Skepticism
pharyngula | July 10, 2010The last time I was in Germany, I was surprised at the pharmacies — they all had big displays of homeopathic 'remedies' in the shop windows. I suppose it made some sense, since the profit margins on water have to be tremendous. There is some good news, though: Der Spiegel has a cover story on the homeopathy illusion (horrible google translation to English).
The Germans are also talking about removing homeopathic snakeoil from the list of supported medicines under their national health plans. Oops, there goes the profitability…
jstemwedel | July 9, 2010Regular readers will recall that this is not the first time the Free-Ride family has discussed skepticism and trust.
Dr. Free-Ride: You two are both exploring the internet more lately, and you know that one of the things people use the internet for is to sell you stuff, right?
Younger offspring: Yeah.
Elder offspring: Yeah.
Dr. Free-Ride: So how do you tell if the people selling you stuff are telling the truth about what they're selling?
Elder offspring: Rave reviews about the item.
Dr. Free-Ride: Rave reviews about the item from whom?
Elder offspring: From ... people who bought the item.
Dr…
pharyngula | July 4, 2010I don't envy Stephen Barrett at all, but this is going to be good. Barrett is the doctor behind QuackWatch a wonderful resource for exposing bogus medical claims. Among the many subjects of common charlatanry he's taken apart, one is the use of invalid tests to justify useless treatments, like chelation therapy, which is a goldmine for quacks. Do the doctory thing of drawing a little blood while wearing a white lab coat, send it off to a 'lab' that does a few tests and sends back a very official looking mass of data, and then the quack gazes into it and announces that you need powdered newts…
pharyngula | July 3, 2010The video below will hurt your brain, but don't worry, the pain will make you stronger. This is a mashup of a few homeopaths rationalizing their baloney, mixed in with Star Trek technobabble. One worry is that it might have the side effect of making you hate Trek, which isn't that bad — Star Trek in all of its versions has been saturated with a woo version of science, anyway.
Wait, don't cry, don't curl into a fetal ball and whimper. There is a corrective: good news. British skeptics have been working hard to fight homeopathy, UK doctors have called for a ban on homeopathic 'medicines', and…
gregladen | June 30, 2010And by faithing it, I mean using faith rather than critical analysis of the available information to make important decisions about what to regard as valid.
Let's do a couple of informal experiments to explore this issue more closely. For the present discussion, I'm assuming that you are a non-scientist and non-medical person who self identifies as a skeptic.
Do you know the following terms, without looking them up (which you can do, in part, by clicking on them)? In some cases you may be able to guess meanings, in some cases you may have a vague idea from prior reading. But that's not…
gregladen | June 29, 2010Skepchicon starts in two days. For those of you who don't know, Skepchicon is a "track" at Convergence, which in turn is one of those science fiction conventions where everyone dresses up as a Klingon or something.
A Klingon Warrior being interviewed at Convergence in a prior year.
The Skepchicon track and related events is an organized effort to bring skeptical conversation to the masses, focusing specifically on one very diverse group of people some of whom being very amenable to this sort of thing, and others perhaps not so. Normally, these conversations are very civil and informative,…
pharyngula | June 29, 2010It's an odd way to put it, I know, but it gets your attention. I could have called this the Atheist and Skeptic Problem, which is more accurate, but leads people to start listing all of our problems, starting with how annoying we are, and just for once I'd rather not go down that road. So here's the Woman Problem, and it's not a problem with women: it's a problem with atheist and skeptic groups looking awfully testosteroney. And you all know it's true, every time I post a photo of some sampling of the audience at an atheist meeting, it is guaranteed that someone will count the contribution of…
aardvarchaeology | June 28, 2010Californian Roy Zimmerman is a satirical singer in the vein of Tom Lehrer (who endorses him). He recently released his seventh solo album, Real American, and I'm happy to say that Zimmerman has lost none of the brilliance us fans have come to expect.
The disc has 13 tracks of which 3 are spoken political comedy. My favourite is the live-recorded boogie tune "Socialist!", which recalls "I'll Pull Out" from Zimmerman's previous album. It's sung in the voice of a hillbilly Republican who sneers at all the socialists in the audience. They've driven to the gig on public streets, gone to public…
gregladen | June 26, 2010 He swam straight over to the German glass, climbed in and even put a lid on top once he was sitting inside."
Huh?
Yes, it's true. Paul the octopus has been predicting German soccer outcomes for some time now, doing slightly better than random.
Here he is in action (Do watch to the end. Maybe you can explain to me who those strange people in robes are):
So, what's an octopus going to do with one million dollars?
gregladen | June 26, 2010In which I provide my two cents regarding the current discussion between PZ Myers, Pamela Gay, and others.
