/r/DebunkThis

Photograph via snooOG

We are an evidence-based subreddit dedicated to taking an objective look at questionable theories, dodgy news sources, bold-faced claims, and suspicious studies.

Join our Lemmy Community @ https://lemmy.world/c/debunkthis

New to /r/DebunkThis? Please read our Wiki before posting. Your question may have already been answered before!

Posting Rules

1- New posts requesting a debunk must use "Debunk This:" as a prefix in the title. Use "Meta:" for meta posts about the subreddit or debunking in general.

2- Put the idea you wish other users to debunk in the title, such as "Debunk This: American Spirits are healthier due to their use of organic tobacco".

3- All posts must include a link to a source.

4- Posts must also include a specific claim so commenters know exactly what to investigate. For example:

"According to this YouTube video, dihydrogen monoxide turns amphibians homosexual. Is this true? Also, did Albert Einstein really claim this?"

5- Political memes, long lists of separate claims, crossposts to other subreddits, and sources less than two months old, are liable to be removed.

General Rules

6- All posters and commenters must remain civil, refrain from abusive language and personal attacks.

7- Posters and commenters must act in good faith. Posts that are deemed as trolling will be removed and repeat offenders may be banned.

8- No NSFW/NSFL images in posts or comments. Descriptions are fine.

Link Flairs

By default, all new links are flaired as "Not Yet Debunked". The OP can change this once they feel satisfied that their submission has been either debunked, proven to be true, or shown to be misleading or lacking in evidence.

Related Reddits

r/BadScience
r/Skeptic
r/Rational_Skeptic
r/DisinformationWatch

Other Useful Resources

Reuters Fact Check Page - Regularly updated news fact check
Media Bias / Fact Check - Great resource for current news fact checking + checking a source's political bias
Science Based Medicine - A scientific look at current issues and controversies
Deplatform Disease - A medical blog that specifically counters anti-COVID-vaccine claims
Respectful Insolence - David Gorsky's blog on antivax shenanigans, politics, and psuedoscience
157 papers that DO NOT prove vaccines cause autism - for those antivax claims
20 cognitive biases that screw up our decisions [Infographic]
5 Characteristics of Scientific Denialism - How to spot fake skepticism, as well as fake science
Common examples of misleading graphs - How to spot dodgy infographics
Metabunk.org - a message board dedicated to debunking popular conspiracies

/r/DebunkThis

25,963 Subscribers

4

Debunk this: Pole shift is not only possible but will happen in next 15/20 years

People like suspicious Observers from YouTube or Chan Thomas the writer have said that there will be a pole shift which will cause massive tsunamis and earthquakes. According to them this is cyclical and will happen again soon

18 Comments
2024/09/14
05:46 UTC

1

DebunkThis: Researchers prove causation between RFR and Cancer in the military/occupational setting through PF-value calculations?

As with many other users that have done this topic, I will mention my personal thoughts in a separate comment

So a bunch of researchers lead by Michael Peleg made a study further analyzing causational link from another study by Yael Stein from 2011. To sum up Yael's study in short, Yael found that their 47 patients (military and occupational) got sick with cancer and tumors after being exposed to varius agents including EMF/RFR.

Results: 15 patients developed cancer with latent periods < 5y and 12 patients with latent periods between 5y and 10y. The remaining 20 patients had longer latent periods In the <5y latency group there were 8 hematolymphatic cancers and 9 solid tumours – testis, head & neck (including brain) and GI tract. In both the <5y and 5-9y latency groups there were patients exposed to intense levels of EMF, to several frequencies of EMF, or to EMF in combination with IR or other exposures. There were patients with direct body contact, or were in direct line of focus from point sources, or worked in small, electronically dense environments. In the >10y latency group there were more patients with intermittent exposures or exposures at older ages.

Conclusions: The data suggest that cancer in young workers may be associated with intense severe exposures to EMF and short latent periods, especially for hematolymphatic cancers. The findings state the case for (1) more careful modelling of exposure sources and penetration into the body, (2) preventive and protective measures based on control of exposure at source, barriers, and personal protection and (3) exploring low-exposure-low risk relationships for latent periods <10 y

^ Note that in the paper itself they list several limitations including obviously small sample size, lack of in depth dose-response relationship, it being a case series that already has limitations for causation, no control group, and no adjustment for any confounding factors.

