In this 161st in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we discuss the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.

This week, we discuss Godot, dogs, and science. Do the New York Times and the Brookings Institution have insight into what’s true, what’s not, and how science is done? Could they define hypothesis, prediction, or test? We think not. New “research” out of Brookings claims that we are leading purveyors of misinformation, who “burnish [our] scientific bona fides” by using tricky terms like “correlation” and “causation.” Brookings having established that we are cranks for discussing scientific articles that are on pre-print servers (and so haven’t been peer-reviewed), we point to Nature’s discussion this week of…a scientific article on a pre-print server. Finally, we discuss how you might use a scientific approach to increase your odds of surviving in the Indonesian rainforest.

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Theme Music: Thank you to Martin Molin of Wintergatan for providing us the rights to use their excellent music.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Steve Bannon’s Podcast Is Top Misinformation Spreader, Study Says: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/09/technology/podcasts-steve-bannon-war-room-misinformation.html

Audible reckoning: How top political podcasters spread unsubstantiated and false claims: https://www.brookings.edu/essay/audible-reckoning-how-top-political-podcasters-spread-unsubstantiated-and-false-claims/

COVID drug drives viral mutations — and now some want to halt its use. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00347-z

Washington Post 2014: At fast-growing Brookings, donors may have an impact on research agenda: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-fast-growing-brookings-donors-help-set-agenda/2014/10/30/a4ba4e8e-48ef-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html

Mastroianni 2022. The rise and fall of peer review. https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-review

Crawford 2015. The World Beyond Your Head. http://www.matthewbcrawford.com/new-page-1-1/

Twitter interaction between Scott Adams and Bret: https://twitter.com/creon/status/1624494554631278592