Skepticblog

Sketchy looking back-alley characters like this are what set the SGU apart from legitimate science journalism.

I had, until quite recently, always held The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast in high esteem. It was usually entertaining, frequently skeptical, and the information presented was often correct.

Sadly, that reliability has now all but crumbled completely away. I first noted this disintegration when I was listening to an episode a few weeks ago. They were, as they often do, discussing fake foreign accents — a topic of grave concern, and far reaching implications. They were unified in their disdain for “Brian Dunning’s terrible German accent.”

I received a number of reports that they repeated this charge during the recent live recording during the NECSS conference. Suspiciously, this specific line was edited out of their broadcast version. The point at which the edit was made can be heard during their obligatory “fake German accent” segment of that show, which begins at approximately 47:30. (continue reading…)

Apparently Stephen Hawking read my book, but not very carefully, because he thinks aliens will come here ala "Independence Day"* and eat up all our resources and move on.

I disagree with him. I think in fact it’s more likely that an aggressive alien race would create self-replicating robot probes that will disperse through the galaxy and destroy all life that way.
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Many readers will recall a central scene in the action movie Die Hard, in which a group of brilliant thieves succeed in opening the seventh lock of a vault containing hundreds of millions of dollars. As the door opens, light spills across the awestruck faces of all present—and the soundtrack sweeps us forward into “Ode to Joy.”

That was almost exactly how I felt the first time I stepped into a university library. I mean, I actually made that comparison at the time, which isn’t entirely surprising; who at 18 does not believe they’re the central character of a Hollywood movie?

Stepping through those doors, I remember almost trembling with emotions as vast as they were pretentious. It’s a feeling I expect few young people in the developed world would have today—not because kids love knowledge (or pretension) any less, but because few in the internet era are so isolated from information. (continue reading…)

On the latest episode of the SGU an audience member (it was a live recording) asked about the youth culture today and why kids don’t seem to be interested in science, or much else of perceived intellectual value. I basically responded that this question is thousands of years old – every generation, apparently, has felt this about the youth of their time. Things are not necessarily getting worse, although confirmation bias and a narrow perspective may make it seem so.

The generation question aside – this also raises the question of how to make science and skepticism more popular in general, but especially with the next generation. A listener then sent me a link to the following article: Why Nerds are Unpopular. The author writes:

I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: there is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.

But why? Basically, the author argues that smart kids invest their time and energy into the things that they like. Meanwhile, being popular in high school is a full-time job, requiring a great deal of time and effort – time the nerds are unwilling to commit. (continue reading…)

My Dinner with Anita

I promised I wouldn’t write about what happened last Saturday night and I’m a man of my word. But after that night, I can officially say that my investigations into the claims made by Anita Ikonen are now at a sorry end. All the evidence I needed to see was put before me and as much as I hate to judge … it’s over. This is the last word you will hear from me about the Ikonen Saga unless she manages to levitate over The Statue of Liberty. (continue reading…)

If you’re like me, and most other human beings, you’ve been a longtime fan of Bill Nye the Science Guy. With his wonderfully entertaining personality, he’s always been able to interest nearly anyone with some fascinating little snippet of science. His influence on the world has been an overwhelmingly positive one. He gets people excited about what’s real in our world, something that has trickle-down benefits through many aspects of our lives.

So it was with a bit of surprise that I first saw some notes on Twitter that he is now promoting a product based on, shall we say, “interesting” principles. He is the spokesman for Activeion, a cleaning product that is a spray bottle of ordinary water, with some impressive-looking electronics in the not-surprisingly-transparent spray top. It claims to “ionize” the water, thus endowing it with magically powerful cleaning ability. I saw one Twitter post that aptly described it as “homeopathy for dirt”. Bill hosts a promotional video on their site, and spews a stream of scientific-sounding words, most of which don’t mean a damned thing to anyone who understands chemistry, but that sound amazing and impressive to an innocent layperson — the oldest sales trick in the book for snake-oil products. Dazzle them with sciencey words! Here’s Activeion’s explanation of how it works: (continue reading…)

If you are in the Pasadena area tonight (Wednesday April 21), then I hope you can attend a pretty cool panel I’ll be moderating at Caltech. The topic is "The Quest for a Living World": how modern astronomy is edging closer to finding another Earth orbiting a distant star.

[Click on image for a higher-res version.]

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On April 10 the Wall Street Journal published a debate between myself and Gregory Paul on the question of whether or not belief in God is innate. Here are the links to the two articles:

http://tinyurl.com/y8n7qg6
http://tinyurl.com/y52ckwf

The online version was well edited but shorter than my original draft, which I present here just for the record. Enjoy.

According to Oxford University Press’s World Christian Encyclopedia, 84 percent of the world’s population belongs to some form of organized religion, which at the end of 2009 equals 5.7 billion people who belong to about 10,000 distinct religions, each one of which may be further subdivided and classified. Christians, for example, may be aportioned among 33,820 different denominations.¹ Among the many bionomial designations granted our species (Homo sapiens, Homo ludens, Homo economicus), a strong case could be made for Homo religiosus. And Americans are among the most religious members of the species. In a 2007 Pew Forum survey of over 35,000 Americans, the following percentages of belief were found: (continue reading…)

Bending a Spoon (again?) for the "Weird or What? shoot

Last Saturday Jim Underdown of CFI and I went to San Diego to be part of a new science program that Discovery Channel is producing called “Weird or What?” It was an interesting afternoon that gave both of us some hope that a bigger note of skepticism might begin to infiltrate the seemingly endless parade of paranormal prattle that has been bombarding us for the last ten years. It’s a start. (continue reading…)

This past weekend was the second North East Conference on Science and Skepticism, or NECSS (meant to be pronounced “nexus”). The conference is jointly sponsored by the New York City Skeptics and the New England Skeptical Society. While I have a completely insider view of the conference, I want to share my thoughts about it in the context of what, if anything, it says about the skeptical movement.

First, I think it reflects the fact that the skeptical movement is heading in the direction of greater collaboration and cohesion. We are slowly weaving together the many threads that make up what is very loosely called the skeptical movement.

This was more than a conference run by two local skeptical groups – the keynote was given by D.J. Grothe, president of the James Randi Educational Organization (JREF). James Randi himself gave a talk and participated in two panels. There was also a live taping of the Skeptics Guide podcast (SGU), a performance by George Hrab who produces the Geologic podcast, and another panel on promoting skepticism which included Steve Mirsky from Scientific American and was moderated by Julia Galef who hosts the Rationally Speaking podcast.

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