Rationality

• Most Topular Stories

• Rumbling and Shaking Reported on Vancouver Island

  Skeptic.com

  Sharon Hill

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:28 pm

  Whole lotta shakin’, but it wasn’t an earthquake. Unusual shaking and rumbling reported around the capital region had people thinking “earthquake” – but, rest assured, there was no seismic event. Natural Resources Canada responded to public concerns by posting an explanation on its website, saying what was felt could have come from an “atmospheric source,” likely sound waves travelling over a long distance. Taimi Mulder, a seismologist at the Pacific Geoscience Centre in North Saanich, said it received several calls from the public reporting rumbling…

• How Do Placebos Relieve Pain?

  Derren Brown Blog

  Abeo

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:07 am

  “Scientists and doctors have been studying placebos for more than half a century. These inert “sugar pills” remain highly controversial, yet they are widely used in clinical treatment today—especially in the area of pain management. So-called “placebo analgesia” has been observed again and again not only in the pain clinic, but also in the neuroscience lab, where scientists have documented a placebo response in the brain’s pain pathways. Despite this evidence, nobody really understands the psychological processes involved in placebo analgesia. Presumably the power of these…

• Unimpressive haunting story from Scotland

  Skeptic.com

  Sharon Hill

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:41 pm

  Back-up needed as blessing fails to stop ‘hauntings’ – Odd – Scotsman.com. A church of Scotland minister has been called in to help a family who have become too terrified to stay in their “haunted” flat. Mother-of-two Vicky Dann told the Evening News how she had been left at her wits’ end by the spooky goings-on in their Dalkeith home which had left her daughters Jenna, 18, and Emma, 11, petrified. The stay-at-home mum claims strange shapes appear from nowhere in photographs she takes, while her children regularly see ghostly figures. In desperation she contacted…

• Blue spheres from the sky? Hmm, not buying it.

  Skeptic.com

  Sharon Hill

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:27 pm

  BBC News – Bournemouth resident mystified by ‘blue sphere shower’. A man in Dorset has been left mystified after tiny blue spheres fell from the sky into his garden. Steve Hornsby from Bournemouth said the 3cm diameter balls came raining down late on Thursday afternoon during a hail storm. He found about a dozen of the balls in his garden. He said: “[They're] difficult to pick up, I had to get a spoon and flick them into a jam jar.” The Met Office said the jelly-like substance was “not meteorological”. Tip: @abovetopsecret on Twitter Here is the…

• Brockovich gets involved in the New York mystery illness case

  Skeptic.com

  Sharon Hill

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:00 pm

  Mystery illness: More girls develop Tourette’s-like tics Erin Brockovich is on the case! The environmental activist, made famous by the 2000 movie starring Julia Roberts as the crusading single mom, tells USA TODAY she is investigating the case of more than a dozen teens from one upstate New York school plagued by mysterious, Tourette’s-like symptoms. One neurologist who has seen most of the affected girls has diagnosed their illness as psychological in origin; but that diagnosis has been difficult for some parents and community members to accept. Brockovich told USA TODAY that at…

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  RichardDawkins.net - All Content

• Student Faces Town’s Wrath in Protest Against a Prayer - Abby Goodnough - The New York Times

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:16 pm

  Jessica Ahlquist, a Rhode Island atheist, won a suit against her school's prayer poster.Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times CRANSTON, R.I. — She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years. A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional,…

• Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality - Darrel Ray ED.D. - IPC Press

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:08 pm

  Why are all the major religions consumed with sex? What makes sex so important, whether Buddhism or Islam, Christianity or Mormonism? What is the impact of religion on human sexuality? This book explores this and more. It ventures into territory that has never been examined. You will be surprised at how much religion has influenced your sexuality, who you marry, the pleasure you get or don't get from sex, and what you can do about it. Purchasing via the links below helps support RDFRS Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk

• To the Moon, Newt! - Lawrence Krauss - Slate

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:37 pm

  Gingrich’s wasteful, scientifically unsound plan to put colonists on lunar soil. Newt Gingrich PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images Newt Gingrich described himself as a visionary when he unveiled plans Wednesday to create a mammoth new space program, including a permanent colony on the moon within the next nine years. Within eight years, he pledges a new Mars rocket program—specifically, a “continually operating propulsion system) capable of getting to Mars within a remarkably short time.” He also reiterated his plan to declare at least part of the moon as U.S. territory, with colonists…

• [Update 1/27] Closing Statements - Richard Dawkins at the Jaipur Literature Festival - Abbas Raza - 3 Quarks Daily & Nirmukta

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:19 pm

  [Update 1/27] - Closing Statements Another one from Bala and Nirmuktavideos The video quality is not good on this one as it was from an audience member's camera but the sound seems ok Thanks to Miranda for the link D4 FL 07 from Dreamcast on Vimeo. There are also some other videos from Jaipur on their website Link to the 3 Quarks Daily post A few videos below thanks to Bala at Nirmukta. He posted links in the comments below but they've been added up here at the top to make sure others see them. Richard Dawkins Q&A, session 1 Richard Dawkins at Jaipur Literary Festival, India, answers…

• New Satellite Takes Spectacular High-Res Image of Earth - Adam Mann - Wired Science

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:24 am

  NASA released this incredible new high-res image of the Earth, taken by the recently launched Earth-observing satellite, Suomi NPP. The image, which centers on North and Central America, has been nicknamed “Blue Marble 2012″ after the famous “Blue Marble” image (below) taken during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The original Blue Marble, featuring the Arabian Peninsula and Africa, is one of the most well recognized photographs of all time. Suomi NPP is designed to help improve weather forecasts and increase scientists’ understanding of long-term climate change. Originally called the…

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  Overcoming Bias

• Far Idealism Hypocrisy

  Robin Hanson

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:15 am

  Not everything fits this story, but an awful lot does: we are more idealistic in far mode, which helps us hypocritically hold others to higher standards than we hold ourselves: In 6 studies, we found that advice is more idealistic than choice in decisions that trade off idealistic and pragmatic considerations. We propose that because advisers are more psychologically distant from the choosers’ decision problem, they construe the dilemma at a higher construal level than do choosers. … Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that compared with choosers, advisers weigh idealistic considerations more…

• Who Talks Politics?

  Robin Hanson

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:10 am

  Using data from a nationally representative survey of registered voters conducted around the 2008 U.S. presidential election … [we find that] people discussed politics as frequently as (or more frequently than) other topics such as family, work, sports, and entertainment with frequent discussion partners. … The frequency with which a topic is discussed is strongly and positively associated with reported agreement on that topic among these same discussion partners, … because people avoid discussing politics when they anticipate disagreement. (more) Political talk is quite different…

• Who Wants Kid $ Insure?

  Robin Hanson

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Financial inequality seems to be shaping up as a central issue in the US presidential campaign. (Other sorts of inequality, not so much.) Many note that such inequality has increased in recent decades. But let me repeat my anti-trend-tracking matra: if what matters is the efficiency of our institutions, trends are irrelevant unless they reveal such inefficiencies. So are the institutions that influence our financial inequality inefficient? Probably the simplest and strongest argument is insurance market failure: being risk-averse, we want to insure against variations in our distant future…

• Virtual Office Design

  Robin Hanson

  23 Jan 2012 | 7:00 pm

  Imagine that you have an office job (as most of you do). Full of meetings, memos, reports, proposals, phone and email ping pong, informal gossip in the hall or over lunch, etc. Now imagine that you work in a virtual office. That is, while you are actually lying at home in your VR pod (or being an em brain in a data center), you experience yourself as sharing a virtual office complex with your work colleagues. Sitting at your desk working at your computer, talking in a meeting, chatting with a neighbor in his doorway, or perhaps walking the cubicles to feel the buzz. OK, now ask yourself: how…

• Sex Ratio & Violence

  Robin Hanson

  23 Jan 2012 | 3:50 pm

  After some prodding by TGGP, I tried to dig into data studies on the relation between violence and sex ratios. Alas this seems to be one of those areas where results are all across the map: More men make more violence: here, here, More men make less violence: here, here, here. Mixed results: here, here. I quit, and tentatively conclude the evidence is unclear.

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  James Randi Educational Foundation

• Massaging The Truth

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Massage is an area of healthcare that is replete with pseudoscience. There are many legitimate practitioners, but the consumer needs to be careful when seeking a massage therapist   Recently, I attempted such a search to treat shoulder aches from many hours spent at my desk. I’ve been feeling like those evolution spoofs posters showing hunched over primates evolving into homo sapiens hunched over a computer.  I started my search online and quickly learned there are some key words that suggest whether your experience will be a therapeutic one or not. A consumer may end up getting…

• Loving A Conspiracy Theorist

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Sleeping with the Enemy   I am in love with a conspiracy theorist. While this is a revelation for me, evidently I have for some time. While I hesitate to define my partner by the few irrational beliefs that she holds, the statement rings true.   I began dating my partner; let’s just call her Jessica, while I was still in high school, long before I became active in the skeptical community. When I did become more skeptically active (blogging, reading, advocating, etc.), a mere two years ago, I realized that many of the controversial topics that we would discuss in passing had slants…

• Watch Richard Saunders at TAM 6 on Critical Thinking in Schools

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:44 am

  In this video from 2008, Australian skeptic, podcaster, author, TV personality, and professional origamist Richard Saunders talks at The Amaz!ng Meeting 6 about the origami Pigasus and dowsing as a model for teaching critical thinking to students. Videos from The Amaz!ng Meeting are provided free of charge on Randi.org and the JREF's YouTube channel.

