All Questions
11,110
questions
537
votes
3
answers
60k
views
Does torture work well as an interrogation technique?
Wikipedia's Effectiveness of torture for interrogation says,
Torture has been used throughout history for the purpose of obtaining information in interrogation. Some arguments say that it is an ...
- 7,906
483
votes
2
answers
316k
views
Was the experiment with five monkeys, a ladder, a banana and a water spray conducted?
I've found the following picture online. It is about the moral/paradigm behind consistent behavior.
Click to enlarge.
The image text says
A group of scientists placed 5 monkeys in a cage and ...
- 5,166
328
votes
7
answers
43k
views
Did Jesus live?
Regardless of whether you believe or not...
What is the non-Biblical evidence regarding his existence around the time he is commonly thought to have lived? That is, are there other historically ...
- 24.5k
264
votes
2
answers
43k
views
Do bigger or more monitors increase productivity?
There is a ton of anecdotal evidence that adding more screen estate (more or larger monitors) leads to an increase in productivity, especially for programmers.
For example, where I work, all ...
- 78.6k
256
votes
1
answer
102k
views
Has Stack Overflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?
John Carmack is a renowned developer and CTO. His Twitter account has over 100,000 followers.
On the occasion of Stack Exchange's 5th anniversary, he quipped on Twitter:
[... Stack Overflow] has ...
- 78.6k
235
votes
4
answers
33k
views
Does hot water freeze faster than cold water?
Is it true that hot water freezes faster than cold water and if so, what practical applications have there been found for this phenomenon?
- 4,267
229
votes
2
answers
38k
views
Has man walked on the Moon?
Is there any concrete, solid proof of this space odyssey?
Is there a way that I personally have a look a it? Let's say, with a nice telescope ?
- 4,433
211
votes
9
answers
33k
views
When did people first know the Earth was a sphere?
I've heard it numerous times, that in the old days people thought that the world was flat. Most commonly I heard this in connection with the voyage of Columbus, that he believed the earth to be a ...
- 43.6k
210
votes
1
answer
23k
views
Is this news article from 1912, essentially explaining climate change, real?
I found this image on reddit, and I'm wondering if this is real? Was this actually published over 100 years ago?
Transcription:
Science Notes And News
COAL CONSUMPTION AFFECTING CLIMATE
...
- 1,874
209
votes
1
answer
23k
views
Are these claims about Japan’s health system true?
The series of claims in the image below has been getting shared around Facebook and are posted from the "Illuminati Exposed" page.
The claims are in the image but I've listed them here
100% of ...
- 6,761
208
votes
1
answer
24k
views
Is popping your knuckles bad for you?
I pop my knuckles fairly frequently, and I have been told on several occasions that doing so is bad for your joints. Is this true? Have there been any medical studies on this?
- 3,593
198
votes
2
answers
38k
views
Does the President of the United States have the ability to deploy nuclear weapons at will?
I heard this claim back during the Bush years, and recently I've been hearing it again. For example:
Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All - The New Yorker
I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and ...
- 2,170
196
votes
1
answer
29k
views
Did the Twitter account Fifndhs predict the exact World Cup results ahead of time?
There was a feeling of exhilaration and excitement on Twitter, with the Twitter account @FifNdhs called “FIFA Corruption” seemingly having predicted the final result of the World Cup final hours ahead ...
- 30.3k
192
votes
4
answers
31k
views
Will a mother bird abandon her young if touched by a human?
Welcome to installment #2 of my "the science of animals falling" series of questions....
I've heard it said many times since childhood that if you are to find a baby bird on the ground which appears ...
- 24.5k
186
votes
1
answer
21k
views
Do cats always land on their feet?
Assuming a fall from a survivable height, will a cat always land on its feet?
Has this been studied? Is there real data to back it up?
- 24.5k
181
votes
4
answers
49k
views
Does YouTube delete video dislikes?
On some YouTube videos, particularly highly downvoted ones, I often see comments asserting that their dislikes on the video are being deleted, either by YouTube or the channel itself.
From the ...
- 1,681
179
votes
4
answers
28k
views
Does a webpage with a black background save energy?
Blackle is a search engine that claims to save energy because it uses a black background. Is there any evidence to back up their claim that a website using a black background will save energy, and if ...
user1936
178
votes
4
answers
23k
views
Do 90% of employees who accept a counteroffer still end up leaving after a year?