Based on the refererred study, Michael focuses on the patients that suffered from HL and testicular cancer specifically (Around 25 patients in total, quite possibly due to their relation to RFR) and tries to use PF value calculation to determine causality between RFR and these cancers. This is explained more under their materials and methods pages and it will make this thread too long as this is wee bit complex.. But I think this definition helps sum it up a bit

PF is the proportion of a specific cancer type relative to the total number of cancer cases in the group of patients. We use the abbreviation PF for both the “relative” and “percentage” definitions and mark by “%” the values expressed as percentage. Consistent and statistically significant association of unusual PF of a definite cancer type with some agent such as RFR exposure suggest an association of the cancer with this agent. We studied hematolymphatic (HL) and testicular cancers. We denote by H the cancer type, in this paper HL or testes. The observed PF, denoted PFobs (the subscript stands for “Observed”), is calculated by dividing the number NH of patients with cancer of type H by the total number N of cancer patients in this group. PFobs = Nh/N

Their results for both HL cancer and testicular stating that the PF of HL and testicular cancer was high showing increased risk between RFR and the cancers (according to both their abstract and below quotes). More found in their results + discussion section (aside from separate studies referenced)

We found that the proportion PF of HL cancer in the group of patients was 40%, while the expected PF for this age and gender profile is 23.4%. The p-value, that is, the chance that at least 19 patients with HL cancers in Stein et al. (2011), were afflicted at random in the group of 47 patients under the hypothesis of no causation by radiation, is smaller than 1% (p < 0.01). Thus, the chance of such PF increase occurring at random is small. See Table 3. Influence of the exposure to ELF: Three of the 47 patients were not exposed to RFR but to ELF alone, none of those had HL cancer. To verify the link between the high HL PF and the RFR exposure we repeated the HL PF analysis on the 23 patients who were exposed to RFR only and not to ELF. The results showed the same characteristics as the whole group reported above: 10 patients out of 23 had HL cancers, HL PF=43%, HL PF expected for the age and gender profile 25%, pvalue=0.037 < 0.05. We infer that the results of the whole group are a good estimate of the specific RFR influence. The data do not reveal whether ELF is carcinogenic or not since not enough patients were exposed to ELF alone to perform the PF calculation. Applying the same analysis on all male patients and testicular cancer in Stein et al. (2011), yielded PFobs very similar to the one expected in the unexposed general population (p-value of 0.55). The normal PFobs and non-significant p-value of testicular cancers compared to the highly elevated PF for HL adds a check on our procedure: a method error increasing the PF of the HL cancers while not affecting the PF of the testicular cancers is less likely

In the end they end up claiming they have a case for cause and effect,

We have presented evidence supporting the case for a cause-effect relationship between radio and radar radiation and HL cancers in occupational/military settings. Our case series showed an increased PF for HL cancers relative to all cancers. The high PF for multiple primaries adds to the case for a causeeffect relationship in those occupationally exposed.

And also

Overall, the excess risk for HL and other cancers in occupational groups complements the findings of brain tumors in cellphone users. These epidemiologic findings together with experimental studies on RFR and carcinogenicity make a coherent case for a cause-effect relationship. We are unable to find alternative explanations.

Note: I might have missed some information that I didn't include from both stein and michael's studies. However compiling these two esp. michael's would make the post too long and I decided to just try my best to oversimplify it and mention what sections to go to get more details

3 Comments
2024/09/14
01:28 UTC

0

Debunk This: Doomsday or the NWO code ''923''

I remember last year the same month of september when i was so afraid of happening something that will change the world forever on 23 september of that month, because i see months ago about a numbered subliminal message ''923'' that appears in a lot of famous disasters and dystopian movies and other stuff such as 2012, They Live, Matrix, The Knowing, V for Vendetta and various others, it claims that something significant will change the world forever on that day

I thinks it all started sometime 2015, when several users on social media noticed that there is a number that always appears in countless films, when they thought there was going to be something that would change the world or end the world forever, mostly of these films are from disasters and dystopian genre, for example, there a Simpsons episode that a accident at springfield nuclear power plant caused a massive EMP wave that shut down all of the springfield electronic devices, leading the town into chaos, and Homer after the disaster revealed to Marge that he was stocking on various canned foods, water and survival stuff days before the event, and i see a electronic board of the day that happened, whether it was september 23 ou september 24, and when nothing happened, it claimed that would be in 2017 on the same day that Nibiru would collide with Earth, but did happen nothing and the same day, doomsday prophets claimed that in this day on Stellarium.org positions a woman dressed in dress with a sun on the middle of dress, a moon on his feet, and a crown with 12 stars, suggesting a reference to a Revelations 12:1-3 prophecy and then the sign appeared again in that day last year, and also they are claiming that this year will finally occur something on this day because it will complete seven years when this sign first appeared on stellarium

''And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth''

Various of these believers say that for example, the rapture will occur making all of christian world population missing and then the antichrist revealing himself and imposing his tyrannic dystopian government, an EMP attack would lead the governments impose a martial law and then finally imposing the NWO into action, a huge asteroid will crash with earth, or the Big One in California finally occurred, or there will be a huge magnetic shift causing a mass of earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes and other climatic disasters causing havoc on Earth

Thoughts??? Should we became worried??? Or it's christofascist scam???

17 Comments
2024/09/13
22:00 UTC

1

Debunk this: Pregnancy gender detection per side of uterus

2 Comments
2024/09/11
23:38 UTC

0

Debunk this: immigrants being brought to US to become armed soldiers

https://youtu.be/IsMYFQRmacE

Hi, just looking into insight on what these people are talking about regarding (young, strong male) immigrants being fast tracked to citizenship by being brought to the US and given military status, with the ultimate “plan” being to use them as soldiers in a civil war… seems like a wild claim to me.

17 Comments
2024/09/06
03:18 UTC

0

Debunk This: Elite wants to mass depopulate world population through lab-grown vegetal meat, GMOs foods and insect-based foods

I don't know why, but people who criticize environmentalism, such as far right christian conservatives, thinks that the global elites are going to force people to only eat lab vegetal meat and insect-based foods as a source of protein to mass depopulate, i viewed videos getting pissed and angry at supermarkets when buying some food such as a flour and uses a bug scanner apps on them, and revealed it has some bug substances

And they saw that reducing the number of cows to mitigate global warming is a bad idea, because it's like reducing the number of fishes in ocean, it will ruin global economy because the cow meat are one of the most valuable objects of the world economy like the oil

and they generally say that ultra-processed meat would be bad for your health, as it would have high cholesterol levels, these alt right guys seems that they don't know the difference between thinking they will be alternatives of a something or literally being replaced

I don't know the story very well, as there are more things that claim that these types of food are bad for your health, but is this real or is it nonsense to deny global warming?

11 Comments
2024/09/06
02:15 UTC

35

Debunk This: We are living in a reality like George Orwell 1984

Conservative conspiracy believers nowadays are freaking and loves saying that our reality since 2020 is like George Orwell 1984

People began linking some real stuff such as more security cameras in public spaces such as rich neighborhoods, facial recognition, ID passports on airports, people talking ill of liberal governments and their social media being deleted, elections fraud that supposedly happened in 2020 and rise of minorities movements to most of what the book trama says

Is this really true or BS to scary people???

61 Comments
2024/09/02
20:17 UTC

0

Debunk This: Cristina Grimmie never died

According to several people one talked to Christina Grimmie never got shot or died and it’s all made up.

This is what I’ve seen so far

  1. It’s impossible to sneak two handguns into a venue and attend the entire concert without anyone noticing the handguns are present

  2. The gunman didn’t actually exist at the venue and instead is a CIA operative who was connected to the pulse club shooting that happened two days after the Grimmie incident

  3. Marcus Grimmie who’s the brother is secretly Adam Lanza from Sandy Hook

  4. Fans who were eye witnesses to the shooting are all connected to Grimmie in some way as frauds such as her relatives

  5. Christina was actually transitioning and because she couldn’t admit it in fear of her Christian community hating her she faked her death

8 Comments
2024/09/02
03:28 UTC

0

Debunk this This comment on Tim waltz

Walz claimed he was a retired command sergeant major. This is a lie, as he was a command sergeant major but had his rank reduced after retiring since he did not complete the required coursework to be a command sergeant major.