The relevant posts and threads:
Should skeptic organizations be atheist organizations? by PZ Myers.Why are we lying to Pamela Gay? by Seth ManapioSeparation between Scientific Truth & Belief by Pamela Gay.
I'm going to assume that you've read these, or are at least familiar with the main points of the argument.
I know Pamela Gay well enough to know that she is a smart person, a nice person, a well meaning person, an important member of the science education community, an effective…
pharyngula | June 26, 2010Skeptic organizations often face a nagging dilemma: should they be openly skeptical about religion? There are a couple of very good reasons why they should make criticizing religious claims a secondary issue, and one extremely bad reason that represents intellectual cowardice and a betrayal of skeptical principles. I'm going to come down on the side of accepting that skeptics groups can make accommodations to religious individuals in general, but that they must not avoid confrontation with religious ideas in particular.
What are the good reasons for shying away from religious conflict? One is…
aardvarchaeology | June 19, 2010There's not much detail available yet about the event, but I for one have written an Oslo trip onto my schedule for the last weekend in October. See you there!
WWW: www.kritiskmasse.no
Facebook: www.facebook.com/kritiskmasse
Twitter: twitter.com/kritiskmasse[More blog entries about skepticism, Norway; skepticism, Norge.]
pharyngula | June 18, 2010Announcing a new meeting to occur on 29-31 October in Oslo: Kritisk Masse (Critical Mass). Mark your calendars, more information will be coming later.
Hey, aren't all Norwegians intelligent critical thinkers? I wonder if they'll be able to handle 4 million attendees.
pharyngula | June 17, 2010I don't know. They seem to come in a range of sizes; when they're as large as a small male penis, I suppose it might be unexpected, perhaps a little confusing, perhaps a little ambiguous to people intolerant of the idea that the human form is found in intermediate shapes. We know that the variation is normal, and that the frequency of children born with intersex genitals is in the neighborhood of 0.1%, and it really shouldn't be a matter of serious concern — a large clitoris is as healthy as a small one.
Some parents freak out if their newborn is different, especially if the sex of their…
pharyngula | June 17, 2010Science budgets are tight all over, and we're all stretched thin. Where to make budget cuts that will harm science the least? Here's a sensible proposal: cut all the programs that have a bad track record and don't support good science:
Here's my proposal: save over $240 million per year in the NIH budget by cutting all funding for the two centers that fund alternative medicine research--the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM). Both of them exist primarily to promote pseudoscience. For the…
aardvarchaeology | June 15, 2010
I spent Tuesday in the charming company of James Randi and his assistant, journalist Brandon Thorp. Myself and P.J. RÃ¥smark had taken it upon ourselves to act as native guides and gophers for Randi during his days in Stockholm at the invitation of the Swedish Skeptics. So in the morning we went cane shopping together, though none of the canes we found were sufficiently antique-looking for our guest, and he seemed to manage effortlessly without one. And then we checked out the Vasa 17th century warship museum, since this is Stockholm's one truly unique attraction as far as I'm aware. (You'll…
pharyngula | June 9, 2010This is a good way to do an interview with Randi: completely cut out the boring interviewer and let the interviewee talk at length. Great fun!
If you go to the Big Think page, there's an index to sections of the talk if you don't have time to listen to the whole thing. You can also leave comments. One peculiar thing is that there are almost no comments there yet, and in fact the only section that seems to have any comments is the one titled "Science will never support religion"…and it's nothing but whiny apologists for faith. Don't bother reading them. It would be nice if people would…
pharyngula | June 9, 2010…but it is a pretty good rant against the climate change deniers. It's just that it is from Bill Maher.
I like what he's saying, but it's hard to listen to the man when he says, "Mainstream media, stop pitting the ignorant vs the educated and framing it as a debate" and not think that maybe the same advice should apply to Ariana Huffington, or when he says, "It's scientists vs non-scientists, and since the topic is science, the non-scientists don't get to vote", wanting to change that to "It's doctors vs non-doctors, and since the topic is medicine, the non-doctors don't get to vote",…
aardvarchaeology | June 8, 2010James Randi -- magician, escapist, author and skeptic extraordinaire -- will give three lectures in Sweden next week under the auspices of the Swedish Skeptics Society. Everyone is welcome: entry fee 50 kronor. Be there before the doors open! Among my duties is the task of buying homeopathic sleeping pills on which our guest can OD.
Tue 15 June. Stockholm, Roslagstullsbacken 21, Oskar Klein Auditorium. Doors open 18:00. Talk begins 19:00.
Wed 16 June. Gothenburg, Sven Hultins gata 4, RunAn. Doors open 18:30. Talk begins 19:00.
Thu 17 June. Lund, LundagÃ¥rd, Palaestra et Odeum. Doors open 17:…