Issue #43

TUESDAY 13 OCTOBER 2026 · 3 CLAIMS CHECKED · 0 SURVIVED THE RECEIPTS · ISSUE 43 OF 43

• TRUE, BUT · Lab Not FieldTen minutes of AI erodes your ability to persist, Berkeley's headline says. The study measured skipped problems on a paid online task, three test problems each, and its largest trial found the skip gap was not significant.Berkeley News (UC Berkeley), headline on a 9 Oct 2026 story about an arXiv preprint; reached the Hacker News front page
• TRUE, BUT · Lab Not FieldGitHub's famous number says Copilot users finished a task 55% faster. A Harvard paper tracking 718 firms finds AI agents raised lines of code 30%, while finished work showed no statistically significant change.GitHub, research blog post (7 Sep 2022); tested at firm level in a Harvard working paper (current version 4 Aug 2026)
• TRUE, BUT · Headline Over FilingA solo developer rebuilt Word, Excel and PowerPoint with Claude, the post says. The WordCraft README says it is about 60% of the way to replacing Word for real work, and the spreadsheet app says 50%.Viral post trending on tech forums; apps published by ArtCraft (Brandon Thomas) on GitHub, 7 Oct 2026

THAT IS THE RECORD FOR ISSUE #43. NEXT VERDICT DROPS 9PM AEST.