• Last Week At Science-Based Medicine

  23 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Here is a recap of the stories that appeared last week at Science-Based Medicine,  a multi-author skeptical blog that separates the science from the woo in medicine. NIH Director Francis Collins doesn’t understand the problem with CAM (David Gorski) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/francis-collins-doesnt-get-cam/ Francis Collins was keynote speaker at a conference on “integrative oncology.” His speech included commonly repeated CAM distortions and logical fallacies and tried to support integrative ideas about personalized medicine and natural medicines by falsely…

• Trust Me, I'm A Doctor

  21 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Recently in the comments to a post on Science-Based Medicine we have been having a discussion about the nature of expertise. The post was superficially about tonsillectomy, but really about the relationship between the role of the physician as a medical expert and the role of the health care consumer in being well-informed. The article was a criticism of a post written by Seth Roberts in which he argued that patients should do their own research (meaning review of published research) and not rely upon the medical establishment, who is biased, self-serving, and ignorant of basic science…

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  Rationally Speaking

• On free will, response to readers

  Massimo Pigliucci

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:17 am

  by Massimo Pigliucciwww.scientificamerican.comIt has been interesting reading through the (at last count) 104 comments on my recent post concerning Jerry Coyne’s take on free will. The post has been viewed (again, so far) 5,660 times, which puts it in 6th place in the all-time ranking of Rationally Speaking entries (interestingly, number 4 is also about Jerry, concerning his changing views on the relationship between science and supernaturalism). Some recurring themes have emerged from that thread which seem worthy of further discussion.One of the things I had pointed out is that there…

• Considering the consequences

  Massimo Pigliucci

  23 Jan 2012 | 9:14 am

  by Michael De DoraI have never thought much of consequentialism, the moral theory which asserts that determining “the good” or “the moral” is a matter of measuring outcomes. Decisions about what is moral, consequentialists say, should depend on the potential or realized costs and benefits of a moral belief or action. There are myriad problems with this line of thought, and while I have already discussed several on this blog, I would like to use this post to examine in more depth what I think are the four strongest objections to consequentialism.First, consequentialism says nothing…

• Radical reform for peer review?

  Massimo Pigliucci

  19 Jan 2012 | 2:29 pm

  scienceforseo.comby Massimo PigliucciA recent piece by Scott Jaschik in “Inside Higher Education” pointed out what a number of my colleagues have been thinking for a while now: the peer review system for scholarly journals doesn’t work very well, needs to be reformed, and really ought to take radical advantage of new technologies. There is, of course, going to be quite a bit of resistance to any change coming from the usual quarters, beginning with older academics who still think of social networking in terms of meeting colleagues after work for a martini (well, okay, nothing wrong with…

• Experimenting in e-Publishing

  Massimo Pigliucci

  18 Jan 2012 | 8:06 am

  As readers of Rationally Speaking may know, there are two collections of essays pertinent to the topics covered by this blog that have been available at the Amazon Kindle store for a while: "Rationally Speaking: Skeptical Essays on Reality as We Think We Know It" includes all the essays I wrote for Rationally Speaking before it was a blog (it started out as a monthly syndicated internet column), while "Thinking About Science: Essays on the Nature of Science: 2003-2008" republishes all my essays in the homonymous Skeptical Inquirer column (still ongoing) during those years.Since I'm…

• Rationally Speaking Podcast: Donald Prothero on science deniers' playbook

  Massimo Pigliucci

  17 Jan 2012 | 7:19 am

  Guest Donald Prothero joins us to discuss the common tactics and thinking of science deniers and the implications of this assault on science for our future. The denial of scientific realities in issues like global warming, creationism, vaccine safety, and AIDS, is growing in our society. Not only is our acceptance of scientific "inconvenient truths" under attack, but even scientists themselves have been threatened.Donald R. Prothero is Professor of Geology at Occidental College and Lecturer in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology. He is the author, co-author, editor, or…

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  Applied Rationality

• The next big GOP worry after voter fraud

  Dave Ribar

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:42 am

  Why do Republicans hate business regulations?Maybe because the ones they come up with themselves are so ridiculous.An Oklahoma Republican is pushing a bill to outlaw the use of human fetuses in food, because, as he says, “there is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors.”This level of stupidity should be disqualifying; instead, some folks wear it like a badge of honor.

• Jobs for Greensboro?

  Dave Ribar

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:02 pm

  The company that is proposing a new commercial development at the corner of W. Friendly Avenue and Hobbs Road, has released plans to the News & Record.The developers of a proposed shopping center at West Friendly Avenue and Hobbs Road met with News & Record reporters and editorial writers today. Here is some of what the developers said:• The center will have four buildings that encompass about 53,000 square feet on 6.7 acres. The two buildings on the north side of the property will be leased to small shops. On the south side along Friendly Avenue, there will be a grocery store and a…

• North Carolina did not add teachers

  Dave Ribar

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:55 pm

  The Civitas Institute (and others) are pushing selective numbers to try to show that the draconian K-12 budget cuts by the Republican legislature actually increased the number of teachers being funded by the state in 2011-12.Civitas is taking its numbers from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction Statistical Profile and focusing on the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years. Below I show the figures for teachers from the 2008-09 through 2011-12 school years. Full-time teachers in public schools School year State-funded Federally-funded Locally-funded Total 2008-09 86,447 5,699 6,952…

• The job picture in NC ain't pretty

  Dave Ribar

  24 Jan 2012 | 6:16 pm

  Some blog posts should come with child warnings. The monthly labor report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that jobs continue to pass the Tar Heel state by. While the number non-farm jobs nationally grew by about 200,000 on a seasonally-adjusted basis in December, the number of non-farm jobs in North Carolina actually fell slightly, dropping by 4,400.The first graph below shows North Carolina's employment each month since January 2007.Seasonally-adjusted non-farm employment (in 000s) in North Carolina from the BLS Current Employment Statistics The next graph shows the…

• Pope's misinformation for UNC alumni

  Dave Ribar

  22 Jan 2012 | 11:16 am

  The John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy can be faulted for a host of sins, but a lack of ambition is not among them. Not content to mislead and misinform state lawmakers to cut public funding for North Carolina's public university system, the Pope Center also operates a misleading web-tool to also discourage private donations from some alumni.Did you attend a North Carolina college or university?If so, you undoubtedly receive frequent pleas from your school for financial support. Does your school deserve your donations?Find out using this Alumni Guide to North Carolina colleges.

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  Unreasonable Faith

• Answering the Star Tribune

  vorjack

  28 Jan 2012 | 4:00 am

  From The Lead blog, I see that the Star Tribune has an article asking “Why should I accept same-sex couples?” They chose the responses of Rev. Lisa Cressman, an Episcopalian priest who answers quite well. Still, there are a few cases where I’d answer differently.1) Were our ancestors all dumb and bigoted because they thought homosexuality was wrong? Some may think that accepting homosexuality is innovative and progressive, but others say abandoning our previous norm may be presumptuous on our part. In other words, our ancestors might have been right, and we might be…

• Back to the Future: Bible Edition

  Daniel Florien

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:08 pm

  [via]

• Atheist Temple

  Daniel Florien

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:18 am

  New library in Stuttgart © DieterJL

• Julia Sweeny on Victoria Jackson’s “Comedy”

  vorjack

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:00 am

  Back in 2008, everybody knew that if Obama was elected that some of America’s right wing would come unhinged. But I don’t know if we really expected the types of people who would become right wing mouthpieces. We should have; we had early examples during the election. People like Joe the Plumber, who is the epitome of some kind of identity politics, yet isn’t named Joe and isn’t really a plumber.As we approach the next election, the examples are worse. Chuck Norris? Seriously? Seriously seriously?But somehow the worst is Victoria Jackson. She’s just so ……

• Islamic Beauty

  Daniel Florien

  26 Jan 2012 | 2:18 pm

  [via]

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  Skepticblog

• Science TV “network decay”

  Donald Prothero

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:00 am

  It happens with disgusting regularity. You will flip through the various basic cable channels which are nominally “science oriented” (often grouped together on the dial if they feature scientific topics) and come up with nothing but junk, pseudoscience, and worse. “Reality shows” about subjects with little or no science content, tons of paranormal and pseudoscientific shows promoting ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, and creationism—all fill the airwaves for channels like Discovery, The  Learning Channel, History Channel, and even the Science Channel and National Geographic…

• Rescuing People from Aliens

  Daniel Loxton

  24 Jan 2012 | 12:27 am

  Working on refinements to my upcoming cryptozoology book with Skepticblog’s own Don Prothero (due out later in 2012) gave me a chance yesterday to dip back into Harvard psychologist Susan Clancy’s fascinating 2005 book about her studies of alien abductees, Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens. I thought I might share a couple of passages from the book here, partly because they dovetail so nicely with my own “Reasonableness of Weird Things” arguments. Clancy’s area of primary interest is not skeptical investigation of paranormal…

• Science, Medicine, and Academia

  Steven Novella

  23 Jan 2012 | 7:05 am

  Proponents of so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are forcing us to answer a question no one has explicitly asked – should there be a scientific basis to medicine? Proponents are generally very coy about this topic, and in most venues want to pretend that they are being scientific, while really promoting “other” forms of evidence and “other” ways of knowing. They promote health care freedom laws designed to weaken the scientific standards of medicine, while simultaneously infiltrating academia with assurances that they are science-based.

