Skepticism
pharyngula | January 30, 2011Follow this link to the amusingly bizarre webcomic about homeopathy behind it. I'll just share with you the story behind the artwork:
So this might seem to make very little sense at all. Fair enough, it's sort of supposed to. But this did actually happen to me at work — A guy came in to buy some homeopathic tablets, and was quite insistent that I not let them touch the large tub of ice-cream that he was also purchasing. Assuming that it had something to do with astronomically minute quantities of poison that such remedies are reputed to contain (they don't, by the by — it is entirely water,)…
pharyngula | January 29, 2011Africa is suffering through the global AIDS pandemic — tens of millions are infected with HIV. It's good that wealthier nations are sending resources to the continent, but do they really need a quack homeopath and chiropractor to travel to Tanzania to treat AIDS with homeopathy?
Wait…there are areas of North Africa where the water shortages are chronic and acute. Maybe she'd be more useful if she went there with her magic vials.
pharyngula | January 28, 2011Dara O'Briain and Brian Cox aggravated a great many astrologers when they announced on a UK television program that "astrology is rubbish" and "astrology is nonsense". The Astrological Association of Great Britain was so incensed that they created a petition demanding that the BBC commit to "making a fair and balanced representation of astrology in the future" — which left me amusedly discombobulated that there is a formal Astrological Association of Great Britain, and that they don't realize that tossing their whole goofy discipline in the rubbish heap is a fair and balanced representation.…
pharyngula | January 24, 2011Nah, not really — that work has been independently confirmed many times over. Recently, though, Deepak Chopra has been praising Luc Montagnier, the Nobel prize winning co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus, for tumbling down the walls of science — which ought to be enough to condemn the poor guy right there. But I had to take a look at exactly what Montagnier is claiming, and I'm afraid the only thing tumbling is his credibility.
Montagnier claims in several papers that the DNA of pathogenic bacteria emits an electromagnetic signal, and further, that if you dilute that DNA…
gregladen | January 22, 2011... or does it???
One day I was eating some chicken, outdoors, somewhere in Africa, with a colleague I had been living with for a few months and two brand new visitors, Dick and Jane1 from the US. After cleaning most, but not all, of the meat off a leg bone, I tossed it to Hozi the Cat, who eagerly grabbed it and took it behind my chair to munch it down.
Jane, lunging at the cat, "No, no. No!!!! She'll die, she'll choke to death!"
The cat moved behind a different chair, with half the bone, the other half already having been munched down.
"Oh, don't worry, I feed her all the chicken bones…
pharyngula | January 18, 2011I told you that maybe talking real fast would be a viable lecture strategy, and here's Ben Goldacre proving me right!
aardvarchaeology | January 17, 2011Noted skeptical author and podcaster CJ Ãkerberg takes a look at one of the most active and visible anti-vaccine cranks in Sweden, Sanna Ehdin, and at the history of vaccination. The entry was originally published in Swedish on the Tankebrott blog, and I asked CJ to translate it for Aard.
In Sweden we have been quite fortunate to not have the same, vociferous anti-vaccination movement as seen in the US and the UK. But this has changed in recent years. Perhaps it was the slightly chaotic handling of the A(H1N1) vaccination. Perhaps it is due to the fact that some well-regarded figures in…
gregladen | January 14, 2011Sometimes, that is what I think news reporters do. There are occasions when you know the story and have the opportunity to watch them spew out incorrect information. Sometimes you do not know the story but you can watch them getting it wrong and see that happening while they appear to remain oblivious to their own clumsy ineptitude.
Several years ago Minnesotans watched in horror as the bodies of a dozen kids where pulled out of a cave where they had suffocated, a cave in a Mississippi River bluff in Saint Paul. Or was it six kids? Or was it a mine and not a cave? Or was it eight kids?…
pharyngula | January 13, 2011I will not be at this one…I wouldn't want you to think I was verging on a state of godlike omnipresence. It should still be fun and informative, and has a good lineup: It's the Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism, on 9-10 April in New York City. Of course, it's not set in the Pacific Northwest, so it does have an inferior venue (NY? Who's heard of that strange place?), but you'll learn stuff there anyway.
