The New History of a Famed Expedition 34%

5/26/2026, 7:42:49 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 11 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Appeal to Authority, and Representativeness Heuristic, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 34.9% saturation with 59 hits. Analysis detected 351 faulty-reasoning hits from 169 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41.7% and a BS Rank of 34% (11,203 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 66.60% of the article peer group.

Sacajawea remains a critical player in this story, of course, but Fehrman’s work also reveals new stories of other expedition members, as well as people they met along the way. 
There’s York, the Black man enslaved by William Clark; John Ordway, the soldier who journaled about Native Americans; and the Blackfoot youth named Wolf Calf who skirmished with the party members. 
And from afar, then-President Thomas Jefferson fought to support the expedition. 
Fehrman spent years digging through archives and collecting interviews, and he says the public interest in the expedition was akin to today’s Artemis II space mission. 
He’s joining us to talk about how Lewis and Clark  and everyone who helped them  battled their way through a wild and dangerous land that each of them understood very differently. 
GUEST  
Craig Fehrman | He’s an historian and a journalist. 
His book is called “This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark.” 
Airdate: May 28 and 30, 2026 
Confirmation Bias
17.8%
Anchoring Bias
0%
Availability Heuristic
15.4%
Representativeness Heuristic
19.5%
Hindsight Bias
0%
Overconfidence Bias
0%
Framing Effect
34.9%
Loss Aversion
0%
Status Quo Bias
0%
Sunk Cost Effect
0%
Optimism Bias
0%
Pessimism Bias
0%
Negativity Bias
0%
Self-Serving Bias
0%
Fundamental Attribution Error
0%
Actor-Observer Bias
0%
In-Group Bias
0%
Out-Group Homogeneity Bias
0%
Halo Effect
5.3%
Horn Effect
0%
Dunning-Kruger Effect
0%
Recency Bias
0%
Primacy Effect
0%
Blind-Spot Bias
0%
Ad Hominem
0%
Straw Man
0%
Appeal to Authority
20.7%
False Dilemma
0%
Slippery Slope
0%
Circular Reasoning
0%
Hasty Generalization
19.5%
Red Herring
0%
Bandwagon
0%
Appeal to Emotion
0%
Begging the Question
0%
Post Hoc (False Cause)
0%
Tu Quoque
0%
Burden of Proof
0%
Appeal to Nature
0%
Composition/Division
0%
Anecdotal
6.5%
No True Scotsman
0%
Ambiguity (Equivocation)
15.4%
Gambler’s Fallacy
0%
Middle Ground
0%
Personal Incredulity
0%
Special Pleading
0%
Genetic Fallacy
0%
Unattributed Quote
0%
Quote-first Misdirection
0%
Biased Writer Voice
33.1%
Indoctrination
19.5%
Politically Left Leaning Bias
0%
Politically Right Leaning Bias
0%
Attempt to Sell a Product or Service
0%

169 words analyzed.

Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.