• SkepticBlog Appreciation by Country

  Brian Dunning

  19 Jan 2012 | 1:45 pm

  So the other day I asked our goodly site admin William Bull for some stats by country, eager to see how it compares with Skeptoid podcast listener distribution. Turns out it’s pretty close. This graph (click to see full size) shows SkepticBlog.org page views over the past year per million of each population’s country. So it’s a fair indicator of this blog’s relative popularity in each country. (Any countries not listed had fewer than one page view per million population.) Obviously this is an English language blog written by primarily American authors, so we cannot…

• Leakey’s Luck—or Leakey’s Laughingstock?

  Donald Prothero

  18 Jan 2012 | 4:00 am

  Last Saturday, January 14,  our Skeptic Society field trip “Viva Mojave” passed by a freeway exit marked “Calico Early Man Site”. On the bus, I briefly discussed the story behind the sign, but it an interesting object lesson about science and skepticism that bears repeating here. If you drive up the bumpy road, you will find a few sheds, trails with railings, and pits in the ground, and on weekends, maybe a volunteer or two. There is a dedicated support group with its own website, and the BLM maintains the site as if were a legitimate scientific discovery. Even the…

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  Derren Brown Blog

• How Do Placebos Relieve Pain?

  Abeo

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:07 am

  “Scientists and doctors have been studying placebos for more than half a century. These inert “sugar pills” remain highly controversial, yet they are widely used in clinical treatment today—especially in the area of pain management. So-called “placebo analgesia” has been observed again and again not only in the pain clinic, but also in the neuroscience lab, where scientists have documented a placebo response in the brain’s pain pathways. Despite this evidence, nobody really understands the psychological processes involved in placebo analgesia. Presumably the power of these…

• What if humans were twice as intelligent?

  Exeo

  24 Jan 2012 | 4:07 am

  A fun article at livescience.com poses an interesting question; “What happens if we all become twice as smart?” This is not a strange thought since human IQ has been steadily rising since measurements began. This is called the Flynn effect and social scientists are not sure what caused it, though improved nutrition, education and social complexity in the media age are all pinned as being factors in the increase. Interestingly, not as much would change as you think, says Richard Haier, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine. Although we would be able to learn…

• An encounter with our cousins once removed

  Exeo

  18 Jan 2012 | 3:51 am

  This will probably be the most amazing thing you’ll see for a while. But if you think we’re referring to an encounter with the Derrenite dynasty of Clan Brown, you’ll be sorely disappointed (or not, depends?). What you’ll see below, and we do urge you to watch, is footage of a troop of wild mountain gorillas in Uganda, marching through a tourist camp as if they own the place, sitting down for a snack next to a stunned tourist before moving on. These are our second closest living relatives after the chimpanzee, since our common ancestors with the gorillas diverged about…

• Exceptionally beautiful video of DNA wrapping and replicating

  Exeo

  17 Jan 2012 | 3:56 am

  In the video below we take a look at the beautiful and rather psychedelic world of intracellular life. These animated images show in stunning detail how molecules containing the genetic instructions that form life, DNA, fold up to form chromosomes (46 compact packages of genetic material) so the cell can divide. Cell division is of course necessary for creatures to grow or to replace older cells in bodies. More importantly we need some of those chromosomes to share our genetic material and to produce a next generation of Derren-loving hairless apes. In total there is 6 feet (1,8 meters) of…

• The Debunking Handbook

  Dupin

  16 Jan 2012 | 7:24 am

  There’s a very strong likelihood that if you’re reading this you’re either: a) a rational skeptic b) a trojan spiritualist c) a fan of Derren Brown Good news then that all three will find something to enjoy in The Debunking Handbook, an Ebook that is free to download courtesy of skepticalscience.com, a website that focuses primarily on explaining what peer-reviewed science has to say about global warming. They describe it thus: “Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, there’s no summary of the literature that offers practical…

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  Skepchick

• Skepchick Quickies 1.27

  Amanda

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:03 am

  Do girls naturally prefer dolls to trucks? Evidence from 2 primate studies – Can looking at primate behavior help us determine how nature vs. nurture affects gender roles? From Shawn. MIT climate scientist’s wife threatened by deniers – “Prominent MIT researcher Kerry Emanuel has been receiving an unprecedented “frenzy of hate” after a video featuring an interview with him was published recently by Climate Desk.” New Hampshire Republicans propose bills that prevent police from protecting domestic abuse victims - From Mark. The craziest conspiracy theorist…

• AI: Critical Thinking 101

  Sam Ogden

  26 Jan 2012 | 2:18 pm

  I can’t recall if we’ve had had this discussion here before — I apologize for the repeat if we have — but as lead organizer for the Houston Skeptic Society, I am teaching a quarterly course on the basics of critical thinking and the processes of skepticism. The class is geared for those just discovering skepticism, or for those who might want to brush up on their critical thinking skills. Now I have a basic outline for the course, and I know pretty much how the class will unfold, but I thought I’d pick your brains for even more ideas; especially since most of…

• When The Feared Have the Most to Fear

  Heina

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:14 pm

  Despite being an ex-Muslim, i.e. someone who learned so much about Islam that she was appalled enough to leave it, I’ve been accused of being an apologist for Islam. Incidents like the actions of the New York Police Department are what make me sound like I love Islam rather than have left it. A year ago, accusations began to fly concerning the New York Police Department’s chosen methods for combating terrorism done by Muslims. Specifically, it was alleged that, as part of training, officers were being shown The Third Jihad, a film intended to spread the idea that American Muslims…

• Skepchick Quickies 1.26

  Amanda

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:36 am

  TIME tells ladies to stop kvetching about doing more chores than men – Because it’s only 20 more minutes a day, which doesn’t add up to anything, right? From John. This paper on men falling asleep after sex is Exhibit A for weak evolutionary psychology – “So… what does the study actually prove? Nothing. It’s a flawed study that proves only that people are eager for “findings” that prop up gender stereotypes.” HPV vaccine does not cause autoimmune disease – From Kathy, who links to the original in her post if you want to go read…

• Measuring Success: Proving that Activism Works

  Masala Skeptic

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:00 pm

  When you are trying to change the world, how do you know when you’ve succeeded? Last week, when Skepchick went dark, did it do any good? Last year, I put together a workshop on skeptical activism with the fantastic Desiree Schell. I thought it might be useful to share some of the components of this workshop in a few blog posts, and to provide some examples of activism that are working or that are not. More and more, skeptical groups are starting to move into the realm of activism. As we continue to see examples of poor critical thinking, bad information and societal trends toward…

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  Skeptico

• Dr. Phil Doesn't Understand Psychology

  Skeptico

  18 Jan 2012 | 10:32 pm

  Or he put his knowledge on hold for this show. After all these years, it still surprises me that people have the same old fake psychic cold readers on their TV shows. From Orac, I learned last week that Dr. Phil was going to have John Edward and Char Marglois on his show January 10. Can the producers of this show not have heard of the lame cold reading tricks these people use to fool their marks? It’s not as if they couldn’t have contacted the JREF for a detailed explanation of how it’s done (along with the information that Edward and others refuse to be tested for Randi’s million…

• The Golden Woos #3

  Skeptico

  2 Jan 2012 | 3:20 pm

  It’s the new year, and so time for the third annual* Golden Woo Awards for outstanding work in the promotion of Woo in the previous year. Here are the winners: [* Except there were no awards last year, so we will include services to woo in the last two years.] The Egnorance Prize for the scientist or academic who said or did the silliest thing to support Woo The Woo goes to Professor John Haught, who during his debate with Jerry Coyne (Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?), informed us that “because my wife turned the gas on” is a different level of answer to the question “why…

