Skepticblog

I have stated before that I think one of the most important battle lines for skeptics and science promoters relates to issues of science in medicine. The science-based standard of care is being systemically attacked on every conceivable front – not just public opinion, but legislative, academic, and commercial. Promoters of dubious health treatments and products, what used to comfortably be called “health fraud” have successfully rebranded their products as “natural” and “alternative.”

But at its heart, the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) movement is about eroding science as an obstacle to selling bogus treatments.

I created the Science-Based Medicine site in order to confront the public opinion and academic angles of this important issue. But educating the public and exposing the flawed arguments and weak evidence of CAM does not directly address what is perhaps the most important front -legislation. Ultimately, it is laws and regulations that establish or weaken the science-based standard of care.

That is why Larry Sarner and Linda Rosa have brought together an international group of 42 physicians (and growing) to form the Institute for Science in Medicine. From the ISM website:

(continue reading…)

The Ghost of La Purisima

I’ve been corresponding with a gentleman, Kevin, who visits allegedly haunted sites in southern California. As evidence of his paranormal experiences, he sent me this photograph, taken inside the La Purisima mission in Lompoc, CA.

Mision La Purisima Concepcion de Maria Santisima is one of the famous network of Spanish Franciscan missions stretching the length of California, established in the 18th century. Today it’s something of a living history museum. Unlike many of the California missions, La Purisima is no longer used for actual regular worship services.

Like so many “ghost” photographs, Kevin’s is of astonishingly poor quality. It’s not even close to being in focus, for one thing, and clearly should have been taken with a flash. I always marvel at such pictures, because in reality, it’s not even possible to buy a camera that automatically takes such bad quality. The world’s worst camera phone would have done a better job. You have to deliberately jack the settings, or blur it out in Photoshop. (continue reading…)

The cool website Information is Beautiful presents, um, well, information in a beautiful way. They recently posted a good guide to the sense and nonsense of the 2012 phenom, pretty much showing that the major claims of the doomcriers are baloney.

I haven’t checked every factoid of the graphic, but the part pictured above is cool: I independently came to this same conclusion a few months ago using some planetarium software to plot the position of the Sun and the Galactic center (and presented this at TAM 7, in fact). There are people out there trying to spin, fold, and mutilate astronomy to fit their pre-manufactured conclusions about 2012, but — as usual when it comes to doomsday scenarios — the actual facts show that these scaremongers’ claims are as vacuous as space itself.

[Originally posted at the Bad Astronomy Blog.]

A behind-the-scenes peek at the long road to Evolution — the Junior Skeptic-based illustrated kids’ book due out in February, 2010

Once upon a time my wife and I sat down for scrambled eggs with Michael Shermer and Julia Sweeney.

We were a little giddy. It was our first time in Las Vegas — and our honeymoon. I was a lifelong skeptic attending my first skeptics’ conference: The Amazing Meeting 2, hosted by the James Randi Educational Foundation. (300 skeptics in one room! Imagine it!) And now we were having breakfast with a genuine movie star.

We were chattering away over coffee when Michael clapped his hands together. “Alright,” he said, suddenly all business, every bit the dynamic leader. “Can we get these Junior Skeptic books out this year?” (continue reading…)

A recent series of articles in The Japan Times about the growing earth leaves me conflicted over the status of journalism. It seems that everyone acknowledges that we are in a  significant transition, and that the new media is playing an increasing role in news reporting and analysis. Meanwhile, traditional journalism is losing its business model and is downsizing, which is having an adverse effect on quality.

The very fact that the internet has exploded print media’s business model means that quality control is really all that traditional journalism has left. In the past the value of a large media outlet was partly its physical infrastructure and its ability to distribute the news – by printing papers or by owning transmitters or cable lines.  Now anyone  can get online and distribute information to the world for peanuts. We don’t need big media infrastructure anymore.

But, we are told, traditional media, with professional journalists and editors, provides a critical quality-control filter on information. The internet, meanwhile, is unfiltered, which results in a very high noise to signal ratio. So we still need professional journalists, and some way to pay them.

(continue reading…)

I’m taking this opportunity to thank all those people, skeptical and otherwise, who have dropped in here at Skepticblog to share their views and concerns in the past months. 2009 has been an eventful year for me. I now have to pull back from the fray and just give some heartfelt thanks when things are going well. Without the support of skeptics worldwide, my forays into the paranormal would not have had the direction and drive that kept me angry enough to stay focused and begin to plot out an attack plan with FORCE ONE, and implementing some real Guerilla and Ambush Skepticism strategies. For this I am very thankful to everyone who shares my commitment to getting out in the streets and becoming more visible. (continue reading…)

I’m excited to announce that Skeptoid has made it to the final round of the annual Podcast Awards for 2010! The real voting starts now.

As you may know, Skeptoid has been my labor of love for over three years. Unlike most other nominated podcasts, I do it almost entirely on my own: I have no co-hosts, producers, company, or sponsors behind me, like most. So I make my pitch that (if you like Skeptoid) it deserves your vote through all my hard work, even if there are other shows also nominated that you also like. (continue reading…)

Oh, that Bill Maher. It’s time to change his show’s name to "Antireality Time". Because when he talks vaccines, he wanders into major woowoo territory.

I don’t need to debunk his antivax nonsense, since actual doctors who have facts at their fingertips do it so well, like in this tirade from Orac and in Steve Novella’s more measured (but just as devastating) response.
(continue reading…)

Welcome Daniel Loxton to the Pantheon of Skeptical Bloggers

Another person north of the border goes rogue this week, and I don’t mean Sarah Palin. I am pleased to announce that Daniel Loxton, the editor and illustrator for Junior Skeptic magazine, the artist and designer for many Skeptic magazine covers, the author of the forthcoming (in February) of the best damn evolution book for kids ever, period, will now be blogging at Skepticblog.com — joining myself, Phil Plait, Steve Novella, and the other skeptics who enlighten us each week with their timely and cogent observations on all things skeptical. (continue reading…)

Deepak Chopra has made a career out of misunderstanding quantum mechanics (QM) – and through his popularity, confusing the public. Like many others, he has found a superficial way in which to interpret quantum mechanics to make is seem as if it is congruent with Eastern metaphysics.

And now he has done it again, in that anti-science rag the Huffington Post. Chopra goes beyond the typical New Age distortion of QM, which is basically the claim that QM is really weird, therefore magic is real. Chopra assumes some very specific, and common, misinterpretations of QM. He writes:

Quantum physics tells us that objects exist in a suspended physical state until observed, when they collapse to just one outcome — we don’t know what happens until we investigate, and our investigation influences that reality. Whether or not certain events may have happened some time ago, may not actually be determined until some time in your future — it may actually be contingent upon actions that have not yet taken place.

Chopra is referring to the wave-particle duality of matter, quantum entanglement, and the uncertainty principle – but he gets them profoundly wrong. First he makes the common mistake of interpreting the collapse of the wave function as being dependent on an observer, which is false. QM states that light, electrons, and all fundamental particles exist not as  discrete point particles, but spread out as a wave. We can only describe the probability that they will be in a specific place at any moment, and that probability is the wave function. Particles, when free from interactions with other matter, actually behave like waves (see the double slit experiments).

(continue reading…)