According to a very highly upvoted post on Workplace.SE that says you should never accept a counteroffer:
80% of people who accept counter offers are gone from that company within 6 months, at the 12 ...
- 2,934
177
votes
2
answers
31k
views
Is Google using ReCaptcha as a free source of human-intelligent labour?
Having worked at the Amazon Mechanical Turk for a long time, I find that some ReCaptcha questions are very similar to the 1c tasks there. Identify this, identify that.
A search shows that several web ...
- 3,299
173
votes
5
answers
32k
views
Would the top 100 men in most physical sports beat each of the top 100 women?
In The Ancestor's Tale, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins makes the following statement about sexual dimorphism:
Our sexual dimporhism is moderate but undeniable. Lots of women are taller than ...
- 1,611
173
votes
1
answer
24k
views
Did NASA invest a million dollars in the research of a space pen, when the USSR simply used a pencil?
I encountered this picture of the "Russian space pen" from the MIT Museum gift shop
When NASA first started sending astronauts into space, they realized that the ball-point pen would not ...
- 31.6k
165
votes
1
answer
37k
views
Is it illegal to own a rabbit in Queensland unless you're a magician?
From all that is interesting How Bunny Rabbits Took Over Australia — And What The Government Is Doing About It
In Queensland, Australia, it’s illegal to own a pet rabbit unless
you’re a magician. ...
- 38.9k
165
votes
4
answers
26k
views
Does being cold increase your chances of catching the common cold?
"Everyone knows" - a scary statement - that you get "a cold" from being cold. Now it seems to be a fact that you don't, because you get a cold from a (rhino)virus, not from the temperature.
But is ...
- 4,707
162
votes
2
answers
26k
views
Do victims of rape have biological defenses that prevent pregnancy?
Pro life Rep. Todd Akin, who was running for Senate in Missouri, said:
“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Needless to say, this claim is ...
- 4,730
160
votes
4
answers
26k
views
Is bread bad for ducks?
This image has being going around (e.g. Facebook with a message attributed to The Friends of Bushy and Home Parks:
Transcript:
Please don't kill us with bread!
Bread is actually a danger to us ducks ...
- 861
160
votes
5
answers
32k
views
Was Einstein a poor student?
I've heard this repeatedly over the years, that Einstein was bad at math, that he was bad at history, that he was dyslexic. I also read somewhere in my youth that some of the " bad at math" stuff was ...
Dogmafrog
159
votes
9
answers
16k
views
Is closed-source code more secure than open-source?
My computing teacher told us that closed source software is more secure than open source software, because with open source "anyone can modify it and put stuff in." This is why they do not want to use ...
- 11.9k
158
votes
6
answers
28k
views
Are people of Nordic Nations "happier, healthier" with "a higher standard of living overall than Americans"?
Ernest W. Adams wrote in the answer to the question "Why are people so negative about Nordic nations, especially Sweden?":
There are a lot of right wing Americans who have been preaching ...
- 15.7k
156
votes
4
answers
34k
views
Did Donald Trump say that "global warming was a hoax invented by the Chinese"?
In the Presidential debate of 26th September, Hillary Clinton claimed that "Donald Trump said that global warming was a hoax invented by the Chinese" . Trump replied several times "I did not say that"....
- 57.5k
155
votes
4
answers
26k
views
Can you only trace a phone call if they don't hang up?
In movies and television shows, you often see law enforcement (or hacker types) attempting to trace a phone call that they have received. The typical scene plays out with one party trying to keep the ...
- 2,936
154
votes
3
answers
31k
views
Do wind turbines consume more energy than they produce in a lifetime?
A rumor in my region states that a wind turbine consumes far more energy while being built and setup than it can produce in a lifetime.
The debate is about modern, freshly built turbines in ...
- 2,139
154
votes
1
answer
55k
views
Is this a ship-shipping ship, shipping shipping ships?
This image has been making the rounds on the internet, with the following caption:
This is a ship-shipping ship, shipping shipping ships.
The obvious question being: is this statement correct or ...
- 4,124
152
votes
4
answers
29k
views
Was pink a boy color and blue a girl color prior to the 20th century?
A recent essay in the New York Times by Claire Cain Miller, entitled How to Raise a Feminist Son, claims that:
Until the mid-20th century, pink was the boy color and blue was for
girls.
It, in ...
- 3,145
151
votes
7
answers
20k
views
Do human activities contribute to climate change?
There is lots of evidence that I have seen showing correlation between human activities and climate change but what evidence is there to support causation?
