Skepticblog

About a year and a half ago, I learned most of what I know about Morgellons Disease while spending a week researching a Skeptoid episode on the subject. It’s a bizarre condition in which sufferers believe that their skin is extruding strange fibers; sometimes colored, sometimes synthetic, always strange. Doctors and psychiatrists have compared it to delusional parasitosis, where imagined parasites are crawling in and on the skin.

Morgellons was invented (it would not be accurate to say diagnosed) in 2001, by a mom whose toddler son developed an unremarkable raw patch on his chin. When the scab collected fibers — almost certainly from the environment — she believed that they were being extruded from his skin. She took him to doctor after doctor, looking for one who would confirm her belief, but none would. A consensus rose among the doctors that she suffered from Munchausen by Proxy, in which an individual thrives on attention from doctors through presenting a family member as an extraordinary medical case. Reports are that she tried eight different doctors, and when none agreed with her claim, she coined the term Morgellons disease. An active community of Morgellons sufferers has grown worldwide ever since. (continue reading…)

So the other day I asked our goodly site admin William Bull for some stats by country, eager to see how it compares with Skeptoid podcast listener distribution. Turns out it’s pretty close. This graph (click to see full size) shows SkepticBlog.org page views over the past year per million of each population’s country. So it’s a fair indicator of this blog’s relative popularity in each country. (Any countries not listed had fewer than one page view per million population.)

Obviously this is an English language blog written by primarily American authors, so we cannot extrapolate this data to indicate the relative popularity of skepticism in general in each country. But there are two surprises. (continue reading…)

As many of you may know, one of my projects is to adapt some of the more popular Skeptoid podcast episodes for the world’s largest single audience venue: YouTube.

I’m posting this blog not so much to make you aware of it, but to solicit your feedback. The show is called inFact with Brian Dunning and is now in its second season. Today’s episode, season 2 number 8, is about conspiracy theorists. Must we assume that they’re nuts, or is there a more rational explanation for why belief in conspiracies is so widespread? See how I answered this question:

(continue reading…)

In September and October of 2011, anti-GMO blogs began trumpeting the news that India was suing Monsanto for “biopiracy” (an example). The term biopiracy is something of a weasel word; all it means is the practice of finding useful chemical compounds in plants or animals located in other countries for research purposes, usually for developing new drug therapies based on native plants. Nearly all pharmaceutical companies do this, no matter what country they’re located in. When some group wishes to portray this negatively, it’s called biopiracy.

As you may know, I am a huge proponent of the technology of genetic engineering of crops (full disclaimer). Compared to old-school, trial-and-error cross pollination, GMO is like using a word processor instead of a manual typewriter. It’s the difference between a plant that’s naturally resistant to pests and naturally able to thrive in the native conditions, versus a plant that must be doused with expensive pesticides and fertilizers. So I wanted to know the true story behind these headlines. (continue reading…)

We’ve all heard of the code talkers, primarily Choctaw and Navajo native Americans deployed during both World Wars to simply speak over the radio — their language was sufficiently unintelligible to others that true encryption was unnecessary. Here is an article that reports on another group of native Americans employed during the Vietnam conflict for a different purpose: tracking.

I had never heard of this before, so I read the story with interest (and, of course, a touch of skepticism). It begins with a woman who reported that her husband, a psychologist, learned something extraordinary from his patients in the military:

I remember clearly an evening when my husband came back to our apartment on Doctor’s Circle carrying a thick official looking folder in his hands. Inside were hundreds of pages of certain studies commissioned by the government. He was in shock from the contents. What he read in those documents completely changed his life. From that moment on my conservative middle of the road husband grew his hair and beard and never cut them again. What is more, the VA Medical center let him do it, and other very conservative men in the staff followed his example.

Why should psychologists and other professional men suddenly decide to stop cutting their hair? Surely there must be some compelling reason. I read on with interest. (continue reading…)

Those of us with an interest in the early days of the space race — won by Sputnik 1 in October 1957 — might need to broaden our disciplines a bit to get the whole story. It turns out that the race might have actually been won two months earlier, by the United States, with an entrant from outside the space program. Its name was Operation Plumbbob.

For six months in 1957, Operation Plumbbob put 29 thermonuclear devices to the test in the Nevada Test Range. They were the most varied in the program’s history; all sorts of devices, fired in the air, on the surface, underground, at pigs, near soldiers, and at all kinds of structures. Two of them were particularly interesting. Pascal-A and Pascal-B, on July 26 and August 27, were detonated at the bottom of 500-foot vertical shafts. Both shafts were covered with great heavy steel lids, some four inches thick and weighing some 900 kg. (continue reading…)

This shark tooth has a very surprising history.

It is from an extinct Giant Mako shark (Isurus hastalis) that died in the early Miocene epoch, at least 5,000,000 years ago. The shark’s remains settled into the silt that later became part of the Monterey formation in what is now Newport Beach, CA.

A long time later in 2006, my friend and chainmaille artist Chris Perley was poking around there for fossils. He’s found some 100 shark teeth of various species in this same spot, a well-known rocky promontory in town that probably wouldn’t benefit from this particular kind of publicity. But that’s not the surprising part. (continue reading…)

No nation concerned with the science of climate change should have ever given the Kyoto Protocol the time of day. Most of them did, and signed and ratified this plan to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of wealthy nations, while granting the two most polluting nations (China and India) immunity to produce as much CO₂ as they wish. (continue reading…)

Pitcairn Island (Photo: NOAA)

The year was 1808, and men of the American trading ship Topaz landed on Pitcairn Island, thus becoming the first to contact the colony founded by the infamous mutineers of the Bounty.

They found a tiny but prosperous village consisting of one remaining mutineer, a number of Tahitian women, and dozens of children. Life was well ordered; homes were clean and well built, the sabbath was observed, the log was meticulously maintained, and the calendar was wrong.

By one day. (continue reading…)

Steve Jobs' super-secret Illuminati barcode license plate

So as long as we’re on the subject of Steve Jobs, how about a little conspiracy theory about him?

It was well known by obsessive Apple fans that Steve had a barcode instead of a license plate on his car. Some believed this was because he had some special deal with the state of California, and many said that there was some kind of secret club of superstar celebrities and business leaders that allowed them to have a futuristic barcode instead of a plate. I remember reading old articles where it was speculated that this gave him special privileges; perhaps immunity from traffic citations, or special services from the motor vehicle department.

Do you know the truth? If you don’t, think a moment before reading on. (continue reading…)