Skepticism
sheril | August 2, 2008Friends back in my home state of New York have been telling me about a 'monster' that supposedly washed up on the beach in Montauk, Long Island. Intrigued, I checked out the now famous photograph after the story appeared on CNN. Take a look:
Unfortunately, while I love a good creature mystery as much as anyone, I'm disappointed. The first thing to note is we have no perspective for scale and I'd be surprised if it was more than a couple feet long. Further, what's being called a 'beak' are more likely canine teeth, which suggest a decomposing carnivore. Now I haven't checked in with the…
sb admin | July 30, 2008
One of my favorite pet websites is RationalWiki, which is slowly transforming into it's 3.0 iteration. It originated as a parody/rebuttal site to the execrable Conservapedia (and no, Conservapedia is not a parody, just an example of Poe's Law at work). Eventually, it expanded to developing articles that examined irrationality in general, such as fundamentalism, evolution denialism, etc.
In its latest phase, it has implemented an interactive "What is Going On" (WIGO) feature. Initially this simply tracked inanity at Conservapedia. Now it will also track the best and worst of the…
aardvarchaeology | July 30, 2008Affärs- och Kapitalnytt reports that the Scanian bank Sparbanken Syd has given an $8300 grant (SEK 50,000) for archaeological fieldwork and research: "a first instalment for excavations" at a cemetery in Ravlunda parish. Well done!
Unfortunately, the bank has chosen to give the money to our old friend Bob Lind, a homeopath and amateur archaeoastronomer with really wigged-out ideas. Bob has neither formal qualifications nor any excavation experience. On the contrary, he was recently reprimanded by the County Archaeologist for unauthorised de-turfing and addition of stones to the cemetery in…
sb admin | July 29, 2008Oh. My. F-ing. God. All the news that's fit to print???
I know some of my readers don't think much of the New York Times (yes, PP, I'm talking to you), but despite some of my reservations, it's still the Paper of Record. That's why I was, er, um, was nauseated was flabbergasted threw up in my mouth was surprised when I saw a piece on the OpEd page today calling for better investigation of UFOs.
If you just did a spit take on your LCD, please wipe it off now.
OK, done? Good.
I did not make this up. Really. I'm not going to go through all the arguments regarding the utter…
aardvarchaeology | July 23, 2008A Trondheim colleague has kindly invited me to head a session at the Nordic TAG conference next May. T.A.G. means "Theoretical Archaeology Group", and denotes a series of annual conferences rather than a defined group of people. The invitation hinted that I might perhaps want to contribute something provocative. After a moment's thought, I realised that my attitude to TAG (Nordic or otherwise) goes beyond provocative: I am simply hostile to it. Archaeological theory, in my opinion, belongs within the context of real specific archaeological research and is useless in an abstract form, which…
aardvarchaeology | July 18, 2008Amateur archaeologist Bob Lind, whom I have often mentioned here in connection with his wild archaeoastronomical ideas, issued me a challenge today (and I translate):
Hello Martin!
I saw a statement of yours in yesterday's Sydsvenska Dagbladet, where you encourage researchers to blog more, which you have certainly done yourself both regarding Ale's stones and Heimdallr's stones. And what rot it all is.
Since you have insulted me in writing to journalists and called me an arch-idiot [Sw. ärkeidiot] among other things, while also claiming that my research regarding Ale's stones and Heimdallr's…
aardvarchaeology | July 17, 2008
Reading up on some pseudoscientific ideas common among dowsing-rod enthusiasts, I happened upon a funny detail. Many Swedish dowsers believe in the "Curry grid", consisting of "power lines" across the surface of the Earth, detectable only by dowsing. They were invented (not discovered, as they are entirely fictitious, and never survive blind tests) by German physician Manfred Curry (1899-1953). As it turns out, Curry was far more known during his lifetime as a keen sailor and student of sailboat design, inventor of the cam cleat (Sw. fjädrande skotlÃ¥s) and contributor to the invention of…
aardvarchaeology | July 16, 2008On my desk is a copy of the 2009 Skepdude pinup calendar. It features lascivious images of many prominent skeptical gentlemen, including D.J. Grothe, Hemant Mehta and Brian Dunning. For March, there's even a picture of a skinny white dude in partial déshabillé, skilfully shot by my art-school-trained wife at sunset in the woods just above our housing area.
