YouTube skeptics/debunkers that you would recommend

MonkeeSage said:
https://www.youtube.com/@Thunderf00t - Phil Mason, British chemist - debunks all kinds of things from flat earth to supposed new energy breakthroughs to climate change denial to religious claims like young earth creationism. I was reminded of him by the Adam Something channel because Phil really dislikes Elon Musk and has a bunch of videos about Musk's claims and projects.
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I do regularly watch his vids, but I wish he'd so a side-channel called Thunder1nch where he cuts down the videos to the 1/12th that's actually necessary to get his video's message across. Too much of the time is spent rehashing old rants, repeating the same old memes, or just duplicating bits of his new content. Every video about every topic will contain some segment about how Musk is an idiot. Which may be true, but I don't need to be reminded of him and his almost infinitude of annoying attributes in every video. He's demonstrating the first signs of Musk derangement syndrome.

TL;DR: if you've not seen him before, go in fore-warned and fore-armed: super smart guy, the meat is good, but there's way too much crust.

And to contribute new meat, with a reasonable overlap with Thunderf00t:
EEVBlog: A very chipper aussie with a mostly electronics/energy focus who quite often addresses claims made by tech companies (often looking for funding), showing them to be based on completely bunk science and guaranteed to fail - things like solar roads, inductively car-charging roads, and space mirror energy.

Source: https://youtu.be/channel/UC2DjFE7Xf11URZqWBigcVOQ
 
yoshy said:
@Mechanik @Edward Current

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

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Good video. Dave is very respectful. The topic of the video is that Sabine caters to the anti science crowd through the language she uses (e.g. "science is dying" or asserting all of the scientific community is corrupt). So it's more about rhetoric rather than specific claims. Worth a watch imo. I have personally had the same thoughts about her.

No nerd fight incoming as far as I can tell.
 
yoshy said:
Good video. Dave is very respectful. The topic of the video is that Sabine caters to the anti science crowd through the language she uses (e.g. "science is dying" or asserting all of the scientific community is corrupt). So it's more about rhetoric rather than specific claims. Worth a watch imo. I have personally had the same thoughts about her.

No nerd fight incoming as far as I can tell.
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Folks will bristle at the idea that being generally anti-establishment is bad. I think we will end up in left field. But I also think it's worth discussing. I don't know the right subform for that discussion.
 
yoshy said:
Good video. Dave is very respectful. The topic of the video is that Sabine caters to the anti science crowd through the language she uses (e.g. "science is dying" or asserting all of the scientific community is corrupt). So it's more about rhetoric rather than specific claims. Worth a watch imo. I have personally had the same thoughts about her.

No nerd fight incoming as far as I can tell.
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I've watched only half of it so far, and I agree. As a female scientist, I've definitely experienced the sexism (which was much worse in the seventies, when I was job-hunting), but I think more of the problem she had finding jobs comes from the brute fact that there simply are not that many positions for theoretical physicists. And if she approached them with what seems to be her attitude of "I want to develop my own ideas, I'm not a team player", that would be a turn-off.

Physics in general is an exciting field, but a limited one, job-wise. My husband had his degree in metallurgy, but most of the other metallurgists in his research lab got their degrees in physics and then had to adapt to the job market.
 
RTM said:
Maybe not quite debunking, but if anyone is interested in various online scams such as crypto, I would recommend Coffezilla.
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I had debated whether to include scam baiters here (folks who engage with scammers online or by phone and waste their time, enrage them and sometimes are able to track them down and report them to law enforcement or counter-hack their computers and delete victim/call lists or just delete everything they can to disable the scammers' computers for a bit).

They can be immensely entertaining, to me anyway, they perform a service by wasting a lot of the time of scammers, and some like Pierogi at Scammer Payback have from time to time done some great things in terms of stopping the transfer of scammed money or reaching the person in the middle of being scammed and alerting them to what is happening. And of course anything that helps folks learn to be wary of scammers and false claims is at least debunking-adjacent.
 
yoshy said:
Definitely not when your argument is "he's wrong, and his field of research is wrong. No I won't explain why, but I'm right". Calling your argument an ad hominem would be an insult to ad hominems.
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I'm not someone who takes the easy way out. In fact, I've argued a lot for months and months. I've just recently been very annoyed and tired of unpleasant discussions that went something like this. As for Layne Norton: Since I doubt his understanding of science, I would have to do a lot of work and deal with someone who puts me in a bad mood to refute him on the details of scientific studies. And since this is about leisure time and not a job, I was a bit curt, sorry. But since there is an expert who has done this many times on his YouTube channel and exposes Layne Norton time and time again, I just have to post one of these videos now. Bart Kay says pretty much exactly what I would say. So it's fine. Even if it's torture: There are always new, important aspects and you should watch it from start to finish.