Walz has also claimed he fought in war and that the weapons he carried should be banned. "We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war,". He was deployed to ITALY during the War on Terror, and he may have carried some rifles at one point. But claiming he carried weapons in war is absolutely stolen valor and a disgrace to all the people who actually carried weapons and fought in war like my dad.

Walz has also claimed to have watched a ramp ceremony at Bagram Air Base while in the military despite the fact that he never deployed to Afghanistan.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/former-member-gov-walzs-battalion-ditched-accuses-walz-stolen-valor

Members of Walz's own battalion feel he abandoned them and should have gone on deployment with them instead of running for Congress.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/former-leader-walzs-battalion-publishes-scathing-message-aimed-governors-military-career-report

Colonel John Kolb, the commander of Walz's battalion, has also called him out for his stolen valor,

And Command Sergeant Major Doug Julin, Walz's immediate superior, was told by Walz that he would accompany him to Iraq. But then, Julin found out that Walz retired by going around him and getting permission from a superior officer, a breach in protocol. Walz knew that if he went to Julin he would be forced to stay in.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/retired-national-guard-member-alleges-walz-left-his-unit-cnn-interview-he-went-around-me

With all the testimony from Walz himself, and from his former brothers-in-arms, it is clear he has lied about and embellished his service in the military, which is stolen valor, and he quit like a coward instead of going to war with the rest of his men.

15 Comments
2024/08/31
21:33 UTC

0

DebunkThis: Youtuber claims Rotisserie Chicken is bad/harmful due to quality and ingredienta

https://youtube.com/shorts/zlhelhx3uMo?si=OMmACeaq904qXbSO

First claim he makes us that the chickens are factory farm. 2nd is that it has harmful ingredients which are added sugar, carrageenan (disruptive to gut), and gmo aka gmo corn starch.

11 Comments
2024/08/30
19:37 UTC

0

Debunk This: WEF will start a massive genocide of six billion people by 2025 until 2030, as part of the great reset and agenda 2030

I remember seeing a post that appeared to me that scared the shit of me last year of a forecast made by Deagel, an US army agency, posted a forecast that the world population will face a mass depopulation of over six billion people through wars, famine, genocides, natural disasters and pandemics starting by 2025 and ending shortly after 2030, as according to the great reset and agenda 2030 because these agendas have a overton window, for example, in the UN agenda 2030 goal, gender equality and reproductive rights, is disguised with abortion and lgbt inclusion

e.g. US have 330 million habitants, in that forecastr it showed that their population will shrunk to 99 million next year, some people claim that might yellowstone will finally erupt in that year or the Big One in the western USA

Thoughts??? Is this fake???

40 Comments
2024/08/30
19:23 UTC

0

Debunk this: The Micronova Sun theory

Source: Came across this post on medium:

https://ahonu.medium.com/micronova-best-place-to-live-to-survive-b09e87a0979a

Debunk this: Read further into it and saw there are similar predictions about a catastrophic event due to a micronova to happen in the 2030's or 2040's.

Also came across Ben Davidson's youtube page which has floods of videos on this topic. This also led me to a video made by you-tuber 'Professor Dave', Dave Farina who has a video debunking Ben Davidson's (Suspicious 0bserver)'s 'doomsday cult' he calls it. But then that led me to negative comments about Dave Farina's legitimacy himself. So which one is the real deal? It feels like both sides have done their homework on one another.

Another thing to note, Professor Dave's 'debunking' of Ben Davidson's was made and uploaded before NASA confirmed new findings related to micronova's and the dwarfs. Would that change or confirm any of the theory?

https://physics.berkeley.edu/news-events/news/astronomers-capture-evidence-of-micronova
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zIMVjqj6VY&t=21s

Would love not to be paranoid over these theories that don't have creditability.

