pseudoscience
scientificactivist | March 3, 2008Via the ABC News blog Political Punch comes news that senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain has taken a strong stance on the discredited link between vaccination and autism... a stance contrary to scientific consensus. Here's what Jake Tapper wrote:
At a town hall meeting Friday in Texas, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared that "there's strong evidence" that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was once in many childhood vaccines, is responsible for the increased diagnoses of autism in the U.S. -- a position in stark contrast with the view of the medical…
clock | February 18, 2008Orac: The American Academy of Pediatrics versus antivaccinationist hypocrisy
Drake Bennett: Black man vs. white woman
Sheril R. Kirshenbaum: The Presidential Science Debate That Happened TODAY In Boston! and The Boston Debate
Mike Dunford: The Role of Science in Politics: A Plea for Activism
John S. Wilkins: The 'design' mistake and, Brian Switek: No thanks, Ken; that argument is poorly designed
Ed reports on how we are messing up with future historians: I Always Wondered Where Those Things Went. How many historical artefacts and writings we believe to be true, but are not?
Paul Jones:…
neurophilosophy | January 22, 2008
Among the one third of Americans who believe in ghosts are high-ranking officials in the intelligence agencies and military.
In the 1970s and 80s, the CIA funded research into "remote viewing", so that they could train clairvoyants to locate, among other things, Colonel Gaddafi and the U.S. marines kidnapped by Hizbollah.
More recently, it was reported that the military employed remote viewers to find Saddam Hussein, and that the Department of Homeland Security is hoping to adopt Russian "mind-reading" technology to identify terrorists.
So when personnel at the Wright-Patterson Air Force…
jlynch | January 13, 2008
In the comments to a previous post, "rebel scientist" Louis Savain made the following statements:
I have made a falsifiable prediction about the human cerebellum based on my interpretation of certain Biblical metaphors. If you can falsify it, do so. Otherwise, your lame attempt at ridiculing my person is just that, lame. You wanted falsifiability, you’re gonna get it. Lots of it.
I commented:
Excellent. I expect to enjoy reading your research papers in neurobiological journals.
and he retorted with:
Forget it. I believe in going directly to the customer, i.e., the public whom you despise,…
clock | January 11, 2008Bloggers often highlight e-mail they get. I also get a bunch of loony stuff (and if it is not loony I try to respond, unless it is a medical question which I cannot ethically answer as I am not an MD, or a "do my homework for me" requests from students which I ignore) which ends up in Trash in nano-seconds. The loony stuff is soooo easy to recognize at first glance, there is no need to actually read that stuff and I am usually not compelled to use that kind of stuff as inspiration for blog posts. Just a waste of my time.
But what I got last night is something I just cannot help but wish to…
neurophilosophy | December 15, 2007Remote viewing is a form of "psychoenergetic perception" (i.e. clairvoyance) developed as part of a long-term $20 million research program initiated by U.S. intelligence agencies in the early 1970s. Now known by the codename Stargate, the program was initiated largely in response to the belief that the Soviets were spending large amounts of money on psychic research.
Research into remote viewing began in 1972 at the Stanford Research Institute, "an independent non-profit research institute that conducts contract research and development for government agencies" (actually, a think tank that…
clock | December 2, 2007This is woo of the decade! Priceless: How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? by Hiroyuki Nishigaki is, according to the Amazon reviewers, absolutely hilarious - reading it will make you laugh (and thus constrict your anus) at least a 100 times, thus completely good-bying your depression. The title of this post is an actual sentence from the book, according to one of the reviewers. Hat-tip: Vaughan
neurophilosophy | November 30, 2007
This brain map comes from The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man (1912), by the obscure mystical philosopher Alesha Sivartha, who is sometimes referred to as a "grandfather of the new-age movement".
The map is of particular interest, as it approaches modern neurology but still retains a few elements of phrenology, and is therefore a transition between the two. (Click on the image for a larger version.)
It is based on the experiments of the pioneering Scottish neurologist David Ferrier, who functionally mapped the sensory and motor cortices by lesion studies and…
cevans | October 21, 2007Occasionally, I day-trip from the borders of legitimate science and into the boundless holiday that is the esoteric. I don't know exactly why I take such pleasure in pseudo-science; perhaps it is to keep my work safe from those who might portend I am out of my league with the real stuff.
The lush, seemingly benign woods of the Pacific Northwest abound with myths, quasi-tragic histories, tucked-away lichen, hallucinogenic mushrooms, endangered animals, and wild men. They also set an unwitting and shadowy stage, perhaps appropriately, for one of the great dramas of the esoteric: Bigfoot.…
clock | October 2, 2007Galilei kicked us out of the Center of the Universe.
Darwin kicked us off the Pinnacle of Creation
Freud kicked the Soul out of our Brains.
Few remain adherents of Geocentrism.
The opponents of evolution are legion and very vocal (in this country, and a couple of Middle Eastern ones), but they have been defeated so soundly so many times, they had to concede more and more ground, and though they are getting sneakier with time, their efforts are becoming more and more laughable and pitiful.