Source: https://youtu.be/4QOWhKlaWMQ?si=xqnfcTu5WejIG_A6
 
Nemon said:
I'm not someone who takes the easy way out. In fact, I've argued a lot for months and months. I've just recently been very annoyed and tired of unpleasant discussions that went something like this. As for Layne Norton: Since I doubt his understanding of science, I would have to do a lot of work and deal with someone who puts me in a bad mood to refute him on the details of scientific studies. And since this is about leisure time and not a job, I was a bit curt, sorry. But since there is an expert who has done this many times on his YouTube channel and exposes Layne Norton time and time again, I just have to post one of these videos now. Bart Kay says pretty much exactly what I would say. So it's fine. Even if it's torture: There are always new, important aspects and you should watch it from start to finish.

Source: https://youtu.be/4QOWhKlaWMQ?si=xqnfcTu5WejIG_A6
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I'll watch the video but I doubt I'm going to enjoy watching anything from a #carnivorediet pseudoscience influencer.

Omgggggg this guy recommends against eating fiber, i.e. the usual "all the medical field is wrong except me". And then his YouTube bio:

> Welcome to the channel of Professor Kay's liberal gender-fluid, non-binary, affirmational health and wellbeing programming. Here, our primary goals are educating you about liberal thinking, progressive nutrition policy with the environmental challenges we face in mind, and the future of humanity, through veganism. Al Gore and Greta Thunberg are our heroes. Nancy Pelosi is a saint.

I'm upgrading my lmao to ROFL. You almost got me to waste an hour of my life.
 
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Nemon said:
Nothing but prejudice and ad hominem, very obvious. But here it will be important for you to attack his arguments in a qualified manner if you want to save face.
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Nah I'm good. I'll stick with medical consensus, not the guy who claims calories don't determine weight and rants about covid vaccines. And the irony of complaining about ad hominem when Mr Kay himself calls everyone "idiot", "moron", and "re*ard" in his videos, and sprinkles in weird culture war "owning the libs" bs. Some people simply aren't worth debunking, when others have already done it better than I could.

My face feels fine, thanks.
 
Shall I introduce you to another actual scientist who takes apart Layne Norton? Nick Norwitz is a polite and friendly influencer (Bart is actually a witty and humourous chap, but he plays a role when he debunks others to get klicks. His pure science content gets far less attention), but even he has trouble keeping his composure here.

Source: https://youtu.be/yiq67wpUhIs?si=C6FhMNipsii1B8Nc
 
Nemon said:
Shall I introduce you to another actual scientist who takes apart Layne Norton? Nick Norwitz is a polite and friendly influencer (Bart is actually a witty and humourous chap, but he plays a role when he debunks others to get klicks. His pure science content gets far less attention), but even he has trouble keeping his composure here.

Source: https://youtu.be/yiq67wpUhIs?si=C6FhMNipsii1B8Nc
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Already familiar with Norwitz. Similar to Kay, he's another fringe researcher with his own pet theories, and again another favorite in the keto sphere. I'm going to stop engaging now. You can stay with the keto people and I'll stay with the medical establishment who believe in calories. Based on the fact that Norwitz just blocks everyone who tries to get him to clarify his theories (wow another similarity to Kay), I'm not holding my breath he'll make much impact. You can find PhDs with any bizarre belief if you look enough.

And btw, agreeing with you is not what makes someone an "actual" scientist lolol.
 
yoshy said:
Good video. Dave is very respectful. The topic of the video is that Sabine caters to the anti science crowd through the language she uses (e.g. "science is dying" or asserting all of the scientific community is corrupt). So it's more about rhetoric rather than specific claims. Worth a watch imo. I have personally had the same thoughts about her.

No nerd fight incoming as far as I can tell.
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I know she's said physics is dead or dying, but that's not some anti science attitude. It's actually a widespread sentiment in physics. I haven't heard her say similar things about other sciences.

The phrase is not about the science failing or being on the wrong track, but about it being stuck in what some think is a dead end. It's got a bunch of models that we're really sure have problems but which we keep confirming in more and more extreme cases. Meanwhile theory has worked so far ahead in the book that we are literal Kardashev levels away from being able to test some of it and it might be built on a foundation of sand if there really is a hole in relativity or the standard model.