- 3,227
150
votes
8
answers
81k
views
Do vote counts for Joe Biden in the 2020 election violate Benford's Law?
Benford's Law is a statistical rule that says that the distribution of digits in real-world numerical datasets tends to follow a specific pattern. It is often used to test whether an election is ...
- 971
150
votes
2
answers
76k
views
Has Phil Karlton ever said "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things"?
Several references to the quote "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things" can be found, such as Martin Fowler's blog and others.
I'm unable to find ...
- 1,601
150
votes
1
answer
22k
views
Are there 96 million workers in the US who want a job and can't get one?
On Wednesday 11 Jan 2017, US President-elect Donald Trump claimed in a press conference that:
There will be a major border tax on these companies that are leaving and getting away with murder. And ...
- 7,319
148
votes
3
answers
24k
views
On 9/11, was Building 7 destroyed in a controlled explosion?
There have been a lot of claims made about the circumstances surrounding the events of 9/11 and Building 7 in particular.
The central claim regarding Building 7, that I have heard personally, is that ...
- 11.3k
148
votes
1
answer
32k
views
Did Amazon pay $0 in US taxes in 2018?
Background
I saw this article saying that Amazon paid $0 in corporate income tax last year. Is this true or just phrased to sound like they are getting away with paying nothing?
Here's the article: ...
- 1,161
144
votes
2
answers
33k
views
Are violent video games a better explanation of school shootings than access to guns?
This site already has a question on the general relationship of video games and violence.
But the recent Florida school shooting has raised a more specific set of claims that deserve to be addressed.
...
- 56.1k
144
votes
2
answers
31k
views
Do solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants?
From Slashdot:
A new study by Environmental Progress warns that toxic waste from used solar panels now poses a global environmental threat. The Berkeley-based group found that solar panels create ...
- 31.2k
144
votes
1
answer
23k
views
Did the @POTUS Twitter account use a picture from Obama's inauguration for its cover image?
There's an image going around Facebook claiming that the @POTUS Twitter account is using an image from President Obama's inauguration.
Is this true? Where is the original image from?
- 933
142
votes
4
answers
22k
views
Did Republicans take 10 of 13 Congressional seats in the 2018 North Carolina general election with roughly the same number of votes as Democrats?
This image has been shared on social media
Transcription:
Gerrymandering in North Carolina
1,747,742 votes for Democrats = 3 Congressional seats
1,638,684 votes for Republicans = 10 Congressional ...
- 57.5k
141
votes
4
answers
40k
views
Did Yuri Gagarin end up in critical condition after coming back to Earth due to the missing magnetic field?
My friend's mother is about to undergo some treatment in magnetic field therapy for osteoarthritis and he is trying to verify if this is useful as claimed, or if this has any harmful effects. The ...
- 1,353
141
votes
4
answers
25k
views
Is the USA murder rate at a high? Specifically is it at a 45 year high?
Current US President Donald Trump is on record as repeatedly saying that "The murder rate is the highest it's been in I guess 45-47 years."
Is that true?
- 4,360
140
votes
3
answers
27k
views
Are some oceans so remote that the closest person is in the space station?
I was listening to BBC news radio last night - 18th day of May 2017 and I heard this guest who was campaigning for people to stop dumping trash in the oceans.
Probably not the same very words but the ...
- 1,763
139
votes
1
answer
64k
views
Is one not able to tweet "Get Better." because it's something Dorsey's father used to say?
I've tried to tweet "Get Better." (without the quotes) a dozen times now, and it keeps not showing. A friend of mine told me that, while in high school, Jack Dorsey's (the creator of Twitter) father ...
- 1,107
138
votes
4
answers
114k
views
Is the Ballmer Peak real?
There is a myth saying that having a BAC in the 0.129% - 0.138% range can improve your cognitive abilities. This effect is called the Ballmer Peak (a reference to Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft) and ...
- 1,856
137
votes
3
answers
22k
views
Is the Amazon rainforest the "world's lungs"?
The 72 million Google results for "Amazon world lungs" (unquoted) is evidence enough that there's a common perception that the Amazon rainforest is the "world's lungs". God knows I grew up believing ...
- 827
135
votes
4
answers
45k
views
Was Opportunity's last message to Earth "My battery is low and it's getting dark"?
On February 13 2019, NASA announced that Opportunity - a Mars rover launched in 2003 with an intended longevity of three months - was likely to be dead.
In the wake of this event, and the outpouring ...
- 1,389