debate
gregladen | October 10, 2016You can't say who really won the debate, because on Friday, news broke, confirming other news from the prior Monday (and general suspicians) indicating that Donald Trump is not fit to be President in Yet Another Way, and his campaign essentially imploded. So, instead, we'll ask, "who won the weekend?"
As you know, I'm the last person to write off Donald Trump. From the very beginning, without fail, I've been warning you that he'll do well, that he'll win the GOP debates, that he'll win various primaries, that he'll win the nomination, etc. All of it. I have never once been wrong about this…
gregladen | September 27, 2016It was a tossup, but in a rather complicated way.
Even the regular commenters with major network news, and PBS, clearly indicated that Hillary Clinton won this debate. And she did. She not only had better answers, but actual answers. Trump acted very poorly and Clinton acted presidential. Trump got caught in several lies, and made several more lies that were to be caught later. He made a fool of himself and Clinton did very well.
Therefore, it was a tossup. It was a tossup because a couple percent of the populous are former Bernie Sanders supporters with so much butt hurt that they will not…
oracknows | November 13, 2015The question of whether it is worthwhile to debate cranks, quacks, and advocates of pseudoscience has long been a contentious issue in the skeptic community. Those of you who've been reading my posts for a while know that I've always come down on the side that it is not a good idea One thing I've learned in my more than a decade of blogging, both here and at my non-pseudonymous other blog, is that advocates of pseudoscience love public debates. Indeed, whenever you see a skeptic agree to a public debate with an advocate of pseudoscience, it's a damned sure bet that it wasn't the skeptic who…
gregladen | October 13, 2015It is debate season for the US presidential race. As usual, science is being viewed as a debating point very differently by the two parties, at least so far. The Democratic candidates, yet to actually debate, are currently engaged in dealing policy statements about important scientific issues such as climate change. In previous election cycles, science was brought into Republican primary debates to see which candidate could make the most anti-science statements. This year it is a bit different, with climate science in particular, and one's ability to say something intelligent-sounding about…
gregladen | April 17, 2014You will recall that last February, Bill Nye, the Science Guy, debated Ken Ham, the Not-So-Science Guy, on the question of creationism as a viable explanation for the Earth's history. The debate was held in Ham's home territory, at the infamous Creation Museum in Kentucky. Nye didn't really debate Ham. He ate him for breakfast. Form now on we shall call him Ken Bacon and Eggs.
Anyway, people, including me, who have been engaged with the "debate" between science (evolution) and not-so-science (creationism of one kind or another) were very concerned when we heard that this debate might…
milhayser | February 13, 2014As an alternative to biblical creationism, Intelligent Design infers a less obtrusive God to explain life on Earth. This deity doesn't hurl bolts of lightning, unless it's with the express purpose of sparking abiogenesis in the primordial soup. On EvolutionBlog, Jason Rosenhouse dismisses probabilistic arguments against the likelihood of complex organisms, explaining that even the most improbable-seeming outcome of natural selection is more or less inevitable. As a flawed analogy, he imagines flipping a coin 500 times. This will always manifest a sequence of heads and tails that only had a…
gregladen | February 5, 2014Bill Nye "The Science Guy" went to the Creation Museum to debate "is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era?" After the debate, Bill Nye came to the Last Word to discuss his faceoff with the founder of the Creation Museum, Ken Ham.
Nye said he accepted the debate challenge because the spread of creationism "frightens" him. "I don't think I'm going to win Mr. Ham over any more than Mr. Ham thinks he's going to win me over," Nye said. "Instead, I want to show people that this belief is still among us. It finds its way onto school boards in the United States."
Ham,…
gregladen | February 5, 2014In the Spring of 2010, evangelical Bible scholar Bruce Waltke, in speaking about the overwhelming evidence for evolution, said “To deny that reality will make us a cult, some odd group that is not really interacting with the real world.”
In response to this, Ken Ham, president of Kentucky’s Creation Museum, commented, “What he is saying ultimately undermines the authority of God’s word.”
Both statements seem to be true. (I don’t think you necessarily need to have faith in a god to accept the basic logic of Ham’s statement.) Also, that’s really all you need to know about young earth…
gregladen | February 4, 2014See the link?
It is pretty obvious to me.
It seems that terrorists who are really serious, reasonably numerous, presumably well funded, and certainly experienced have threatened to attack the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia (both of them). The fallback plan, it is assumed, is that they can't attack Sochi so they pick some other random locations, maybe in Russia, maybe not, and attack them. (That is the part about terrorists being cowards, I assume.)
