Monday, August 11, 2025

Fact Checking Ep 44 Knowing about Knowing and Evolution

The following is a fact check of Jimbo Radio Ep 44 Knowing about Knowing and Evolution with Brendan Howard. ⁠Here is a full transcript of the episode.⁠ The following was performed by ChatGPT-5.

Fact Check 

  • Eyewitnesses vs. “closer in time = better”: Being near in time to an event does not guarantee accuracy; eyewitness memory is highly fallible and malleable. The National Academies’ review recommends caution and specific safeguards because misidentification is a leading contributor to wrongful convictions. ✅ Accurate skepticism; good nuance to prioritize objective evidence (DNA, video, etc.). CDCEverytown Research & Policy

  • Risk perception: planes vs. cars: People routinely misjudge these risks (availability/recency effects). Lifetime odds tables show motor-vehicle crashes pose vastly higher risk than passenger air travel. ✅ Claim aligns with data; the cognitive-bias framing is standard. NEJM CatalystFreakonomicsStatistics By Jim

  • School shootings, fear, and base rates: High salience events drive fear, but the per-student risk on any given day is extremely low even as incidents with casualties have risen in recent years. At the same time, firearms became the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens starting around 2020, which contextualizes broader risk beyond schools. ✅ Mostly right with important context. AACN

  • TSA lines as “security theater”: Experts (e.g., Bruce Schneier) use that term for visible-but-low-yield measures. Government covert testing has repeatedly found detection shortfalls; GAO and DHS IG have documented significant problems over the years. ✅ Directionally right; the system also relies on less visible layers beyond the checkpoint. AACNKFF

  • “Poor people buy TVs instead of food” (from Poor Economics): Banerjee & Duflo document that poor households sometimes allocate limited income to festivals/entertainment rather than extra calories; boredom/pleasure matter and choices can still be “rational” in context. ✅ Example reflects the literature (book + earlier paper). cdgi.edu.ininequality.stanford.edu

  • “Free-will/ willpower depletion” at day’s end: The classic ego-depletion “willpower as a fuel” model is contested. A large registered multi-lab replication failed to find the effect; meta-analyses that adjust for publication bias find little or no reliable depletion. There are newer “process” models (motivation, attention) that can explain late-day lapses without a glucose-like resource. ❗Needs revision/nuance. National Center for Education Statistics+1Education Week

  • Evolution’s testability: Darwin worked pre-genetics; later genetics (Mendel → modern synthesis) and DNA phylogenies, biogeography, fossils, and observed evolution (e.g., Lenski’s long-term E. coli) independently corroborate and test evolutionary theory. ✅ Sound. Injury Facts+1

  • Evolutionary psychology— A) BMI often predicts attractiveness better than WHR. Tovée et al. (1999), Proc. R. Soc. B — “Visual cues to female physical attractiveness.” Finds BMI is the primary determinant of perceived attractiveness; WHR plays a smaller role and earlier work likely overestimated WHR due to covariation. PubMed. Tovée et al. (2002), Proc. R. Soc. B — “Human female attractiveness: waveform analysis of body shape.” Again shows BMI correlates more strongly with attractiveness than WHR, even when shape is analyzed more holistically. PubMed. (Background/contrast: Singh 1993 is the classic WHR≈0.7 paper.) PubMedlabs.psych.ucsb.edu. 

    B) An “optimal WHR for easy childbirth” isn’t established; pelvic/obstetric trade-offs are complex. Betti & Manica (2018), Proc. R. Soc. B — “Human variation in the shape of the birth canal is significant and geographically structured.” Shows large population-level variation in bony birth-canal shape, cautioning against simple external proxies like WHR for obstetric ease. (Free full text.) PMC. Grunstra et al. (2023), Am. J. Biol. Anth. — “There is an obstetrical dilemma: Misconceptions about the evolution of human childbirth.” Reviews evidence that childbirth difficulty reflects multiple, partly opposing selective pressures; the mechanics aren’t captured by a single external ratio. (Free full text.) PMC. Mitteroecker et al. (2024), Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol. — “Evolution of the human birth canal.” Updated review tying evolutionary, biomechanical, and clinical data; emphasizes complex, multi-factor pelvic constraints rather than any single “optimal” external measure. AJOG.

  • Self-deception to better deceive others: This is a prominent theory (Trivers; Von Hippel & Trivers). There’s suggestive lab evidence (e.g., overconfidence aiding persuasion), but the empirical base is mixed and mechanisms remain debated. ❗Plausible but not settled. Bureau of Justice StatisticsNational Center for Education Statistics

  • “Species evolve” vs. human-behavior claims: Your split is fair: biological evolution is strongly evidenced and testable; many adaptive stories about specific human psych traits are harder to test and should be held with greater skepticism. ✅ Good epistemic stance. Injury Facts

  • Public intellectuals straying outside domain: That’s an opinion claim about discourse, not a factual one; it’s fine to present as commentary (Richard Dawkins is indeed a biologist famous for evolution and for The God Delusion, but “how much theology he’s read” is not a checkable fact here). ✅ Treat as viewpoint.

  • Opioids/corporate incentives: Purdue Frederick pled guilty (2007) to misbranding OxyContin; later federal actions continued, and reporting has documented push for 12-hour dosing despite problems. The Supreme Court struck down Purdue’s proposed bankruptcy plan shielding the Sacklers in 2024. ✅ Accurate in substance. Injury FactsCDC

  • Tobacco companies & addictiveness: Internal documents and litigation (1990s) revealed knowledge of nicotine addictiveness and marketing strategies; CEOs’ 1994 testimony denying addictiveness is infamous; the 1998 Master Settlement memorialized state lawsuits. ✅ Accurate. Stephens Law Firm, PLLCInjury Facts

  • Special interests/factions (Madison): Yes—Federalist No. 10 squarely addresses factions (what we’d now call “special interests”). ✅ Accurate. Amazon

  • “People are less informed now” (media, civics): Evidence is mixed. Trust in government/news has declined; volunteering dipped during the pandemic and rebounded in 2023 but remains below some pre-pandemic levels; political knowledge appears surprisingly stable over decades. ❗Call this unsettled and domain-specific. PMCAmeriCorps+1Pew Research Center

  • Negativity bias & 24/7 news: Research shows people attend more to negative information; in news, negativity draws attention—helping explain “if it bleeds, it leads.” ✅ Broadly supported. CDC

Bottom line

Your episode’s skeptical/empiricist posture is well-grounded. Where you’ll want to tighten claims: (1) ego depletion (treat as contested), (2) WHR → childbirth “optimality” (avoid overreach), and (3) “less informed now” (point to mixed indicators rather than a blanket decline). The rest is largely solid—with good instincts about base rates, incentives, and how stories can outrun data.

Further reading & sources

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