Skepticism
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Category archives for Skepticism
The dark side of open access journals?
Posted by PZ Myers on April 9, 2013 The New York Times has an article on the rise of predatory, fake science journals — these are journals put out by commercial interests with titles that sound vaguely like the real thing, but are not legitimate in any sense of the word. They exist only for the resource that open access publishing also uses,…
Another conversion story
Posted by PZ Myers on July 29, 2012 Richard Muller used to be a doubter — he didn’t think global warming was a concern, and he didn’t think people were responsible for it. Now he has changed his mind, and he explains why. Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw…
Did Ancient Aliens visit the earth and guide human evolution?
Posted by PZ Myers on July 9, 2012 No. One other event I participated in was a “debate” with an ancient alien theorist. It was very peculiar, as you might guess. The way this came about was that Scotty Roberts, the alien astronaut fan, proposed a session on his wacky speculations, and the conference organizers didn’t want such lunacy to sail through without…
WTF, NatGeo?
Posted by PZ Myers on July 1, 2012 Oh, it’s another crappy television show put on by a purported science-positive network that I completely missed. National Geographic ran a show called “Chasing UFOs” on Friday, and since about the only television I ever watch any more is commercial-free movies on Netflix, I wasn’t tuned in. Fortunately, Robert Sheaffer did, and found it “lurid…
The wages of pseudoscience
Posted by PZ Myers on June 10, 2012 I completely missed the disgraceful hokum the Animal Planet channel aired last week, Mermaids: The Body Found, a completely fictional pseudodocumentary dressed up as reality that claims mermaids exist. You can watch it now, though, until Animal Planet takes it down. It’s genuinely awful. Total nonsense, gussied up with more nonsense: would you believe it…
Dear Jezebel
Posted by PZ Myers on February 6, 2012 There’s a reason I promote atheism and skepticism coupled with feminism, and it’s not because I’m trying to foist a feminist ideology on skepticism. It’s because skepticism drives me to consider discrimination and injustice as wrong, not just in an abstract moral sense, but unjustifiable and invalid. If I am in any sense a feminist,…
Andrew Wakefield lashes out
Posted by PZ Myers on January 6, 2012 Poor Andy. Once upon a time, he had the power to kill children just by doing some very bad science and writing a few very bad papers, and now he’s reduced to living in Texas and being supported by mobs of New Age cranks. He’s powerless and bored, but his ego is still being inflated…
How to spot a quack
Posted by PZ Myers on November 21, 2011 As I was going through my usual morning roster of webcomics, I discovered that Sci-ence referenced an earlier one I missed — the Red Flags of Quackery. There are certain tell-tale signs that you’re dealing with woo…like the abuse of the word “quantum”. But then you all already knew that Sci-ence was required regular reading,…
The Kensington Forgery
Posted by PZ Myers on November 16, 2011 The infamous Kensington Runestone is kept in a museum just a few miles up the road from me. It’s a carved rock that was dug up on a farm in the 19th century by a Swedish farmer, and purports to tell the tale in runes of a doomed Viking expedition that had come down from…
Stand for Science: Confront Homeopathy
Posted by PZ Myers on October 24, 2011 Aww, the students of Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists have warmed the frigid, friable cockles of my black heart. They’re having a protest of homeopathy on the Twin Cities campus this Friday! They’re hosting a lecture debunking that nonsense, and are planning to poison themselves with homeopathic dilutions. Take that, Center for Spirituality and Healing!…