Skepticblog

I used to write for the Huffington Post, an online news and blog collective. It was started by Arianna Huffington during the Bush Era as a response to all the far-right online media. I didn’t agree with a lot of what was on there — I am more centrist — but at the time I thought it was necessary.

Then they started to promote far-left New Age nonsense, and when it came to vaccinations, HuffPo started posting all kinds of opinions that amounted to nothing more than out-and-out health threats. While they do sometimes post a counter-argument, it’s still almost all alt-med, all the time.

Here’s the latest: a doctor named Frank Lipman is telling people not to get vaccinated against Swine Flu. Instead he says you should wash your hands a lot, eat well, and take homeopathic medicine.

Yes, seriously. (continue reading…)

Are you a global warming skeptic, or are you skeptical of the global warming skeptics? Your answer depends on how you answer these five questions:

1. Is the earth getting warmer?
2. Is the cause of global warming human activity?
3. How much warmer is it going to get?
4. What are the consequences of a warmer climate?
5. How much should we invest in altering the climate? Here are my answers.

Global warming is real and primarily human caused. With questions 3 and 4, however, estimates include error bars that grow wider the further out we run the models because complex systems like climate are notoriously difficult to predict. I provisionally accept the estimate of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the mean global temperature by 2100 will increase by 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and that sea levels will rise by about one foot (about the same as they have risen since 1860). Moderate warming with moderate changes. (continue reading…)

The question of human overpopulation of the earth is one of those empirical scientific questions that garners a strange amount of emotional opinion.  It is as if the sense of overcrowding and depleting resources triggers something primal in our monkey brains. On the other side, we resent being told to curb what is perhaps our strongest natural instinct – to make more versions of our genome.

Another feature of this debate that encourages or at least allows emotion to reign over data is that the core questions involve predicting the future. We are very bad at predicting the future. Predicting the future is really just an exercise in projecting our biases onto the future. The best we can do is extrapolate current trends forward, but there are often multiple overlapping trends that we can choose from, some trends are really cyclical, and the appropriate curve (linear, geometric, exponential) may not be obvious.

It is also important to identify in a controversy where there are value judgments that cannot be resolved objectively with facts. The abortion debate continues to rage because at its core is a personal choice of value – the mother’s biological freedom vs the life of a fetus. In the population debate there are value judgments regarding humanity’s rights and responsibilities toward the earth and all other life on it.

(continue reading…)

Heads are Turning...

Yes! We are making a dent in the calloused shells of the media psychics out there! FORCE ONE is prying the lid off this slimy can of weasels and we are starting to make a difference. Despite the spamming maneuvers and several vicious death threats from those who know their days are numbered, it has come to the attention of the Skeptologist team that many of the bottom feeders who are the most egregious peddlers of woo are now beginning to run for cover. Our recent coded FORCE ONE operation has shown positive signs of success. We have just begun to fight. (continue reading…)

Of course I scored 100%. Can you?

The bigger question is, how do the statistics play out? A lot of people scored far less than what I would consider acceptable, given that the questions relate to practical science that is getting a lot of attention in the news, and people are voting on these issues. I’d like to see these stats broken down by age and education level. I’d also like to see them by state, by voting party, and by religious affiliation (or lack thereof). All of those categories, I suspect, would make for interesting inspection.

Originally posted at Bad Astronomy.

The week of September 7 I spent in the beautiful Eastern European country of Romania, home of the blood-sucking vampire Count Dracula in Transylvania and the soul-sucking Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu in Bucharest. I was invited by the physicist and historian of science Gheorghe Stratan at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj (pronounced Kloog), who translated two of my books, Why People Believe Weird Things and Why Darwin Matters (published by Humanitas publishing house in Romania). Dr. Stratan has also translated books by Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, and Ernst Mayr. The central event was an evolution conference in Cluj celebrating the Darwinian bicentennial, and there were many interesting talks on evolutionary biology, history, and cultural impacts. (continue reading…)

Or – Why are there so many engineers on the list of scientists who doubt Darwin?

At a recent live SGU show (at DragonCon 2009) a questioner asked why it was that so many of the scientists who have added their name to the list of those who doubt Darwin were – and then I cut him off and finished for him – engineers. He was not the first person to make this observation. (You can download the list here: http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/download.php)

First, on a separate note, this list has been the focus of much ridicule because after years of scouring the globe they have only managed to come up with 700 scientists willing to sign the list. And, whenever they add scientists to the list they boast that the number of scientists dissenting from Darwin is growing, as if the percentage of scientists is growing, and therefore the scientific community is moving away from evolutionary theory (which they tellingly equate with Darwin). No – they just added another buffoon to their list.

Also, I have to point out that the National Center for Science Education, to parody the silliness of this list, launched Project Steve, and have now listed 1,107 scientists named Steve (or some variation of Steve) who support evolution (and of which I am a proud member).

(continue reading…)

Yes, I have already done my first and no doubt not the last seance for Michael Jackson. I wanted to be the first but it only took minutes for every other medium and medium wannabe to jump on the glory wagon to fame and fortune by making proclamations of contact with the King of Pop. How long did it take for Lady Diana to get her share of the mediumistic spotlight? It probably took a few more days for the British mediums to haul out their bells, books and candles on that one, the English being known for being only slightly more reserved in such matters. I was cajoled by The SGU crew to “put one on” during the podcast interview I did with them between all the lectures and frolicking at TAM7. I just had to break out in a trance. I felt it coming on soon after I saw the face of MJ in the mottled rust pattern formed on a baggage maintenance box. I clearly saw it smiling back at me as I was lifting off the runway at LAX  for Las Vegas. I’m only doing what comes naturally… (continue reading…)

I stand before you today to confess perhaps my greatest clusterfuck of the year: the Skeptoid Twitter Experiment, which rendered your Twitter account nearly useless on September 14 and 15, if you follow me or anyone else who follows me.

I have an upcoming Skeptoid podcast episode for which I want to include some informal survey data (it’s the September 29 episode, #173, and I’ll update this page when it’s available. The topic and the results will all be revealed on that day). I’ve also been thinking a lot about Twitter for its potential to virally spread information. So I thought it would be a clever idea to combine my survey with Twitter, which (I thought) would be a lot of fun for everyone and would accomplish two goals: (continue reading…)

I’ve been an active skeptic for many years now, and I’ve been able to find my voice on the internet and IRL. At the JREF and here at Skepticblog, we do a lot of work as well to spread rationality and reason.

I’ve written in the past about finding your voice, linking to the really good Rational Moms piece about that. But let’s say you’re ready to go, and you’ve got yourself all ready to go. Where can you find out what else is going on, so you can sign up to help?

Have I got the site for you: Grassroots Skeptics is the place to be. It’s a compendium of skeptical events for, well, grassroots efforts to make the world a more rational place. They have a calendar with events listed, a forum and links to other venues as well. They’re just starting out, so there’s not a huge amount of info there yet, but this is a really good idea and could use your support. So go over there, poke around, and send them suggestions on what else they can do.

Make your voice heard!