Skepticblog

The results are in: alcohol and telepathy don’t mix. At least they didn’t this past Saturday, when after over two years of negotiations with alleged telepath Regan Traynor, his test ended in a complete wash-out for him and his “receiver” Fernando. (continue reading…)

The ATLAS detector at the LHC. Photo courtesy of CERN.

As Skeptoid listeners know, occasionally I like to go the Listener Feedback files to hear what people have to say. I found a note from Nick from Albuquerque, who disagreed strongly with the way I discussed the safety of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. I offer my response to his criticism herewith. He began:

I find it disheartening that someone who purports to be a common-sense skeptic of zany theories is completely incapable of making a logical, evidence based argument.

Now, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve established a decent reputation for making good, rational arguments (see this page for a bandwagon fallacy supporting this assertion). When someone starts an email to me with the statement that I am “completely incapable of making a logical, evidence based argument”, it tells me something about what to expect in their following paragraphs. I was not disappointed: (continue reading…)

Oh, FFSMS. After countless tests showing them useless, articles about them being useless, challenges from Randi and others to prove they are not useless, and the company head arrested for suspicion of fraud because they’re useless, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has ordered that the (useless) magic wand dowsing rod bomb-sniffers should still be utilized.

FFSMS.

At least al-Maliki wanted them tested. Still. This angers me:

The survey, ordered by Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, found the British device, known as ADE651, generally worked. However some of the gadgets, found to be ineff­ective, would be replaced.

A government spokesman later said only 50% of the devices worked.

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left to right: Jared Cohen, Dave Morin, John Cusack, Dean Kamen, Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington, Michael Shermer. (All photos in this post were taken by John Brockman.)

No, it wasn’t exactly My Dinner with Andre—the classic 1981 filmed conversation between Wallace Shaun and Andre Gregory (directed by Louis Malle) that ranged across a diversity of existential topics—but listening to Bill Gates hold forth on matters of business, economics, finance, world health, education, and nutrition and physical fitness in a dinner arranged by John Brockman’s Edge.org during last week’s TED gathering in Long Beach was a memorable experience nonetheless.

Richard Dawkins once said that John Brockman has the most stellar rolodex in all of science, and periodically Brockman organizes an Edge.org event that brings them all together for some serious dialogue about the great issues of our time. There were around 80 people in all, which soon broke up into small groups of schmoozing and social networking. Check out the roster and accompanying photos.

When it was time to sit down for dinner there was a spot open at the Gates table (we’ll call it), that included some heavyweights such as Facebook’s Dave Morin, the Segway inventor Dean Kamen, the actor John Cusack, Jared Cohen from the U.S. State Department, Michael Tchao, VP of Apple’s new iPad division, Arianna Huffington of HuffingtonPost, Bill Gates, and your humble servant. (continue reading…)

One of the common questions (sometimes framed as a claim or justification) about unscientific and implausible treatments that frequently comes up is – if they don’t work, why are they so popular? The assumption (also made by some who oppose regulation of medical products) is that the consumer will perceive the medical value of products and adjust demand accordingly.

I and others who favor more scientific and effective regulation of health products and claims have argued that there are a host of factors distorting the market in favor of health products with appealing claims, even if they lack substance. I am not an economist, however. So it was heartening to read the very same arguments I have been making expressed from an economist’s point of view.

This paper by Werner Troesken, an economist from the University of Pittsburgh, explores the flourishing of the patent medicine industry from 1810 to 1939 in the US (when FDA regulation essentially shut it down).