• A Wonderful Life - Without Religion

  Skeptico

  24 Dec 2011 | 12:49 pm

  CNN: shame on you. Not for publishing Larry Alex Taunton’s (“Special to CNN”) opinion piece on why the country would decline without Christian belief: My Take: When Bedford Falls Becomes Pottersville. Not per se. But for making it their main story. This was what greeted me when I turned on my screen this morning: That was right in the middle, up front and at the top, on the home page of a supposedly “news” organization. Hard to miss. In case you can’t read the blurb, it says: The 1946 classic "It's a Wonderful Life" is a fitting metaphor for a nation absent Christian…

• Philosophy Isn't Logic (Apparently)

  Skeptico

  15 Dec 2011 | 11:03 pm

  Via Jerry Coyne I learn of some Remarkably stupid remarks by a sophisticated theologian. In the New York Times this week is an article about philosopher Alvin Plantinga, headlined Philosopher Sticks Up for God. Well maybe he does, but not with logic. Get a load of this reason why we should believe in god: Mr. Plantinga readily admits that he has no proof that God exists. But he also thinks that doesn’t matter. Belief in God, he argues, is what philosophers call a basic belief: It is no more in need of proof than the belief that the past exists, or that other people have minds, or that one…

• Michael Egnor's Straw Colloquialism

  Skeptico

  11 Dec 2011 | 11:26 pm

  I’m a bit late to this one. Over three months late, to be precise. But I came across this this piece again by accident last week, and was reminded how bad it was, and I had to write something about it anyway. Especially as I just found the follow up post (more on that later). I’m talking about Michael Egnor’s defense of Ann Coulter: In which I take up P.Z. Myers' challenge on Ann Coulter and Evolution. The main thrust of Egnor’s post is to reduce evolution (actually just natural selection) to “stuff changes and survivors survive.” Egnor says this shows that evolution is mere…

• 

  The Blog for WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com

• Notice how the natural thing to do is to laugh at the creationist

  Thomas

  24 Jan 2012 | 6:09 pm

  If you watch this video, it comes to a point where the politician is backed into a corner, and the only thing that people can do is laugh at him. His creationist beliefs are ridiculous: Ridiculous.

• Where do Christians get their morals?

  Thomas

  21 Jan 2012 | 6:22 pm

  There is a popular cartoon floating around the internet this week that says: If Christians pick and choose only the good parts of the Bible… didn’t they already have morals prior to reading it? This is a point that Christians and other theists seem unable to grasp. Either you believe and follow the Bible - the word of God - in its entirety, or you pick and choose. As soon as you pick and choose, you have created your own morality. How do you create it? How do you decide as a Christian that you will ignore the parts of God’s Word that condone slavery, misogyny, racism,…

• The humor of the “Intelligent Design” argument

  Thomas

  16 Jan 2012 | 6:22 pm

  This article was mentioned in the comments and deserves to be read by both theists and atheists alike: Intelligent Design Made Mankind? It is a humorous look at the “Intelligent Design” argument and demonstrates how very silly the argument is.

• The incredible ignorance behind the statement “God created the Universe”

  Thomas

  12 Jan 2012 | 6:44 pm

  The video is entitled: “Neil DeGrasse Tyson Destroys Bill O’Reilly.” Is that how you want to play this game? Because if it is, here is a list of things from the past that scientists didn’t understand… If that is how you want to invoke your evidence of God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Even more important is the character of the person who would invoke such an ignorant argument. Tyson goes on: What would bother me is if you were so content in your answer that you no longer had…

• Why are atheists so hated in the USA? An amazing answer to the question

  Thomas

  8 Jan 2012 | 6:35 pm

  Have you ever asked yourself this question: Why are atheists so hated in the USA? How could a religion supposedly based on love harbor so much hatred for another group of fellow human beings? Here is the answer to this question: Why are atheists so hated in the USA? You will never think about Christianity or Atheism in the same way after reading this.

• 

  denialism blog

• Are liberals really more likely to accept science than conservatives?

  23 Jan 2012 | 11:44 am

  Today's NYT has Thomas Edsall's What the Left Get's Right, the follow up piece to last week's What the Right Get's Right, and what's fascinating is how even conservative commentators think liberals get science right more often than conservatives. Or at least they are less likely to view it ideologically: A few conservative concessions to liberalism's strengths were made without qualification; others were begrudging. Nonetheless, in the conservative assessment, common themes emerge: Liberals recognize the real problems facing the poor, the hardships resulting from economic globalization and…

• The Teenage Mutant Turtle Threat to Our Morality!

  19 Jan 2012 | 3:23 pm

  Via Everything is Terrible. Read the comments on this post...

• Two great obesity articles from the NYT and what they mean for you

  18 Jan 2012 | 5:27 am

  A few weeks ago Tara Parker Pope wrote The Fat Trap for the NYT and once I read it I started sending it to other doctors I know. It is a great summary on the current knowledge of why we get fat, and more importantly for those of us that already are tipping the scales, why is it so damn hard to take that weight back off. (I'll discuss Young, Obese and Getting Weight Loss Surgery nearer the end) Beginning in 2009, he and his team recruited 50 obese men and women. The men weighed an average of 233 pounds; the women weighed about 200 pounds. Although some people dropped out of the study, most of…

• Homeopathy is an embarrassment to everyone living in this century

  17 Jan 2012 | 2:19 pm

  Zite has failed me. For some reason under the "science" heading it referred me to thisold hpathy article on homeopathic treatment of burns. I realize this site has been a source of idiocy for years but I think this is a true gem. It makes me want to cry for humanity. Orac, don't look, it will make your brain explode. The question is, how should you treat burns? Most normal, sane people, in the treatment of the acute burn would suggest cooling the tissue, thus ending the process of damage from the exposure to heat, as well as adding the secondary benefit of soothing the injury. What do they…

• In case you missed it, some denialism mentions of note

  14 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  Being inactive for the last couple of years I still read about denialism being mentioned in some interesting places. Two in particular I thought I share. Peter Gleick in Forbes write on "The Rise and Fall of Climate Change Denial is interesting largely because it's in Forbes. And predictably, for publishing in a right-wing magazine, the comments are basically 100% against Gleick, a national academy member, accusing him of everything from incompetence to dishonesty. It's actually pretty remarkable. But at least the scientific viewpoint is starting to infiltrate the literature of the right…

• 

  Scepticon

• Chiropractic for the 21st Century

  Scepticon

  23 Jan 2012 | 8:49 pm

  Every week I get a number of email alerts about various online medical journals. Each email represents the opportunity for blogging material though many are deathly dull. Several of the journals I receive alerts from are in the AltMed domain and I sometimes wonder why I bother looking through them at all. The mix is usually some proportion of “Survey of x population using y alternative modality” often merely chronicling the depressing rise of AltMed/CAM in general use (either actual or claimed depending on your definition of CAM). The rest are often boringly conventional in their…

• NZ (Nearly) Tops Skeptics Chart

  Scepticon

  19 Jan 2012 | 6:35 pm

  Just in my RSS feed is this post on the SkepticBlog site talking about the number of page views of the blog ranked by country. The stats are adjusted and represent page views per million of the country’s population. New Zealand follows Canada in the #1 spot relegating the US to #3. HA. What’s the deal? Why are we so over represented? I’d like to say it’s because our population is just highly educated and naturally receptive to the sceptical mind set. Any suggestions? Page Views of "Skepticblog" per million Ranked by Country Filed under: Sciblogs, skepticism…

• Thai Yoga Massage: Herald, Wherefore Art Thou Sense?

  Scepticon

  12 Jan 2012 | 1:40 pm

  So here I am, again latching onto the brilliance of others and writing my own counterpoint to the nonsense that is currently being run in the NZ Herald under the “Alternative Therapies” summer fluff. Previously Alison kicked us off by looking at the use of medicinal leeches, as did  Siouxsie, and Michael took on Ayurvedic Medicine. The latest round concerns something called Thai Yoga Massage or Nuad (Nuat) Boran. Essentially the practice consists of the massaged party adopting a series of yoga positions while the massager applies pressure to the body’s “Sen”…

• The Webwhisperer: A Medical Resource

  Scepticon

  11 Jan 2012 | 2:19 pm

  I generally look with interest to see how people are getting to my blog. Often the referrer is Mr Google, the next culprit is usually Facebook, then there are pages where someone has posted a link to an article I written for others to check out. These are the most satisfying. Sometimes it’s someone pointing out how stupid I am, many times I’m being used as a resource on some forum discussing AltMed. Today I found I was being linked to by a site called the Webwhisperer. The Webwhisperer is a blog run by a UK doctor who is attempting to create a resource of reliable medical…

• God, UFOs, Life After Death: What do New Zealanders Believe?

  Scepticon

  6 Dec 2011 | 7:28 pm

  Reading the paper today I learned that 1/3 of New Zealanders believe that we have been visited by extra terrestrials. I thought this was an interesting juxtaposition of stories given that a page or two later there was a report about a possibly habitable planet. Maybe aliens are visiting us from Kepler-22b. Keplerites aside, I decided to look up the report from UMR Research about the beliefs of my fellow citizens. The report makes for interesting reading (if somewhat disconcerting in places) and I’ll be looking for the follow-up reports around Maori culture and Herbal remedies. The first…

• 

  Small Town Skepticism

• Really? That's the best you could come up with?

