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And so on.

And so on. In the next comparison US vs. Vietnam, I think he says "by the end of the year" when he means "by the end of the decade". Slip of the tongue, should never be allowed to stand in a carefully produced, copy-edited, reviewed scientific publication, but there it is. So in a sense, no, public speaking is not credible at all since such errors are far more common. In another sense, does this mean there's something wrong with public speaking?

Next he shows off his visualization software. The important thing to note here is that this is not an attempt to publish academic conclusions on fertility or life expectancy. He's using UN data (about which a great deal has been written elsewhere), to motivate the use of a particular tool, to combat what he believes are out-of-date general intuitions about that data. He is not making any scientific claims beyond the fact that may of what would be called "developing" countries do not in point of fact have very high fertility or low live expectancy.

There is nothing really to verify or falsify beyond his claim that anyone holds this intuition about developing countries in the first place. That is substantial and, even worse than his informal student study, he doesn't quantify it, let alone support it. He's not properly publishing a scientific conclusion, but then I'm not persuaded that he's pretending to.

Next he shows off his visualization software. The important thing to note here is that this is not an attempt to publish academic conclusions on fertility or life expectancy. He's using UN data (about which a great deal has been written elsewhere), to motivate the use of a particular tool, to combat what he believes are out-of-date general intuitions about that data. His hurried narration makes no scientific claims beyond the fact that a large group of what would be called "developing" countries used to have high fertility and low life expectancy, and now don't. And that AIDS reduced life expectancy in Africa. Neither of those is really controversial enough to really warrant further justification in this context: like the comparisons between pairs of countries it just provides something for you to go away and look up if you want serious corroboration.

There is nothing really to verify or falsify beyond his claim that anyone holds this intuition about developing countries in the first place. That is substantial, it's presented as novel and, even worse than his informal student study, he doesn't quantify it, let alone support it. He's not properly publishing a scientific conclusion, but then I'm not persuaded that he's pretending to.

I don't think it takes an anthropologist to analyse whether Rosling's numbers are verifiable or not. He certainly does not provide evidence in the TED talk that they are correct, in that sense they clearly are not verifiable from the talk. If that's what your friend means then fair enough.

I'm not aware that the field of anthropology rejects in principle the notion of child mortality being a real thing. So Rosling's comparisons could be checked against other sources. It would not be appropriate to cite Rosling in a paper if you needed a source for the relative child mortality rates of those pairs of countries. You would go to WHO and/or national medical reporting, and pay close attention to their methodologies.

He also hasn't really demonstrated anything about the state of knowledge of Swedish students, although the insinuation is that he has. He (serious-jokingly) says that there's a role for him to teach them something. His small trial is sufficient to support his small claim. His methodology is simple and obvious enough that the test is repeatable with other groups. There's no problem of fundamental science here. I don't know (and I don't think it matters) whether he's ever published on that particular result, but it's probably never appropriate to cite because it's such a limited and specific claim of no general interest. And might be cherry-picked.

It's all on the credibility of the individual speaker. The fact that TED has "chosen" them should lend no authority at all but probably, unfortunately, does. As for the credibility of TED as a forum, I don't recall what wit here in the UK observed that the country has very many people who would turn down an honour in principle, but tragically are never offered one. I suspect the same may be true of TED -- there are various reasons you might not want to do it, among them that the content of the talks tends to be over-trusted by people who enjoy TED and its speakers. These reasons are not universally applicable, and in any case apply most strongly to those who won't be invited.

I don't think it takes an anthropologist to analyse whether Rosling's numbers are verifiable or not. He certainly does not provide evidence in the TED talk that they are correct, in that sense they clearly are not verifiable from the talk. If that's what your friend means then fair enough. A TED talk is not an academic publication.

I'm not aware that the field of anthropology rejects in principle the notion of child mortality being a real thing. So Rosling's comparisons could be checked against other sources. It would not be appropriate to cite Rosling in a paper if you needed a source for the relative child mortality rates of those pairs of countries. You would go to WHO and/or national medical reporting, and pay close attention to their methodologies. In that sense they can be checked, and either verified or falsified. Will your friend give you long odds that Rosling has those pairs of countries in the right order according to WHO or his preferred source? Thought not ;-)

Rosling also hasn't really demonstrated anything about the state of knowledge of Swedish students, although the insinuation is that he has. He (serious-jokingly) says that there's a role for him to teach them something. His small trial is sufficient to support his small claim. His methodology is simple and obvious enough that the test is repeatable with other groups. There's no problem of fundamental science here. I don't know (and I don't think it matters) whether he's ever published on that particular result, but it's probably never appropriate to cite because it's such a limited and specific claim of no general interest. And might be cherry-picked.

TED talks are as credible as the individual speaker. The fact that TED has "chosen" them should lend no authority at all but probably, unfortunately, does. As for the credibility of TED as a forum, I don't recall what wit here in the UK observed that the country has very many people who would turn down an honour in principle, but tragically are never offered one. I suspect the same may be true of TED -- there are various reasons you might not want to do it, among them that the content of the talks tends to be over-trusted by people who enjoy TED and its speakers. These reasons are not universally applicable, and in any case apply most strongly to those who won't be invited.