Tag: Australian Skeptics

So, it’s Sunday morning right. No not now. Back then. Back on… Sunday morning.

I’ve plunged the coffee, added a cup and milk, and am scrolling through that thing called X. You know – what Elon did to Twitter. I meant to check the weather because it’s cool, windy and wet and I hate the heat, so I’m like “Yay! Let me look at the digits”, but somehow I get on X.

There’s a tweet with a screenshot and the screenshot reads:

If you’re not an expert but you think you’ve destroyed the entire foundation of a vast scientific edifice with 10 minutes of Googling, you might want to consider the possibility that you could be wrong.

Even before the caffeine kicked in I knew it was good – the tweet not the coffee – and perhaps I maybe wished I’d said it. Okay, I did wish I did but I didn’t and will now have to learn to live with that. Then I looked at the handle and the caffeine must have just then kicked in because my memory worked. It went way, way back to the afternoon before, when I’d seen it on Twitter / X. It was @GidMK.

Now, @GidMK calls himself the Health Nerd, but has a whole bunch of talent. In fact I even know that:

https://skepticon.org.au/speaker/gideon-meyerowitz-katz/

Well, I actually stole that from the Skepticon 2023 speaker bio for Gideon. I also know stole information that he’ll be involved in a panel discussion and that you can:

Join Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz (Health Nerd) and the award-winning science journalists Melissa Davey and Liam Mannix in this panel discussion looking at science in the media and how to avoid being misled by the headlines you read.

Skepticon 2023 runs over Saturday 2nd to Sunday 3rd December, and you can get tickets for either day or for virtual attendance. As for the tweet itself, well I couldn’t find it at first. I had to do an advanced search, which is all very la-de-dah with lots of typing in little boxes until I found it way, way back in January 2020. 

Yes. It was from B.C. Before COVID. And it’s hard evidence that critical thinkers were employing logic and sensibility long before social media platforms realised fact-checking was a thing.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to catching Gideon at Skepticon.

If you're not an expert but you think you've destroyed the entire foundation of a vast scientific edifice with 10 minutes of Googling, you might want to consider the possibility that you could be wrong

— Health Nerd (@GidMK) January 13, 2020