16 Comments
2024/08/28
20:54 UTC

13

Debunk this: the number of premarital sexual partners is linked to divorce

*Re-Examining the Link Between Premarital Sex and Divorce*

"Premarital sex predicts divorce, but we do not know why. Scholars have attributed the relationship to factors such as differences in beliefs and values, but these explanations have not been tested. It is further unclear how this relationship changes by number of sexual partners, or differs by gender. We re-examine this relationship with event history models using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Models include measures of adolescent beliefs and values, religious background, and personal characteristics, as well as approximate number of premarital sexual partners in young adulthood. We find the relationship between premarital sex and divorce is highly significant and robust even when accounting for early-life factors. Compared to people with no premarital partners other than eventual spouses, those with nine or more partners exhibit the highest divorce risk, followed by those with one to eight partners. There is no evidence of gender differences."

28 Comments
2024/08/28
19:47 UTC

0

Please debunk this

Even for what they say on this subreddit, it just feels TOO crazy. Something something mystery rites used by the military

Please don't try to convert me btw, its kinda an athiest subreddit but I'm just here to debunk conspiracies

https://www.reddit.com/r/AmmonHillman/s/RfVXRx1SWh

18 Comments
2024/08/27
23:04 UTC

0

Debunk This: Miracle of the Sun witness testimonies and rapid drying of clothes and soil during the event after a period of intensive rain.

On October 13th, 1917, "Miracle of the Sun" took place, with 30 000-100 000 people witnessing the event. Aside from the visual effects most of the witnesses experienced, it was also reported that their clothes, previously wet from the intensive rain, as well as the mud, instantaneously dried up once the event began. We know that it rained both the day before the event and on the day of the miracle (https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Newspaper_fatima_355.jpg ; top photo with people holding umbrellas). Indeed, we can see on the photographs that both the ground and the crowd are dry (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun#/media/File%3ANewspaper_fatima_353.jpg) I have no idea how to explain this - maybe you'll be more lucky.

40 Comments
2024/08/24
20:57 UTC

0

Debunk This: The current Mpox outbreak is going to be Black death 2.0

I'm became worried because since the Mpox was declared global health emergency by WHO last month, people begun making memes about a Lockdown that is going to have in the next months, most of them point to march next year, 2025, some of them is talking that this strain of Mpox is the most dangerous of the vírus family, with a fucking 10% fatality ratio, and Will be worse than Black death that It can kill at least 250 Million people in Just five-six months, and have some and transmissibility ways like COVID, except that people don't get them by Air, and can spreads predominantly in married and in a relationship people, and most of the world population is in a relationship or is married

We are really going to have life stopped again??? Or It's Scam??? Should i became worried??

20 Comments
2024/08/23
19:42 UTC

9

Debunk this: A picture circulating showing a patient infected with mpox

Repost because i'm a dumbass and forgot the title.

Trypophobia warning

Hi, I recently got forwarded a picture of a person infected with monkeypox:

https://i.imgur.com/XdadHST.jpeg

It kinda looks like those viral photoshopped images of people's body parts with lots of holes used to trigger people with trypohobia

While i'm 90% sure it's fake, the number of mpox cases in my country has been on the rise, and a reverse image search for this particular image only showed twitter posts from users worrying about it.

Does anybody have a credible source/reputable medical fact checker debunking or supporting this particular image is related to mpox?

My 70+ year old aunt sent me this image and told me to be careful because i'm travelling abroad soon, i'd need to calm her worries by sending a good source debunking this instead of just telling her "it looks fake".

Thank you

8 Comments
2024/08/19
08:43 UTC

29

Debunk this: Britain will be minority white by *insert year here*?

I mean, I know it's almost definitely a conspiracy theory, but I can't put evidence against it into words. The UK is currently rioting over this question. Literally.

217 Comments
2024/08/18
12:25 UTC

5

DebunkThis: Authors claim/imply that case control study "that shows no association between RFR and child brain cancer" says the opposite?

A 2018 review article by AB Miller and Lloyd Morgan discusses a 2011 study by Aydin that discussed the relationship between mobile phone use and children brain tumors (Astrocytoma, ependymoma, other vague glioma, primitive neuroectodermal tumors, and vague intracranial neoplasms.)

