Skepticism
pharyngula | January 30, 2008I'm fed up. There have been 5.5 Amaz!ng Meetings with James Randi, and I haven't gone to a single one…yet. That's finally going to change, though, as I've been invited to speak at TAM6, in Las Vegas, on 19-22 June. Who else is going? Maybe a few of you will think about marking your calendars and making the pilgrimage for the first time this summer, so that I'm not the only TAM virgin there?
I haven't quite settled on what I'll be talking about, just yet, although I have a few ideas. Maybe Phil and I should have a joint session in which we publicly play the dozens? He did just get back from…
aardvarchaeology | January 27, 2008I wrote this last night in Florida, but the hotel wifi was on the blink, so I couldn't get it on-line. I am now at Newark airport in New Jersey, having just eaten my first bowl of matzoh soup. Oy vey, good stuff!
Audience frowning in concentration
I've been to gaming conventions and academic conferences and recently my first blogging convention, and now I've experienced my first skeptics' convention: The Amazing Meeting 5.5, a 1.5-day mini-con hosted by the Amazing Randi himself.
James Randi demonstrating Geller-like powers
Friday offered a solid four-hour round-robin lecture on podcasting…
aardvarchaeology | January 25, 2008
Spent yesterday volunteering at the James Randi Educational Foundation, doing manual work and getting to know people. I moved furniture, cleaned up trash, painted a door and pasted errata sheets into books. And everybody was so nice to me! Loads of good conversation and silly jokes. I'm here as a representative of the Swedish Skeptics Society, so I make an effort to overcome my retiring personality and make as many new contacts as I can.
Jeff Wagg bought me breakfast at Denny's. Our party was accosted by a Christian lady who overheard us talking about atheism and wanted us to repent! I…
oracknows | January 22, 2008Three months ago, I wrote about vacuous legal threats issued by the Society of Homeopaths against one of the better skeptical bloggers, Le Canard Noir, who runs the excellent Quackometer Blog and created the infamous Quackometer, in order to intimidate him into silence. The attempt backfired spectacularly, as scores of bloggers reposted the article by Le Canard Noir that prompted the legal threats, in the face of which his ISP had caved.
Now it looks like it might be time to do it all again, this time with a different twit who has issued abusive threats against Le Canard Noir. This time…
aardvarchaeology | January 17, 2008Anybody in the Ft Lauderdale area want to meet up some time 23-24 January? I'd like to befriend some natives!
I'm touching down at FLL at noon on Wednesday the 23rd and will be staying in Plantation. I'll be a tourist during Wednesday and Thursday, and then I'll attend the TAM 5.5 skeptical conference on Friday and Saturday.
tsmith | January 17, 2008 Yesterday I introduced criticisms that have been raised against Y. pestis causation of the Black Death and subsequent plague outbreaks. Today I'll discuss what I see as weaknesses in these criticisms, after the jump.
Selective quoting and interpretation of evidence
First and foremost, a big issue I have with the claims by Duncan and Scott are that they are rather selective in what evidence they choose. For example, they selected several quotes from medieval manuscripts and diaries that suggest that people at the time "knew" it was directly contagious from person to person, and…
aardvarchaeology | January 6, 2008Canadian newspaper The National Post seems to be subscribing to a blog-buzz service that everybody on Sb got onto a while ago. Therefore, I just got an intriguingly worded letter from Canadian creationist David Johnston (appended below the fold for the edification of the interested Dear Reader).
In response to David's letter, I'll just say that I have decent basic knowledge of biology and Christian scripture, and that my reading has convinced me that the latter has nothing to contribute to the former.
Hello Dr. Martin.
Where does a skeptic (or anyone) find an origins scientist? No such thing…
aardvarchaeology | January 6, 2008In my recent blog entry "Skepticism and Informed Consensus", I pointed out that a real member of the skeptical movement is not universally skeptical (as may seem evident when you first think of it), but follows scientific consensus. The entry has spun off a lot of side effects: a long supportive reply by Orac, loads of comments at both our blogs, a blog entry of mine about the discredited idea that gays are nuts, and the first troll banned from commenting on Aard (not because he was one of several people who disagreed with me, but because he was being obstinately rude to myself and one of his…
aardvarchaeology | January 5, 2008The Swedish Skeptics Society (VoF) has just announced its annual awards. The Popular Enlightener for 2007 is none other than my friend Jonathan Lindström, the guy with the Neolithic kids' book! (I abstained from voting, being heavily biased in his favour.)
States the press release, "He receives the award for his pop-sci books where he relays, in words and images and with endless curiosity and stellar pedagogics, the latest advances in astronomy, cosmology, natural history and archaeology. Jonathan Lindström's books are a pure pop-sci pleasure for all ages to gather around."
The 2007…
denialism | January 4, 2008After ten years the James Randi Educational Foundation is discontinuing its 1 million dollar paranormal challenge.
The James Randi Educational Foundation Million-Dollar Challenge will be discontinued 24 months from this coming March 6th, and those prize funds will then be available to generally add to our flexibility. This move will free us to do many more projects, which will be announced at that time.
