Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
This is a topic that I’m more or less done with for now, but before I move on I wanted to add one last posting that contains a couple of links that consist of some quite good writing on it all. I should add that putting links to them here does not necessarily imply I endorse … Read more
The title says it all, and yes, I confess that I did indeed quite enjoy reading this. The story is about Robert Saunders, a 79 year old retied teacher and devoted birdwatcher, who was out checking on some owls. While doing so he was confronted by an armed Oregon militant who quickly got in his face and … Read more
I’ve come across a fascinating little site named “Review Skeptic”. There they explain … Review Skeptic is based on research at Cornell University that uses machine learning to identify fake hotel reviews with nearly 90% accuracy. So the idea here is that you can cut and paste any review in and then click “Test It”, and the … Read more
Lumosity, a San Francisco based company, has been promoting “Brain Training” that basically consists of games that are supposed to improve your memory, attention, flexibility, speed of processing, and problem solving abilities. It might indeed be popular and also quite profitable, but the ever so slight flaw is that they have been claiming stuff that is at best … Read more
In the age of google those that promote weird or bizarre claims are being challenged as never before because we no longer have to simply accept their word, we can look it up, and this is especially true of the Prosperity gospel. Justifying the Prosperity gospel As I’m sure you are aware, at least I hope … Read more
One manifestation of the rising tide of the non-scientific anti-vaccine movement has been the arrival of the pox party. The idea is that when somebody has a kid who has chickenpox they hold a party and invite all their friends around so that their kids can catch it and thus get it all over and done with early. … Read more