Award-winning journalist Tim Harford explains what it means when you hear that a COVID vaccine is 95% effective. Then, learn about Sentinel Island, home to the last uncontacted people on Earth; and what we can learn about our solar system’s theoretical “Planet Nine” from the newly discovered planet HD 106906 b.

Additional resources from Tim Harford:

• Pick up "The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics" on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ad1dQ4
• Tim Harford's website: https://timharford.com/
• Tim Harford on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TimHarford

North Sentinel Island Is Home to the Last Uncontacted People on Earth by Reuben Westmaas

• Kane, S. (2016, May 15). This isolated tribe has rejected contact for centuries and remained hostile toward outsiders. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/sentinelese-uncontacted-island-tribe-photos-2016-5
• Sen, S. (2009). Savage bodies, civilized pleasures: M. V. Portman and the Andamanese. American Ethnologist, 36(2), 364–379. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2009.01140.x
• North Sentinel Island History. (2019). North Sentinel Island. https://northsentinelisland.com/north-sentinel-history/
• McDougall, D. (2006, February 12). Survival comes first for Sentinel islanders – the world’s last “stone-age” tribe. The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/12/theobserver.worldnews12
• Alastair Jamieson, Fieldstadt, E., & Associated Press. (2018, November 21). American killed by isolated tribe on India’s North Sentinel Island, police say. NBC News; NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-killed-isolated-tribe-india-s-north-sentinel-island-police-n938826

Scientists discovered a solar system with its own version of the theoretical "Planet Nine" by Grant Currin

• Planet X. (2019, December 19). NASA Solar System Exploration. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/hypothetical-planet-x/in-depth/
• Hubble identifies strange exoplanet that behaves like the long-sought. (2020). EurekAlert! his121020.php">https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-12/eic-his121020.php
• Nguyen, M. M., De Rosa, R. J., & Kalas, P. (2020). First Detection of Orbital Motion for HD 106906 b: A Wide-separation Exoplanet on a Planet Nine–like Orbit. The Astronomical Journal, 161(1), 22. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/abc012

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Find episode transcript here: daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/what-a-95-effective-vaccine-actually-means">https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/what-a-95-effective-vaccine-actually-means