No. 5 | Skeptical Inquirer (original) (raw)
From the Editor
The Spectrum of Skepticism Kendrick Frazier
The concerns of scientific skeptics cover an astonishingly wide range of issues, with an equal variety of emphases and approaches. The articles in this issue typify that. Jeanne Goldberg’s cover article, “The Politicization of Scientific Issues,” is as timely as today’s headlines, but she approaches the subject with deep philosophical and historical context. In her …
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News & Comment
Understanding Gallup’s Latest Poll on Evolution Glenn Branch
When a pollster that’s been surveying public opinion about evolution at intervals over the past thirty-five years declares, “In US, Belief in Creationist View of Humans at New Low,” as Gallup did on May 22, 2017, it’s a good idea to pay attention. But it’s also a good idea to pay attention to the details. …
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News & Comment
CFI, Richard Dawkins, Teachers Slam as ‘Unconscionable’ Turkey’s Decision to Ban Teaching Evolution
Turkey already ranked even worse than the United States in its nonacceptance of evolution, but now Turkey’s current right-wing government has gone even further and made it official: It will no longer allow the teaching of evolution in schools. The Center for Inquiry (CFI) and famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins both immediately decried the ban …
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News & Comment
CSI Fellows in the News
Daniel C. Dennett, professor of philosophy at Tufts University and author of the new book From Bacteria to Bach and Back, was the subject of a lengthy profile in the March 27 The New Yorker, titled “Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul: A Philosopher’s Lifelong Quest to Understand the Making of the Mind.” It is …
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News & Comment
Psychic Roundup: ‘Psychics’ Convicted Benjamin Radford
The first few months of 2017 have not been good for those who claim to have psychic powers. Between April and August 2015, a Hong Kong taxi driver tricked one of his girlfriend’s daughters into having sex with him, telling her it would help keep evil spirits away from her younger sister. The man, who …
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News & Comment
Genetic Engineering through Music?
The Journal of Scientific Exploration (JSE) is one of the major academic journals in parapsychology and the study of other “alternative facts” (to borrow a phrase from one of President Trump’s key advisors, Kellyanne Conway). The Spring 2017 issue of JSE carries an article by Jeff Levin of Baylor University titled “New Paradigm Research in …
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Investigative Files
Australia’s Storied Ghosts Joe Nickell
Whenever someone relates his or her ghost encounter, a story is born. And, as folklorists know well, stories tend to evolve in the retelling—changing and becoming embellished by others over time. Thus are created variants, evidence of the folklore process at work. When a writer creates an imitation tale, the product is called “fakelore,” but, …
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A Magician in the Lab
A Consistently Erroneous Technology James Randi
The evidence is just so much against this technology, it’s difficult to believe how long it has existed as a supposedly valid notion.
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Notes on a Strange World
The Monster of Florence: Case Closed? The Terrifying Story of the Most Infamous Ritual Murders in Italian History, Part 2 Massimo Polidoro
The story of the Monster of Florence, after consuming energies and investigative efforts on the inconclusive Sardinian lead (see previous column), forced the investigators to start from scratch—almost. On September 11, 1985, just three days after the last murder attributed to the serial killer, an anonymous person wrote to the police of San Casciano naming …
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Behavior & Belief
P-Hacker Confessions: Daryl Bem and Me Stuart Vyse
Cornell University psychologist Daryl Bem and I have something in common. Yes, we are both research psychologists, but that’s not what I mean. For me, it started when I was just a young graduate student. Statistics courses are a standard part of graduate training in psychology, because statistical methods are still the coin of the …
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The Science of Science Communication
Evolution in the College Classroom: Facilitating Conversations about Science and Religion Matt Nisbet
As surprising as this might sound, the unfortunate reality is that in many high schools across the country evolution is often avoided or covered superficially as part of a crammed science curriculum, taught by teachers who are underqualified and poorly supported.
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Skeptical Inquiree
Orbs as Plasma Life Benjamin Radford
I contacted you about my video evidence over two years ago and have continued to video my orb/plasma life forms. My file contains over fourteen hours of video and pictures. I started a YouTube channel to show some of my video; please look at them and let me know what you think. I got the …
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Letters to the Editor
Letters To The Editor
The Age of Misinformation “Surviving the Misinformation Age” (May/June 2017) offered my incredulous skeptical brain a real epiphany. We often simply cannot understand how the masses can possibly believe things that are, well, unbelievable. But people who read SI and our friends tend to be those who do know how satellites can tell us where …
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New And Notable
New And Notable Benjamin Radford, Kendrick Frazier
DEAR MARTIN / DEAR MARCELLO: Gardner and Truzzi on Skepticism. Edited by Dana Richards. This book is a major contribution to the history of modern skepticism. It will also be of considerable interest to the history and philosophy of science more generally. Martin Gardner comes back to life in the form of sparkling, never-before-seen correspondence …
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The Politicization of Scientific Issues Jeanne Goldberg
It is paradoxical that in populations supportive of science and democracy scientific issues have become politicized to the degree that objective evidence is ignored or rejected in favor of “alternative” opinions.
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The Fakery of Electrodermal Screening Stephen Barrett
Souped-up galvanometers are being used to assess people’s health and determine what they supposedly need. Tests expose them as preposterous, and government agencies should stop their use.
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The Fallacy Fork Maarten Boudry
Why do people believe weird things? Why is there so much irrationality in the world? Here’s one common answer from the skeptic’s playbook: fallacies. Fallacies are certain types of arguments that are common, attractive, persistent, and dead wrong. Because people keep committing fallacies, so the story goes, they end up believing all sorts of weird …
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Bigfoot as Big Myth: Seven Phases of Mythmaking Joe Nickell
The hairy man-beast known as the “Sasquatch” or “Bigfoot” is now ever present in North American culture. Supposedly a throwback to our evolutionary past, it is an “ape-man” version of us just as the little-bodied, big-headed, humanoid extraterrestrial is a futuristic one.
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Special Report
Teaching Skepticism: How Early Can We Begin? Scott O. Lilienfeld
I trust that I need not persuade readers of Skeptical Inquirer that in today’s world of post-truth, alternative facts, and rampant pseudoscience, critical thinking—reasoning that helps to compensate for our biases—is needed now more than ever.
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Special Report
Predatory Journals: Write, Submit, and Publish the Next Day Ramzi Hakami
Predatory journals can be defined as “publications [that take] large fees without providing robust editorial or publishing services.” They usually “recruit articles through aggressive marketing and spam emails, promising quick review and open access publication for a price.
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Review
A History of Physics Worth Fifty-One Thousand Words Celestia Ward
Drawing Physics: 2,600 Years of Discovery from Thales to Higgs. By Don S. Lemons. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2017. ISBN: 978-0262035903. 246 pp. Hardcover, $27. In this little red book, Don S. Lemons has assembled a very useful and accessible collection of fifty-one physics concepts organized according to era and illustrated with drawings by …
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Review
The Madhouse Effect: A Brilliant Climate Collaboration Robert Ladendorf
The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy by Michael E. Mann and Tom Toles
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Review
Houdini’s Remarkable Female Detective Terence Hines
Houdini’s ‘Girl Detective’: The Real-Life Ghost-Busting Adventures of Rose Mackenburg. Compiled and introduced by Tony Wolf. 2016. ISBN: 9-781537-143965. 93 pp. Paperback, 8.00;Kindleedition,8.00; Kindle edition, 8.00;Kindleedition,6.00. Rose Mackenberg was a female private detective in the 1920s, an unusual occupation for a woman even today. She worked very closely with Harry Houdini in exposing mediums and …
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