Skepticism
pharyngula | March 3, 2010Gosh, when I put it that way, it doesn't sound like much. But at least Dr Rachel Dunlop has won the Shorty Award in the Health category, beating out some quack. Congratulations!
pharyngula | March 1, 2010I thought she'd just want to know, since she talks about it as one of her hideous personal deformities without knowing what it is called.
Nice video. It takes quite a bit of confidence to be able to do that. I'd make a similar one recounting my flaws, but youtube has a 10 minute limit on their videos.
You know, Rebecca will be one of the speakers at Skepticon III…
pharyngula | March 1, 2010
Springfield, that is. And you'll have to wait until November, but it will be worth it. It's Skepticon 3! Read about the meeting. Peruse the list of speakers. Register now. If you're rich, help by sponsoring.
I hear there will be a drinking contest between Richard Carrier and Rebecca Watson, which will be an event for the ages. I'm excused because of my advanced age and unfairly fine-honed metabolism.
It's a fabulously fun meeting. You want to go.
pharyngula | February 28, 2010There was a natural disaster somewhere, so I opened my mailbox to find lots of links to Pat Robertson saying stupid things about the Chilean earthquake, like this one and this one and this one and this one.
Sorry, gang, I don't believe it. Not only do I expect that nowadays, when his staff at the radio and television stations hear about a disaster, the first thought in their heads is how to stifle Pat, but some of those accounts are clearly satire, and they all say something different. It's become the obvious expectation that Robertson will blame something stupid for natural events, and…
aardvarchaeology | February 25, 2010
Being an atheist and a rationalist, I find most religious beliefs quite silly. But religious people vary hugely in their behaviour, and many do excellent deeds. Generally, I find it easier to respect the believer who lives by the core tenets of his faith, as all major religions have pretty reasonable ethical groundwork. Christian charity, for instance, is a fine thing.
On the other hand, I find idolatry and religious egoism particularly risible. And at a Chinese restaurant where I have been a regular for nearly 20 years there is a lovely example of both, as shown above.
Chinese Buddhism is…
pharyngula | February 22, 2010I like water, but I don't think it has magic powers.
Do you believe homeopathy is an effective form of treatment?
65% Yes
35% No
aardvarchaeology | February 20, 2010Yesterday the parents of a 17-y-o Malmö boy who suffers from autism lost a case in the Swedish court of appeal, Hovrätten. They had sued their insurance company for not recognising their claim for compensation. The parents blame the boy's condition on common vaccines, which would have entitled them to insurance money, while the company holds that autism is almost always congenital and never caused by vaccines. The court found the science presented by the defendant convincing and ruled in the company's favour.
I'm glad that the judicial system values scientific knowledge. But I am saddened…
pharyngula | February 20, 2010Rom Houben, the unfortunate fellow with severe brain damage who doctors claimed to be conscious via facilitated communication, is silent again. Investigators did the trivial experiment of sending his facilitating communicator outside the room while they showed Houben a series of simple objects, then brought her back in, and asked him to name them. Suddenly, facilitated communication failed…to nobody's surprise, except perhaps to the gullible medical staff.
I'm amazed it took them so long to do something so trivial and so conclusive.
pharyngula | February 18, 2010The Prime Quack has been identified: Andreas Moritz. He has admitted to getting Wordpress to pull Michael Hawkins' blog, and is also threatening me, now.
Michael Hawkins,
You may blame me for having your blog pulled. WorldPress had to remove your blog because otherwise it would have faced a hefty lawsuit, given the nature of the defamation campaign you had launched against me, and having positioned your blog link second place on the search engines.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Andreas+Moritz&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
I…
pharyngula | February 18, 2010Christopher Maloney, N.D.*, is rightfully complaining about the fact that he has received rude email, and also implies that he may have received harassing phone calls. He's a sensitive soul, apparently — hundreds of email messages is nothing, I get that much every few hours — but if you are sending nothing but vituperation and anger his way, knock it off.
I repeat, STOP IT.
No phone calls. Email should be arguments, not stab-someone-in-the-eyes loudness. You don't have to compromise on content, just don't be stupid. If you are intruding on someone's personal life, you are in the wrong, plain…
pharyngula | February 18, 2010That quack, Christopher Maloney, has written to me now…with a nice little edge of hysteria and paranoia.
