Skepticblog

This week I’d like to share something a little different: an out-of-copyright detective story published way back in 1916. “The Rough Fist of Reason”—one of the “Strange Cases of Magnum, Scientific Consultant” by Max Rittenberg (1880–1965)—tells the tale of a fictional on-site skeptical investigation into the operation of a slick Spiritualist medium and a perplexing photograph of an astral manifestation. It is charmingly dated and over the top, and yet it is also astonishingly familiar. It echoes not only much of the language and arguments of the modern skeptical movement, but also some of the clichés and ongoing debates of our field. Like some modern portrayals of skeptics in fiction (I’m reminded here of Hugh Laurie’s Dr. House or Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes) Magnum is a hard, overconfident debunker with little empathy for the purveyors or consumers of paranormal ideas: “He was an inveterate opponent of superstition or nebulous fancy presented to the world in the garments of science, and wherever possible, liked to smash a fist into it.” In his merciless materialism, he is both brilliant and callous; admirable, and yet conceivably dangerous to the wellbeing of those he encounters.

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I gave a seminar recently to science teachers and the topic of whether or not there is a lunar effect came up. I was not surprised to find that 80% of them believed that emergency rooms and police stations are more busy during a full moon. I was also not surprised, but only because I have been there before, that they were highly resistant to my claim that the scientific evidence shows that there is no such effect.

Several questions emerge from the notion that the phases of the moon affect human behavior: what is the plausibility of such a claim, is there actually such an effect, and if not why do so many people believe that there is?

Plausibility

One of two justifications are commonly given for how the moon might influence human behavior. The moon basically has two physical effects on our environment – gravity and light. Astrological influences are not worth further discussion in this article, and I rarely hear that as a justification from the general public in any case.

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Token Skeptic podcast host Kylie Sturgess.

I was pleased recently to speak with Kylie Sturgess for her Token Skeptic podcast (audio available here) about my research into the history of skepticism—in particular, my recent two-chapter piece “Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?” (PDF) and Junior Skeptic issues 45 and 46.

I found it a very useful conversation about the many skeptics who have lived, worked, and left the stage before us; their legacy; and the foundational principles of the movement they inspired. For that reason, I’m delighted that Sturgess has now provided a transcript, posted at her Patheos blog Token Skeptic. Here’s an excerpt:

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A review of The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People, by Neil Shubin (Pantheon, New York, 2013).

Popularizing science, and writing science trade books for general audiences, is a challenging business. As an author of trade science books myself, I know how hard it is to write a book that sells well. Many of my fellow scientist-writers complain that the trade science book market is vanishing as fewer and fewer people read much any  more, and those who do read a lot don’t read non-fiction/science. Only a handful of scientists (Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and just a few others) have managed to do it well for a long time. They are among the few that have reached the best-seller lists and achieved celebrity status so they are recognizable names and faces (and some have even appeared on The Simpsons, the ultimate arbiter of pop-culture status). Some of these people (especially Sagan) were attacked and scorned by their scientific peers for being “too popular” and no longer serious about their science, even though studies have shown that Sagan and Gould and the others were just as productive in their peer-reviewed science even as they reached superstar status. On the other hand, many people have cried out for the scientific community to provide us with more Sagans and Goulds who can make science interesting and comprehensible to a public that is becoming increasingly ignorant of science, or sucked into pseudoscience of UFOs and Bigfoot, or the junk science of creationists, anti-vaxxers, and climate change deniers. (continue reading…)

Tired of talking (or reading) about skepticism and want to take real action?

The Fabulously Busy Susan Gerbic & Myself

Join the Guerrilla Skepitcism movement and take a few minutes to really DO SOMETHING.

I recently receive the following e-mail question:

Got a question for you: do you consider the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence to be science or pseudoscience? I recently got into an online debate and found myself in the minority because I maintained that the central thesis — that if intelligent life exists somewhere out there in the greater universe, we would be able to recognize it based upon patterns in radio waves — is not falsifiable.

It would seem to me that the only way to truly falsify SETI, we’d need to map quite literally every body in the universe and rule them out one by one and say that they don’t have anything there in terms of extraterrestrial intelligence.  Unlike other complex hypotheses that are limited by available technologies, I’m not convinced that the task of mapping the universe is even possible, even with a sufficiently advanced technology.