One example is the dark matter problem. Every specific high energy event we observe (like fast spinning neutron stars, close black hole interactions, and supernovae) confirm general and special relativity to an astounding level, with no evidence of phantom forces or mass. Yet galaxies function fundamentally differently than predicted. If we add phantom mass to correct this it then causes problems with intergalactic scale interactions. If we adjust gravity then that should show up in high energy relativistic events.

Having problems with theories is nothing new or special, but in the past (and present in other fields) we've had specific issues like the Mercury problem to work from. The current situation is that all the specific cases seem correct, but then the general case fails, often in ways that become nearly impossible to fix without breaking the specific cases.

And in some ways the alternative that we ARE right is even scarier - that could suggest the paths to resolve the discrepancies are in those deep theoretical realms that are vastly beyond our ability to test and which we can only do math at forever with no way to ever really know if we took a wrong turn decades ago and have been chasing a unicorn ever since.
 
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Hevach said:
I know she's said physics is dead or dying, but that's not some anti science attitude. It's actually a widespread sentiment in physics. I haven't heard her say similar things about other sciences.
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I think you've missed Dave's point. It's not that what she's saying (regarding the extremely narrow discipline of foundational physics) is necessarily inaccurate, it's that she's using broad-stroke, clickbaity video titles and thumbnails like "I no longer trust scientists" that are pandering to science deniers. They don't care about the nuances of her argument, they only seek validation for their general "distrust" in science and the scientific method, because they prefer to believe in some bullshit that seems more intuitive. As Dave says, it's bad science communication.
 
Edward Current said:
I think you've missed Dave's point. It's not that what she's saying (regarding the extremely narrow discipline of foundational physics) is necessarily inaccurate, it's that she's using broad-stroke, clickbaity video titles and thumbnails like "I no longer trust scientists" that are pandering to science deniers. They don't care about the nuances of her argument, they only seek validation for their general "distrust" in science and the scientific method, because they prefer to believe in some bullshit that seems more intuitive. As Dave says, it's bad science communication.
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I thought his comparison of the view counts for her "regular" posts, as compared to her posts using such "click bait," was telling.
 
yoshy said:
Already familiar with Norwitz. Similar to Kay, he's another fringe researcher with his own pet theories, and again another favorite in the keto sphere. I'm going to stop engaging now. You can stay with the keto people and I'll stay with the medical establishment who believe in calories. Based on the fact that Norwitz just blocks everyone who tries to get him to clarify his theories (wow another similarity to Kay), I'm not holding my breath he'll make much impact. You can find PhDs with any bizarre belief if you look enough.

And btw, agreeing with you is not what makes someone an "actual" scientist lolol.
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I would be well prepared to discuss all of this. But this doesn't seem to be the right place for it (and you are too biased a "discussion partner" for a constructive dialogue to even seem possible). The point here was to prove that Layne Norton reveals a poor understanding of science and is a bit too big-mouthed for that. These findings arise from a formal consideration alone. We don't need to debate substantive aspects for this. If Bart Kay vehemently shows him how wrong he is with his understanding of epidemiology, among other things, and Nick Norwitz shows him that he doesn't understand the physiological facts, you should address these arguments. And not open irrelevant side battlefields and throw smoke bombs. This approach is just obvious. By the way, Nick also shows a few examples of how Laye throws dirt around on social media. You accused Bart of that at the beginning. That can be described as hypocrisy. As far as I'm concerned, this is over. Everyone can form their own opinion.
 
Nemon said:
Everyone can form their own opinion.
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Not really, because all y'all have done is talk in generalities and invoke authority. I'm not tempted at all to watch either video.

What I would love to see is an "Open Discussion" subforum topic (because there are multiple claims) listing/quoting the claims you have issues with (either you or @yoshy), and then rebutting them, ideally with references.
 
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Mendel said:
Not really, because all y'all have done is talk in generalities and invoke authority. I'm not tempted at all to watch either video.
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I downloaded one of them, and quit within 30s because it looked like it was just some keyboard warrior with a headset on having a rant. The adhoms came thick and fast, before any actual argument had any chance to be presented. No thanks.
 
New response video from Professor Dave Explains. It's not a response against just Sabine, but many videos and reactions that missed the point of his first video.



Gotta agree with Dave's thesis here: Sabine fuels science denial. He repeats some direct quotes from Sabine that paint the picture well.

