No. 6 | Skeptical Inquirer (original) (raw)
Feature Article
The Antikythera Mechanism: The Greek Computer of Science and Reason Evaggelos Vallianatos
In 1900, Greek sponge divers discovered a sunken ship off the coast of the island of Antikythera. The ship was full of Greek treasures, including the remnants of a computer dubbed the Antikythera Mechanism. Scientists have been studying this geared device ever since. Their consensus is that this tooth-geared bronze astronomical computer is a machine …
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Feature Article
Science and Civil Liberties: The Lost ACLU Lecture of Carl Sagan Steven Pinker and Harvey Silverglate
The astronomer, science communicator, thinker, writer, and teacher Carl Sagan (1934–1996) had an influence as a scientist that is almost unimaginable today. Together with his many scientific contributions (including his analyses of the origins of life, his discovery of the temperature of Venus and its connection to the greenhouse effect, and his work on nuclear …
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Feature Article
Truth, Relativism, and Identity Politics Roger A. Sabbadini
Is there such a concept as absolute truth? Most scientists appreciate that there are proven physical principles and laws that could be considered absolutes, even including, paradoxically, the theories of special and general relativity (Capra 2013). Non-physicist relativists argue that there are no absolutes; truth is relative and is subject to more than one opinion …
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There’s Something about Mary (but It’s Not What You’ve Heard) Chris Perley
The RMS Queen Mary was the pride of the British ocean liner company Cunard White Star from 1936 until 1967. She is a niece to the infamous RMS Titanic, which sank only eighteen years before the Mary’s construction began. The Mary was designed to be one of the largest and fastest passenger liners in existence. …
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Feature Article
Dinosaur Bones and Radiocar-bunkum Philip J. Senter
Abundant physical evidence firmly establishes that the earth is billions of years old (Strachan et al. 2020) and that all organisms on earth evolved from a common ancestor (e.g., Prothero 2017). Nevertheless, the young-earth creationist (YEC) movement aggressively promotes the view that God created the earth about 6,000 years ago and that he independently created …
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Feature Article
Pseudoscience Offered by a Young-Earth Creationist Lorence G. Collins
Andrew Snelling, director of research at the organization Answers in Genesis, wrote a short article in a creationist publication describing his study of fifty-three samples he collected in the Grand Canyon (Snelling 2021a). He gathered them to support his view that two Tapeats Sandstone places and one place each in the Bright Angel and Muav …
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Commentary
On Memory and Bravery: When You Can Be Screamed at and Honored on the Same Day Elizabeth F. Loftus
Editor’s note: Psychologist and CSI Fellow Elizabeth Loftus is one of the world’s leading experts on human memory. She has long been outspoken in her criticisms of the controversial claims about repressed memories and innovative in her research showing how false memories can easily be created. She is Distinguished Professor of Psychological Science, Criminology, and …
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Commentary
A Brief History of Bunk Joe Nickell
The familiar word bunk (short for its original form buncombe) has a clear origin and colorful history important to skeptics. The word bunk traces back to 1820 when the U.S. House of Representatives was debating what would come to be known as the Missouri Compromise, regarding the question of slavery in new territories. After nearly …
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Special Report
What Happened to the COVID-19 Power of Prayer Study? Edzard Ernst
Dr. Dhanunjaya Lakkireddy is a cardiologist of some repute, the director of the Kansas City Heart Rhythm Institute with many sound publications under his belt. It was therefore with considerable surprise that the medical community learned of his plans to conduct a study of prayer for preventing deaths in COVID-19 patients. The trial created headlines …
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From the Editor
Our Debt to the Ancient Greeks Kendrick Frazier
Ten years ago, my wife, Ruth, and I had the incredible good fortune to take a remarkable trip with four friends: four days of sailing in the eastern Aegean Sea on a Turkish wooden sailing ship called a gulet followed by a ground tour of southwestern Turkey’s Ionian peninsula. We started at Bodrum and drove …
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Postcards from Reality
Junk Medicine in Dentistry Robyn E. Blumner
StellaLife markets a set of products that it says relieves pain and swelling after gum and dental surgery. At its website, StellaLife offers gushing testimonials and fawning videos of dentists endorsing its products, including its flagship offering, the VEGA Oral Care Recovery Kit. Typical of the praise is this, from consulting periodontist Dr. Lee Sheldon …
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Investigative Files
Solving the Hidden-Tomb Mystery at Rosslyn Chapel Joe Nickell
Certain curious “vaults” of the “strange mysteries” variety are at far-flung sites around the world. They typically fall into two categories: burial vaults with some unusual activity, or treasure hoards that tend to be lost or perpetually inaccessible—or both. Over the years, beginning about 1979, I began to uncover the underlying secrets of these sites—which …
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The Philosopher’s Corner
The (Linguistic) Fall of Rationality Massimo Pigliucci
If you ever suspected that the beginning of the end of the world happened around 1980, there is now some scientific evidence to back up your intuition. An intriguing paper authored by a group of researchers in the Netherlands comprising Marten Scheffer, Ingrid van de Leemput, Els Weinans, and Johan Bollen and published in the …
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Reality Is the Best Medicine
Understanding Gluten Harriet Hall
Until a few years ago, few people had even heard of gluten. Now going on a gluten-free diet has become a popular fad. People diagnosed with celiac disease must avoid gluten to prevent symptoms, but others are avoiding gluten for questionable reasons—or for no reason at all. I watched a TV program where the host …
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Behavior & Belief
Eat Popcorn: The Current State of the Priming ‘Train Wreck’ Stuart Vyse
The story is the stuff of advertising legend. In 1957 at a movie theater in New Jersey, messages too brief to be consciously detected were flashed on the screen during a movie: “DRINK COCA-COLA” and “EAT POPCORN.” Without knowing why they were doing it, people streamed to the concession stand and plunked down good money …
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The Practical Skeptic
Hairdryers and UFOs Mick West
I first became aware of the crosshairs mark phenomenon while watching an interview with Stanford scientist Garry Nolan, who gave an account of a UFO sighting that mysteriously did not show up in photographs. Interested, I looked up the case and found a presentation by legendary UFO researcher Jaques Vallée (Vallée 2020). The disappearing UFO …
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Skeptical Inquiree
Buried Alive in Brazil: Modern Premature Burials Benjamin Radford
Q: While researching stories of people seemingly coming back from death, I found a terrifying case of a Brazilian woman who was buried alive. How would you explain this? —S. Goldie A: Being mistaken for dead—and thus prematurely buried—is a primal human fear. It’s also fiction fodder for countless authors, from William Shakespeare to Edgar …
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Letters to the Editor
Letters – Vol. 46, no. 6
‘Best Magazine I’ve Read in Decades’ I hate junk mail and am cynical of the many pitches I receive, but I read yours and said to myself, “I get this,” and I subscribed. Well, it’s the best magazine I’ve read in decades. We all need something to sharpen our sticks and declare our own personal …
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Review
Patterns of Fear and Factual Distortion in America Peter Huston
Do the news media sometimes provide a distorted picture of the world around us? Undoubtedly, and social media even more so. And of course the two interact. Social media comments upon or shares the news, and social media’s comments, memes, and concerns become news themselves. The interaction between the two increases and accelerates distortion. Often …
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Review
The Flaws in Forensic Science Terence Hines
The 2009 National Academy of Science report Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward first brought to public attention the serious problems with the forensic sciences. Now, well over ten years later, the state of forensic science in the United States still leaves much to be desired. Brandon L. Garrett, a law …
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