Skepticblog

It has finally happened. After decades of skeptics proclaiming that they would drop their skepticism about UFOs and alien abductions if only an extraterrestrial intelligence would contact them directly, it has finally happened right smack in the middle of the Skeptics Society offices. An ET appeared one day to lay to rest once and for all whether or not ETs have visited earth. And the aliens have a message and a warning about what we earthlings are doing to our planet: (continue reading…)

Half a century ago the flying car was a symbol of the miracles that technology would bring us in the future. Now, after 50-60 years of being just around the corner,  it is a symbol of the false promises of over-enthusiastic technofiles. It is a campy vision of a future that perhaps will never come, right up there with ray guns, jet packs, and meals in a pill.

Yet all this time believers never gave up on the concept of a flying car, and home-grown engineers have optmistically promised that they would be the ones to finally deliver. It seems that every year the various tech magazines will have the picture of the latest flying car concept on the cover – it’s a tease they know will sell magazines. I always smile whenever I see yet another news outlet reporting that the flying car has finally arrived.

Well – I’m smiling again. The Times Online reported yesterday the “World’s First Flying Car.” They are referring to the upcoming test flight of a “flying car” by Carl Dietrich, who runs the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia.

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From time to time, I get questions from people who listen to my podcast, This Week in Science, asking me to discuss topics that they feel are being ignored by the mainstream media. Most of these questions revolve around either climate change or free-energy.

The climate change questions usually contain some hope that I will dig up some evidence against human-induced, carbon dioxide-linked climate change. And, I do try to report on any relevant stories that arise. There just aren’t as many of them as my questioners would like, and sometimes I do miss new developments. The result is that I become a biased, censoring cog in the media machine. Evil, just like the rest of them… but, enough about me.  On to free-energy. (continue reading…)

On January 2, as nearly everyone knows, the worst thing that can happen to someone happened to John Travolta and Kelly Preston: They outlived their child.

This has happened to my parents, so I took particular notice of this story, as I do with all such tragedies in the news. They hit a little too close to home.

But this one was different, not because some segment of the population took a sort of morbid pleasure in the news, because that happens all the time with celebrity tragedies; but because a lot of my own friends were doing it. People who I thought were above that sort of thing. (continue reading…)

This is the worst pareidolia ever.

Jesus in a tile. But not really.

Click to embiggen and see more from the source (the Las Vegas Sun).

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It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about the production of The Skeptologists.

I wanted to talk a bit about what it was like working with what I’ve come to call “The Skeptical Dream Team.” I’m going to give you a (from memory) blow-by blow of the production days.

After we got all of the players together, made all the arrangements for the locations and set the production schedule, the ball was rolling, and the planes were in the air with cast and crew from all over all descending on Pasadena CA, our home base for the location production for the show. The Date, April 1, 2008, April Fool’s day, thankfully most everyone knew better than to try and pull any pranks on me this year. 

Pasadena was the nearest major city to most of the main locations that would serve as the backdrops for our show; They were; The Skeptic Magazine offices where the on-camera interviews would be shot, Mt. Wilson Observatory where the cast would open and close the show, The RMS Queen Mary where the ghost hunt would take place, O’ Happy Day, a quaint little health food store where some of the team would discuss and try wheatgrass juice and finally the Center for Inquiry where the team would assemble to discuss their findings and conduct experiments.

The first day was a flurry of driving, airport pickups, phone calls and directions. We had three production assistants criss-crossing LA to pickup up cast, and purchase last minute props and food for the shoot. There was insurance paperwork to get ironed out, schedule changes to accommodate, and vehicle capacity issues to get sorted. Most of our cell phones were rarely hung up. The next morning was to begin our production. (continue reading…)

Most skeptics know that self-proclaimed psychics such as Uri Geller, who claim to be able to bend cutlery with just their minds, are actually using magic and trickery to do so. Of course, if they could really bend metal with just their minds you have to wonder why at some point they always have to touch the spoon. The answer is obvious to skeptics: because the only way to bend a spoon is by physically bending it! But how? (continue reading…)

I have been an animal lover all my life and the reports of supposed telepathic communication between man and the animal world has long held a deep fascination for me. To this day, I still have trouble keeping a dry eye watching the closing scenes in “Lassie Come Home” when the ragged collie finally makes her lonely way home, limping on one paw. As far back as I can remember in my childhood I wondered: how did she travel all those miles and know where to go?  (continue reading…)

Water is the new snakeoil – well, it’s an old snakeoil too. There certainly seems to be something psychologically appealing about the notion of pure water. It is clear, crisp, untainted – it just has to be healthy. And, of course, clean water is essential for health and life, and nothing enhances a lie better than a kernal of truth.

It is not surprising, therefore, that “magic” water has long been a staple of snakeoil salesmen, gurus, and charlatans. Health spas originally centered around special springs of water, or mineral water, and later carbonated water.

I was recently asked about a recent incarnation of the water snakeoil routine, Kangen Water. The claims made on the website for this dubious product are unimaginatively representative.

Water is the single most important resource for the human body. Water is the most essential nutrient involved in every function of the body. Water accounts for approximately 70% of an individual’s complete fat free body mass. In order to function properly, water must be consumed in set quantities in consistent intervals (average of 2.5 liters per day). When not enough water is consumed, people can begin to develop certain illnesses and even accelerate their aging processes.

Many of the “magic water” website begin like this – water is an “important resource for the human body.” Well, duh. This says nothing, of course, about why any particular water is more healthful then, say, the water that comes out of your tap.

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I would like to turn the clock back, if I may, to a few years before I had ever heard of such a thing as skepticism, back to June of 2001. One of my responsibilities was as Technical Editor for the database publication FileMaker Advisor magazine, and I wrote a companion editorial column called Browse Mode. In one such column, I wrote about the exploits of one Bill McClintock (last name changed at his request), who used FileMaker Pro software to manage his own database of Bigfoot sightings – quite the colorful topic for a publication that could easily run on the dry side.

Tucked in the back corner of a woodworking shop in Portland, Oregon, Bill managed his database with great care and hunted for patterns in his database of reported sightings. One of his nuances (and I’ve since gathered that this is endemic in the Bigfoot community) was a virulent hatred of competing Bigfoot researchers. Of the best known Bigfoot organization, Bill said:

Organizations like BFRO (Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization) list anything and everything, no matter what joker reports it. So it’s impossible to glean anything statistically useful out of their databases. (continue reading…)