The 2011 study essentially found no causal relationship or statistical increase between brain tumor risk for children and mobile phone use. Though they did find that a small set of cases for operator recorded data did see a statistical increase in risk though this is small and not related to amount of use.

In summary, we did not observe that regular use of a mobile phone increased the risk for brain tumors in children and adoles-cents. However, in a small subset of study participants for whom operator recorded data was available, brain tumor risk was related to the time elapsed since the start of their mobile phone subscrip-tions but was not related to the amount of use. The lack of an exposure–response relationship, given our finding that risk was related to neither the amount of mobile phone use and nor the location of the tumor, does not support a causal interpretation. Moreover, brain tumor incidence in Sweden has not increased among children and adolescents in the last few years. We cannot, however, rule out the possibility that mobile phones confer a small increase in risk and therefore emphasize the importance of future studies with objective exposure assessment or the use of prospec-tively collected exposure data

The 2018 article, Morgan, claims/implies that looking at Aydin's table data (Table 2 in the article) and others that it shows the complete opposite. Seeing that there was a significant risk for operator recorded info that increased along with years of use. They also claim that that both ipsilateral and contralateral use showed increased risk also.

However, their data suggest that another interpretation might be offered. Analysis of a subset of cases (58% of all cases) based on operator-recorded information showed significant brain cancer risks for children with a signifcant trend of increase in risk with increasing years of use. Based on children's memory of both ipsilateral and contralateral use there were significant increased risk of brain cancer along with a marginal increase of risk with an increasing number of calls

Morgan also states that the Aydin dismissed this finding? Not sure if they are referring to their interpretation or Aydin's own results.

Because both ipsilateral and contralateral self-reported use of phones in children show significant trends toward increasing brain cancer risk, the authors dismissed this finding.

they also provide 3 possible explanations for the results in Aydin's study (increased risk or not).

Three factors could account for this result. First, children's capacity to recall their phone use habits accurately may not be correct. Second, young children (25% were between 7 and 9 years; the median age of the study participants overall was 13 years) will absorb considerably more radiation further into their brains than adults . Given that many of these cases began to use phones before age 5, their exposures would certainly have been extensive no matter what side of the head they reported having placed the phone. Therefore, the fact that the differences between the ORs for ipsilateral and contralateral use of cell phones and brain cancer were not significant while both ipsilateral and contralateral reported regular use showed a significant risk could signal that use of the phone on either side of the head by children involves proportionally more than adults. The third potential explanation is recall bias.

Finally at the end of the article, they also claim that RFR from mobile phones causes glioma apparently in aydin's article

The Aydin et al. (2011) data that relied on billing records along with children's recall of their uses of phones approaches and in some instances met conventional tests of statistical significance and indicated that four years or more of heavy cell phone radiation causes glioma in children.

10 Comments
2024/08/14
22:57 UTC

0

DebunkThis: Eucharist Miracles are accurately verified.

https://ewtn.co.uk/article-three-eucharistic-miracles-which-cases-have-undergone-the-most-extensive-scientific-analysis/

This article is trying to say that, in spite of an inability to procure DNA, human tissue has not only been found in communion wafers, but it was viable when it should be dead, and this was confirmed by someone not informed of the tissue coming from bread.

https://ewtn.co.uk/article-how-does-the-catholic-church-investigate-eucharistic-miracles/

This article proclaims that as part of the determination that something is a miracle, the "Chain of custody" prevents tampering and all scientific tests must be in agreement.

Obviously the main point of contention would be about physical evidence, and I don't know how credibility here could be disputed (though I might be wrong).

6 Comments
2024/08/13
17:32 UTC

0

Debunk This: Youtube shorts showing that NFL games are scripted.

I keep seeing youtube shorts showing comedic videos that the NFL games are scripted. People are saying that they're as fake as pro wrestling. The motive behind this conspiracy makes no sense. What I'm really looking for is the full context behind these plays, specifically the first one in which a ref knocks the ball out of the player's hand. https://youtube.com/shorts/7YFyPUzr7rs https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KKirCVKwe4c?feature=share

19 Comments
2024/08/13
02:47 UTC

0

Debunk this: Kamala Harris is using green screens to fake crowds at her rallies

So sayeth this video.

