Skeptic (Altadena, CA) articles from December 2002

Skeptic (Altadena, CA) archives from December 2002

The Skeptics Society.
December 22, 2002... The Skeptics Society is a member-supported 501(c)(3) nonprofit scientific and educational organization of scholars, scientists, historians, magicians, professors and teachers, and anyone curious about controversial ideas, that does the...

What is a skeptic?
December 22, 2002... What does it mean to be a skeptic? Some people believe that skepticism is rejection of new ideas, or worse, they confuse "skeptic" with "cynic" and think that skeptics are a bunch of grumpy curmudgeons unwilling to accept any claim that...

'Twas brillig.(fraud exposed)
December 22, 2002... Medical I Quackery Down Under, Think of a Card, A Step in the Right Direction, Raining on Art Bell's Parade, The big MEG Takes a Fall The Fake Vaccine from Down Under The Australian Daily Telegraph reports that a fake meningococcal...

French follies: a 9/11 conspiracy theory turns out to be an appalling deception.(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... Review of L'Effroyable Imposture, by Thierry Meyssan. (Chatou, France: Carnot, 2002) 235 pages FOR SOME YEARS NOW, MANY American liberals have been dismayed by the odd collection of "progressive" ideas emanating from France. The final...

Paranormal brain chemistry; poll. (News).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2002... Paranormal beliefs linked to brain chemistry The magazine New Scientist released the following story on July 24 2002: Whether or not you believe in the paranormal may depend entirely on your brain chemistry. People with high levels of...

Belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal widespread and growing according to the national science foundation study. (News).
December 22, 2002... In April, 2002, the National Science Foundation (NSF) published their biennial report on the state of science understanding and public attitudes toward science, that included a section on the relationships between science and pseudoscience. The...

To be or not to be a weasel: Hamlet, intelligent design, and how evolution works. (News).
December 22, 2002... In the July 2002 issue of Scientific American, Editor-in-Chief John Rennie wrote a brilliant article entitled "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense." In that article he used an example from my book, Why People Believe Weird Things, in which I...

Science testing fringes of credibility. (Forum).
December 22, 2002... Science and Skepticism Regarding Walker, et al's article on "Science Education is no Guarantee of Skepticism" (Vol. 9, No. 3) I tend to agree with most of what the authors were saying, but I have a problem with the assessment tool thye...

Luther Setzer and John Kassebaum defend hydrino theory. (Forum).
December 22, 2002... Refuting Barth's "Refutations" Aaron Barth's hatchet job "Bigger than Fire? A Scientific Examination of Ranclell Mills' 'Hydrino' Theory" in SKEPTIC Vol. 8 No. 4 made gross misrepresentations of Mills' book The Grand Unified Theory of...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
December 22, 2002... A letter in SKEPTIC, Vol. 9, No. 3, pages 20-21 titled "Lomborg's Selective Skepticism, Pimentel's Disappointing Response" inadvertanly left out the author's name. It was written by Dr. Joseph Soltis, of the Laboratory of Comparative Ethology...

Mole's cognitive catastrophes, Sheldrake responds. (Forum).(Phil Mole)
December 22, 2002... I Think Therefore I Deduce Regarding Phil Mole's article "Cognitive Catastrophes" (vol. 9 no. 3), I must object to his presentation of Descartes' dictum, "Cogito ergo sum", as "flagrantly incorrect" because existence can occur without...

Creationism, black confederates. (Forum).
December 22, 2002... Pack Your Lunch for Creationists In his review of Stuart Kauffman's Investigations (Vol. 9, No. 3) Dr. Marvizon is too generous in his agreement on the issue of the significance of the "no-free-lunch theorem" to evolutionary biology....

The power of coincidence.
December 22, 2002... PEOPLE AROUND ME HAVE BEEN BOTH amused and aghast at the news that on September 11, 2002 the New York State Lottery's evening number game popped up the numbers 9-1-1. Is this a paranormal happening--perhaps a wink from God? It's hardly the...

Farewell, fossilface: a memoir of Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002).
December 22, 2002... "The so-called dead are still alive. Our friends are still with us. They guide and strengthen us when owing to absence of proper conditions they cannot make their presence known." Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) I FIRST MET STEPHEN...

This view of science: Stephen Jay Gould as historian of science and scientific historian.
December 22, 2002... IN THE CLOSING DECADES OF THE twentieth century the genre of popular science writing by professional scientists blossomed as never before, with sales figures to match the astronomical six- and seven-figure advances being sought and secured by...

What do we do about creationism? Suggestions about how to change people's minds.
December 22, 2002... ACCORDING TO JONATHAN WELLS, an intelligent design creationist at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, the proof that evolutionary biology is a theory in crisis is that several high school and college biology textbooks contain errors in their...

Two Shakespeares: a skeptical analysis of Shakespeare and his works reveals the real author.
December 22, 2002... ABOUT 1785, ThE REVEREND JAMES WILMOT, the rector of Barton-on-the-Heath (a town just a few miles north of Stratford-upon-Avon) made a startling discovery. He had recently retired to the rural village after an illustrious career in London,...

Science and the resurrection.
December 22, 2002... Christ's alleged resurrection as a consequence of a synergism between drugs, limbic epilepsy, and physical restraint--experimental evidence for an alternative hypothesis to being raised from the dead by God BEFORE THE VALIDITY OF A...

Parting seas, magic stars, and miracles: can science explain events in the Bible?
December 22, 2002... IN THE SECOND CENTURY of the common era, the church father Origen made the suggestion that the star of Bethlehem described in the gospel of Matthew was a comet.(1) Church annals dating as far back as the 13th century make the suggestion that...

101 Reasons to Dig Deeper. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... A review of 101 Myths of the Bible: How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History by Gary Greenberg, President of the Biblical Archaeology Society of New York. 2000, Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc. 320 pages I AM, PERHAPS, THE...

A late defense. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... Paul on Trial: The Book of Acts as a Defense of Christianity by John W. Mauck. Foreword by Donald A. Hagner Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001 OUR TENDENCY TO SEE THE world through the lens of our own experience often slants our...

Vanquished, but not gone. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... The Vanquished Gods: Science, Religion, and the Nature of Belief by Richard H. Schlagel, Elton Professor of Philosophy, George Washington University, 2001, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 350 pages THIS BOOK IS A WELL TAD-OUT...

Plus Ca Change, Plus C'est la Meme Chose: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... A review of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay, LLD (1841) IT MAY SEEM ODD TO REVIEW A book that is over 150 years old, but several new editions of this book have recently been released (Templeton...

Cadborosaurus!(legendary sea monster)
December 22, 2002... ACCORDING TO LEGEND, A GIGANTIC SEA SERPENT hides in the ocean off the Pacific Northwest, swimming through the drizzling rain between lush green islands. It is 80 feet long, a predator, and some scientists suspect that it is a surviving...