Skepticism
pharyngula | April 24, 2010I never thought of this, but it's a real danger: the Homeopathic Bomb.
Homeopathic bombs are comprised of 99.9% water but contain the merest trace element of explosive. The solution is then repeatedly diluted so as to leave only the memory of the explosive in the water molecules. According to the laws of homeopathy, the more that the water is diluted, the more powerful the bomb becomes.
All I need is a minuscule quantity of octanitrocubane and a couple of liters of bottled water, and *POW*, I'll have the deadliest water balloon in the universe. Those people who were afraid the LHC was…
gregladen | April 21, 2010The venue, Minneapolis, is well chosen as it is very hard to get an earthquake going on this nice stable bit of crust.
I know it is a bit early, but I'll remind you of this now and then ... as you are making your plans for the summer, consider attending the Skepchicon track at the Convergence thingie in Minneapolis this July.
There will be many other things going on a Convergence. It's one of those fantasy/sci fi conventions where you wear the Star Wars suit. Well, you don't have to wear the suit if you don't want to. And the Skepchicks have a series of things going on:
Join us for a…
aardvarchaeology | April 19, 2010Because of blogging and my involvement in the skeptical pro-science movement, in recent years I have come into close contact with Americans as never before in my adult life. More than half of Aard's readers are in the US. It's almost like when I met my wife and suddenly learned lots about China.
A couple of things recur in people's commentary here, largely on religious and political issues. My outlook is clearly quite exotic to many Americans. I view mainstream US politics as half of a full political spectrum, where voters really only get to choose between two different brands of conservative…
pharyngula | April 16, 2010Let's pile on Phil Plait! He's arguing against the whole "let's bring the Pope to justice" idea. I will summarize his objections very briefly:
This is not necessarily a skeptical cause, unless they bring a supernatural defense to bear.
Need more tact: "We don't always need warriors. Sometimes we need diplomats."
We're outnumbered and would be pissing off 75 million Catholics.
What do you know…I mostly disagree with all of those points.
It is a skeptical cause. The whole problem arises from the self-righteousness of an organization that believes its authority comes from a…
pharyngula | April 15, 2010The British Chiropractic Association has dropped its lawsuit against Simon Singh. This is very, very good news…and to make it even better, Singh is going to go after the BCA for court costs. Drive the fools into the ground! Make them pay!
gregladen | April 14, 2010There are two things I've learned over the last year.
1) If you get a room full of self-described skeptics, gathered to converse skeptically about something, a minor tweaking of the conversation can cause an alarmingly large percentage of said "skeptics" to start spewing utter nonsense; and
2) Manyself-described skeptics seem to believe (yes, believe) that nothing can be believed, and assert that the ONLY thing that EVER matters is "the" truth, and at the same time insist that "the truth" can never be trusted (unless they themselves have uttered it). Such an approach can cause said…
pharyngula | April 12, 2010It's been a long term issue: a lot of vocal skeptics want nothing to do with atheism. They see it as a difficult issue that could sidetrack campaigns to encourage critical thinking, even though a lot of prominent skeptics are also atheists. I've never quite seen the logic: they're going to oppose the use of magic crystals to enhance your aura, but praying to a magical sky-primate to bring you a new bicycle…eh, it doesn't hurt. It seems a little inconsistent.
Anyway, Rebecca Watson, a godless skeptic if ever there was one, wrote a bit in support of the Hitchens/Dawkins proposal to bring legal…
pharyngula | April 12, 2010Klotho (KL) is an interesting gene. It produces an enzyme which seems to be involved in repressing cellular senescence by regulating the p53 pathway, mouse mutations in these genes produce the symptoms of accelerated aging, and there are even a couple of known human alleles correlated with changes in longevity and coronary artery disease. The current research is at the level of basic science, though, asking how this gene product fits into the regulatory web that maintains cell states; it is not ready for any kind of medical work, I don't even know how we would take advantage of the…
aardvarchaeology | April 9, 2010The comment thread on the entry about the shroud of Turin grows daily and is (perhaps not surprisingly) mainly not about the shroud but about Christianity and atheism. Some people are praying for me and my family, others are calling me names, just because I identify as an atheist and offer the scientific consensus view of that piece of Medieval linen along with some hypotheses about its context of manufacture.
