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The Return of Facilitated Communication
The Horse That Won’t Go Away: Clever Hans, Facilitated Communication, and the Need for Clear Thinking. By Thomas E. Heinzen, Scott O. Lilienfeld, and Susan A. Nolan. Worth Publishers, New York, 2014....
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The Mystery of TJIPETIR
Mysterious rectangular rubber-like blocks, with the enigmatic word TJIPETIR engraved into them, have been washing up for the past few years on the beaches of northern Europe. Over a century old, it...
View ArticleHomeopathy ‘Unsupported, Ineffective, Dangerous’: CFI Testimony to FDA
Here is the full text of invited testimony by the Center for Inquiry at the April 20, 2015, hearing of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on “Homeopathic Product Regulation: Evaluating the FDA’s...
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ADVERLYING: Disliking Advertising from an Informed Perspective
Some accusations levied against advertising are undeserved. But then, some are deserved, though perhaps not in ways you may have heard or assumed. Meanwhile, not a few bad apples engage in a heinous...
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The Sept. 27, 2015 Total Eclipse of the Moon
Lunar eclipse October 8 2014 California Alfredo Garcia Jr mideclipse" by Tomruen - [1] [2]. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Commons. 1. What Is Happening? On Sunday evening Sept. 27, a total eclipse...
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A Brief History of Scientific Celebrity
Science is personified by a handful of articulate, media-savvy scientists who stimulate new thinking, drive scientific controversies, enhance public understanding, mobilize social movements, and...
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Superfood Silliness
Someone is always trying to tell us what to eat. It’s like religions: they can’t all be right, and they might all be wrong. One of the most pervasive food myths is the idea of “superfoods,” the belief...
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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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No Reason to Believe That Sykes’s Yeti-Bear Cryptid Exists
In the November/December 2014 Skeptical Inquirer, Sharon Hill (in her article “Bigfoot DNA Data Disappoints and Reveals Surprise”) reported on the results of a study by Bryan Sykes, of the firm Oxford...
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Science, Podcasting (And a Little Nudity Doesn’t Hurt) - The Naked Scientists
The recent boom in podcasts and podcasting may seem a little bemusing to those who have been in the practice for some time. But there’s one thing that established podcasters seem to share with...
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Going Clear: Interview with Tony Ortega
A documentary about Scientology is now distributed worldwide, after successfully screening on HBO in the USA. Written and directed by Academy Award® winner Alex Gibney and based on the book by...
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Welcome to the Season of Conspiracy Theories
Welcome to the Season of Conspiracy Theories The 2016 Presidential campaign is well underway, and perhaps because fear mongering is such a popular political strategy (see Donald Trump on immigration),...
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Ten Distinguished Scientists and Scholars Named Fellows of Committee for...
Ten distinguished scientists, scholars, educators, and investigators from five countries have been elected fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), copublisher of the Skeptical Inquirer....
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Alex Tsakiris, Psychic Detectives, and Bad Science
Good science requires good data, and to get valid results scientists must consider all of the evidence. If a researcher chooses to exclude some of the information available in an experiment, for...
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Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Didn’t Win a Nobel Prize, Scientific...
Tu Youyou, a Chinese researcher, was awarded half of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of artemisininin, a malaria drug. This has been touted as a victory for traditional Chinese...
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Does a New Documentary Prove Shaken Baby Syndrome Doesn’t Exist?
A baby screams nonstop for five hours. Her daycare attendant, crazed with frustration and fatigue, shakes the baby, trying to shock her into silence. The next day, the infant dies of brain damage....
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Learn to Edit Wikipedia like a GSoW Editor–Backwards Editing
So you might have heard about this awesome website called Wikipedia. It’s the sixth most viewed website worldwide. It is where most people find out information about the weird in the world. I’m going...
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The Black Madonna: A Folkloristic and Iconographic Investigation
Figure 1. The Black Madonna of Czestochowa, Poland, is the subject of many pious legends. One of the most famous of true icons (traditional religious panel paintings) is the so-called Black Madonna of...
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Playing with Past Lives: The Virginia Boy and the Dead Marine
Q: Have you heard about this recent case of a young boy who says he lived a past life as a Marine? What do you make of it? A: In November 2014, news stories circulated about a four-year-old Virginia...
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Is Wikipedia a Conspiracy? Common Myths Explained
This past June, the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW) project celebrated its fourth anniversary. The project has been a great success. Wikipedia is the default source of information for...
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