pharyngula | January 13, 2011Back in the dim and ancient days of usenet, I used to take astrologers apart for fun. They had such goofy ideas, and they were so serious about it. But fortunately for us, astrology is unlike creationism in that it is mostly powerless and unpersuasive, and only the deeply gullible and ignorant can fall for it any more. And it's so darned inconsistent — even the rationale that forms the foundation of the belief doesn't hold up. I've tended to ignore the irrelevancies of astrology most of the time, but the Star Tribune had a short piece on astrology, and it's nicely dismissive — so I'll mention…
pharyngula | January 13, 2011Last night, I finished reading Paul Offit's Deadly Choices(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), his new book about the history of anti-vaccination movements. It's very good and very thorough and very convincing, and I found it informative because it also takes a broad view, looking everything from the campaigns against Jenner to the crazy talk of Jenny McCarthy. I had never really seen where these opponents of a simple life-saving procedure were coming from, but seeing a few centuries worth of their rhetoric lined up and put on display was helpful, and I finally realized what was wrong with the anti-…
pharyngula | January 12, 2011Your problems are over: Justin Bieber is praying for you.
I'm afraid us atheists lack such privileged access to cosmic powers, so any of you readers who might want to help — pitiful as any of your efforts might be in contrast to the awesome majesty Bieber has brought to bear on the flooding — you can donate to Queensland Flood Relief.
pharyngula | January 12, 2011Those fine folks behind Skepticon are already planning ahead to the next event, and have begun fundraising so they can keep the convention cheap to attend. They are smart people. However, the way they're trying to raise a little cash now is by selling Valentine's Day cards. Don't they know that godless skeptics are heartless, cold, unfeeling people who don't know what love is?
Anyway, if you choose to buy some for amusement — you know, so you can aloofly ponder in a detached, intellectual way the strange rituals of these emotional hu-mans — you know where to go. You can put custom messages in…
pharyngula | January 11, 2011Whoa. Naming rights to the arena for the Sacramento Kings has been bought up by a corporation — no surprise at all there — but guess who bought it?
The company that makes those cheesy and ridiculous Power Balance bracelets, those scraps of silicone with an imbedded hologram that they falsely tout as improving athletic performance. This is the same company that got slapped down by an Australian court…and they make $35 million a year defrauding the public.
We're all in the wrong business.
There's also a poll at the article:
Although the name change is tentative, Arco Arena is to be renamed…
pharyngula | January 10, 2011You might want to look at Ince's web page: he's touring in March and April, and in May he's gathered together Brian Cox, Ben Goldacre, and Simon Singh for a "science tour celebrating the universe and many of the wonders that lie within it". That all looks wonderful, you think, and so do I. I would like to see that.
But then, look at the venues.
To my horror, surprise, and dismay, "Morris, Minnesota" is not among them. They're all strange little places like Glasgow and Oxford and Cambridge and of all places, London. Those places don't need these kinds of tours. The rural midwest does. I want…
pharyngula | January 9, 2011That loopy homeopath, John Benneth, is bragging now that he is the most widely read homeopath in the world, and that his blog has broken all previous viewership records. He's quite proud of this "accomplishment".
One of the last John Benneth Journal entries for 2010, IN ONE YEAR, has broken all previous viewership records and sparked more commentary and outrage amongst the pharmaceutical company stooges than any previous Journal entry, enlisting the usual fury and nasty responses.
He seems to be aware of how it happened: I linked to that one article. What he doesn't seem to appreciate,…
pharyngula | January 8, 2011It's Tracey Spicer, a commentator on an Australian radio show. If you do radio or TV, you must listen to her interview with Meryl Dorey, the wicked anti-vaxxer crank. There are no mealy mouthed pleasantries, there is no downplaying of the evil Dorey has promoted, Spicer simply rips into her and points out all the legal and scientific facts against her. Then, at the end, Dorey is asked about the fact that a legal judgment has been made against her requiring that she post a disclaimer on her website, which she has not done, and Dorey begins to give the address of her website instead of…
pharyngula | January 4, 2011Power Balance is a company that prospered on gullibility: they sell overpriced silicon rubber wristbands with an imbedded hologram that do absolutely nothing, but which they claimed would enhance athletic performance. And they got suckers to shell out $60 for them.
The law caught up to them and forced them to publicly retract their claims. Here's what you'll find on their website now.
In our advertising we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility.
We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we…
pharyngula | January 2, 2011I just saw a commercial peddling gold coins, going on and on about how the price of gold was soaring above $1300 per ounce, and showing this fancy glinting well-lit shiny gold coin and telling everyone the cost of gold meant the $50 price could only be guaranteed for 7 days. This coin is 14 karat 0.9999 pure gold clad! A little deeper in to the spiel, they mention that it contains 14 milligrams of pure gold.
Using their own numbers, by my calculation that means the $50 coin contains about 64¢ worth of gold.
It sounds like a tax on dumb people, to me. They're probably snaring people who watch…