11 Comments
2024/08/12
00:22 UTC

20

Debunk This: How American Fire Departments are Getting People Killed

How American Fire Departments are Getting People Killed - YouTube

I'm curious if anyone has any counterarguments against this. TLDW American fire trucks should be smaller, European fire trucks/engines are just as capable despite being smaller, fire departments routinely demand wide roads and oppose things such as bike lanes which the Youtuber claims would actually make things easier for the fire department (but they're too dumb to realize this).

It seems convincing and I strongly suspect he's more right than wrong but if it really was as black and white as the video maker claims that implies people who run American fire departments are all just stupid stubborn assholes. Usually these kinds of issues are far more complicated than this, there are pros and cons to different approaches and the counter arguments are more complicated than can be summed up to single sentences that can be fairly debunked. I also can't see anyone disagreeing in the comments which smells like censorship too.

Again I do strongly suspect he's more right than wrong but it feels like there have got to be at least a few points that are inconvenient to his position that are being glossed over.

13 Comments
2024/08/11
20:47 UTC

8

Debunk This: Per pupil spending in education very similar across racial groups

I was having a convo with a friend on systemic racism, and he said that education was a big reason why some groups are doing worse, but specifically he said that funding was much worse on average for minorities. So i went digging and saw some district level spending analysis, but i wanted something more accurate, so i looked at per pupil spending, and found this 2008 paper, from the urban brookings tax policy center, which found that on average, since 1982, non white students have gotten slightly more per pupil funding than white students. Thoughts? https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/411785-Racial-Disparities-in-Education-Finance-Going-Beyond-Equal-Revenues.PDF

9 Comments
2024/08/11
08:56 UTC

9

Debunk this: Female Hypergamy

I'm sorry for making a post like this again. An Incel DM'd me this to trigger my OCD by sending me "proof" for their BS and I don't know what to make of this. After this post I will disable DMs and stay away from these topics.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPillScience/s/VYWL0w4dhf

This post is compilation of studies that Incels use to basically claim that

  1. Women prefer a man with higher status, women with a high status even more so
  2. Marriages where women have a higher status are less successful

3.As society becomes more egalitarian and women more successful the number of these unhappy relationship or men that can't find relationships will increase 4.This is the case regardless of culture

This is basically just an extension of the whole argument that "women are unhappy being equal"

49 Comments
2024/08/08
18:34 UTC

0

Debunk this lost cause nonsense

Honestly, in the end, slavery was certainly the main component of the war, but I believe it is generally misunderstood. Much of the south was for abolition, and a good portion was for it, but not for racial reasons, but for economic reasons. The focal point should have been placed not on slavery, but on the method by which it was outlawed. While evil, it was at the time, legal (just like abortion), and it was constitutionally, a State’s rights issue. The federal act of invading the South (after a menagerie of events from both sides, stoking the flames in the years prior) was seen (correctly) as government overreach, which posed a far greater problem than just the abolition of slaves. Governments aren’t too keen on giving up power once they’ve gained it, and this was a prime example of the beginnings of a big government, overruling the individual state’s right to decide their own laws. Again, I’m acknowledging that slavery was a big part of this, but it needs to be stated that it was in conjunction with the fear of further government overreach.

“Well, most didn't (southerners supporting slavery). In the election of 1860, most (50-70%) of the Southern voters supported candidates who supported state based abolition and remaining in the Union. Most of the electoral votes (70%) when to the pro-slavery expansion camp.

The average Confederate soldier was a seasonal farm laborer, or a small scale farmer, and not only didn't want slavery to expand, but was held down by slavery as they could not compete with slavery.

On the flip side, the Union was fine with slavery, as it enforced segregation, hence why the free states of Kansas and Indiana outlawed Black and Mixed race people from setting foot in their states. Then there's the pro-slavery exemption zones in the emancipation proclamation, the creation of Liberia, the free state approval of the Crittenden Compromise, and the Union slave concentration camps, etc.

