Skeptics Stack Exchange
Skeptics Stack Exchange

Most Popular

more tags
1500 questions
114
votes
2 answers

Is all gold ever mined able to fit in a 20x20x20 meter cube?

According to this picture/fact, all gold ever mined is able to fit in a 20x20x20 meter cube. Is there any evidence of this, as this seems like very very little gold?
user1622951
  • 1,101
  • 2
  • 7
  • 6
113
votes
3 answers

Do 10 Asian and African rivers generate 90% of plastic trash in the ocean?

I found this image shared on Facebook [Warning: image contains a bleeding turtle.] with the following text: Your Straws Did NOT Do This [image of turtle with foreign body in nostril] Americans are being told we must risk our health with expensive,…
Tom M
  • 1,001
  • 2
  • 6
  • 9
113
votes
4 answers

Is a woman who dresses sexually suggestively more likely to get raped?

There was a recent controversy about a police officer who is reported to have suggested: Women can avoid sexual assault by not dressing like a “slut.” If we leave out the derogatory word and focus on the substance of the claim, is there any…
Christian
  • 33,271
  • 15
  • 112
  • 266
113
votes
3 answers

Is it possible to fly 4 helicopters anywhere in a country without official knowledge?

According to reports, there were 4 helicopters used in the raid on Osama Bin Laden. Is it conceivable that even one helicopter could be flown so close to the capital of another country without raising alarm bells? Considering these were military…
going
  • 18,069
  • 18
  • 86
  • 151
113
votes
6 answers

Is alcohol beneficial in small amounts?

It's widely believed that consuming small amounts of alcohol has many health benefits. As a matter of fact, a lot of alcohol might be good for you, as Wired Magazine reports: It’s one of those medical anomalies that nobody can really explain:…
Patches
  • 8,162
  • 8
  • 44
  • 58
112
votes
2 answers

Is a police officer 18x more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be by a police officer?

PragerU is a YouTube channel for expressive conservative views. They published a video titled Are The Police Racist? (with over a million views) that has this claim [at 2:48]: a police officer is eighteen and a half times more likely to be killed…
user42650
  • 1,017
  • 2
  • 7
  • 6
111
votes
3 answers

Do we only use 10% of our brain?

I've heard claims that the average person uses only 10% of their "brain power," whatever that means. The implication, though, is that there the majority of our brain's potential is untapped. However, I've often heard this refrain from people who are…
Scott Mitchell
  • 5,923
  • 4
  • 35
  • 32
111
votes
5 answers

Can you predict a number that is "randomly" chosen by a person better than chance?

(https://xkcd.com/628/) If you hover your mouse over the comic for a few second a small tool tip box says: You can do a lot better than 1% if you start keeping track of the patterns in what numbers people pick. Is there any evidence for this…
10 Replies
  • 943
  • 2
  • 6
  • 11
111
votes
2 answers

Do expensive, "premium" speaker cables make a difference?

I was tempted to go drop $8500 on these awesome speaker cables so I could be like Whiplash (see customer pictures), but I'm curious, if I use them for my audio system, will they actually make a perceptible difference over some low gauge copper…
Nick T
  • 3,796
  • 3
  • 25
  • 32
110
votes
2 answers

Do facemasks cause CO2 poisoning?

I came across this video on BitChute purporting to test the CO2 levels of what appears to be a KN95 (a Non-NIOSH Approved Respirator) whilst the mask is in use. The video shows a device displaying CO2 levels rising, next to an image depicting…
SE Does Not Like Dissent
  • 1,172
  • 2
  • 7
  • 11
110
votes
1 answer

Was there Cyrillic text visible on Intel 386 chips after decapping?

Heise, a German IT news portal, reported today about a chip presented to the State Council, including Erich Honecker, exactly thirty years ago. They also mention how other chips had been copied from Western chips and relate the following story,…
0xC0000022L
  • 1,768
  • 3
  • 18
  • 25
110
votes
4 answers

Does the US spend more public money (i.e. tax/capita) on Health Care than other developed countries?

The author John Green on a YouTube post Why are American Health Care costs so high? makes the (referenced) claim that US public health expenditure per capita, is higher than most other developed countries - even where those countries then provide…
Gazzer
  • 913
  • 2
  • 6
  • 7
110
votes
2 answers

Do these pictures depict David Hogg after two separate crises?

A post circulating on social media - 48,000 shares and counting so far - depicts still images of two news reports, one in California in August 2017 and one in Florida in February 2018 after the Parkland school shooting. The post alleges that both…
F1Krazy
  • 3,520
  • 5
  • 20
  • 29
109
votes
3 answers

Does camera flash destroy art?

This is a question which is highly discussed on the Internet but I've been researching for a long time and I've never found any scientific proof backing this up. It's known (or at least spoken of) that intense light creates an effect called…
Hallaghan
  • 1,123
  • 2
  • 7
  • 7
109
votes
8 answers

Did close to 3,000 Puerto Ricans die in Hurricane Maria?

CNN reports: Earlier this month, [Puerto Rico]'s governor formally raised the death toll from Hurricane Maria to an estimated 2,975 from 64 following a study conducted by researchers at The George Washington University. It also reports that…
Keshav Srinivasan
  • 4,229
  • 4
  • 17
  • 36
1 2 3
…
99 100