Learn how often people misremember alibis; new lessons from Denisova Cave; and how to remove pesticides from produce. People often misremember where they were on a given date, which puts criminal alibis into question by Cameron Duke Faulty memories of our past whereabouts: The fallacy of an airtight alibi. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-07/afps-fmo070721.php Laliberte, E., Yim, H., Stone, B., & Dennis, S. J. (2021). The Fallacy of an Airtight Alibi: Understanding Human Memory for “Where” Using Experience Sampling. Psychological Science, 32(6), 944–951. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620980752 Young, E. (2021, June 7). It’s Surprisingly Common To Misremember Where You Were On A Specific Time And Date. Research Digest. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/06/07/its-surprisingly-common-to-misremember-where-you-were-on-a-specific-time-and-date/ Huge analysis of sediment DNA tells a deeper story of Denisova Cave by Cameron Duke Pleistocene sediment DNA from Denisova Cave: Sediment DNA tracks 300,000 years of hominin and animal presence at Denisova Cave. (2021). ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210623113857.htm Zavala, E. I., Jacobs, Z., Vernot, B., Shunkov, M. V., Kozlikin, M. B., Derevianko, A. P., Essel, E., de Fillipo, C., Nagel, S., Richter, J., Romagné, F., Schmidt, A., Li, B., O’Gorman, K., Slon, V., Kelso, J., Pääbo, S., Roberts, R. G., & Meyer, M. (2021). Pleistocene sediment DNA reveals hominin and faunal turnovers at Denisova Cave. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03675-0 The Best Ways to Remove Pesticides From Produce was originally published June 29, 2018: https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/how-to-remove-pesticides-from-produce-the-misattri Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn how often people misremember alibis; new lessons from Denisova Cave; and how to remove pesticides from produce.
People often misremember where they were on a given date, which puts criminal alibis into question by Cameron Duke
Huge analysis of sediment DNA tells a deeper story of Denisova Cave by Cameron Duke
The Best Ways to Remove Pesticides From Produce was originally published June 29, 2018: https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/how-to-remove-pesticides-from-produce-the-misattri
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/alibi-memory-denisova-cave-history-cleaning-fruit-veggies
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how often people misremember where they were on a certain date; what Denisova Cave has taught us about human evolution, including the latest results from a huge DNA analysis; and how to remove pesticides from produce.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
If I asked you where you were at 8 am two Thursdays ago, would you be able to tell me? Maybe you have some memory, but are you confident that it is accurate? A recent study suggests you are likely to misremember where you were at a given time - a fact that doesn’t bode well for criminal alibis.
In a recent experiment, researchers at the University of Melbourne had 51 volunteers install a smartphone app that would track their location for a period of 30 days and record an audio clip every 10 minutes. Maybe a little creepy, but the participants did have the option to pause recording at any time for privacy reasons.
Anyway, at the end of the month, the participants were given a quiz. They got questions like, “where were you at 6 pm last Tuesday?” and could select their answer from four points on a Google map.
If you took this quiz, how well do you think you’d do? Would you get an A? A B-plus? On average, these participants were right 64 percent of the time — that’s a D. Some common mistakes they made were things like remembering where they were on a particular day of the week, but mistaking which week that day occurred in. Or, they confused places they visited at similar times, like going to multiple bars in one night, or places that were linked by similar activities, like two different places they visited while listening to the same music.
This research matters because a suspect in a criminal trial is expected to know exactly where they were on the date and time the crime occurred. This research shows just how common it is to get that wrong. Someone who confuses times and locations might be seen as lying when the truth might be that they just weren’t doing anything memorable at the time. Our memories are fallible, and so are the stories we tell from memory.
The researchers hope that their work can better inform how investigators ask questions and interpret answers from suspects. If people in the criminal justice system can better understand the types of memory errors that plague us all, then maybe they can avoid incriminating innocent people.
Scientists just made an important discovery about human evolution in a spot known for important discoveries about human evolution. And they did it not with fossils or artifacts, but by analyzing DNA in the dirt. The results give us a much deeper understanding of when and how different human species once lived side by side.
The spot I’m talking about is Denisova Cave, in southern Siberia. We know that it’s been occupied by hominin species, like modern humans and Neanderthals, for hundreds of thousands of years. We know this because fossils like teeth and bones of various human species have been found in the cave dating back roughly 300,000 years.
The cave’s biggest claim to fame was the discovery of the Denisovans, a now-extinct species of hominin that we know mated with Neanderthals. We know that because of another find in the cave: a pinky bone that belonged to a child who had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. Scientists have also found stone tools, jewelry, and other artifacts in the cave. All this suggests that the cave has a rich history. But so far, paleontologists haven’t had enough evidence to put the whole history together.
That’s why these paleontologists turned to DNA evidence. By matching the DNA found in sediment layers with the relative ages of those layers, researchers were able to construct a log of who was in the cave and when.
Here’s what they learned: The first human species to arrive in the cave were the Denisovans, who produced the oldest stone tools found in the cave between 250,000 and 170,000 years ago.
190,000 years ago, as the climate cooled, hyena and bear DNA started appearing in the cave. The Neanderthals showed up toward the end of this period and shared the cave with the Denisovans — for a little while.
The climate warmed back up 130,000 years ago, and at this point, animal populations shifted again and the Denisovans vanished. They didn’t come back to the cave for 30,000 years. But when they did, they returned with different mitochondrial DNA. That suggests they were a different lineage from the ones that lived there before.
In the youngest layers of sediment, researchers found mitochondrial DNA from modern humans along with paleolithic tools. That’s right — we modern humans joined the party too. Deep down, we’re all cave people.
CODY: You might have heard that you’re supposed to rinse your fruits and veggies before you eat ‘em, after you bring them home from the grocery store. Well it turns out that yes, cleaning produce is good, but there’s a right and a wrong way to do it. Here’s a story from 2018 we rinsed off to make it sound fresh — just for you.
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Let’s recap the main things we learned today
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CODY: Today’s writers were Cameron Duke and Ashley Hamer, who’s also our managing editor.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!