All Questions
1,398
questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
11
votes
0
answers
956
views
Does sneezing repeatedly lead to orgasm, or a similar sensation?
This came up randomly during office talk but it goes something as follows; sneezing repeatedly is equivalent to having an orgasm.
Some basic research on the internet seems to indicate there is some ...
- 211
11
votes
0
answers
323
views
Are these claims about what reduces abortion correct?
This post on tumblr currently has more than 77,500 "notes", so I'd consider it notable. The numbers and letters are mine:
Things that lower abortion rates:
A1: Better access to condoms
A2:...
- 4,950
11
votes
0
answers
721
views
Do obese people have lower lifetime healthcare costs?
I've always been told that obesity is a drain a country's healthcare system...and it's generally accepted as fact. In online debates I frequently see reference to this. I remember seeing news ...
- 993
11
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Did Adolf Hitler offer to make Dhyan Chand a Field Marshal in the German army?
There is a popular story about Indian field hockey legend, Dhyan Chand, and his encounter with Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Here is one randomly selected version of it:
Nazi dictator ...
- 571
11
votes
0
answers
500
views
Trolling and young people
There seems often to be an implicit assumption in the minds of many people that most trolls are children or teenagers or generally in the younger demographics.
Such as this unsourced claim on this ...
- 897
11
votes
0
answers
600
views
Does Montessori daycare lead to higher educational achievement?
A Montessori curriculum contains these elements as essential elements:
Mixed age classrooms, with classrooms for children aged 2½ or 3 to 6 years old by far the most common
Student choice of ...
- 347
11
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Is sex slavery active in the Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates?
In Iran (as a neighbor of these countries from the north of Persian Gulf) it is common to hear claims that sex slavery is active in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. You can find some ...
- 1,066
11
votes
0
answers
983
views
Are contraceptives unaffordable for female students at Georgetown Law?
At a hearing before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, Sandra Fluke said:
"Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. ...
- 8,933
11
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Does taking a shower when dehydrated increase body weight?
For sports (such as wrestling, MMA, judo, etc) where the competition is divided into weight divisions, it's common to drop cut 10+ lbs of water weight hours before weigh ins and then rehydrate right ...
- 253
11
votes
0
answers
1k
views
What hair-care benefits come from adding fruit or fruit-extracts to shampoo?
Shampoo manufacturers seem to be very keen to tell us about the all the fruit and fruit-extracts they put in their product. I suspect that the hair-care actually comes from the other ingredients they ...
- 987
11
votes
0
answers
542
views
Does oversleeping lead to reduced alertness?
There are several studies (Example 1, Example 2) about the effect of sleep deprivation on alertness and cognitive performance.
Are there any studies investigating the opposite - The effect of too ...
- 258
11
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Can a cup of coffee be used as a barometer?
A recent Instructable was picked up by Lifehacker. It states:
When you pour the coffee into your cup, watch the bubbles.
If the bubbles move to the edge of the cup rather quickly, that's a good sign. ...
- 5,005
11
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Is eroto-comatose lucidity a state only achievable via sexual means?
Some "sex magic" practitioners assert that it is possible to achieve a higher state of consciousness, "eroto-comatose lucidity", through basically making one fall asleep through too much sex.
Eroto-...
- 78.5k
11
votes
0
answers
3k
views
Are Pathans the lost tribe of the Israel?
The Pathan people (also known as the Pasthun) is an ethnic group of around 50 million living scattered across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and also Iran and India.
Wikipedia explains:...
- 2,772
11
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0
answers
3k
views
Is studying while sick bad for your brain?
The New Straits Times reported:
Working unduly hard or studying while sick may lead to a decrease in effectiveness of the brain as well as damaging it.
P-Healthcare blog reports one of the "Top ...
- 401
11
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Does picking your nose make it grow?
Does pulling/tugging at your soft cartilage cause it to grow?
Example of claim on answers.com
Don't pick your nose. Compulsive nose picking, known as rhinotillexomania, can increase the size of ...
- 401
11
votes
0
answers
2k
views
In the economic crisis of 2008, were some companies truly "too big to fail"?
During the first of the half of the current economic crisis, some companies began to collapse due to the subprime mortgage crisis or from the cascading economic damage that it entailed. A danger was ...
- 11.3k
11
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Can a dead mouse sealed in a can of soda dissolve into a jelly-like substance in one year?
