Skeptic (Altadena, CA) articles from June 2008

Skeptic (Altadena, CA) archives from June 2008

What is a skeptic?
June 22, 2008... 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...

Prayer and pregnancy; shooting UFO photos.('Twas Brillig ...)(Clinical report)
June 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Prayer and Pregnancy WE HAVE WELCOME NEWS FROM Dr. Bruce L. Flamm, M.D., who for the last eight years has been battling the ridiculous report that prayers intoned for infertility patients in Korea could result in...

Popular medical fallacies: ancient wisdom * it works for me * natural is good.(The SkepDoc)
June 22, 2008... ADVOCATES OF SO-CALLED alternative medicine (i.e., unproven treatments) don't always use the best critical thinking skills. False assumptions and logical fallacies abound. Three that I encounter regularly are (1) "ancient wisdom," (2) "it works...

The Phoenix lights explained (again): NBC's dateline misleads public on UFO footage.
June 22, 2008... UFOS MAKE GREAT RATINGS, SO IT isn't surprising that NBC'S Dateline aired a special on Sunday, May 18, entitled 10 Close Encounters Caught on Tape. To its credit, the NBC program at least made an attempt to provide prosaic explanations for each...

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008): visionary science-fiction author.(Obituary)
June 22, 2008... LUCKY PROPHETS BECOME vindicated sages in their own lifetimes. Arthur C. Clarke, who died on March 19, 2008, was the luckiest of men, becoming the most famous of science fiction authors by writing of wonder when many were writing of despair....

Socratic skepticism.
June 22, 2008... IT IS FREQUENTLY CLAIMED THAT Socrates said, "All I know is that I know nothing." SKEPTIC magazine itself makes this claim in its self-defining article at the front matter of the magazine, "What is a Skeptic?" It uses this quote to justify a...

Near death experiences and the medical literature.
June 22, 2008... Miracle Max: See, there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Now, mostly dead: he's slightly alive. All dead, well, with all dead, there's usually only one thing that you can do. Inigo: What's that? Miracle Max: Go...

How skeptics confronted 9/11 conspiracy advocates.
June 22, 2008... SKEPTICS TODAY BEMOAN THE overwhelming proportion of people who claim to believe in all manner of conspiracy theories for anything from the JFK assassination to the origins of HIV-AIDS. For that reason, it may be worthwhile to take a moment to...

Universal Jackpots v. Intelligent Design.(FORUM: Cosmic Jackpot Journalism Supernatural Beliefs Animal Rights)(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2008... The title "Jackpot or Crackpot" in Sid Deutsch's review of Paul Davies' Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life (SKEPTIC, Vol. 14, No. 1) and its statement that Davies "veers dangerously close to invoking "intelligent design...

Reality bites journalist!(FORUM: Cosmic Jackpot Journalism Supernatural Beliefs Animal Rights)(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2008... Maybe I'm missing the point of Steve Salerno's "Journalist Bites Reality", in which he castigates the media for preferring "man-bites-dog" stories. Applying Salerno's logic, on September 11, 2001, we should have been hearing about the...

In whose belief do we trust?(FORUM: Cosmic Jackpot Journalism Supernatural Beliefs Animal Rights)(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2008... In responding to the article critiquing anthropologists, "In Belief We Trust" (Vol. 14, No. 1), can one person know whether another person has "an actual belief in the supernatural"? Ironically claiming to be actual believers in "science," the...

Animal rights and medical research.(FORUM: Cosmic Jackpot Journalism Supernatural Beliefs Animal Rights)(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2008... As a coauthor of the article "Animal and Medicine: Do Animal Experiments Predict Human Response" (Vol. 13 No. 3) I would like to address the concerns raised by Conn and Parker (Vol. 13 No. 4). Our article described the evidence, mainly from...

More words on consciousness.
June 22, 2008... A Response to Henry D. Schlinger's "Consciousness Is Nothing But a Word" In his article "Consciousness Is Nothing But a Word" (Vol. 13, No. 4) Henry D. Schlinger rejects two prominent attempts to solve the problem of consciousness:...

Global warming forum.(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2008... While informative, William Calvin's compendium of would-be cures for global warming, "Turning Around by 2020," (SKEPTIC Vol 14, No. 1)ignores the most obvious and most effective means of them all: stopping population growth. If global warming...

Correction.(Correction notice)
June 22, 2008... The wrong picture was printed in Daniel Loxton's article "Skull Island, Canada" in SKEPTIC Vol. 14, No.1, pp. 13-14 which compared stills from the movie King Kong to a hoax photo of the Loch Ness Monster. Here is the correct comparison. ...

Predicting evolution: how likely is it that human-level intelligence will evolve again?
June 22, 2008... "The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game." --Jacques Monod Chance and Necessity, 1971. IF YOU ARE EVEN VAGUELY FAMILIAR WITH science fiction, especially in film,...