If your cognitive abilities are more strongly perturbed by the female form than the male one, there's the 2009 Skepchick calendar. All for a good cause: sending cool people to The Amazing Meeting who wouldn't otherwise be able to be there.…
pharyngula | July 5, 2008One of the splendid people I met in Denver told me about her attendance at a bizarre lecture a few months ago — and she sent me a link to her summary. If you want to experience a second hand glimmering of Native American woo, with UFOs, magic origins, transparent white people, anti-evolution, and quantum physics, there you go.
pharyngula | July 5, 2008Yesterday, I blitzed through a tiny slice of the Mensa meeting in Denver. My time was really tight, so after arriving on Thursday for a fabulous Pharyngufest, I only got to sit through two talks in the morning session before mine, and then whoosh, I was off to the airport and hurtling through the sky at 475mph to get back home.
I had time to look through the program at least, and I hate to say it, but Mensa meetings are better organized than the big meetings of most atheist groups I've been to (this is a peeve of mine — atheists give bad meetings, although I'm sure Margaret Downey will prove…
pharyngula | June 28, 2008Lest Phelps and the Texas Supreme Court leave the unfortunate impression that the US is the sole repository of lunacy in the world, Ben Goldacre's latest column is about linking mobile phone signals to suicides — there's a bit of hysteria in one of the British newspapers about it. I like his approach; he called the source of the frightening information, a Dr Roger Coghill, to get the data that led to his conclusion.
I contacted Dr Coghill, since his work is now a matter of great public concern, and it is vital his evidence can be properly assessed. He was unable to give me the data. No paper…
aardvarchaeology | June 22, 2008The European Council of Skeptical Organizations (ECSO) has set up an on-line forum.
Explains ECSO chairman Amardeo Sarma,
"The purpose of this forum is to promote discussion with ECSO and other Skeptics Organisations. So if you have some question or a suggestion to a particular Skeptics Organisation and do not have direct access to them or do not speak their language, here is where you can ask. If someone from that organisation is reading this forum, you should get an answer or reaction. If possible, ECSO members will point responsible people from that organisation to this question or…
pharyngula | June 21, 2008This weekend has been busy — yesterday, I gave my talk at the Amaz!ng Meeting, and I think it went OK. I tried to go against type and gave a talk that was all science and biology*, no debunking, no godless inspiration pep talk, no railing at the state of delusional thinking and ignorance in the US. I saved all that instead for the conversations with people afterwards. I was hanging out with swarms of people all day and all night, talking myself hoarse and listening to all these interesting skeptics. I was up until 3am, at which time I discovered I was drinking something bright blue called an…
pharyngula | June 19, 2008As you read this, I'm on an airplane winging off to Las Vegas for The Amazing Meeting (Amazing Schedule here). I understand that I am expected to be Amazing, but usually all I can manage is a low-key Interesting, so it will be quite the challenge.
Anyway, I am told that I should arrange a Pharyngulation of some sort. Who else is going? What fits into our schedule? One thing we could do is look for the Bad Astronomers to arrange something, and then we crash it, elbow aside all the starry-eyed geeks, and take over. But maybe you have a better idea … share it here.
pharyngula | June 19, 2008Colleen Leduc has an autistic child named Victoria who is enrolled in a public school. She recently got a terrifying phone call — her daughter was being sexually abused. We parents know well the fear and worry a threat to our children can cause, and Leduc was receiving an urgent, frantic phone call from school officials telling her that her daughter was being victimized in the worst way.
So she rushes in to this little meeting.
"The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the…
pharyngula | June 10, 2008Minnesota is a pretty darn good state, usually fairly progressive, but sometimes…sometimes it can plunge off the deep end into the credulous muck of woo. My state has just approved the title of doctor for naturopaths. I imagine the MDs are a bit aghast, and even us Ph.D.s are feeling a bit diminished.
It's also a law that was pushed by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. My party. Minnesota Democrats are responsible for elevating respect for quackery. I'm embarrassed by that, too.
If only I'd known, I would have proposed an alternative idea at the DFL caucus: we should ennoble naturopaths…
pharyngula | June 8, 2008Richard Dawkins interviewed Rupert Sheldrake on Sheldrake's remarkable assertions about the existence of psychic abilities. Here's Sheldrake's rationalization:
He then said that in a romantic spirit he himself would like to believe in telepathy, but there just wasn't any evidence for it. He dismissed all research on the subject out of hand. He compared the lack of acceptance of telepathy by scientists such as himself with the way in which the echo-location system had been discovered in bats, followed by its rapid acceptance within the scientific community in the 1940s. In fact, as I later…
aardvarchaeology | May 29, 2008Me and Junior just got home from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. First we were shown the portrait collection and the main meeting room where a lot of Nobel prizes have been decided. Then, under the joint auspices of the Academy and the Swedish Skeptics Society, we heard an hour's lecture by one of the Society's long-time members: astronaut Christer Fuglesang.
It was a good talk in plain Swedish, ranging from abstruse physics to everyday practicalities of life in space. (If you lose something small inside a space station, just wait a day or two and then look for it near the intake of…