A soft-drink company argued in a "dead mouse in a can of soda" case that an intact body of a dead mouse is unlikely to be found inside a can of soda because the dead mouse would have been dissolved by ...
user2547
11
votes
1
answer
947
views
Are frat members more often involved in rape?
This is more about a common prejudice (or not) about fraternities than about some famous claim. I want to know whether frat members rape more than the common non-fraternity member?
In Opinion: '...
- 119
10
votes
0
answers
447
views
Is there any historical basis to the four Toltec agreements?
Mexican author Miguel Ruiz published a best-selling self-help book called The Four Agreements, claiming to be based on ancient Toltec wisdom. The four agreements are as follows:
Be Impeccable With ...
- 201
10
votes
0
answers
656
views
Did an SR-71 Blackbird airbase have a plaque regarding the valley of the shadow of death?
A common meme around the internet involves a quote from a supposed plaque in front of an SR-71 Blackbird airbase.
The meme seems to be extremely popular on the internet, but I can't seem to find an ...
- 22.3k
10
votes
0
answers
4k
views
Was Columbia University fined for animal cruelty due to experiments run by Mehmet Oz?
This SourceWatch article is being publicized in connection to Mehmet Oz:
In 2004, complaints about Dr. Mehmet Oz’s dog experiments were cited in a report from an internal investigation into ...
- 2,162
10
votes
0
answers
972
views
Did a billion people watch "Rumble in the Jungle"?
The fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman is claimed to have a billion viewership.
For example Jet (Sep 1995):
the first one-billion viewer fight
Revisiting 'The Rumble in the Jungle' 40 ...
- 721
10
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Do cows need their tails when ploughing?
I was watching this documentary about North Korean defectors, and one of the claims struck me as very odd. One of the defectors claimed that the CIA was largely responsible for the famines in North ...
- 875
10
votes
0
answers
653
views
Is this video about an Uighur family being forced to live with Han Chinese men genuine?
The following video was posted to a number of social media platforms:
"Uyghur women being forced to serve Han Chinese"
In the video, an Asian male is recording himself sitting on the couch. ...
- 251
10
votes
0
answers
754
views
Does blue light coating on eyeglasses protect the eyes?
I ask about adding blue light coating to eyeglass lenses, not separately wearing blue light glasses.
Evidence for
SeeCoat Blue Premium | Nikon Lenswear Canada
Recommended For: Those who regularly use ...
user16959
10
votes
0
answers
468
views
Did two brothers steal credit card information worth millions and walked away scot-free because banks were embarrassed?
In this DEFCON talk at around 24:52 minute mark, the speaker (a Cambridge professor) tells a story of two brothers stealing millions of dollars using a weakness in credit card terminal technology, and ...
- 221
10
votes
0
answers
968
views
Did Lyndon Johnson spy on Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign using CIA and FBI assets?
An article by Lee Edwards on the Heritage Foundation website claims so with quite some level of detail, e.g.
In the fall of 1964, the White House turned to the CIA to get advance inside information ...
- 56.9k
10
votes
0
answers
708
views
Have more people "been to space than have flown in a B-2?"
According to Popular Mechanics (emphasis added):
More people have been to space than have flown in a B-2.
... A B-2 pilot at Whiteman [Air Force Base] told me that the number of astronauts who've ...
- 14k
10
votes
0
answers
3k
views
Do Islamic countries have a higher than average porn consumption despite porn being banned in them?
In the first place, I'm linking this wikipedia web page to show that, as a general rule, pornography seems to be banned in Islamic countries (although it doesn't show data for all of them, it looks ...
- 117
10
votes
0
answers
260
views
Did the IMF admit that capital controls have been successful in Malaysia?
A DW article says
Malaysia stood out as a country that refused IMF assistance and advice. Instead of further opening its economy, Malaysia imposed capital controls, in an effort to eliminate ...
- 56.9k
10
votes
0
answers
3k
views
Did Alfred Kinsey sexually abuse children for his studies?
The following is an interesting question posted in Psychology.SE which was closed as off-topic. It was not migrated here so I thought I would ask it.
An article at https://web.archive.org/web/...
- 2,606
10
votes
0
answers
803
views
Does CS tear gas permanently damage children?
In the final assault ending the 1993 siege of a compound in Waco, Texas , in which 76 people were killed, the FBI fired 40mm M651 CS and Ferret CS rounds into buildings containing adults and children ...
- 103k
10
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Did Alan Turing ever say “Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine”?