External Quote:
Most of academic research that your taxes pay for is almost certainly bullshit.
...
But I knew it was bullshit. Just as most of the work in that area is currently bullshit, and just as most of academic research that your taxes pay for is almost certainly bullshit.
For a little extra context, Sabine is eternally butthurt that MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics), her preferred solution as opposed to dark matter, is not accepted by the consensus. (Because MOND literally does not explain even half of the phenomenon we see that dark matter DOES explain.)
 
yoshy said:
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Quote from Dave on the point of this video:

External Quote:
Because so many people felt compelled to rant exclusively about academia, we are going to talk about academia in a moment, as I said very little about it in my previous video. But it seems that I have to summarize an entire video in the first two minutes or most people won't even hear it, so allow me to do that up top this time. The issue is not that Sabine brings up valid criticisms of academia, and if you don't like it then too bad for you. The issue is that she deliberately distorts these narratives to provide outrageous takes disparaging the entire scientific community and the entire output of science. That is what I was describing when I said "anti-establishment narratives". It doesn't mean anyone who challenges any institution in any way. It means people who say things like "science is dying" and "don't trust scientists", which pushes the general public towards blanket science denial. People with an anti-establishment bias are very easy to manipulate, because any fraud can just say "government bad" or "university bad" followed by any ridiculous lie they want, and people prone to this narrative will believe them. When Sabine uses this rhetoric, she is pushing people in that direction and making them more receptive to lies and conspiracy theories.
 
JMartJr said:
I thought his comparison of the view counts for her "regular" posts, as compared to her posts using such "click bait," was telling.
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Ironically (well at least Alanis Morrisette ironic), his view count on this video is also sky high compared to his regulars.
 
yoshy said:
For a little extra context, Sabine is eternally butthurt that MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics), her preferred solution as opposed to dark matter, is not accepted by the consensus. (Because MOND literally does not explain even half of the phenomenon we see that dark matter DOES explain.)
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That context seems wrong, or at least incomplete...

Did we make a mistake? Dark matter alternative now looks like statistical error (Feb 5, 2024)
External Quote:
This is a rare case in which I talk about some of my own work. It's about the biggest current controversy in astrophysics, does dark matter exist or do we instead need to change the law of gravity. If you've followed me for some while, then you'll know that my opinion on this has switched back and forth a few times. In this most recent iteration, it's flipped back to it's probably dark matter. Then again… it's complicated. Let's have a look.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MVl1cSmYE
 
MonkeeSage said:
That context seems wrong, or at least incomplete...

Did we make a mistake? Dark matter alternative now looks like statistical error (Feb 5, 2024)
External Quote:
This is a rare case in which I talk about some of my own work. It's about the biggest current controversy in astrophysics, does dark matter exist or do we instead need to change the law of gravity. If you've followed me for some while, then you'll know that my opinion on this has switched back and forth a few times. In this most recent iteration, it's flipped back to it's probably dark matter. Then again… it's complicated. Let's have a look.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MVl1cSmYE
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Appreciate the correction. It appears I'm outdated.
 
yoshy said:
For a little extra context, Sabine is eternally butthurt that MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics), her preferred solution as opposed to dark matter, is not accepted by the consensus.
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Please provide a quote from Sabine where she expresses a preference for MOND. And, no, any of her many quotes where she says "dark matter detection experiments have all failed" would not count as such a bias, that would count solely as "facts".

For example, this doesn't scream "preference for MOND and opposed to dark matter" to me:
External Quote:
So, the conclusion that I have arrived at is that the distinction between dark matter and modified gravity is a false dichotomy.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/05/dark-matter-situation-has-changed.html

I see her stance as one of a curmugeonly refusal to jump on any bandwagon due to lack of evidence for any of them. If the prevailing bandwagon is dark matter, which it is, then she will be more seen opposing dark matter, but I don't perceive that as her own intrinsic bias.
 
FatPhil said:
Please provide a quote from Sabine where she expresses a preference for MOND. And, no, any of her many quotes where she says "dark matter detection experiments have all failed" would not count as such a bias, that would count solely as "facts".

For example, this doesn't scream "preference for MOND and opposed to dark matter" to me:
External Quote:
So, the conclusion that I have arrived at is that the distinction between dark matter and modified gravity is a false dichotomy.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/05/dark-matter-situation-has-changed.html

I see her stance as one of a curmugeonly refusal to jump on any bandwagon due to lack of evidence for any of them. If the prevailing bandwagon is dark matter, which it is, then she will be more seen opposing dark matter, but I don't perceive that as her own intrinsic bias.
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See above where I was corrected. I was going off much older videos of hers from memory. I can look for those old videos if you want, but I don't think it really matters in the overall discussion, since it's not her view anymore anyway.
 
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