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:59 am

  Sorry for such a short entry - I'm traveling today so this has to be quick - blogging from a smartphone is a challenge. The local newspaper, The Sarnia Observer, has published, in the Friday, January 27th edition of it's editorial, an entry (really a sales pitch for the guy's book) from an believer who argued that Hitch (Christopher Hitchens) had it wrong and science doesn't support his claims (Atheist’s faith a leap too far for science). The complete argument that the contributor is making is that the earth and the universe is fine-tuned and that if any of the physical constants were…

• Religion Deserves Ridicule Not Respect

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:12 am

  Jay Leno is a comedian and being a comedian means poking fun and pointing out absurdities.  During his opening monologue on a recent show, he referenced a "sacred" building in the Sikh religion when suggesting that Mitt Romney vacationed in a golden palace.As a result of the joke, someone from the Sikh faith filed a lawsuit against him because of his statements, "claiming Leno is responsible for encouraging hatred and ridicule of his religion".Dr. Randeep Dhillon, the person suing Jay Leno, is right, however.  Just simply showing the building to people and educating them about it is…

• The Pope on Gay Marriage

  10 Jan 2012 | 8:50 am

  Recently the guy with the funny hat piped up about his views on gay marriage - he feels that "Gay marriage (is) a threat to humanity's future".This from the same person who is against condoms and heads an organization exposed for its consistent and thorough cover-up of child sexual abuse (which included sodomy).  I will admit that there is a substantial difference between "gay marriage" and what the clergy were doing but it doesn't favour the Catholic Church.  Gay marriage is between consenting adults and the "gay sex" committed by the clergy was forced on young children (rape, we…

• Tim Minchin's Song Cut from ITV Show

  23 Dec 2011 | 9:46 am

  Though many will have already seen this, in the interest of keeping it trending, here is Tim Minchin's song that was cut from Jonathan Ross' show on ITV (Britain).It is a beautiful, intelligent and funny song about Woody Allen... Jesus.

• The Logan Tucker Case: Not Solved by Psychics

  21 Dec 2011 | 10:47 am

  Because I'm busy (preparing for Isaac Newton's birthday party), this is a cross-post from www.stoprobbie.com (the site with the focus of exposing the harms committed by liars (psychics) like Robbie Thomas - who is not psychic).I received an email about Robbie Thomas being on a recent "radio" show (December 15 or 16) and though I haven't had a chance to listen to the program yet (I have to put all my forks away or the "radio" show will drive me to poke my eyes out - Robbie is a consistent liar and an abuser of the English language.  Listening to his radio programs involves a re-write of…

• 

  The Skeptic's Field Guide

• Part 1 (d): Seekers after truth - Humbug! 2nd Edition

  Theo Clark

  11 Jan 2012 | 1:45 am

  Truth-seeking involves both a habit of mind (a disinterested search for truth) and a set of intellectual skills (the capacity to make a distinction between clay and another substance with a similar colour and texture). Humbug-hunting is a way to foster one's critical thinking abilities in order to better seek the truth. It can be a rewarding and enjoyable pastime, but one needs to have the right attitude. Our enjoyment of hunting for humbug is founded on a well-honed sense of the ridiculous, an appreciation of unconscious irony, a readiness to engage in shameless hypocrisy, and a commitment…

• Part 1 (c): Skeptical Thinking (How to Apply Humbug!) - Humbug! 2nd Edition

  Theo Clark

  2 Jan 2012 | 11:59 pm

  Most knowledge is provisional, and over the course of time, many "certainties" prove to be false or misleading. Decision makers (such as bureaucrats), keepers of the "Truth" (such as academics), people who paraphrase press releases (such as journalists), and people who comment on blog posts, often have an "axe to grind", or rather, a view of the world which they hope will prevail. When such people write or speak, they often dress up mere opinions as well founded, research based certainties. Be afraid. Be very afraid of dogmatism masquerading as superior insight (see special pleading). We all…

• Part 1 (b): Style and treatment - Humbug! 2nd Edition

  Theo Clark

  28 Dec 2011 | 10:03 pm

  The writing style of Humbug! is not disinterested and scholarly, it is deliberately assertive, "over the top" and declamatory. We frequently resort to the use of irony, overstatement and over-simplification in order to emphasize salient features of the fallacy under consideration. For this reason we will no doubt cause offence to most readers at some point. So be it. (It should be noted, besides the real examples, none of the scenarios described or characters sketched or depicted in this book are based on actual persons or real institutions.) For each fallacy, there is a cartoon which relates…

• Part 1 (a): Purpose and usage - Humbug! 2nd Edition

  Theo Clark

  23 Dec 2011 | 2:24 am

  The short title of this book is Humbug! Humbug" may be defined as "deceptive or false talk or behaviour" (OED). Our general aim in writing this book was to create a tool for the detection of humbug. Humbug! is intended to serve two main purposes. 1) A "ready reference" which may be consulted as required during discussions, forums, debates, lectures, public talks, seminars and tutorials, whether such events are part of a formal program of study, or open to the broader community. 2) A guide to be consulted as part of the reading and writing process – particularly by students as they research…

• Hunting Humbug 101 v2: Hunting Humbug 101 01 - Podcast update

  Theo Clark

  19 Dec 2011 | 10:18 pm

  Hunting Humbug 101 v2: Hunting Humbug 101 01 - Podcast update: An update to what's going on with the podcast and why I'm re-publishing it. Direct download: http://www.archive.org/download/HuntingHumbug101Episode1-WhatIsHumbug/HuntingHumbug10101-PodcastUpdate.mp3 Subscribe

• 

  Bad Astronomy

• The Gingrich Who Stole The News Cycle

  Phil Plait

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:38 pm

  Because I was on the road Wednesday night, I missed the first few hours of reaction to Newt Gingrich’s speech in Florida, when he said he wants to have a permanent station on the Moon "by the end of my second term". It wasn’t until Thursday morning that I opened up my web browser and saw that every blog, every news site, everyone, was talking about it. I must have had dozens of tweets and emails telling me about it and asking my opinion. So I found a video of the speech and watched it. The only reason I didn’t laugh out loud at the nonsense unfolding from Mr.

• Siriusly twinkling

  Phil Plait

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:19 am

  If you live nearly anywhere on Earth — those of you north of 73° you’re out of luck, but I’m guessing there aren’t many of you! — and look to the southeast shortly after sunset, you’ll see the figure of Orion. Follow the three belt stars to the east, and you’ll see a bright star: Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. If it’s near the horizon, you may see it twinkling madly: flickering, dancing, perhaps even changing color. This gave astronomer David Lynch an idea: take a time exposure of Sirius with a camera and telephoto, and…

• Weekly Space Roundup for January 26, 2012

  Phil Plait

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:05 am

  Yesterday was the weekly live video Space Roundup, run by Fraser Cain from Universe Today. This week we had Pamela Gay, Alan Boyle, Nicole Gugliucci, and Ian O’Neill. We talked about the solar storm, black holes, arsenic life, Newt Gingrich, Phobos-Grunt, and answered some questions from the listeners. Here’s the video: We do these every week on Google+ at 18:00 UTC on Thursday. Come join us!

• This is a galaxy

  Phil Plait

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:23 pm

  I have nothing to add to this, except to say it’s great, and I saw it because Brian Cox mentioned it on Twitter. Oh yeah: one more thing; watch it in HD and full screen. Coooool.