The chain of accidents and the rule of law: the role of contingency and necessity in the evolution of higher intelligence.
June 22, 2008... HUMANS ARE PATTERN-SEEKING, STORY-telling animals. We look for and find patterns in our world and in our lives, then weave narratives around those patterns to bring them to life and give them meaning. Such is the stuff of which myth, religion,...

The myth of the stages of dying, death and grief.(Critical essay)
June 22, 2008... IN 1969 THE PSYCHIATRIST ELIZABETH KUBLER-ROSS wrote one of the most influential books in the history of psychology, On Death and Dying. It exposed the heartless treatment of terminally-ill patients prevalent at the time. On the positive side,...

Criminal profiling: granfalloons and gobbledygook.(Report)
June 22, 2008... READING THE CLAIMS OF CRIMINAL PROFILERS and watching popular television programs like Criminal Minds can leave one with the impression that Criminal Profiling (CP)--the task of inferring demographic and personality details of an offender from...

The curious case of Freeman Dyson and the paranormal.(Critical essay)
June 22, 2008... IN A 2007 ARTICLE POSTED ON EDGE (www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07_index.html), a prestigious web page where scientists debate controversial issues, the famous theoretical physicist and raconteur Freeman Dyson stated once again that he is...

Ben Stein's blunder: in a recent documentary film--expelled: no intelligence allowed--actor, game show host and financial columnist Ben Stein falls for the pseudoscience of Intelligent Design.(Critical essay)
June 22, 2008... IN 1974 I MATRICULATED AT PEPPERDINE University as a born-again Christian who rejected Darwinism and evolutionary theory, not because I knew anything about it (I didn't) but because I thought that in order to believe in God and accept the Bible...

The facts about the "expelled" scientists in expelled.(Guillermo Gonzalez, Richard Sternberg and Caroline Crocker)
June 22, 2008... The intelligent design (ID) movement has long labored to inculcate two mutually exclusive falsehoods in the minds of the public: (A) that ID is a purely scientific theory that has nothing to do with religion; and (B) that any objection to ID is...

Expelled, and the trouble ahead for American Science.
June 22, 2008... AMERICAN SCIENCE IS IN TROUBLE, AND IF you'd like to see one of the reasons why, all you have to do is to go to the movies. The popular culture of this great nation, which has led the world in research, is gradually turning against science. I...

The matrix of the brain.(A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives )(Book review)
June 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A Review of A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine. W. W. Norton, 2006. 243 pp. $24.96. ISBN 10-0393062139 IN THE 1999 SCIENCE-FANTASY FILM The Matrix, people were...

Evolution in our genes.(Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A review of Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA by Daniel J. Fairbanks, Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2007. 280 pp. $24.95 hardcover. ISBN 978-1-59102-564-1 SCIENCE WRITERS...

Read this book!(Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A review of Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine by R. Barker Bausell. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 352 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-19-531368-0 I COULD...

Gimme that old-time irreligion.(A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A review of Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up by John Alan Paulos. Hill and Want, 2007. 176 pp. $20.00, ISBN 10-0809059193 THE VERY FIRST THING I DID IN...

Between scientism and postmodernism.(Darwinian Misadventures in the Humanities)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A review of Darwinian Misadventures in the Humanities, by Eugene Geodheart,. Transactions Publishers, New Brunswick. 127 pp. $32.95 ISBN 10-1412806615 I HAVE MUCH SYMPATHY FOR THE program that Eugene...

The ghost in the machine.(The Spiritual Brain)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A review of The Spiritual Brain, by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary. HarperCollins, 2007. 384 pp. $25.96 ISBN 10-0060858834 ISBN 13-978-0060858834 EVEN BEFORE WE REACH THE table of contents, the book...

Science and religion on the rack.(Thank God for Evolution!: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A review of Thank God for Evolution!: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World, by The Rev. Michael Dowd. Council Oak Books 2007. 432 pp. $18.99 [pounds sterling]...

CAM scam.(Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A review of Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us Aft by Rose Shapiro. London: Harvili Secker, 2008. 272 pp. 12.99 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 978-1846550287 POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HAS...

Fundamental truths.(Bondage of the Mind)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A review of Bondage of the Mind by R. D. Gold. Aldus Books, Menlo Park, CA 2008. 268 pp. $24.95. ISBN 13-9780979640605 MOST OF US INVOLVED WITH critical thinking issues, when referring to fundamentalism,...

The crystal skulls.
June 22, 2008... "PROVENANCE" There's an idea used in the fine art business that will help us solve the mystery of the crystal skulls: it's called "provenance." This word comes from French, and means "to come from." The provenance of a painting or...

The crystal skulls.
June 22, 2008... HELLO! I'm Daniel, the Editor of JUNIOR SKEPTIC. I'd like to introduce you to one of my favorite mysteries from when I was growing up: the crystal skulls! Beautiful and mysterious-even, some would say, cursed-these glittering quartz...