotechnology-denialism/
• HUNGARY: Government campaigns against opposition party with fake election program
  • Telex.hu: https://telex.hu/techtud/2025/12/04/tisza-adoterv-dokumentum-index-mesterseges-intelligencia-furcsasagok
• INTERNATIONAL: Influencers promote bogus health advice
  • Sydsvenskan: https://www.sydsvenskan.se/inpa-livet/tiktok-fylls-av-tveksamma-skonhetsrad-for-unga-man-som-att-sla-sig-sjalv-med-hammare/
  • BMJ: https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2501
  • Omni: https://omni.se/skonhetsradet-till-man-sla-dig-sjalv-med-en-hammare/a/OknyRw
• UK: Persuasion through chatbots leads to inaccurate assessments
  • the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/04/chatbots-sway-political-opinions-substantially-inaccurate-study

0:53:12 REALLY RIGHT

• Really Right: Researcher Rebecca Sear is fighting use of flawed database linking IQ and nationality
  • Retraction Watch: https://retractionwatch.com/2025/11/25/meet-the-researcher-aiming-to-halt-use-of-fundamentally-flawed-database-linking-iq-and-nationality/#more-133404

0:59:37 QUOTE AND FAREWELL

“Experimenters are the shocktroops of science… An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer. But before an experiment can be performed, it must be planned – the question to nature must be formulated before being posed. Before the result of a measurement can be used, it must be interpreted – Nature’s answer must be understood properly. These two tasks are those of theorists, who find himself always more and more dependent on the tools of abstract mathematics.”
/ Max Planck (23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. The quote is from his book ‘Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers’ (1949) /

1:01:56 OUTRO

1:03:18 OUT-TAKES