Troesken explores many factors leading to this success, but what I found most interesting is that when you strip away all the complexity, Troesken shows how ineffective treatments will still flourish in the marketplace.
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Karla McLaren

Are skeptics being too rude, insulting and obnoxious in our quest to spread critical thinking? Are our methods and actions demeaning and cruel? Do we come on too strong? I know that I have little patience with all the woo peddlers and my blogs here are usually characterized by sarcasm and a call to arms. That’s where I’m going with Guerrilla and Ambush Skepticism and I make no apologies for taking a stronger stance against the bottom feeders like the phonies I have been putting up here for the last few weeks. But what about the great masses of undecided people who are on the fence? Could the “greater movement” of skeptical thinking be putting these people off?  This is probably happening right now – and it’s a shame. I recently received an article that appeared in “Skeptical Inquirer” back in 2004, “Bridging the Chasm Between Two Cultures.” In it, a once full-time new age author Karla McLaren, tells a powerful story of her own awakening, her position on critical thinking and the hard fought trials and tribulations of what some might call an ”ordinary mystic.” (continue reading…)

Hey, remember Kevin Trudeau, the guy convicted of fraud, the larcenous liar who mercilessly (literally) plugs away on informercials to sell his books like Natural Cures "They" Don’t Want You to Know About, books that tell people to turn away from real medicine so they can die of cancer if they follow his quackery?

Yeah, that sweetheart.

Well, he’s at it again. He just doesn’t think that his reputation can get any lower, despite being able to comfortably limbo underneath a mosquito’s belly with room to spare. Trudeau recently urged his minions to send protesting emails and text messages to federal judge Robert Gettleman — the hero who raised a fine against Trudeau from $5 million to $37 million, to better match the money Trudeau defrauded out of people for his books. Gettleman is currently working on potentially revising his order after an appellate court found his ruling too broad.
(continue reading…)

So I guess I can now reveal that no, I am not jackass enough to imagine that the “John E Walker” Bigfoot video is so compelling as to command the attention of SkepticBlog or the Skeptologists.

The video was made and sent to me back in January by John Rael of SkepticallyPwnd.com, and he asked me to write up something that looked like a critical review of it. He said it would be easy, since it’s such a lame video, and I suppose it was. It would have been easier if it had been more compelling. When a video is so dumb, it’s kind of hard to say anything intelligent about it.

I’m not exactly sure what role I played in his gag, but what the heck, it was a fun little lark. His reveal video is here.

But Google Alerts made this a little more fun. Turns out some Bigfoot site, the Bigfoot Lunch Club, picked up on my SkepticBlog analysis and found it lacking. The author’s comments are well worth a read: (continue reading…)

In November of 2007, I heard that an alleged energy healer named Adam McLeod (“Adam Dreamhealer”) was scheduled to appear on a popular Canadian Broadcasting Corporation talk show, The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos. I was familiar with the Adam Dreamhealer case, and also uncomfortably aware that media outlets usually treat miracle healers as harmless, untestable human interest stories. I was concerned about the ethical implications of promoting Adam’s claims to a national television audience. (Adam claims abilities for “energetically diagnosing illnesses,” and treating cancer “from 3000 miles away.” According to his web site, Adam is “uniquely able to influence the health and healing of large groups of individuals at his workshops by joining the auras of all in attendance.”)

I wrote to the producers of the show in advance to offer my assistance, and to remind them, “When The Hour interviews Adam, there will no doubt be thousands of viewers who are either suffering from cancer or watching a loved one suffer from cancer — all potential customers” of Adam’s lucrative books and healing workshops. (According to ABC News, then-19 year old Adam was already making over a million dollars a year in 2006.) (continue reading…)

I have been covering the story of Dr. Steven Laureys, a Belgium neurologist whose research involves disorders of consciousness, and his most famous patient, Rom Houben. Houben is a 46 year old man who is the victim of a car accident at the age of 23. For the latter half of his life he has been in an apparent persistent vegetative state -except recently it was discovered that he has more brain activity (almost normal) than expected.

So Dr. Laureys attempted to establish communication with Houben as if Houben were in a locked in state – someone who is conscious but paralyzed. All they could get Houben to move was his foot to depress a pedal, and that could theoretically be used to answer yes/no questions. But Houben has too much spasticity and he could not lift his foot off the pedal.

This is where the story gets interesting, and where it became an international controversy. Enter Linda Wouters – a speech therapist who uses facilitated communication (FC). She claimed that after months of training she could communicate with Houbens by sensing the subtle movements of his right hand, which he could use to direct her across a computer screen keyboard.

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