• Rosetta’s stunning Mars

  Phil Plait

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:52 am

  Click here to view gallery

• 

  TheNESS Blog Feed

• Genesis Weak|Steven Novella|Neurologica

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:27 am

  I advise you to please turn off your irony meters before reading further or clicking the link to the video I will be discussing today. You may also want to take a couple of deep relaxing breaths to help preserve your neurons from the irrational assault they are about to suffer. I was recently asked to take a look at Genesis Week with Ian Juby (Wazooloo), a slick YouTube series in which Juby takes us on a mystical journey through the looking glass of creationist nonsense. In his world science and reason are flipped completely upside down. It is, as they say, a “target rich…

• Placebo Again.|Mark Crislip|Science-Based Medicine

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:04 am

  Medicine is simultaneously both easy and hard. As an Infectious Disease doctor, my day can be summed up with the phrase “me find bug, me kill bug, me go home.” Sometimes it is just that simple. A lot of the time it isn’t. I may not be certain what the infection is, or even if the patient has an infection, or allergies and/or antibiotic resistance limit therapeutic options, the host has co-morbidities that limit effectiveness, and the patient has no financial resources for the needed treatment. I am lucky, since most infections are acute, make people feel terrible, and require a…

• Exposing Nutritional Pseudoscience|Steven Novella|Neurologica

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am

  Which? magazine is the UK equivalent of Consumer Reports – an independent magazine primarily focused on product reviews and providing objective information to the consumer. They recently conducted an investigation of nutritional therapists, with scandalous (although not surprising) results. This kind of expose is becoming more common, and that is a very good thing. The concept is very simple – just present as a typical client off the street and ask practitioners to do what they do every day, give their professional advice. This is a good real-world assessment of what a profession…

• Night of the living naturopaths|Linda Rosa|Science-Based Medicine

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:45 am

  Colorado’s “degreed” naturopaths (NDs) are nothing if not persistent. Starting in 1994 they have tried seven times to convince legislators that the Colorado’s public needs protection from what “traditional” naturopaths (traditionals) do, and that the best way of providing that protection, they claim, is to bestow licensure on the guys with the college degrees. The irony in this is that the NDs could well be the more dangerous practitioners. Legislators have been largely sympathetic to the concerns of the more numerous traditionals who fear the loss of their right to work as…

• What Is Traditional Chinese Medicine?|Steven Novella|Science-Based Medicine

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:10 am

  One of the themes of science-based medicine is to be suspicious of any form of medicine that is not science-based. In other words, beware of dodgy qualifiers placed before “medicine,” such as: “alternative”, “integrative”, or “complementary” – those that imply that something other than science or evidence is being used to determine which treatments are safe and effective. I would also include “traditional Chinese” medicine in the dodgy category.  A recent article defending Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) provides,…

• 

  Pro-science

• Translations

  Kristjan Wager

  7 Jan 2012 | 10:55 am

  Sticker svin, a photo by Kristjan Wager on Flickr.I am currently reading Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos, which is about translations (NY Times has a book review of it here).While reading the book, I couldn't help think of this sticker which I took a picture of some months ago (the black one), since it is a good example of the problems with translations.The sticker was in a Danish bar, and translated into English it would be "klistermærke swine" - yes the first word would be the Danish word, since the word sticker is not Danish, but…

• Speaking ill of the dead

  Kristjan Wager

  27 Nov 2011 | 11:41 am

  Jerry Coyne has written a couple of posts about the death of Lynn Margulis over at his blog Why Evolution is True. The first one was rather respectful of her contributions to science and ignored her less than stellar contributions to science. The second post went into more details about her flaws.In the comment section to the first post I dared to make the statement that Margulis was not a great scientist, but rather someone who made a great contribution to science, but otherwise promoted quackery such as HIV/AIDS-denial. Or as I put it:I would think that great scientists as a minimum should…

• How to hold a children's birthday party

  Kristjan Wager

  27 Nov 2011 | 11:13 am

  David Snowden uses the example of a children's birthday party as an example to explain complexity theory

• Reversed roles

  Kristjan Wager

  14 Oct 2011 | 5:49 am

  Note: I should probably point out that in the following piece, I will follow the Danish tendency to not use peoples’ titles. For people not living in Denmark, this might seem disrespectful, and if it is perceived as such, I apologize, but the habit of not doing so is too ingrained in me, for me to start doing so now.I was considering calling this piece “through the looking glass”, but that would have connotations of weirdness which I found inappropriate, since what I wanted to was to indicate that I had experienced the “other side” of the divide for once.What divide you ask?The…

• Blogroll have been temporarily removed

  Kristjan Wager

  13 Aug 2011 | 10:55 am

  I have temporarily removed the blogroll, as it was out of date, with many dead links, and because it linked to blogs that I no longer wants to be associated with. There are diferent views on blogrolls and on whether they can be considered an endorsement or not. Well, I am of the opinion that while I don't have to be in complete agreement with everything a blogger on the blogroll does, and can disagree on things like e.g. politics and religion, I am implicitly endorsing the behavior or style of the blogs on my blogroll. This means that while I will link to Republican blogs or blogs run by…

• 

  Skeptic.com

• Unimpressive haunting story from Scotland

  Sharon Hill

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:41 pm

  Back-up needed as blessing fails to stop ‘hauntings’ – Odd – Scotsman.com. A church of Scotland minister has been called in to help a family who have become too terrified to stay in their “haunted” flat. Mother-of-two Vicky Dann told the Evening News how she had been left at her wits’ end by the spooky goings-on in their Dalkeith home which had left her daughters Jenna, 18, and Emma, 11, petrified. The stay-at-home mum claims strange shapes appear from nowhere in photographs she takes, while her children regularly see ghostly figures. In desperation she contacted…

• Rumbling and Shaking Reported on Vancouver Island

  Sharon Hill

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:28 pm

  Whole lotta shakin’, but it wasn’t an earthquake. Unusual shaking and rumbling reported around the capital region had people thinking “earthquake” – but, rest assured, there was no seismic event. Natural Resources Canada responded to public concerns by posting an explanation on its website, saying what was felt could have come from an “atmospheric source,” likely sound waves travelling over a long distance. Taimi Mulder, a seismologist at the Pacific Geoscience Centre in North Saanich, said it received several calls from the public reporting rumbling…

• Blue spheres from the sky? Hmm, not buying it.

  Sharon Hill

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:27 pm

  BBC News – Bournemouth resident mystified by ‘blue sphere shower’. A man in Dorset has been left mystified after tiny blue spheres fell from the sky into his garden. Steve Hornsby from Bournemouth said the 3cm diameter balls came raining down late on Thursday afternoon during a hail storm. He found about a dozen of the balls in his garden. He said: “[They're] difficult to pick up, I had to get a spoon and flick them into a jam jar.” The Met Office said the jelly-like substance was “not meteorological”. Tip: @abovetopsecret on Twitter Here is the…

• Brockovich gets involved in the New York mystery illness case

  Sharon Hill

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:00 pm

  Mystery illness: More girls develop Tourette’s-like tics Erin Brockovich is on the case! The environmental activist, made famous by the 2000 movie starring Julia Roberts as the crusading single mom, tells USA TODAY she is investigating the case of more than a dozen teens from one upstate New York school plagued by mysterious, Tourette’s-like symptoms. One neurologist who has seen most of the affected girls has diagnosed their illness as psychological in origin; but that diagnosis has been difficult for some parents and community members to accept. Brockovich told USA TODAY that at…

• Geologic Concert: a gneiss night out

  Sharon Hill

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:00 pm

  Host of Discovery Channel’s “Bad Universe” to Perform Space Anthem in Bethlehem, Pa Phil Plait, host of Discovery Channel’s Bad Universe, will perform with George Hrab and the Geologic Orchestra at the historic Ice House in Bethlehem, Pa on February 18, 2012. The concert, entitled 21812: A Gneiss Night Out, is set for 8:00pm and tickets can be purchased at GeologicConcert.com. Plait, an award-winning blogger at Discovery.com, and host of Phil Plait’s Bad Universe is a friend of musician George Hrab and appeared on his 2010 album Trebuchet. The two collaborated on the track Death…

• 

  Genomicron

• A seriously cranky press release.

  T. Ryan Gregory

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:02 pm

  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I often feel frustrated by press releases that are overhyped, misleading, and/or laden with buzzwords and cliches. Today I received by email the most over the top press release I have ever seen. It’s the sort of thing one might expect to see on a crank website, not in a press release from a major US university. Here it is, verbatim. Enjoy. Radical Theory Explains the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life, Challenges Conventional Wisdom Case Western Reserve Theorist Develops Incomparable Model that Unifies…

• PZ Myers on junk DNA.

  T. Ryan Gregory

  7 Dec 2011 | 9:42 am

  PZ Myers, who apparently has a blog or something, gave a talk about junk DNA. Favourite part: the Onion test followed by a Simpsons reference (at 37:00). Can’t ask for more than that! (Incidentally, PZ gets the onion test right — it’s about onions vs. humans AND onions vs. other onions; see also Larry Moran’s summary). PZ Myers on junk DNA. is a post from Genomicron.

• Thorough takedown of the supposed connection between Darwin and Nazism.

  T. Ryan Gregory

  17 Nov 2011 | 7:11 am

  It has been a common tactic among creationists to attempt to discredit scientific ideas by linking them to the horrific actions of the likes of Hitler and the Nazis. The scientific merits of a theory do not rest on its societal implications, of course, but there is also the issue that the Nazis did not take any of their ideas from Darwin or evolutionary concepts. Rather, as this very thorough debunking by UK astrophysicist Coel Hellier shows, it was quite the opposite in that the Nazis had an explicitly creationist ideology. Nazi racial ideology was religious, creationist, and opposed to…

• Dulce et Decorum Est.

  T. Ryan Gregory

  11 Nov 2011 | 10:21 am

  In high school, I gave a presentation on the poetry of Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) about the First World War. His most famous poem, and one that I still think of often, especially at this time of year, is Dulce et Decorum Est. The poem was published posthumously, as Owen died in combat in France at the age of 25. Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfren Owen Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But…

• Remembrance Day (re-post).

