ClaimsSteven Pinker

“Sexually reproducing organisms don't literally replicate themselves, because their offspring are not clones but rather composites of themselves and their mates.”

Steven Pinker, essay author 18 June 2012 The False Allure of Group Selection (Edge.org) archived copy

Factual Science and research methods

Sexually reproducing organisms do not literally replicate themselves, because their offspring are composites of themselves and their mates rather than clones.

Not researched Checkable, but outside the sample that was researched.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

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Steven Pinker, “Sexually reproducing organisms do not literally replicate themselves, because their offspring are composites of themselves and their mates rather than clones.” (said 18 June 2012). Verdict: not researched. Reliability API, claim c_49ff37a46dc2, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_49ff37a46dc2

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

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More factual claims by Steven Pinker

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  2. Mostly true Factual 24 September 2025
    “What they do is they coordinate on the full moon.”

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  3. Mixed Factual 2023
    “So that’s an unresolved controversy in the cognitive psychology literature”

    Whether rationality and intelligence are dissociable in a human population is an unresolved controversy in the cognitive psychology literature.

  4. Mostly true Factual 27 December 2022
    “Females on average perform better than males on a 'theory of mind' test across 57 countries.”

    A new big-data study by a team including Simon Baron-Cohen found females on average outperform males on a 'theory of mind' test across 57 countries.

  5. Resolved true Factual 20 March 2020
    “John Ioannidis, among the savviest epidemiologists (his 2005 article alerted us to the replicability crisis)”

    John Ioannidis published a 2005 article that alerted scientists to the replicability crisis.

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