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Are these pictures just a bizarre coincidence? I think not. Magic ruled the shadowy midway at the Annual Hollywood Haunted Hayride in Griffith Park, CA. last weekend. (and continuing Thursday, Oct.28 -31.) Lot’s of spooky fun for everybody and the chance for me to do my side-show act with plenty of ballyhoo. The crowds have been large and rowdy, just the way I like it. (continue reading…)
I’m elated to announce that my Junior Skeptic-based book Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be is a 2011 nominee for the prestigious Silver Birch® Nonfiction Award! This is a tremendous honor (for which I thank my illustration collaborator Jim W. W. Smith, my editor Valerie Wyatt at Kids Can Press, producer Pat Linse — and the Skeptics Society for making the project possible in the first place).
Each year, the Ontario Library Association showcases selected titles for its Forest of Reading® program — a heavily-promoted recreational reading initiative, widely supported throughout Ontario’s public schools and public libraries. Among the 250,000 participating young readers, kids who read a minimum of five of the 10 books in their reading category will become eligible to vote for the award in that category.
The Forest of Reading program runs throughout the Spring, culminating with award ceremonies in front of an audience of several thousand at Canada’s largest literary event for younger readers: the Festival of Trees™ at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto (May 11 and 12, 2011).
I receive frequent commentary on my public writing, which is great. The feature that most distinguishes blogs is that they are conversations. So I am glad to see that science-based medicine (a term I coined) is getting targeted for criticism in other blogs. One blogger, Marya Zilberberg at Healthcare, etc., has written a series of posts responding to what she thinks is our position at Science-based medicine. What she has done, however, is make many of the logical fallacies typically committed in defense of unscientific medical modalities and framed them as one giant straw man.
She is partly responding to this article of mine on SBM (What’s the harm) in which I make the point that medicine is a risk vs benefit game. Ethical responsible medical practice involves interventions where there is at least the probability of doing more benefit than harm with proper informed consent, so the patient knows what those chances are. Using scientifically dubious treatments, where there is little or no chance of benefit, especially when they are overhyped, is therefore unethical. And further, the “harm” side of the equation needs to include all forms of harm, not just direct physical harm.
Robert Heinlein’s classic 1961 sci-fi novel Stranger in a Strange Land includes a passage I’ve often thought of as a parable for scientific skepticism.
Understanding the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, Heinlein imagines a special class of “Fair Witnesses” — licensed professionals trained to observe accurately and give legally admissible testimony. In one scene, cantankerous patriarch Jubal Harshaw demonstrates that one of his staffers is a certified Fair Witness:
“Anne!“ Anne was seated on the springboard; she turned her head. Jubal called out, “That new house on the far hilltop — can you see what color they’ve painted it?”
Anne looked in the direction in which Jubal was pointing and answered, “It’s white on this side.”
Just in case you thought the amount of woo in the world was diminishing, here comes an author to restore your faith. Randall Dale Chipkar has written a self-published new book that explains how your motorcycle is giving you cancer, The Motorcycle Cancer Book (http://www.motorcyclecancer.com).
As you know, a motorcycle’s engine incorporates a magneto that generates electricity to power the spark plugs, fuel pump, and other systems needed to run the bike. There is nothing about this unique to motorcycles; the same basic system is used in virtually all internal combustion engines, like those found in cars, boats, lawnmowers, radio controlled airplanes, even the jets found in airliners and cruise missiles. So why the beef about motorcycles? Why, because that engine is right near your groin! (continue reading…)
When I matriculated at Pepperdine University in 1974 and moved to the Malibu campus from my home in La Canada, my mother exercised her parental right to express her angst at my departure from the nest, now empty.
I responded with typical teenage indifference and bafflement born of ignorance. “Sheez, Mom, I’m only an hour away. What’s the big deal?”
“You just wait until you have one of your own,” she cried. “Then you’ll know what I’m feeling.”
Last month I found out when my daughter moved into her dorm at college and life as I know it has come to an end. Or so at least that’s what it feels like. I find myself waking up at four in the morning, reaching for some distracting literature and finding light comfort in (continue reading…)
We have been getting a great deal of e-mail asking about the various “experiments” on YouTube (inspired by events on Fast Food Nation) in which a McDonald’s hamburger and fries are left out for weeks or months. To the surprise of some, the food does not rot away to nothing but instead shrivels a little and becomes hard and shiny, but does not get moldy or rotten. The implication is that there is something wrong and unnatural about food that doesn’t rot when left out.
Unfortunately this is what passes for “science” on the interwebs. But it does provide a teaching moment – with lessons about scientific methodology and how the logic of interpreting evidence.
The first thing I need to point out is that none of these “experiments” are actually experiments. They are simply observations. Observation is an important component of experiments, but the raw act of observing is not sufficient to establish an experiment. In fact, in medicine we divide clinical evidence into “observational” and “experimental.”
Rumor has it that Lady Gaga, the favorite musical artist of many of us here at SkepticBlog, travels with her own crew of ghost hunters to protect her from spirits that may be haunting the hotels she visits while on tour.
That’s right sports fans, you heard it here first (unless you spend as much time as I do on all the Hollywood celebrity gossip web sites). Word is that Gaga is so worried about ghosts that she spent $60,000 on EMF meters to equip a small team of ghost hunters, evidently modeled after those whom we know and love so well from the telly. Whenever she stays at a hotel, her team first sweeps it with the EMF meters to be sure there are no spooks waiting for an autograph. (continue reading…)
Skeptical Luminaries right to left: paranormal investigator Joe Nickell, Center for Inquiry founder Paul Kurtz, the Amazing One himself, and psychologist and magician Ray Hyman
On Sunday, October 3, a group of skeptics gathered in Falls Church, Virginia to celebrate James Randi’s 82nd birthday. What an amazing meeting it was … er, an astonishing evening I mean, as Randi prefers to retain the “amazing” adjective for his moniker, James “The Amazing” Randi. Take a look at just a few of the giants present in the above photo — the legends of skepticism (from right to left: paranormal investigator Joe Nickell, Center for Inquiry founder Paul Kurtz, the Amazing One himself, and psychologist and magician Ray Hyman). (continue reading…)
In an SGU interview with Christopher Hitchens he commented that journalists tend to have a limited pallet of story themes from which they choose, and then they conform the story to the chosen theme. Stories always need to be about something, such as corporate greed or government malfeasance, so that is the story that is told – regardless of the pesky facts.
Bad science journalism works that way also. That is why we can joke about common cliches, such as “Missing Link Discovered,” “Scientists Baffled,” and “It turns out everything we thought we knew was wrong.”
One such science journalism meme is the “Elixir of Life” – a scientific “breakthrough” (there are no advances, only breakthroughs) that offers the hope of extended life or a panacea of sorts. These stories often follow another theme – taking an esoteric bit of research that is very preliminary and/or has very narrow implications, and then pulling from that research the most extreme speculative future application. That is why every basic life-science “breakthrough” could “potentially lead to a cure.”