  T. Ryan Gregory

  11 Nov 2011 | 8:59 am

  (This post was first written in 2007, but I don’t think I can do better and thought it appropriate to re-post it today on Remembrance Day 2011). In Canada, as in many countries around the world, November 11 is a day of remembrance for the sacrifices made during wartime. In Canada, this refers in particular to World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945), but also to smaller engagements in which Canadians were (or are) involved, such as Korea and Afghanistan. The poppy has become a symbol of remembrance, and can be found pinned to people’s lapels more or less from the…

• 

  NeuroLogica Blog

• Genesis Weak

  Steven Novella

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:27 am

  I advise you to please turn off your irony meters before reading further or clicking the link to the video I will be discussing today. You may also want to take a couple of deep relaxing breaths to help preserve your neurons from the irrational assault they are about to suffer. I was recently asked to take a look at Genesis Week with Ian Juby (Wazooloo), a slick YouTube series in which Juby takes us on a mystical journey through the looking glass of creationist nonsense. In his world science and reason are flipped completely upside down. It is, as they say, a “target rich…

• Exposing Nutritional Pseudoscience

  Steven Novella

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am

  Which? magazine is the UK equivalent of Consumer Reports – an independent magazine primarily focused on product reviews and providing objective information to the consumer. They recently conducted an investigation of nutritional therapists, with scandalous (although not surprising) results. This kind of expose is becoming more common, and that is a very good thing. The concept is very simple – just present as a typical client off the street and ask practitioners to do what they do every day, give their professional advice. This is a good real-world assessment of what a profession…

• Stem Cells for Blindness

  Steven Novella

  24 Jan 2012 | 6:22 am

  File this one under “encouraging but preliminary.” Published in The Lancet – researchers report the results of two patients with two different forms of macular degeneration (the most common cause of blindness in the developed world) who had stem cells injected into one eye. Both patients reports improved vision. This study is the first to report a clinical benefit from the use of embryonic stem cells (other kinds of stem cells, like bone marrow, have been used for a long time). The study, however, is a very preliminary study designed mostly to look at safety. There are…

• Science, Medicine, and Academia

  Steven Novella

  23 Jan 2012 | 7:05 am

  Proponents of so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are forcing us to answer a question no one has explicitly asked – should there be a scientific basis to medicine? Proponents are generally very coy about this topic, and in most venues want to pretend that they are being scientific, while really promoting “other” forms of evidence and “other” ways of knowing. They promote health care freedom laws designed to weaken the scientific standards of medicine, while simultaneously infiltrating academia with assurances that they are science-based.

• Biofuels from Seaweed

  Steven Novella

  20 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  We are at a time in history when collectively we are re-examining the flow of energy through our civilization. It’s a fascinating question from a purely scientific point of view, but also with profound practical implications. For the last century we have relied heavily on fossils fuels – energy stored in hydrocarbons that we pull out of the ground. This is a cheap and convenient source of large amounts of energy, and it’s difficult to imagine that we could have gotten to this point in our technological development without it. But looking to the future we can see the light at…

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  Epsilon Clue

• Floristgate: How Petty Can You Get?

  arensb

  20 Jan 2012 | 11:43 am

  Quick recap for those who don’t visit the atheosphere much, or who have been living under a rock: Cranston High School West in Cranston, Rhode Island used to have a mural with a “School Prayer”. Jessica Ahlquist, a student at the school, tried to have it removed on the grounds of it being blatantly unconstitutional, and eventually had to sue. And she won. Naturally, the good Christians of Rhode Island realized that religion is a private matter that shouldn’t be pushed in public schools, and accepted the ruling graciously. Ha ha! Just kidding! Actually, they inundated…

• “Motion Capture” for Text-to-Speech?

  arensb

  17 Jan 2012 | 10:06 am

  I had a random thought over the weekend, and while I suspect it’s not original, I couldn’t find anyone working on it. One big reason why text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis sucks so badly is that the result sounds flat. Yes, the synthesizer can try to infer cadence and tone from things like commas, paragraph breaks, exclamation points, and question marks, but the result still falls far short of what a human reader sounds like. In the end, the problem seems to be Turing-hard, since you need to understand the meaning of a piece of text in order to read it properly. So would it be…

• Stop the Press! I Want to Get Off

  arensb

  12 Jan 2012 | 4:33 pm

  The New York Times asks, in all sincerity, whether it should be doing fact-checking. As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same? If so, then perhaps the next time Mr. Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for his country, the reporter should insert a paragraph saying, more or less: “The president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading…

• Disk Hack

  arensb

  5 Jan 2012 | 12:06 pm

  One of the things I enjoy about Unix system administration is the McGyver aspect of it: when something goes pear-shaped, and your preferred tools aren’t available because they’re on the disk that just died, or on the other side of the pile of smoking ashes that used to be a router, you have to figure out how to recover with what you’ve got left. It’s a bit like that scene in Apollo 13 when they realize that the space capsule has a round hole for the air filter, but only square filters, and the engineer dumps all the equipment the astronauts have available onto the…

• Sect Fight!

  arensb

  28 Dec 2011 | 12:06 pm

  From the AP: BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — The annual cleaning of one of Christianity’s holiest churches deteriorated into a brawl between rival clergy Wednesday, as dozens of monks feuding over sacred space at the Church of the Nativity battled each other with brooms until police intervened. The ancient church, built over the traditional site of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, is shared by three Christian denominations – Roman Catholics, Armenians and Greek Orthodox. Wednesday’s fight erupted between Greek and Armenian clergy, with both sides accusing each other of…

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  A Photon In The Darkness

• It’s Natural!

  Prometheus

  25 Jan 2012 | 12:24 pm

  I think I need to switch radio stations. If you remember, last summer, the station I was listening to on my weekly drive to Downstate Univ. was carrying advertisements for a pseudo-study of a “natural” remedy for “low testosterone”. Lately, the same station has been bombarding me with ads for a “natural” way for post-menopausal women to ”restore hormonal balance”. This “hormonal balance”, we are told, will not only eliminate the hot flashes and other problems of menopause, it will allow us to “eliminate that stubborn belly…

• Autism and Insurance: Myths vs Reality

  Prometheus

  22 Dec 2011 | 5:01 pm

  Earlier this week, I had arranged to have coffee with a close friend of mine. When I arrived, she was holding a copy of the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal and was quite upset about an article on the “Affordable Care Act” (”Obama-care”). In this article, it was mentioned that the department of Health and Human Services was planning to leave it up to the various states whether or not to mandate “autism treatment” coverage. This, she felt, was a cruel blow to families with autistic children. Fortunately, I had been through this all before, many…

• “Latex causes autism”: a “Brave (but dead) Maverick Hypothesis“? [Part 3]

  Prometheus

  9 Dec 2011 | 11:05 am

  Enough people have shown interest in having a “part 3″ of this series, so here it is! These are the “odd bits” I thought were curious but didn’t fit neatly into the main posts. How much latex is in vaccine or medication vials?  In the book, Vaccine Delivery and Autism (The Latex Connection), the authors repeatedly assert that H. brasiliensis proteins (and genetic material, but more on that later) leach out of latex-containing vaccine vial stoppers and into the vaccine. In support of this, they cite one study (Primeau et al 2001) and one case report (Hoffman…

• “Latex causes autism”: a “Brave (but dead) Maverick Hypothesis“? [Part 2]

  Prometheus

  4 Dec 2011 | 10:59 pm

  Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends…. In the last episode, we saw how Mr. Dochniak goaded me into reviewing his latest book, Vaccine Delivery and Autism (the Latex Connection) and my impressions of the format of that book. Now, we get to the meat of the book - and the science! A few positive notes: One of my mentors, early in my graduate school career, taught me that whenever I graded a paper or reviewed a proposal, article or book, I should first endeavor to find at least two positive things. That, I was told, would help me retain my objectivity, since every piece of…

• “Latex causes autism”: a “Brave (but dead) Maverick Hypothesis“? [Part 1]

  Prometheus

  1 Dec 2011 | 3:14 pm

  Let the Nonsense begin!: Before May of this year, I was in blissfiul ignorance of the “hypothesis” that latex - specifically, latex in vaccines (of course) - was the cause (or a cause) of regressive autism. But then Orac (of the Respectful Insolence ‘blog) posted a short notice (here) of a press release for the book Vaccine Delivery and Autism (The Latex Connection), by Dochiak and Dunn. It was a small post, with only a minimum of “respectful insolence” added, since the premise of the book seemed laughable enough.  The press release described the authors…

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  Respectful Insolence

• Vaccines are "transhumanism" that subverts evolution?

