Tag Archives: skepticism

Snopes: Everyone is searching for an easy “cure”

By Paul | Published April 1, 2020

Snopes Digest, #7, 31 March 2020: As the world deals with an ever-more-frightening pandemic, we at Snopes are seeing the resurgence of a classic form of misinformation: Rumors of snake-oil cures and junk medicine have roared into public consciousness, crossing social media feeds and even the White House podium, around the COVID-19 coronavirus disease. If […]

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A Version of Reality So Elaborately Embellished That it Qualifies as Fan Fiction

By Paul | Published October 3, 2018

New York Times Editorial Board: “I built what I built myself.” This boast has long been at the core of the mythology of Donald Trump, Self-Made Billionaire. As the oft-told story goes, young Mr. Trump accepted a modest $1 million loan from his father, Fred, a moderately successful real estate developer from Queens, and — […]

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Bill Nye Saves the World

By Paul | Published April 24, 2017

Netflix: Emmy-winning host Bill Nye brings experts and famous guests to his lab for a talk show exploring scientific issues that touch our lives. Wow. Great show! Even better than I was hoping.

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How should the media cover a White House that isn’t afraid to lie?

By Paul | Published February 2, 2017

Thanks for watching. Strikethrough is a new Vox video series focusing on media coverage in the age of Trump, or, as Sean Spicer would say, the biggest, most impressive video series of all time.

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A Skeptical Response to Science Denial

By Paul | Published January 4, 2017

So, study after study confirms an overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. But what does the average person think about the consensus? A Yale survey of Americans found that on average, people think that 67 percent of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. That already sounds disturbingly low, but it’s even worse […]

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WSJ: NSA Monitoring Includes Three Major Phone Companies, as Well as Online Activity

By Paul | Published June 8, 2013

Honestly, I don’t know why so many people are getting so upset about this. Let me rephrase that: I honestly don’t know why so many people are just now getting so upset about this! Unless you’ve been practicing willful ignorance — for political or other reasons — then you’ve known full well about (or at […]

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Reason: How Even a ‘Well-Trained Narcotics Detection Dog’ Can Be Wrong 84 Percent of the Time

By Paul | Published February 27, 2013

So even a dog that is very good at finding drugs in a “controlled testing environment” will generate a lot of false positives when sniffing randomly selected cars. Again, forensic “science” (with the exception of DNA) largely isn’t science. The U.S. Extreme Court is WRONG.

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How reliable is the science behind forensic science?

By Paul | Published February 16, 2013

Fascinating PBS: FRONTLINE show from April, “The Real CSI: How reliable is the science behind forensics?” So it turns out that the Forensic sciences (with the notable exception of DNA) are no more “hard science” than Creation “science”, social “science”, or Scientology… Most have no scientific basis at all, and those that do rarely reach […]

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AP: 12 things to know about the end of the world?

By Paul | Published December 12, 2012

Cute video. Covers several of the major apocalyptic theories (Talk about “just a theory”!!!), as well as a number of previous (and obviously, incorrect) end-of-days predictions. I truly appreciate that the AP includes in their coverage of the Rapture an important point that most Christians either never knew, or conveniently forget: “The Bible records Jesus […]

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A few thoughts on “Voter Photo ID”

By Paul | Published September 24, 2012

I understand the purpose: to help prevent voter fraud; and while reasonable opinions vary as to any supposed secondary or non-stated purpose(s), I don’t feel that reasonable opinions can vary on the importance of eliminating voter fraud. That being said, you have to admit it seems a little peculiar that you need a Photo ID […]

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