I have received some version of this question many times over the years, always by people who are trying to be skeptical and apply what they have learned about the differences between science and pseudoscience.  It therefore seems like an excellent opportunity to explore this important issue.

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Tight folding, like a crumpled rug, of the 2 m.y. old beds just north of the San Andreas fault

I heard they exploded the underground blast
They say its gonna happen – gonna happen at last
That’s the way it appears
They tell me the faultline runs right through here
So that maybe that may be
What’s gonna happens gonna happen to me
They tell me the faultline runs right through here
Atlantis will rise, Sunset Boulevard will fall
Where the beach used to be won’t be nothing at all
That’s the way it appears
They tell me the faultline runs right through here
—”Mama” Cass Elliott, California Earthquake

Last week I had the opportunity to take my intro geology class on a field trip along the San Andreas fault, from Palmdale to Devil’s Punchbowl. It’s always an eye-opening experience for students to see what the REAL San Andreas fault looks like. Contrary to the Hollywood myths of a giant chasm filled with glowing lava that Superman could pull back together (in the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie) , the real fault is so subtle that thousands of people drive across it twice a day on the 14 freeway between Palmdale and LA and never notice it. Most faults in southern California are strike-slip faults where one block shifts horizontally relative to the other, with almost no vertical displacement. They grind past one another each time there is a quake, and pulverize the rock between them—but there is no “gap” or “chasm” opening up. This pulverized rock is easy to erode, so stream valleys tend to follow fault lines. Consequently, faults in this region (and in most regions) are simply long straight valleys that look unimpressive at ground level. However, when you see them from the air or satellite view, they are glaringly obvious. So you have to know where and how to look, and then the long straight valleys begin to stand out. Since there are so many faults in Southern California, I always tell my students that any long straight feature (valley or scarp) in the area is assumed to be a fault unless proven otherwise! (continue reading…)

TED is a prestigious biannual conference whose brand is, “Ideas Worth Spreading.” (TED originally stood for “Technology, Entertainment, Design,” but its scope has since expanded.) It has spawned TEDx – regional independent TED style conferences that are allowed to use the TED brand as long as they strive for the same level of quality.

Deepak Chopra apparently thinks that TED’s logo should be, “Let’s throw any crap against the wall and let the audience sort it out.” Of course that is what all self-styled gurus and purveyors of pseudoscience want, no real scientific standards so that they can present their crackpot ideas as legitimate.

This conflict of vision recently came to a head when TEDx directors (Lara Stein, TEDx Director and Emily McManus, TED.com Editor) wrote an open letter to TEDx organizers giving them guidance on how to avoid accidentally promoting bad science. The letter is an excellent primer on pseudoscience and I recommend reading it in its entirety. The letter was a response to several dubious TEDx talks and the backlash that resulted. Early in the letter they make clear its purpose and their philosophy.

“It is not your audience’s job to figure out if a speaker is offering legitimate science or not. It is your job.”

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As has already been made public, Brian Dunning is currently involved in legal proceedings involving the charge of wire fraud. While we all take this situation very seriously, not all the facts of the case will be made public until after the court case is completed later this year. Only at that time will we be able to fully review the case and its implications. After lengthy discussion with Brian we mutually agreed that he would suspend his contributions to Skepticblog until after the case is completed.

For those who are interested, while Brian is not at liberty to discuss the details of the case, he was allowed to post this partial explanation for now.

RepRap Mendel 3D printer

This is one of those blog posts that will likely be laughably obsolete within a couple of years.

It’s not exactly news that 3D printing technologies have been used to print parts of working guns. So far, the firing chamber still needs to be a piece of real metal, and can be purchased off the shelf; but the main mechanical part — where bullets are loaded and triggers are pulled and shells are ejected — can be printed at home on a common 3D printer. It is this part, usually called the lower receiver, that constitutes the legally controlled “gun”. In other words, the part of the gun that makes it a gun, and that you’re in trouble if you make without being a licensed firearm manufacturer, is the part that’s easiest to print yourself. (continue reading…)