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Skeptic (Altadena, CA)
Magazine promoting scientific method, critical thinking and the skepticism of the paranormal and superstition.
Articles from Vol. 15, No. 2, Summer
2012 and Counting: A NASA Scientist Answers the Top 20 Questions about 2012
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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] PUBLIC CONCERN ABOUT DOOMSDAY IN December 2012 has blossomed into a major new presence on the Internet. This fear has begun to invade cable TV and Hollywood, and it is rapidly spreading internationally. The hoax originally...
A Governor's Prayer for Rain: An Empirical Analysis of a Supernatural Claim
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ON TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2007, Sonny Perdue, the Governor of Georgia, led a group of approximately 250 persons, including many state officials, in a prayer for rain on the steps of the state capitol in Atlanta. (1) Georgia had been suffering an extreme...
Atheism Rising: The Connection between Intelligence, Science, and the Decline of Belief
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OVER THE COURSE OF the past century there have been three curious phenomena in the social sciences that are both significant and related: (1) the rise in IQ scores in developed countries, (2) the decline in religious belief and commitment in these...
Chiropractic: A Little Physical Therapy, a Lot of Nonsense
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CHIROPRACTIC MEANS DIFFERENT things to different people. For some, it is a practical way to get quick relief from mechanical back pain. For others, it is a cult-like belief system based on demonstrably false ideas and a magnet for every kind of quackery...
Darwin in Texas: What Teachers of Evolution Believe
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TEXTBOOK WARS HAVE A LONG AND agonizing history in Texas, closely watched by the rest of the country because the state purchases so many textbooks that publishers feel the need to cater to the wishes of that state's eductional board. The Beginning...
It's Time to Teach the Controversy: Since Creationism Isn't Going Away, Let's Use It in the Classroom to Teach the Difference between Science and Pseudoscience
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"Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again." --J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings I AM REMINDED OF TOLKIEN'S WORDS WHENEVER I consider the history of creationism in the United States. The pattern is...
Optimism Is Good for Your Brain a Response to Steve Salerno
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As skeptical researchers with a penchant for thorough and accurate assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of positive thinking and optimism, we are dismayed by Salerno's apparent lack of comprehension (and exclusion of references to back up his...
Physicists Will Not Destroy the World! Why We Need Not Worry about the Large Hadron Collider
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LLOYD B. LUEPTOW'S ARTICLE ON THE "Large Hadron Collider and the Threats of Catastrophe" clearly illustrates how science is different than sociology. The author seems to think that by doing a literature search and quoting every possible source and...
Randi on the Double-Blind Experiment: A Response to a Critic
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In the Forum section of Vol. 15. No. 1, Douglas M. Stokes takes me to task for having poorly designed a double-blind protocol for testing a dowser's claims. He writes: "Unfortunately, Randi's procedure is not blind at all," and he provides his reasons...
The Coriolis Effect: Does Water Drain in Different Directions in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres?
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ON THE EQUATOR, NEAR THE TOWN OF Nanyuki, Kenya, a local man named Peter McLeary makes a living by showing tourists the so-called "Coriolis force": He takes them to a line drawn on the ground (the putative location of the equator) and drains...
The Non-Historical Jesus
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We were extremely disappointed by Tim Callahan's review of Peter Joseph's Internet film Zeitgeist, in which Callahan contends that there is strong evidence for a historical Jesus. The only doubter he mentions is Peter Joseph himself, and since Callahan...
The Problem of Bias, Even in Biology
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RECENTLY I PURCHASED AN UNUSUAL ITEM FOR MY office wall--an "inverted" world map with Antarctica at the top and the Arctic at the bottom. It also happens to be centered on the 0[degrees] meridian running through Greenwich. All countries, states, oceans,...
The Shocking Secret of Thetis Lake
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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] HELLO! I'm Daniel, the Editor of JUNIOR SKEPTIC. I'd like to introduce you to a creature you've probably never heard of: the Thetis Lake Monster! And, if you have heard of it--you shouldn't have! This must be among the...
Vaccines and Autism: A Deadly Manufactroversy
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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after."--Jonathan Swift DURING A QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION after a talk I recently gave, I was asked for my opinion about the vaccine/autism controversy. That was easy: my...
Why Religions Turn Oppressive: A Perspective from Evolutionary Psychology
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RELIGION HAS PRESENTED A complex array of puzzles for scientists from many different disciplines. Recently, work by sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists has been supplemented by researchers who have tried to explain aspects of religion by...
Will Physicists Destroy the World? the Large Hadron Collider and the Threats of Catastrophe
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EARTH-THREATENING CATASTROPHE scenarios are once again in the news. Even if you are not worried about the Mayan calendar running out in 2012, or being "left behind" in a biblical Armageddon, there are some scientists concerned about the unanticipated...