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  In the more than a decade since I first discovered, to my shock, that there are actual people out there who not only don't believe that vaccines are safe despite overwhelming evidence that they are but in fact believe that they don't work and are dangerous, I thought I had seen every antivaccine argument out there. After all, I just wrote about the tactics and the tropes of the antivaccine movement in which I reviewed, well, the tactics and tropes of the antivaccine movement. One of the favorite (and therefore most commonly used) tropes of the anti-vaccine movement is that vaccines are…

• Still more evidence that Morgellons disease is most likely delusional parasitosis, 2012 edition

  26 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  It's been nearly a year since I last discussed a most unusual malady. Part of the reason is that the opportunity to discuss it hasn't occurred recently; usually I need some spark or incident to "inspire" me to write about something, and there just hasn't been any Morgellons news that's caught my eye since then. However, another part of the reason, I must admit, is that writing about this particular condition almost always brings sufferers out of the woodwork, castigating me the way antivaccinationists like to castigate me for challenging the scientific basis of their preferred pseudoscience.

• $#*! skeptics say

  25 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Ha! I must admit, I've said probably about 50% of these things at one time or another, maybe more: Hmmmm. Maybe I need to come up with new "shit." Oh, and, by the way, I've been mentioned on PZ's blog more times than I can remember over the last seven years. So there! (Oh, wait. Does that mean PZ won't ever mention me again. Never mind. I take it back.) Read the comments on this post...

• If this is true, the Dutch must be drinking in lots of information!

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  If there's one thing about homeopaths, it's that they're indefatigable in their dedication to their unique brand of pseudoscience. They're also endlessly protean in their ability to induce their explanations for how homeopathy is supposed to "work" to evolve into endless forms not so beautiful. If it's not the claim that "like cures like" is some sort of immutable law of nature or that diluting a remedy somehow makes it stronger, it's pivoting to the claim that water has "memory." If it's not that, then homeopaths and homeopathy apologists invoke quantum entanglement that somehow works at the…

• Tactics and tropes of the antivaccine movement

  24 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  I've been an observer and student of the antivaccine movement for nearly a decade now, although my intensive education began almost seven years ago, in early 2005, not long after I started blogging. It was then that I first encountered several "luminaries" of the antivaccine movement both throughout the blogosphere and sometimes even commenting on my blog itself. I'm talking about "luminaries" such as J.B. Handley, who is the founder of Generation Rescue and was its leader and main spokesperson; that is, until he managed to recruit spokesmodel Jenny McCarthy to be its public face, and Dr. Jay…

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  New Urban Legends

• Zimbabwe Croc

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  Photograph purportedly shows a large crocodile killed in Zimbabwe.

• Legal Separation

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  Text describes the process of producing mechanically separated chicken.

• Self-Insured

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  Photo purportedly shows a McDonald's sign announcing a $1.50 surcharge on African-American customers.

• Gun Shop Tire Marking

  24 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  Are gangs marking cars parked outside gun stores to later identify them as potential gun theft opportunities?

• Baby Boom

  23 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  Photograph purportedly shows a 9-month-old baby tattooed by its mother's boyfriend.

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  Sorting out Science

• Casual Friday — inserting objects into existing imagery

  Sam Wise

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  So let's say you've got a photograph of some place, and you really wish it contained something that wasn't present at the time the image was taken. A recent presentation at SIGGRAPH shows how to do just that in a realistic way, and Photoshop isn't involved... Continue reading →

• Carnivalia — 1/18 – 1/24

  Sam Wise

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:09 pm

  The past week's bounty crop of (mostly) science-related blog carnivals for your reading pleasure... Continue reading →

• The scientific tourist #207 — the VK-1 jet engine

  Sam Wise

  23 Jan 2012 | 8:49 am

  This week's picture comes to you from the Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum in Tutusville, Florida. It's a Russian VK-1 jet engine... Continue reading →

• Casual Friday — don’t break the internet!

  Sam Wise

  20 Jan 2012 | 9:11 am

  For those who haven't become saturated by the argument (in the U.S., anyway) over the SOPA / PIPA bills floating around in Congress, here's a bit more background for you... Continue reading →

• Carnivalia — 1/11 – 1/17

  Sam Wise

  18 Jan 2012 | 10:22 pm

  The past week's collection of science-related blog carnivals for you... Continue reading →

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  White Coat Underground

• And everything that creepeth upon the Earth

  PalMD

  26 Jan 2012 | 5:54 pm

  Image courtesy of Alex Wild, click image for link Not all hallucinations are disturbing, but most probably are.  They can be categorized by which sense is involved or by cause.  Schizophrenics often experience auditory hallucinations, hearing voices that are not actually present.  Many people can experience olfactory hallucinations, usually smelling foul odors that no one else can detect.  These are often caused by specific problems in the brain or nose.  A classic cause is seizure in the temporal lobe of the brain. Visual hallucinations aren’t that common and usually aren’t…

• I know exactly what you mean

  PalMD

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:01 pm

  My kid has a few sleep problems, and as most parents know, kiddo’s sleep problems are your sleep problems.  She sleeps in her own bed—most of the time.  Strange noises will drive her into ours, and we’re far too tired to try to get her back to her own bed.  Like most small children, she cares nothing for Euclidean space and is able to occupy an entire king-sized bed.  Not infrequently, I end up sleeping in a smaller bed in a pink room. More commonly, she has trouble falling asleep.  She requires a parent to stay with her until she’s out.  This is usually more my…

• Shin splints

  PalMD

  17 Jan 2012 | 8:05 pm

  OK, here’s the thing about Midwestern weather: it’s all about extremes, about the unexpected.  I woke up a few minutes late this morning, which wouldn’t normally be an issue, but something seemed wrong about the light in the house.  I glanced out the window and saw—nothing.  I turned out the light and looked again, but all I saw was fog; no car, no street, nothing but grey. Crap.  Waking up late + fog = late to work. Part of my drive follows a lake shore, so I turned off early hoping that  a climb away from the lake would see some clearing.  It did, just a…

• Think like a doctor, Part III

  PalMD

  16 Jan 2012 | 5:59 pm

  In Part I we discussed the history of medicine as a science. In Part II we addressed the role of compassion. This is the third part of the series. Meridians of so-called Traditional Chinese Medicine In 1994, I first put my hands on a human cadaver.  When we first received it, the head and hands were wrapped.  The rumor was that this would help us to adjust to the humanity of the thing more gradually.  When we did uncover the hands, the nails were painted, giving the meat a sudden, undeniable humanity. Over the months, my friends and I slowly dissected this person, finding nerves, veins,…

• Think Like a Doctor, Part II

  PalMD

  15 Jan 2012 | 10:45 am

  In Part I we discussed the history of medicine as a science. This is Part II in a series. It is during a surgery rotation when a medical student perhaps feels least competent. Not only is there an enormous amount of book learning, there are the physical skills that take years to develop.  Most of the time you pull on a retractor and answer questions, record vitals and pull out drains. My instructor, who in the OR hurled Spanish invectives like scalpels and called every med student, “Pullgoddamyou”, was gentle as a kitten with conscious patients. When I was in his office an…

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  Science-Based Pharmacy

• What FX? CBC’s Marketplace looks at Cold-fX

  Scott

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:25 pm

  I’ve been blogging for over three years and Cold-fX, a popular Canadian ginseng supplement, was one of the first topics I tackled. The omnipresent Canadian advertising, huge pharmacy presence, and impressive-sounding efficacy claims made it an ideal case study. Perhaps not surprisingly, when I reviewed the data, the results didn’t hold up:  I concluded that in a best case scenario, you’d need to take Cold-fX for four cold seasons (about 16 months) to prevent a single cold. And while the manufacturer claimed that Cold-fX could actually stop colds once they’d started, I…

• Super Cold-Treatment Reference Spectacular!

  Scott

  11 Jan 2012 | 10:51 pm

  I was recently the guest of Desiree Schell on Skeptically Speaking, where we spent an hour discussing the prevention and treatment of the common cold. Here are some of the references and sources I cited or referred to during the discussion. So read along as you listen to the podcast. What is a cold, why does it make us feel so crappy, and how does it differ from influenza (the flu)? See Medscape, CommonCold.org, and MedlinePlus for general info on the illness. What is the only preventive strategy that’s both practical and effective: Wash your hands, and use alcohol gel when necessary…

• The Red Flags of Quackery

  Scott

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:54 pm

  This compilation made me laugh out loud: Click to Embiggen From the website Sci-ənce. Nicely done. Anything missing? Filed under: updates Tagged: humour, pseuodscience, quackery, red flags

• Third year anniversary!

  Scott

  6 Jan 2012 | 11:18 pm

  I recently asked a colleague for search advice on a topic I was researching. When I told her it was for a blog post, she was intrigued. “How much do you get paid to blog?” she asked. When I told her that blogging didn’t provide any revenue, she was dumfounded. “Even writing for [big pharmacy trade magazine] will pay you a few hundred dollars per article! Why would you write something, and then just give it away?” I told her I wasn’t interested in writing 5000 words on someone else’s topic, waiting months to see it in print, and then wondering if…

• New Year’s Resolutions

  Scott

  6 Jan 2012 | 5:00 pm

  Heh. From Cyanide and Happiness. (Email recipients may need to click the links to view.) via Yoni Freedhoff Filed under: updates