I'm disappointed, because that means in two years we will lose one of the best anti-woo tools in the arsenal. That is, the offer of 1 million dollars to any woomeister who can prove their…
denialism | January 3, 2008White Coat Underground has the overmedicalized edition. I'm pleased to see Happy Jihad House of Pancakes arguing for more skepticism in the humanities as part of the circle. And a great post on epidemiology and autism from Andrea.
Orac had some important things to say about consensus, and just to clarify my position on how a skeptic should regard consensus it's simple. It is a sign of crankery to attack consensus as a concept, for example see this nonsense from creationist John West whining about consensus on evolution. However, a big part of being a scientist is challenging various…
aardvarchaeology | December 31, 2007Over at Respectful Insolence, a lot of people have been discussing the relationship between skepticism and scientific consensus, a topic I brought up recently. And commenter Alvaro has pointed out a kind of counterexample, to whit, that the consensus among US psychiatrists had defined homosexuality as a psychiatric condition up through 1974. This is classic Michel Foucault territory, and I think Alvaro's point is interesting and apt. Being gay isn't always easy in an at best semi-tolerant society, but it sure isn't something that calls for treatment.
Reading up a little, I found something…
aardvarchaeology | December 24, 2007A discussion in the comments section of the recent Skeptics' Circle reminded me of something I learned only after years in the skeptical movement.
A real skeptic always sides with scientific consensus.
This may sound really unsatisfying and self-contradictory at first. Isn't skepticism about critical thinking? About being open to any idea (or none) as long as it survives rational deliberation? Doesn't this consensus thing mean that the whole movement is actually just kowtowing to white-coated authority? Well, yes and no.
To begin with, let's remember that there are many people who are…
aardvarchaeology | December 21, 2007
Yet another piece of news about Bob Lind's most recent archaeoastronomical caper (previously covered here and here).
The Scania County Archaeologist has had an independent contractor assess and document the damage done to an Early Iron Age cemetery by Lind and former geology professor Nils-Axel Mörner. The men's interventions will be repaired and the site's protected area will be enlarged, but no charges will be pressed. It's an unusual case as Lind made his unauthorised interference with the site known through a press release!
Here are a few choice quotations from contract archaeologist…
denialism | December 20, 2007Good for Martin Hosting the Skeptics' Circle and keeping out the cranks.
I'm fond of Whiskey Before Breakfasts' entry on just whether the 20th century truly was the bloodiest, and Knudsens News straight-faced description of the failure of doctors to meet chiropractic standard of care.
Enjoy!
aardvarchaeology | December 20, 2007Dear Reader, welcome to the 76th instalment of the Skeptics' Circle, your bi-weekly portal to the best skeptical blog writing on this or any other world-wide web.
Greta Christina discusses muddled debates where the issue whether certain religious beliefs are factually true gets mixed up with the issue whether religion is mainly a force for good or not.
Terry comments on a new paper claiming that divorce hurts the environment -- sharing a house does reduce per capita carbon emissions.
Coffee House Poetry offers a rousing atheistic rant.
Bing at Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes replies to a…
denialism | December 17, 2007I'm in DC this week working for Dr. Mom and getting my physical exam skills back up to snuff, so I'll be a little quiet. In the meantime, Cectic is keeping the dream alive:
I love these guys.
pharyngula | December 17, 2007Larry Moran has had a couple of articles up lately on Dr Sharon Moalem, a fellow who has a book out called Survival of the Sickest, and who also has a blog. Larry noticed a couple of things: he's writing utter tripe about junk DNA, he's editing and deleting comments about his science from his blog, and he's been misleading about his credentials — although, to be fair, Moalem does plainly and accurately list his background on the endflaps of the book (some of this has come from a student blog that has been dissecting his dubious claims).
And then I noticed…I actually have Moalem's book! I get…
aardvarchaeology | December 14, 2007This is really great. Everybody else has realised that Bob Lind's new "discovery" was a canard. But today, local paper Ystad Allehanda's credulous reporter nevertheless conveys the man's ideas that
Standing stones are unlikely to mark cemeteries. (They are in fact enormously common in early-to-mid-1st Millennium AD cemeteries in Sweden.)
Many of the stones in the new cemetery Lind has been spinning his astronomical yarns about hardly protrude above the turf. The reason, he says, is that the ground level in the meadow has somehow risen 80 cm since the stones were put in place, and nearly…
aardvarchaeology | December 8, 2007
Bob Lind chalking some apparently quite genuine cupmarks, a ubiquitous type of Bronze Age rock art.
Alternative archaeoastronomer Bob Lind (note that I do not call him an unhinged man with crackpot theories) felt himself vindicated this past summer by the Swedish Heritage Board. On a set of new visitors' signs, the Board didn't actually endorse Lind's alternative interpretation of the stone ship of Ales stenar, but the signs recounted his ideas alongside the scholarly consensus interpretation without taking a stand on the issue. This was enough to make Lind a very happy man.
Now, local…