Henrik commented that anybody who is not agnostic about gods has an unscientific attitude to the question. Owlmirror simply and wisely replied "Parsimony". This is in my opinion worth a…
pharyngula | April 7, 2010It's another CFI conference, titled Dangerous Nonsense - Exploring the Gulf between Science and its Impostors, which is being held in Chicago on 24 April. I just got the notice today, though, and noticed that the cutoff date for discounted early registration is 7 April, right now! If you're interested, work fast, save yourself a few dollars.
pharyngula | April 7, 2010Californians, if you're living anywhere near Berkeley, you might want to go to this: the Skeptical Conference on 24 April. They've got some good speakers, and it should be a fun meeting.
Just don't believe anything they tell you unless they provide lots of evidence to back it up.
pharyngula | April 4, 2010I know many of you are occupied with batting around an obtuse creationist named JohnHamilton, but if you need a break, there's a nice post here that has drawn out a couple of scientologists. They're actually trying to defend the fantasies of L. Ron Hubbard as "science"!
Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is, in its broadest sense, any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a correct prediction, or reliably-predictable type of outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique, technology, or practice, from…
aardvarchaeology | April 3, 2010I was annoyed and surprised to learn from a publicist that this weekend the History Channel is airing a programme named "The Real Face of Jesus" that takes a credulous approach to the shroud of Turin. The shroud is a 14th century fake relic, as has been well documented by historical sources and radiocarbon analysis. Here's a quick machine-assisted translation of a 2004 article I wrote on the subject.
The shroud of Turin, a linen cloth, 4.5 x 1.2 m, with the image of a wounded male body. The wounds are consistent with the New Testament's portrayal of the last days and death of Jesus of…
pharyngula | April 1, 2010I have arrived safely in Rochester, New York!
OK, totally unsurprising and boring. How about this for exciting news: Simon Singh has won an appeal, and gets to use the defense of fair comment in his battle with the chiropractic quacks.
Air travel works! Reason wins one!
pharyngula | March 27, 2010You could also smack it with a hammer and set it on fire. More mass media lunacy is looming, with a new show on TLC called Paranormal Court.
Robert Hansen, a psychic medium famous among people who believe in psychic mediums, will mediate disputes between family members squabbling over possessions left behind by the deceased.
You know, if somebody I loved died, and a fraud like Robert Hanson came along to tell me what that person believed, I think I'd be a bit pissed. And no, I wouldn't accept that he had any authority or knowledge to determine the state of mind of the deceased.
Oh, and TLC (…
pharyngula | March 24, 2010Nikki Owen is "a practitioner of neuro-linguistic programming and TV commentator who is described as Britain's leading charisma expert."
Let that sink in. You just know she's got to be an utterly astounding dingbat, and you wouldn't be wrong.
Anyway, she has made an incredible claim that is testable (that last bit is probably the most astonishing part of it all — these gomers usually run away from anything that can be evaluated as fast as their little legs will take them). Owen says that if you slice an apple in two and talk lovey-dovey to one half, and spiteful meanness to the other, the…
aardvarchaeology | March 12, 2010Here's an interesting case. A woman took her baby to Danderyd church (where I once took first communion) and had the child baptised -- against the father's wishes, as it turned out. He isn't happy. And the priest admits that he should have checked with the dad but that he didn't.
Bo Larsson, provost of the see of Stockholm, comments (and I translate):
"When I became a priest in the mid-70s, the nuclear family was the unquestioned standard, but today's relationship patterns are infinitely more varied than they were 20 or 30 years ago and I feel that it has become even more important that the…
pharyngula | March 8, 2010On Saturday in Melbourne, I'm going to be giving a talk on the incompatibility of science and religion. Now what happens? Another eruption of those accommodation arguments, and I've got this big pile of stuff I could say right now, but I'm going to hold it in, so it's at least a little bit fresh for the end of this week. Until then, read Larry Moran, who has it covered.
I am particularly appalled that Larry's comments contain that hoary old chestnut, "science can't explain love," with the bizarre claim that "No scientist that is also a decent human being subjects all her/his beliefs to…
pharyngula | March 4, 2010This is old news. The NY Times has an article on the expanding agenda of creationists to include denial of lots of other phenomena that make them uncomfortable. We've known this for years! It isn't just creationism; those beliefs have a surprisingly high correlation with denial of climate change, denial of HIV's role in AIDS, anti-vax nonsense, rejection of the Big Bang, dualism, etc., etc., etc. At the root of these problems is discomfort with modernity and change, resentment of authority, anti-intellectualism, and of course, goddamned religion, which is little more than a rationalization…