US
201 MIN READ TIME

TERRIFYING! IMPROBABLE! CHEMTRAILS!

“The sky is Falling”

We’ve all heard the story of Chicken Little—a fanciful tale about panic and jumping to conclusions. But how would it feel to truly believe that the sky is out to get you?

For believers in one strange conspiracy theory, it’s scary to see a blue sky crossed by wispy white contrail lines from passing jet planes. They claim some of those contrails are not clouds or exhaust from jet engines as they appear, but sinister “chemtrails.” Supposedly, an evil government conspiracy uses jet planes to secretly spread poison across skies worldwide. Is there any possibility this paranoid claim could be true?

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Skeptic
22.2
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How the “Tractor”—an Early 19th Century Medical Quack Device—Was Debunked by One of the Earliest Single Blind Placebo Studies
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Why We Should Be Concerned About Artificial Superintelligence
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REVIEWS
Think Again
Rethink: The Surprising History of New Ideas by Steven Poole
The Ultimate Trade Off
A review of How Men Age: What Evolution Reveals About Male Health and Mortality by Richard G. Bribiescas
Playing Whac-a-Mole with Science Deniers
A Review of Not a Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science by Dave Levitan.
Frauds and Cons
Reviews of: Big Con: Great Hoaxes, Frauds, Grifts, and Swindles in American History by Nate Hendley Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff by Edward J. Balliesen Houdini’s ‘Girl Detective’ compiled by Tony Wolf The Confidence Game: Why We Fall For it…Every Time by Maria Konnikova
Any Sufficiently Advanced Human is Indistinguishable from God
Review of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari.