Skeptic (Altadena, CA) articles from March 2005

Skeptic (Altadena, CA) archives from March 2005

John of God: ABC's Primetime Live special about a Brazilian "healer" falls far short of investigative journalism.(American Broadcasting Companies Inc.)
March 22, 2005... On February 10th, 2005, ABC's Primetime Live aired an hour-long special on a man called "John of God" who works out of Brazil. This was a major show that could have been a useful, productive, and informative program, but failed to reach that...

God offers human race on eBay.
March 22, 2005... GOLDENPALACE, HEAVEN--The creator of the cosmos put the entire human race up for sale last week on eBay. God, who created the species just 6,000 years ago, says he never thought he'd sell what many consider to be the pinnacle of his creation....

Ernst Mayr, 1904-2005 remembrances and tribute.(Biography)
March 22, 2005... ERNST MAYR WAS, WITHOUT A doubt, the most important intellectual figure in my life. He was my closest mentor and a towering model for anyone to try to live up to. He was always remarkably generous with his time to younger scholars and...

Dr. Summers' hidden agenda women, men, and the 80-hour work week.(Lawrence Summers)
March 22, 2005... HAVING BEEN INVOLVED WITH gender research for some 30 years I want to comment on Harvard University President Lawrence Summers' observations on gender differences in the sciences. In a book chapter I wrote 18 years ago (S. Losh-Hesselbart,...

Testing Prayer.(prayer's influence on health)
March 22, 2005... Testing prayer has been much in the news of late. I would like to point out that Sir Francis Galton devised an almost flawless experiment in 1872. (1) Galton used Guy's data (2) on the longevity of 6,473 persons in the following classes:...

Democratizing Darwin: a review of a conference on "Darwin, design, and democracy".
March 22, 2005... On September 24-25, 2004, proponents of "Intelligent Design" convened at the University of New Mexico for the fifth annual Darwin, Design, and Democracy conference. The highlight of the event came on the second night when two of the three most...

The death of philosophy: Jacques Derrida 1930-2004.(Obituary)
March 22, 2005... WHEN PHILOSOPHER JACQUES DERRIDA DIED IN PARIS at the age of 74 last year, French President Chirac said "France has given the world one of its greatest contemporary philosophers, one of the major figures of intellectual life of our time." On...

The Da Vinci Code cult: a critical look at Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... MUCH HAS ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN decoding, deconstructing, and debunking Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, including Tim Callahan's critical review in SKEPTIC. But since then the book has become a cult hit, having sold over 25 million copies in 44...

Collapsed predicted medical myths intelligent design.(FORUM)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2005... Collapse predicted in 1974 Thanks for excerpting Jared Diamond's important book Collapse (Vol. 11, No. 3). Though new, it concentrates and develops an overview of what many have written for perhaps 50 years, but to which too few have paid...

Hormone replacement myths and the real truth about cholesterol.(FORUM)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2005... In "The Double-Blind Gaze" by Steven Bratman and "The Truth About Cholesterol" by Marshall E. Deutsch (SKEPTIC, Vol. 11 No. 3), both authors make some very good points on two very important subjects, but both stumble in ways that require a...

Intelligent Design and polytheism.(FORUM)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2005... Regarding the Intelligent Design (ID) article in SKEPTIC (Vol. 11, No. 2, 79-88) I applaud those that hold ID and statistical approaches to theology up to scientific standards and campaign to keep them out of science classrooms. However, I...

Race and sex: the difference in theory and the difference it makes.
March 22, 2005... Race and Sexual Selection I thoroughly enjoyed the recent eSkeptic reviews of Vince Sarich's and Frank Miele's book Race, but I was somewhat surprised that none of the writers, neither of the book nor the reviews, mentioned Darwin's...

Neutral letters.(FORUM)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2005... While I agree in general with the points raised in Dylan Otto Krider's piece, I have a few quibbles. He describes White House interference with the EPA as "government meddling," even though the EPA is itself a government agency. I think it...

Positive letters.(FORUM)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2005... As an evangelical Christian, I voted for Bush last time bemuse I thought that he would have more of a commitment to the truth than would someone from Clinton's administration. I also thought that "compassionate conservatism" would be more than...

Negative letters.(FORUM)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2005... I have long been a fan of the writings of Mr. Randi, Mr. Shermer and Skeptic.com in general. However, I must say that the article on Science in the Bush Administration goes too far beyond just criticizing his science policies. You give way to...

Krider responds.(Union of Concerned Scientists' scientific research)
March 22, 2005... Thanks for taking the time to read the article and to respond. I did realize people would fault the article if I relied solely on the UCS. That is why I listed only a few of the examples noted in their report, and independently validated those...

Blind men with an elephant: nature and nurture revisited.
March 22, 2005... As a former behaviorist trained by a protege (Jim Dinsmoor) of Skinner's best friend in the field (Fred Keller), I am provisionally ready to accept Schlinger's recent claim at the conclusion of his article, "The Almost Blank Slate". "One can...

Blank snakes.(NATURE-NURTURE FORUM)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2005... There is an even simpler alternative to "Nature or Nurture" on the question "why are people afraid of snakes?" discussed in the previous issue of SKEPTIC (Vol. 11, No. 2). It is that snakes are hideously ugly. The same goes for scorpions,...

Genetic preparedness does not equal genetic determinism.
March 22, 2005... In a recent SKEPTIC article (Vol. 11, No. 2), Henry Schlinger suggested that popular sentiment seemed to be leaning toward a genetic explanation for human behavior. In doing so, Schlinger argued that learning (nurture) was a much more powerful...

Nurturing nature.(NATURE-NURTURE FORUM)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2005... I would like to commend SKEPTIC for the article in Vol. 11, No. 2, "The Almost Blank Slate" by Henry Schlinger. Dr. Schlinger has done an excellent presentation in an area that has been misunderstood and misapplied for centuries. He is correct...

The triplets of nature and nurture.(NATURE-NURTURE FORUM)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2005... Regarding the nature vs. nurture debate (Vol. 11, No. 2), I have some personal experiences that may be relevant--I am the father of triplets. Our children recently turned three. We have fraternal triplets, one girl and two boys. Nature vs....

Tilting pictures and fruitless pursuits: how to test for a supernatural occurrence.
March 22, 2005... DURING A RECENT DISCUSSION WITH A colleague about the possibility of the existence of the supernatural it soon became apparent to both of us that the descriptive term "supernatural" is an oxymoron, because if such activity does exist, its...

The truth is out there ... way out there: three major patterns of conspiratorial thinking.
March 22, 2005... THE PEAK POPULARITY of the television series The X-Files, and the initial Internet-boosted acceleration of the Information Revolution are behind us, but their legacies live on, in the pervasive familiarity of the conspiracy theory. Indeed, the...

Close encounters of the facial kind: are UFO alien faces an inborn facial recognition template?
March 22, 2005... THE DESCRIPTIONS OF ALIEN FACES historically reported by UFO abductees are almost boringly uniform. Long before "close encounters" became a catchword in the ufologist's vocabulary, self-proclaimed UFO abductees described their abductors as...

How the human got its mind: debunking the last great myth in psychology.
March 22, 2005... DESPITE THE FACT THAT "MIND" is a pre-scientific concept that dates back at least to the ancient Greek philosophies of Aristotle and Plato, it still occupies a central place as the subject matter of modern psychology and philosophy. Consider...

The dream world of William Dembski's creationism.
March 22, 2005... THE INORDINATELY WELL-FUNDED Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute of Seattle is home to a new anti-evolution movement. Their goal is to add creationism to school curricula as an alternative to evolution. This they...

Creationism's Holy Grail: the intelligent design of a peer-reviewed paper.
March 22, 2005... LIKE THE MEDIEVAL PRINCE who forfeited his kingdom in a quest for the Holy Graft, Intelligent Design creationists (IDers) have embarked on the equally quixotic quest to place a peer-reviewed article in a bona fide scientific journal. This...

Required reading.(The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions and Dangerous Delusions)(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... A review of The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions & Dangerous Delusions by Robert Todd Carroll. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ, 2003. 446 pp. paperback, $19.95 ISBN 0-471-27242-6 THERE HAVE BEEN MANY...

Super size this!(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... A Review of The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos. Gotham Books, 2004. 288 pp. $25. ISBN: 1-59244-0066-3 YOU MIGHT HAVE HEARD that we in the U.S. have a bit of a weight problem. If you turn on the television or read the news it is hard to miss...

Faith, facts, and the resurrection of Jesus.(The Resurrection of the Son of God)(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... A review of The Resurrection of the Son of God by N. T. Wright, Fortress Press, 2004. 817 pp. $39, ISBN: 0-8006-2679-6 ALL RELIGIONS MAKE TRUTH claims. Judaism claims that the Lord God promised Abraham and his seed that the land of Canaan...

The key to the universe.(The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe)(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... A review of The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. 390 illustrations, 1,099 pp. $$40. ISBN 0679-45443-8 A COUPLE OF YEARS INTO THE editing and publishing of SKEPTIC...

In the blink of an eye.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... A review of Blink: The Power of Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell 2005. Little Brown, 2005. 304 pp. $25.95 0-316-172324 ANYONE WHO DOES A LOT of public speaking knows from experience that there are certain questions that inevitably arise from...

The Gods must be crazy.(Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians)(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... A review of Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians by Dale B. Martin. Harvard University Press, 2004, 307 pp, $29.95 ISBN: 0-674-01534-7 AS IS OCCASIONALLY HEARD in our post-9/11 world, one country's terrorist may...

When death comes knockin' who ya gonna call?(Facing Death: Epicurus and His Critics )(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... A Review of Facing Death: Epicurus and His Critics by James Warren. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 240 pp. $57.21 ISBN 0199252890 SKEPTICS MUST FACE DEATH without the consolation of a religious person's belief in an afterlife....

Seek and ye shall find.(The God Code: The Secret of Our Past, the Promise of Our Future)(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... A review of The God Code: The Secret of Our Past, the Promise of Our Future, by Gregg Braden. Hay House, Inc., Carlsbad, CA, 2004. 288 pp. $24,95 ISBN 14019-0299-5 SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND: prophecies in the Bible and in Nostradamus, Jesus...

The great race debate.(Race: The Reality of Human Differences)(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Two reviews of Race: The Reality of Human Differences by Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele. Westview Press, 2004, 320 pp. $27.50 ISBN: 0813340861 Editor's note: The authors of the book under review are both have connections to Skeptic...

The madman of magic Bob Friedhoffer presents six slick tricks and the science behind them.
March 22, 2005... THE ANTIGRAVITY TUBE Effect: A 24-inch long aluminum or copper tube with an inside diameter of about 1/2-inch is shown to the audience. A 3/8-inch ball bearing is displayed. The performer holds the tube vertically in one hand,...