The Skeptics Guide #1063 - Nov 22 2025
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Who attended the show and what was Stephen Novella’s takeaway from Dubai?
You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, November 20th, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.
Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon.
Now, Kara is away this week, but I did record her segment previously, so she'll be jumping in in the middle of the show with her news item, but she is not here to participate in the rest of the show. Actually, we did her science or fiction as well, so I'll be clipping that. Ah, she went first.
If I had known, I would have texted her and asked her. Yeah, right.
Does that mean, though, we get to hear her ramblings and her decision before we go?
Not at all. Why?
Why wouldn't she go first?
She's in a limbo. She went. She's done.
But I'm not going to play her for you.
Did you tell her if she got it right or not?
Maybe.
Oh, Steve, you are clever.
All right. So Bob just picked me up at the airport a few hours ago. I just got in from Dubai. I'm significantly jet lagged.
This will be fun.
I'm mostly awake. It was a good trip. It was a lot of fun. I did a nine-hour seminar on scientific skepticism, which is always fun. After that, there was a conference where I was on a panel on the future of consciousness and the mind. It was good. It actually turned out to be a really good panel. So yeah, things are happening in Dubai. We may be going back there next year.
What's your number one takeaway?
Dubai is trying to position itself as the city of the future. They're investing in a lot of technology. They're trying to attract a lot of talent, a lot of investment. And they're motivated to make this happen. So they have like the Museum of the Future there. It's actually a pretty snazzy kind of construction. Yeah, so Muhammad is the guy who's hosting me there, who's the listener of the show. He's a skeptic. He's like, skepticism has to be part of this process. Otherwise, the pseudoscience will come in. Of course. Which, of course, I completely agree with. The learning curve is pretty steep when you're thinking about metacognition, critical thinking, science versus pseudoscience. Thinking about that versus not thinking about that is a huge difference, right?
Yeah. Having some kind of process where we say, okay, is this something that's legitimate, that deserves our time and attention, our investment, or is this just some crank looking to exploit the situation? We're trying to at least introduce that basic nuts and bolts kind of process.
I mean even them pausing for a second and asking themselves, could this be a scam or could I possibly be taken advantage of is a wonderful start.
And there's research on that. Anything you do to make people think about, be aware of the truth status of a claim makes them more skeptical about it. You know what I mean? Just to introduce – even if saying anything about is this true or not true, as soon as you introduce the idea that it may or may not be true, people think about it. So, yeah. But obviously doing that in the context of this is how you tell real science from fake science.
Mm-hmm.
Steve, when you're there, this is part of a giant conference, right? You said it lasts like a month?
So there's two things, right? So the first is the FEEL program, which is like there are 30 fellows that are invited each year, and they spend a month-long seminar workshop with going through multiple seminars. I did one of the seminars for that course, but they have many other people doing that. And then the other one was a two-day conference. It was the Future Forum, just a two-day conference that anybody could go to. You just got to buy a ticket like any other con.
Was it dominated by AI discussion?
So AI all over the place, man. It was so much AI. Absolutely. Of course. Like almost every – it seemed to come up in almost every context. Yeah. Of course AI is going to change this. It's like, sure. Let's see what they're saying after the bubble burst.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Who attended the show and what was Stephen Novella’s takeaway from Dubai?
0:00–34:59
2
Why is the Mount Ararat 'Noah's Ark' claim criticized as pseudoscience?
34:59–1:08:07
3
What are the realistic limits of a new blood test for chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)?
1:08:07–1:09:46
4
How did hosts evaluate the University of East Anglia 3D-genome assay claims?
1:09:46–1:15:33
5
What was the winner and common guesses in 'Who's That Noisy' and why did the F‑16 win?
1:15:33–1:23:38
6
How do the panelists decide the fake item in 'Science or Fiction' and which story was revealed as false?
1:23:38–2:02:43