pseudoscience
clock | September 20, 2006People argue bad science, psuedoscience and nonsense for a variety of reasons, some religiously motivated, some politically motivated, some out of ignorance, some out of arrogance, some out emotional needs, some due to psychological problems.
When they encroach onto the scinetific turf and argue nonsense within a scientific domain, they use a limited set of rhetorical tools. The exact choice of tools depends on the motivation, as well as the forum where they advocate the nonsense. Some, the generals in the army in War On Science, have big soapboxes, e.g., TV, radio and newspapers. Some…
clock | September 20, 2006Over 1.6 Million Americans Use Alternative Medicine For Insomnia Or Trouble Sleeping:
A recent analysis of national survey data reveals that over 1.6 million American adults use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to treat insomnia or trouble sleeping according to scientists at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the National Institutes of Health.
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Those using CAM to treat insomnia or trouble sleeping were more likely to use biologically based therapies (nearly 65 percent), such as herbal…
clock | September 20, 2006This strange November 09, 2005 post should really be posted on Friday as part of the Friday Weird Sex Blogging....
Via Shakespeare's Sister and Blue Gal in a Red State comes this crazy article:
Serbs line up for testicle shocks
Men in Serbia are lining up to have electric shocks delivered to their testicles as part of a new contraceptive treatment.
Serbian fertility expert Dr Sava Bojovic, who runs one of the clinics offering the service, said the small electric shock makes men temporarily infertile by stunning their sperm into a state of immobility.
He said: "We attach electrodes to either…
jlynch | September 16, 2006
Arizona has unfortunately been a hot-bed for Young Earth Creationism (YEC). Some of the smaller church-affiliated schools here teach YEC, and there are a number of groups that run creationist tours to the Grand Canyon. Up north, the Creation Research Society maintains the Van Andel Creation Research Center north of Chino Valley. And in Phoenix, we have Walt Brown's Center for Scientific Creationism. For these alone, I'd have to apologize to the world on behalf on Arizona.
I recently stumbled across the Lost World Musuem which is apparently opening in Phoenix NY this Fall. The Musuem's…
jlynch | September 15, 2006Over at the Panda's Thumb, Nick highlights the following quote from Wiker and Witt's, A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature:
Strange though it may seem to neo-Darwinists, Darwin's assumption that the terms species and variety are merely given for convenience's sake is part of a larger materialist and reductionist program that undercuts the natural foundation of counting and distorts the natural origin of mathematics. To put it more bluntly, in assuming that "species" are not real, Darwinism and the larger reductionist program burn away the original ties…
clock | September 1, 2006And even better - they were discovered to be working illegally.
Steve says: "Extraterrestrials gotta eat, too"
Lex noticed that (if you hover your cursor over the "illegal aliens" in the text), you can find Roswell aliens on eBay!
clock | August 31, 2006Since Chris Mooney's book has just come out in paperback and the critics often invoke false equivalence between abuses of science on the Right and the Left, I thought this would be a good time to repost this August 05, 2005 post (reposted here on January 16, 2006):
According to Michael Shermer there are:
- science
- borderlands science
- psuedoscience, and
- nonsense
Science is a methodology of figuring out, with as great confidence as possible, how the world works. Evolutionary theory is one of the biggest, strongest and best-supported bodies of all of science.
Borderland Science refers to…
jlynch | August 26, 2006Jonathan Wells is at it again. Erstwhile "developmental biologist," he has taken time off "working on a book criticizing the over-emphasis on genes in biology and medicine" to present a Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, one that is approved of by Ann Coulter, who sees Wells as "an expert of Darwinism and intelligent design". To be fair, this is probably true - Wells is an expert in the same way that Coulter is an expert on science and history.
In any case, over at the Thumb, the crew have begun to put together a chapter by chapter response to Wells' dreck. As…
jlynch | July 24, 2006This is .... strange. Apparently there are individuals out there that deny the germ theory of disease. Tara encountered this in one of her comment threads:
[F]orget the germ theory nonsense and become a real scientist. ... Evidence is all around and you have as much evidence as I do. The sole difference between you and me is that you are still blindfolded by a century of dogmatic thinking and are not able to see the evidence.
You can do what you want with your special laboratory mice, but whan it comes to it nobody has ever proven that germs cause disease and a century of war on microbes has…
scientificactivist | July 13, 2006This week's Nature features a news article and editorial about Francis Collins--director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute--whose new book The Language of God advocates reconciliation between science and religion. Although the status of science in America could be improved by lessening religious anti-science hostility, and we're generally much better off in general when we all get along, the argument advanced by Collins is less than compelling.
To his credit, Collins' religious views are relatively progressive, and he disagrees strongly with creationism and intelligent…
clock | July 3, 2006Believe me, I love the word "circadian". It is a really cool word, invented by Franz Halberg in the late 1950s, out of 'circa' (Latin - "about") and diem ("a day"), to denote daily rhythms in biochemistry, physiology and behavior generated by the internal, endogenous biological clocks within living organisms.
It's been a while since the last time I found someone mistaking the word for 'cicada' which is a really cool insect. 'Circadian' has become quite common term in the media and, these days increasingly, in popular culture. Names of some bands contain the word. A few blogs' names…
clock | June 26, 2006There is a whole slew of responses to this silly post by Comissar/
It is a typical effort to make "balance" between Left and Right in order to make the Right appear more palatable, ...or palatable at all. The typical He-said-She-said approach that tries to equalize the enormously dangerous policies of the Right (see my previous post below) with follies of some powerless, silly people on the fringes that nominally belong to the Left (and vote Nader when it really matters!).
But, since when was Astrology part of the Democratic Party platform, even at state level, like Creationism and Global…