37 Comments
2024/08/07
15:32 UTC

0

Debunk this: A brazilian pastor was murdered for ''exposing'' the globalism/satanism

As many of you may know, I am a 17 year old Brazilian who has been trying to get rid of these illusions that Christianity is real for a long time, however, some news on the internet made me have a panic attack, I went looking for his Instagram to see what fake news that a brazilian pastor named ''Daniel Mastral'' is speaking, but I didn't find anything because their account was deleted, and then a news appeared on my Instagram feed saying that he killed himself and had a wound on his head in the backyard of his house in a city called Barueri, but Christians claim that he was found in a forested area , as reports stated that they heard a ''banging'' sound near his house, in his last video on YouTube, he stated that he was being threatened uninterruptedly on all the social networks, videos and lives he made, according to the their followers, so claiming that it was a file burning, where they claim that anyone who speaks ill of the government to ''unmask'' their evil intentions is killed secretly without leaving a trace, as they had no trace of a weapon, and according to the Bible, suicide is an unforgivable sin because in Genesis 9:6 and Job 1:21 it teaches that life is a sacred gift from God and that only he can take or give his own life, it is no wonder that in the last video he posted he said no he wants to die until the rapture arrives, and he had a face-to-face seminar scheduled for the 12th of this month and also his wife disappeared from social media, the most intriguing thing is that a Satanist who recently converted to Christianity, who rivaled him for many years, became friends last Wednesday, and he was pissed and sad stating in one of his stories that a friend would never commit suicide, He stated that he also knows who the antichrist is, who is probably Donald Trump, because if he returns to be president he intends to make a peace agreement between Israel, Palestine and other Arab countries, which will be the start of seven year apocalypse

And he had a face-to-face seminar scheduled for the 12th of this month

For those who don't know him, this guy was none other than the Brazilian David Icke, he spread a lot of misinformation and pseudoscience, he claimed to be a former Satanist who once worked for the global elite who knew all about his secret evil agenda. , he left Satanism because he refused to sacrifice a child, then he was exorcised and converted, he claims that every year, around 40,000 children and teenagers under 18 years old mysteriously disappear, they say that satanists kidnap these people, torture them to death to collect a blood substance called adrenochrome, a substance that comes from the adrenal glands, it serves as a ''source of rejuvenation'', it is no wonder that the vast majority of Hollywood celebrities such as Will Smith, Keanu Reeves and Beyoncé do not look elderly despite their advanced age, so much so that Sandra Bullock has already admitted that she drinked this substance

However, if you see this guy, he was depressed due to his tone of speech and his manner, as he lost his son to suicide and his former wife to a heart attack, so much so that the guy even tried to commit suicide three times.

Thoughts??? should we became worried???

13 Comments
2024/08/05
23:49 UTC

13

Debunk this: Okcupid study proves 80/20 Theory

https://web.archive.org/web/20101125020017/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/

This blog post by Okcupid shows how men and women rate attractiveness on the site. The majority of men were rated as "below average" by their pictures. Incels claim that this proves that women are only attracted to the top 20% of men.

Women still messaged the less attractive men more, but that might just be responses which could be negative too

I am not an Incel, but I don't know how to interpret this data

Edit: There is also a ton of data showing that women care about physical attraction just as much as men, which isn't surprising or wrong, but wouldn't that support this theory, if women find 80% of men physically unappealing?

Edit 2: I found this article which references this data and contextualizes it. I'm not 100% sure about it, but it sounds like it makes sense (maybe someone smarter than me can confirm it) https://datepsychology.com/is-physical-attractiveness-normally-distributed/

55 Comments
2024/08/04
08:58 UTC

0

Debunk this: Australian judge advocates for decriminalising pedophilia

6 Comments
2024/08/03
12:11 UTC

19

Debunk this comment about election fraud

[Tell that to Texas who just arrested a woman for massive fraud in the 2020 election. they also found massive fraud in GA too.

https://x.com/JDunlap1974/status/1817378898398556253]

To make it clear not my comment

10 Comments
2024/07/30
18:17 UTC

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