So, the last Big Fight will be about the Soul. The next area of science to experience a big frontal…
neurophilosophy | September 25, 2007I received an email earlier today from one Nelson Abreu, who offered a criticism of the experimentally-induced out-of-body experiences that were reported recently, in the hope that I might post a reaction on my blog.
In his message, Mr. Abreu tells me that the studies "reveal interesting things about dissociated perceptions under virtual reality conditions, but [do not] say much about the OBE." He also provides several links to the International Academy of Consciousness (IAC), and suggests I follow them if I want to gain a better understanding of out-of-body experiences.
It only took me a…
clock | August 31, 2007Naomi Oreskes, the author of the 2004 paper in Science about the scientific consensus on global warming, recently had her work attacked by regressive denialists (including on Senator I-hate-science-Inhofe's blog). Her full response is now available on Stranger Fruit. Go and read it. Now.
jlynch | August 24, 2007Many readers will by now have encountered the (frankly) frivolous law suit filed - for $15 million for Jeez sake- by Stuart Pivar against PZ Myers for negatively reviewing Pivar’s book Lifecode. Peter Irons - retired law professor at UCSD - has shared the following letter he has sent to Pivar:
Dear Mr. Pivar:
I don’t know if this is a current email address for you; I obtained it from the Internet by accessing some of your 2004 correspondence regarding the NYAA affair.
First, let me introduce myself. I am a lawyer (a graduate of Harvard Law School) and am admitted to practice before several…
clock | August 21, 2007My Scibling Tara Smith together with Steven Novella, published an article in PLoS Medicine last week that all frequent readers of science blogs will find interesting:
HIV Denial in the Internet Era:
Because these denialist assertions are made in books and on the Internet rather than in the scientific literature, many scientists are either unaware of the existence of organized denial groups, or believe they can safely ignore them as the discredited fringe. And indeed, most of the HIV deniers' arguments were answered long ago by scientists. However, many members of the general public do not…
jlynch | August 13, 2007One of the reasons that I canceled my subscription to Skeptic was that it was giving a mouthpiece to Frank Miele and his odious defences of Arthur Jensen and putative links between race, intelligence and IQ. Miele as an undergraduate contributed to the racist journal Mankind Quarterly, has collaborated with eugenicist Richard Lynn, and has received funding from the eugenicist Pioneer Fund. Which makes the following all the more ludicrous.
Over at Uncommon Descent, Dave Springer (a.k.a. "DaveScot") has approvingly linked to an overwrought article by Miele which decrys Newsweek for its coverage…
neurophilosophy | July 28, 2007Earlier this week, I posted an email I received about a nutritional supplement called EM Power Plus. The makers of this product, a Canadian company called TrueHope, claim that it can alleviate the symptoms of bipolar disorder.
In the comments to that post, PalMD, author of the WhiteCoatUnderground blog, is having what appears to be an on-going debate with Peter Helgason, the quack who emailed me.
Update: PalMD has written about the miracle cure.
neurophilosophy | July 25, 2007I received this email yesterday:
Hello,
I just read your post [on augmented cognition] and found it intriguing. I have been experimenting with a nutritional supplement for the past several years which was designed to treat bi-polar disorder (and it works amazing well for that purpose according to all the researchers who have studied it) and have found my capacity to hold way more information (and not go crazy) and maintain my calmness under pressure is greatly expanded.
Some of the rat research neuro-anatomist guys have regrown frontal cortexes in lobotomized rats fed the product and…
scientificactivist | July 24, 2007If we learned anything from the Atlas of Creation, it's that we can refute any evidence, regardless of how scientifically sound it is, just by putting a red X across it and writing "FALSE". Jeremiah McNichols reflects on this at his blog Think In Pictures... and then he takes it one step further. McNichols is selling merchandise to give you the same powers of refutation as the Atlas's own Harun Yahya. Check it out here. All proceeds go to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), so it's for a good cause.
Besides, who wouldn't want to be able to do this?
Evolution…
clock | July 21, 2007 Ha! Check out this brand-new blog! Ste is going to bookstores, checking out the Science section and moving pseudo-science, anti-science and nonsense books from it to the New Age section. Just a couple of Behe books in the La Jolla Bookstar, but I bet there will be more egregious miscategorizations in other stores. I wonder if this practice will spread virally to other cities and towns of the world...
(Hat-tip: Reed)
scientificactivist | July 19, 2007Yesterday, I mentioned the Atlas of Creation a book by Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar (a.k.a. Harun Yahya) sent unsolicited to scientists around the world. My boss also received a copy a few months ago, and yesterday he dug up the enormous volume for me. My first impression was that it was even larger and more glorious than I remembered. With hundreds of pages of full-color photos, this book must have been incredibly expensive to produce and distribute.
My second impression, though, was that it was also even crazier than I remembered. In the "to the reader" note at the beginning, Oktar…