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Paul McCartney Really Is Not Dead
Paul McCartney was twenty years old when the Beatles came to fame, and only twenty-four when, as legend has it, he was killed in a car accident in 1966 and replaced with a lookalike. Now, nearly fifty...
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Report from the Skepsis Congres on 8 November 2014 in Utrecht, the Netherlands
The Dutch-speaking skeptical landscape For a bit of context, let me take you on a short tour around the skeptical movement in the Dutch-speaking world. This includes the Netherlands and Flanders...
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The Meaning of Consensus in Science
Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth. By James Lawrence Powell. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-231-16448-1. 384 pp. $35. The scientific skeptic...
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From the Whole Pantry to the Whole Health Hoax
For over a month now, I have read over Belle Gibson’s The Whole Pantry (Over 80 New Recipes With a Back-To-Basics Approach to Wellness, Lifestyle And Nutrition)–a book that reportedly has been removed...
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Truth, Trouble, and Research Exposing Alt Med
A Scientist in Wonderland: A Memoir of Searching for Truth and Finding Trouble. By Edzard Ernst. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2015. ISBN: 978-1845 407773. Softcover, £14.99. If you have any interest...
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It’s Time for Science-Based Medicine
In the pages of the Skeptical Inquirer and elsewhere in the skeptical literature, you can read about a seemingly endless array of snake oil remedies, dubious health claims, questionable practices,...
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Vaccines and the Anti-Vaccination Movement: An Interview with Dr. Paul Offit
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, is one of the world’s leading proponents of...
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SkeptiCal: The Northern California Conference of Science and Skepticism
When Skeptical Inquirer asked me to report on a skeptical conference happening in my backyard of San Francisco, I was, well, skeptical. I’ve been attending and occasionally speaking at skeptics’...
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Pesticides: Just How Bad Are They?
I think everyone would agree that it would not be a good idea to put pesticides in a saltshaker and add them to our food at the table. But there is little agreement when it comes to their use in...
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Neuro-Pseudoscience
Today’s Brain Teaser Question: What product…. Was inspired by its co-creator’s experience with the Alzheimer’s disease of both of his grandmothers?[1] Has attracted $70 million dollars in venture...
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WHO’s Strategy on Traditional and Complementary Medicine
A Disgraceful Contempt for Evidence-Based Medicine Despite the increasing global recognition of the value of evidence-based medicine, the World Health Organization (WHO) still appears to be on a quest...
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The ‘Food Babe’: A Taste of Her Own Medicine
While “Food Babe” Vani Hari’s pseudoscience has been widely debunked by qualified doctors and scientists, a more sobering fact seems to have escaped everyone’s attention: one of America’s most...
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Do Essential Oils Cure Everything?
When my friend Ross and I started a podcast about investigating weird stuff five years ago, we didn’t know what kind of investigation requests we would get. There were the obvious ones: Scientology,...
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Myths about Nutrition
As a PhD student in medical sciences, people often ask me questions about diet and nutrition. The problem is that several bogus claims have spread and are widely believed. Sometimes it only takes a...
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Online Tools for Skeptical Fact Checking
Changes to the media over the past few decades have brought many distressing trends. Social media tend to reward emotional manipulation over truth-telling. News outlets, even well respected ones, rush...
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Bitter(s) Medicine
As early as 1711, the old English word bitter (from biting) was extended to mean a “bitter medicinal substance” (according to the Oxford English Dictionary, 1971). In his “first” dictionary, A...
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Covert Cognition: My So-Called Near-Death Experience
A skeptic sees no light at the end of the tunnel when she falls into a six-week coma and nearly dies. We often see and hear dramatic accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) in books, in films, and...
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Hanging Out at the Café: Cultures of Skepticism and Belief
For a few weeks this summer, I vacationed in a part of the country I had not visited before: an area high in the hills west of Los Angeles. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, this region was home to...
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My Ninety Seconds of Cryotherapy
“You should freeze your toxins out!” The emails were adamant. Everyone wanted me to undergo cryotherapy: step into a -260°F stall, alone and naked, for three minutes, and feel the toxins flutter away...
View ArticleYou Can Lead Believers to Knowledge, but You Can’t Make Them Think
I blame Tim Farley, the skeptic who runs the website whatstheharm.net. We were both on a skeptic-themed cruise when he gave a talk about finding a direction for your skepticism. He pointed out there...
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