Dissin' Yoga: You can almost hear the gnashing of teeth
The real problem sets in when yoga is offered as part of a larger program of alternative care.Posted on October 9, 2007 4:14 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Island of Doubt
An irregular exploration of the struggle between the power of rational discourse and the scientific method on one hand, and the forces of superstition and dogma on the other.
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Profile
James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
Recent Posts
- In praise of planetariums (and Laser Floyd)
- Why can't American scientists be like this?
- Ejaculation, sinus relief and "two excellent reasons for publishing loopy papers"
- Global warming and whale song
- The Queen of Clean Energy
- All you ever wanted to know about the Global Carbon Budget but were afraid to ask
- Science is irrelevant, say Brit students
- Polar bears in scientific tug of war
- Sarah Palin on, you know, the molecules!
- New climate target: Negative emissions growth
Recent Comments
- Mike Haubrich, FCD on In praise of planetariums (and Laser Floyd)
- paulm on In praise of planetariums (and Laser Floyd)
- metapsyche on In praise of planetariums (and Laser Floyd)
- metapsyche on In praise of planetariums (and Laser Floyd)
- Elf Eye on In praise of planetariums (and Laser Floyd)
- Glendon Mellow on Why can't American scientists be like this?
- paulm on Why can't American scientists be like this?
- paulm on Why can't American scientists be like this?
- crf on Why can't American scientists be like this?
- paulm on Why can't American scientists be like this?
for 9 July 2007
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Other Doubtful Blogs
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Inspiration
The Demon-Haunted World:
Science as a Candle
in the Dark,
by Carl Sagan
(A
review)
The Doubter's Companion:
by John Ralston Saul (Excerpts)
Skeptic Magazine: www.skeptic.com
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal: www.csicop.org
A poem by Yehuda Amichai:
The
Place
Where We Are Right
The Meaning of the
Island of Doubt
Author's site: cyamid.net
--- H. L. Mencken
By doubting we come to inquiry; and through inquiry we perceive truth.
--- Peter Abelard
Undisguised clarity is easily mistaken for arrogance.
-- Richard Dawkins
As for evolution, it happened. Deal with it.
-- Michael Shermer.
pseudo-science:
Can celebrities save the world?
So Leonardo DiCaprio is picking up where Al Gore left off in the battle to keep Earth habitable. Is this a good thing?...Posted on August 24, 2007 2:53 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Cell phone fever: it's all in your head ... so to speak
A new study that shows people who say radio waves from cell phone towers are making them sick are exhibiting a purely pyschosomatic reaction won't be the last nail required to seal this particular coffin of pseudo-science. But as a...Posted on July 27, 2007 11:15 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The incredible calculating canine!
"Her husband decided to ask their 4-year-old dog another question, the square root of 25. Micah tapped his paw five times."Posted on June 23, 2007 2:18 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Cowards at University College London
"One of the most eminent scientists in the UK" has been taking on the merchants of woo...Posted on June 14, 2007 8:05 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Loch Ness monster is back ... not
When CNN announces it has "what Loch Ness Monster watchers say is among the finest footage ever taken" it's hard not to bite. Never mind that what used to be the most famous photographic evidence turned out to be fake....Posted on June 13, 2007 7:39 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
How to embarrass your country
I am so embarrassed to be a Canadian. A member of Canada's Parliament has given voice to an effort to add Bigfoot to the country's Species at Risk Act. Read it and weep:...Posted on May 5, 2007 5:10 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Scared of the ether
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and it was more that little appropriate that I might be reminded of that particular truism by a friend of mine who just happens to be a librarian. The lesson involves a variation...Posted on March 1, 2007 8:47 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Witchful thinking: water on the brain
This past weekend in the New Age capital of the New South (Asheville, N.C.), members of the Appalachian chapter of the American Society of Dowsers were scheduled to hold a quarterly meeting. I know this because the alternative weekly in...Posted on February 26, 2007 12:06 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The end of an era at Princeton
After 28 years, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research institute is finally giving up the ghost, bringing an end to arguably the most respectable -- or the least embarrassing -- parapsychological research effort. Is this cause for celebration? I'm not sure,...Posted on February 16, 2007 9:22 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Fake psychic get's girls
"Fake Psychic Get's Girls." That's the subject line of my favorite piece of spam. Every now and then one slips by the email junk filters and I get a chuckle, and not just because of the punctuation error, either....Posted on December 27, 2006 10:58 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Playing to type in Japan
What with absurdly high levels of belief in astrology, sky fairies, homeopathy, and whatnot, it sometimes seems like the United States of America has the market cornered in superstitious nonsense. Far from it. The Chinese, for example, have their penchant...Posted on December 16, 2006 4:36 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
PSYCH Colombia: Voodoo-doll exorcisms
Anyone tried to watch the new USA Network series Psych? The one in which a sharp-eyed guy pretends to be psychic in order to get paid investigation gigs with the local police department? Well, don't bother. For one thing, the...Posted on September 20, 2006 10:07 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
British flakes
Today's time-waster while I wait for the first coat of sky blue to dry in what used to be the study is reader-baiting. The targets are citizens of the U.K. The subject is the paranormal. I ask you, what's with...Posted on September 6, 2006 11:05 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Forget Hitler, the fault lies in our stars
Astrology is not usually at the top of my worry list. Sure, there are far too many gullible readers of daily horoscopes, and it did bother me a bit to learn Ronald Reagan was consulting an astrologer while sitting in...Posted on August 28, 2006 8:45 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Psychics on the ascendancy
Here's a depressing way to start your week, courtesy of The New Statesman: .."psychic schools have never been so busy, and it's not the Doris Stokes brigade who want to learn, but the young, the prosperous and the educated. Stephen...Posted on August 7, 2006 8:46 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
When parents let their children die
I used to be dead-set against the idea of letting Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists deny their children conventional treatment for life-threatening illnesses. It still makes me angry to know that there are mothers and fathers out there who love...Posted on August 3, 2006 10:02 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The sense of being stared at ...not
Time was when I wouldn't have cared much if my alma mater had invited a New Age quack to give a lecture on the university's dime. That was then. This is now. Under the very clever headline of "Pitching Woo-woo,"...Posted on July 24, 2006 3:49 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Alternative medicine debate
This week's Science includes an interesting "forum" on the value of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), that wing of the U.S. National Institutes of Health charged with checking out whether or not herbal remedies and other...Posted on July 21, 2006 3:26 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The 0.1 % solution
No. I'm not talking about Dick Cheney's metric for how probable a threat must be before taking it seriously (that would be 1 %). Instead we have this bizarre statement in Newsday from a researcher of the paranorma identified only...Posted on June 26, 2006 5:38 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
