Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic, shared a Chapman University lecture on conspiracy theories and their psychological roots.
Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
What would count as true or false
Judged as of 2020-03-19. True: Michael Shermer was editor (publisher/editor-in-chief) of Skeptic magazine at that time and shared, on or before that date, a recording or text of a lecture he gave at Chapman University on conspiracy theories and their psychological roots. Mostly true: all of this holds but with a minor slip in detail (e.g. the lecture title or his exact title at Skeptic). Mixed: Shermer shared a conspiracy-theory lecture but it was not a Chapman University lecture, or the reverse. Mostly false: Shermer shared some talk but not on conspiracy theories, or he was not linked to Skeptic. False: no such lecture by Shermer exists, or evidence shows he did not share it.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
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E1 all videos Archives Skeptic (skeptic.com) · 17 March 2020 Own record
“Tuesday, March 17, 2020 at 12:00 am Produced by: Michael Shermer Dr. Michael Shermer explains the difference between conspiracies and conspiracy theories, who is more likely to believe which conspiracy theories, the social, political, cultural, and psychological conditions in which conspiracy theories flourish, real conspiracies, and who really killed JFK.”
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E2 all videos Archives Skeptic (skeptic.com) Own record
“This lecture is part of a course that Dr. Shermer teaches at Chapman University called Skepticism 101: How to Think Like a Scientist which covers a wide range of topics, from critical thinking, reasoning, rationality, cognitive biases and how thinking goes wrong, and the scientific methods, to actual claims and whether or not there is any truth to them, e.g., ESP, ETIs, UFOs, astrology, channelling, psychics, creationism, Holocaust denial, and especially conspiracy theories and how to think about them.”
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E3 Michael Shermer - Wikipedia Wikipedia
“| Title | Editor-in-chief of Skeptic, adjunct professor at Chapman University |”
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E4 Michael Shermer - Wikipedia Wikipedia
“founding publisher[1] of Skeptic magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims.”
Reasoning
The evidence shows that Shermer is listed as Skeptic's editor-in-chief and founding publisher [E3][E4], and that Skeptic posted a conspiracy-theory lecture produced by him on March 17, 2020 [E1]. However, the only source tying a lecture to Chapman University is undated and does not identify which lecture it describes [E2], so it does not show whether this was a Chapman lecture, which the criteria need in order to choose between true and mixed.
Cite this claim
Steven Pinker, “Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic, shared a Chapman University lecture on conspiracy theories and their psychological roots.” (said 19 March 2020). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_2ed38c8cebad, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_2ed38c8cebad
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Steven Pinker
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Mostly true
“But in other kinds violence, such as homicides, the progress has definitely continued.”
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Mostly true
“I float a number of hypotheses as to why cooperation and human flourishing in general have increased.”
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Mostly true
“Those were as old as civilisation.”
Slavery and imperialism were as old as civilisation, predating the Enlightenment.
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Mixed
“Nuclear doomsday scenarios in the 1960s set off not disarmament but an arms race with the Soviets.”
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Mixed
“More countries are democratic than not, even though if it’s fewer than it was 20 years ago.”
More countries are democratic than not, though fewer than 20 years ago.
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.