The Russians have security that is probably second to none in the world, or at least on par with the countries that have a lot of…
gregladen | January 9, 2014As you know, Bill Nye has agreed to engage in a debate about evolution with Ken Ham at the Kentucky Creation Museum. You may also know that I suggested that this debate was a bad idea, not so much because it is Bill Nye doing it (he’s a great spokesperson for science and science education) but because the whole idea of a debate is questionable for a number of reasons (discussed here).
Bill recently made a few comments on the debate on CNN.
Here, I’d like to list a handful of the points I’d make if I was doing this debate.
It is not necessary or even possible to argue against “creationism…
oracknows | July 18, 2012During this year's TAM, I had the distinct pleasure of accompanying Steve Novella and Michael Shermer to debate an antivaccinationist at FreedomFest, a conservative/libertarian confab that was going on in Las Vegas at the same time as TAM. That antivaccinationist turned out to be Dr. Julian Whitaker, a man who champions Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski and is one of Suzanne Somer's doctors. There's no polite way to put this, Steve Novella wiped the floor with Dr. Whitaker, mercilessly pummeling him with facts, analysis, and logic to the point where even the audience appeared to be grumbling. Even…
oracknows | July 15, 2012Like so many other skeptics, I just returned from TAM, which, despite all the conflict and drama surrounding it this year, actually turned out to be a highly enjoyable experience for myself and most people I talked to. As I've been doing the last few years, I joined up with Steve Novella and other proponents of science-based medicine to do a workshop about how difficult it is to find decent health information on the Internet, and how the "University of Google" all too frequently puts quackery on the same level as reliable sources of medical information because all that matters for most search…
illconsidered | October 18, 2010If you have a spare couple of hours, I am sure the YouTube below is well worth the time. I don't, so I can't comment on anything but my expectations and the approval of Dessler's performance from Eli Rabett and Deltoid.
Thanks, Eli, for the link.
laelaps | June 4, 2010
The "common cuttle-fish." From Mysteries of the Ocean.
About three decades before On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection would forever change biological science, the aspiring young naturalists Pierre-Stanislas Meyranx and Laurencet submitted a paper on mollusks to France's prestigious Academie des Sciences. For weeks they waited for a patron from within the scientific elite to recognize their work, but no response came. Ultimately they decided to take the more direct route of having the paper examined by a commission, and in 1830 the naturalists Pierre-Andre Latreille and…
laelaps | May 3, 2010Way back in 1989 (I was only six!), Eugenie Scott and other members of the National Center for Science Education got together for a mock debate pitting evolutionary scientists against creationist impersonators at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. How things have changed (well, except young earth creationist arguments)...
illconsidered | February 16, 2010I know this is old news, but I just found the youtubes of this debate. You will recall how Plimer declined to answer some very straightforward requests for evidence of a handful of his most egregious fabrications that George Monbiot put to him as a precondition of a debate. Well, not because Plimer decided to be forthcoming, the debate went ahead in December with no preconditions.
It can be viewed in three parts below.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
If you don't have time for it all (~24 minutes) I would recommend starting at part 2.
Is anyone impressed with Plimer's evasivness. He might as…
illconsidered | February 10, 2010Anyone going to be in Sydney with a video camera?
I happen to be in Australia now, but Sydney is a far cry from Ulverstone...
I can't tell from the debate description if there will be any rebuttal time. If not it will be one of those kinds of debates that even Sarah Palin can look good in.
Regardless, Go Tim! : )
sciencepunk | July 16, 2009
Tomorrow I'll be taking part in a debate about the place of alternative medicine in the NHS on BBC Radio Oxford. If you're in the area you can tune in on 95.2 FM, otherwise listen live via the BBC website. It's part of a phone-in show, so I expect a lot of calls from the "it works for me" brigade, but you can have your two cents by calling 08459 311111.
sciencepunk | April 20, 2009
Tune in to Richard Bacon's talk radio show on BBC 5 Live tonight, where I'll be fighting the skeptic's corner for the evening's debate: Should we all be looking for our inner self?:
Some therapists claim the key to a fulfilling life is finding your 'inner self'.But is it all just nonsense? Is our inner self a powerful healer that can give us peace and confidence in life?Or is it just a load of hocus pocus?We'd love to hear from you: call 0500 909 693, text 85058 or email bacon@bbc.co.uk
I suspect I'll be up against someone from the bizarre InnerSelf website, which seems to be a mix of bland…
grrlscientist | December 17, 2007tags: science, public policy, politics, federal funding, research, reality-based government, 2008 American presidential elections, ScienceDebate2008
I was disappointed, but not really surprised, when three Republican presidential candidates -- Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo and Sam Brownback (who has since dropped out) -- declared that they do not "believe in" the theory of evolution (in my opinion, the correct phrasing should have been "do you accept the theory of evolution?" rather than using the misleading and incorrect phrase believe in, which implies blind faith rather than scientifically…