Let the witch trials begin! Michael Hawkins and Rev. Myers presiding
Dear "Reverend" PZ Meyers,
How fitting that, three hundred years later, the witch trials continue. If you recall, it was the herbalists that were burned then as well. Your flock has spoken to me, Reverend Meyers, with the shrieking common to all fundamentalist cults. I believe if you check you will find that fundamentalism involves a closed mind while doing science requires an open mind. It also involves a thing they…
pharyngula | February 17, 2010Maloney is a naturopath in the state of Maine, where quacks like him get to call themselves "doctors". These so-called "doctors" get to make recommendations like this, in which he disparages standard flu vaccines and suggests these useless prescriptions:
Parents waiting for vaccinations can provide their children with black elderberry, which blocks the H1N1 virus. A single garlic capsule daily cuts in half the incidence and the severity of a flu episode for children.
There's another way you can tell he's a quack. When a student, Michael Hawkins, dared to criticize him, pointing out that "…
pharyngula | February 17, 2010Some of you may recall the Bigfoot footage I posted a while back — now the full, unedited, complete version without the blurry effects is available. Note that the language here may be NSFW, unless you're working as a longshoreman.
pharyngula | February 13, 2010Desiree Jennings was a young woman with some peculiar symptoms: after getting a seasonal flu shot, she was diagnosed with dystonia. Her speech was slurred, she couldn't walk without going into painful-looking spams…except that she was fine when she walked backwards or ran. It was very odd, and the blame was being placed on vaccinations.
Now, though, she's been caught by a camera crew, walking normally, driving, and just generally looking perfectly fine. Her only remaining symptom seems to be that she is afflicted* with an Australian accent. She claims to have been treated by some quack with…
pharyngula | February 6, 2010Oh, no. Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini have written a book and opinion piece in which they try to claim that natural selection is a dying concept, and what do they use to justify that outrageous claim? Evo devo! That's just nuts, and Mary Midgely compounds the crazy with terrible abuse of developmental biology — she seems to want to turn back the clock to the time of D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, and throw out Jacob and Monod. I really get pissed off when I see people misusing the specialized ideas of evo devo as a replacement for, rather than an addition to, the framework of modern…
pharyngula | February 4, 2010I'm quite proud, under most circumstances, to be affiliated with the University of Minnesota: it's an excellent university (and the Morris campus is the best within the system, although some of the other campuses argue about that), we've got great students, and we are a secular public institution dedicated to giving an affordable education to anyone. However, there is also one thing about the University of Minnesota which causes me great shame, and which I consider a betrayal of reason and evidence.
I am speaking, of course, of the Center for Spirituality & Healing. Center for Bullshit…
pharyngula | January 29, 2010Oh, no. I'm flying off to the UK tomorrow, and I've just learned that all my favoritest, bestest people there are going to kill themselves just 8 hours from now (uh, remember, correlation is not causation…I'm sorta sure it's not because I'm coming to visit.) What they're all going to do is go down to their local pharmacy and overdose on those ever-so-potent homeopathic "remedies" they're selling.
I may be tripping over heaps of corpses on the sidewalks there.
I wonder if there are homeopathic cures for jetlag? Can I pick up 1023 pills to get a molecule or two of something useful?
oracknows | January 28, 2010Faster than a blink of an eye (well, not really, but it sure seems that way sometimes) another fortnight has flown by, meaning that it's time yet again for another meeting of that venerable blog carnival of critical thinking, the Skeptics' Circle. This time around, we have our first ever veterinarian hosting. I could make jokes about the Skeptics' Circle going to the dogs, but I'll exercise some rare self-restraint and refrain from doing so. (Oh, wait...)
In any case, this time around, the 129th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is being held over at SkeptVet.
Head on over and check it out.…
oracknows | January 25, 2010It's amazing how fast two weeks can slide by, but the 129th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching and will be landing Thursday, January 28 at The SkeptVet Blog. Blog-specific instructions for submitting your best skeptical blogging can be found here, while general guidelines can be found here.
This is the first time we've had a skeptical veterinarian host; so let's try to get him some great material to help him do a bang-up job. And if you have some good woo related to veterinary or animals to send in, so much the better.