Goodreads lists the quote under Alan Turing but I always thought it was merely from the movie (The Imitation Game) and couldn't find anything similar in his published works
- 1,009
10
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0
answers
1k
views
Do Starbucks' new lids use more plastic than the previous lids plus straws?
Have recently seen this claim circulating Facebook:
The image goes to a post by a group called UnbiasedAmerica... but it looks like the original source article is the story Starbucks Bans Plastic ...
- 210
10
votes
0
answers
3k
views
Does the average Ivy League student have an IQ of 145?
Psychology Professor Dr. Jordan B. Peterson gave a talk in March 2017 where he said (in the first minute of the video):
If you go back and look at the records at Harvard, for example, in the early ...
- 201
10
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Do hallucinogens cause people to jump out of the window?
Back in the 90s, the DARE program made a big point about how hallucinogenic drugs cause people to jump out the window because they think they can fly, or similar things. Various other sources (such as ...
- 381
10
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Did a casino in Las Vegas suffer its worst week in history after hosting a physicists conference?
According to The Crime of Reason: And the Closing of the Scientific Mind:
In March 1986, Las Vegas newspapers buzzed with rumors that the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino had suffered its worst weekly ...
- 10.8k
10
votes
0
answers
582
views
Does social media cause permanent damage to concentration capability?
In this TEDxtalk (transcript is here), the speaker claims that there is a growing amount of research that shows that spending large amounts of time on social media permanently damages the capability ...
- 101
10
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Did Hitler ban round goldfish bowls because he thought they were cruel?
In the MythBuster's episode Sinking Titantic they carried out an experiment on goldfish memory. As part of this they interviewed an expert who stated that Hitler banned round goldfish bowls because he ...
- 2,484
10
votes
0
answers
165
views
Do sports compression clothes give their claimed benefits?
Sellers of sports compression clothes make a lot of claims about their products.
Here are some I saw on the back of a 2XU packet. This is not exclusive to them:
Benefits of compression
...
- 6,721
10
votes
0
answers
554
views
Did three people turn down a meeting in Zuckerberg's dorm room about founding Facebook?
I've seen this posted to Linkedin:
Now this makes you think!! .....10 years ago, a student at Harvard
invited 5 people over to his dorm room to discuss a business
opportunity. Only 2 of the 5 ...
- 1,514
10
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Are democrats more likely to commit crimes then republicans in the United States?
Ted Cruz during in interview with Hugh Hewitt claimed that democrats are more likely to commit violent crime than republicans.
He apparently is getting this statistic from a study on three states ...
- 217
10
votes
0
answers
191
views
Are teens who vape more likely to become smokers?
eCigarettes are controversial. Some people regard them as a major health improvement because they are far less harmful than "real" cigarettes. Others seem to think they are just another way for the ...
- 56.1k
10
votes
0
answers
574
views
Do cats avoid water when it is placed near food?
This tumblr post makes the interesting claim that if a cat's water is placed near its food, the cat will consider the water to be unsafe to drink, and that cats will be more inclined to drink it if it ...
- 2,077
10
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0
answers
382
views
Do trains/boats/planes involved in accidents have a lower occupancy?
This Article from the daily mail makes some interesting (and rather ludicrous) claims, but one stuck out to me specifically.
The article argues that higher cancellation rates/lower occupancy on ...
- 219
10
votes
0
answers
784
views
Does the E-Kaia device harvest electrical power from small plants?
The E-Kaia device claims to be able to harvest electricity released into soil by small plants. Here's a Daily Mail article describing it.
And because not all of the electrons are needed, harvesting ...
- 201
10
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0
answers
409
views
Did a Michigan jewellery store keeper successfully scare off his attackers with a shotgun in 1995?
In an answer to another question, there is a reference to this 2012 Natural News article, which in turn cites this NRA-ILA article, which cites "The Chronicle, Muskegon, MI, 8/23/95":
Plans to slay ...
- 139k
10
votes
0
answers
329
views
Are 'user-adjustable' thermostats in offices usually 'dummies'?
An example here at WSJ and here, but seen around the internet (often grouped together with anecdotes about dummy "walk" buttons and elevator "close door" buttons):
Looking for an ...
- 18.7k
10
votes
0
answers
318
views
Is it routine for Sweden prosecutors to travel to the UK to question people they are looking to arrest?
According to an investigation of the Assange case:
The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 ...
- 4,950