Categories
Announcements Skepticism/critical thinking

The 60th Meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle: Reality in danger

It’s that time again! Has it really been a fortnight since the last time the skeptics of the blogosphere met to apply desperately-needed critical thinking skills to the woo, credulity, and general lack of critical thinking in which the blogosphere is continually awash? I guess so. This time up, we have a rather unusual presentation […]

Categories
History Holocaust Skepticism/critical thinking World War II

Skepticism undermined by an insufficient knowledge of history

I’ll admit it. There have been at least two times since I started blogging that I fell for a dubious story because I exercised insufficient skepticism. The first time occurred very early on in my blogging history when swallowed a story about how legalization of prostitution was claimed to lead to the requirement that unemployed […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The shifting sands of anti-entropic woo

Everybody (well, mostly everybody) learns in science and physics class the Three Laws of Thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, meaning that the increase in the internal energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the amount of heat energy added to the system minus the work done by the system on the surroundings. […]

Categories
Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Medicine and Evolution, Part 10: “Intelligent design” creationists misrepresenting the role of evolution in medicine

If there’s one undeniable aspect of “intelligent design” creationism advocates, it is their ability to twist and misrepresent science and any discussions of evolution to their own ends. Be it Dr. Michael Egnor‘s twisting of history to claim that eugenics is based on Darwinism, rather than the artificial selection (or, as we snarky ones like […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Steve Novella weighs in on mercury-autism controversy

Dr. Steven Novella, an academic neurologist, President of the New England Skeptical Society, and organizer of what’s become my favorite skeptical podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, took the time to weigh in on the Nature Neuroscience article that I discussed the other day and that engendered dozens of comments, as posts about antivaccination […]