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Diamonds: A Doctor’s Best Friend
Crystal Healing by Caroline on Flickr with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License She hesitated when the priest asked, “Do you take this man…” in anticipation of...
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Pacu Panic: Swallowed Hook, Line, and Sinker
First, it was found in Danish waters. And then France. Then in New Jersey. A fish, normally found in the Amazon, was scaring the pants ON fishermen around the world. Why be scared of a pacu? Teeth and...
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Do You Believe in Magic?
Do You Believe in Magic? The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine. By Paul Offit, MD. Harper Collins, New York, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-06-222296-1. 336 pp. Hardcover, $26.99. Dr. Paul Offit, a...
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Identified Flying Objects
UFO by Val Astraverkhau on Flickr Creative Commons Early this year, on a brisk but clear morning in Chelyabinsk, Russia, a chunk of rock half the diameter of the ill-fated Hindenburg entered the...
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Another Tower Fell: My Months with the 9/11 Truthers
Ross and I are in a coffee shop, on a miserably uncomfortable bench that may have once been a church pew, surrounded by conspiracy theorists who are yelling at us. “Do you want your employer to know...
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Mind Over Metal
Can people move or alter physical objects simply by using a hidden power of the mind called psychokinesis? I have encountered many claims of such powers in the course of my work (since 1969) as a...
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The Queen Mary Is Not Haunted (But I Understand Why You Think She Is)
The RMS Queen Mary, a ship of enormous historical import, has been transformed into a roadside attraction whose owners profit off the allure of “ghosts.” Her glorious factual history has been brushed...
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Be Happy If You Want To: How I Became a Raëlian (Part One)
Ross and I scurry into the Raëlian Happiness Academy four days late. The whole thing is supposed to last six days, but we will only be there two. They are the most important two—the final meditations...
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Steven Pinker on Violence
Acclaimed Harvard psychologist and best-selling author Steven Pinker was interviewed by Indre Viskontas and Chris Mooney in a rare live edition of Point of Inquiry, the flagship podcast of our Center...
View ArticleDown the Garden Path: Faulty Thinking and Self-Delusion
A Navy neurologist’s credulous venture into acupuncture advocacy serves as a useful case study. Here are twelve mistakes he made rambling down the garden path of self-delusion. He posted a three-part...
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Bigfoot Files: Science, Skepticism and the True Believers
There is a small, elite group of skeptics who know their Bigfootery. That’s right, the Bigfoot skeptics. Scoff if you will, but skeptical advocacy through talking about Bigfoot and other...
View ArticleRest in Peace, Sylvia
This article will appear in a future issue of Skeptical Inquirer. One of the world’s most popular alleged psychics and spiritual mediums in history, Sylvia Browne, died on November 20, 2013 at age 77...
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The Psychic Defective Revisited: Years Later, Sylvia Browne’s Accuracy...
An update of our “Psychic Defective” analysis examines developments in eleven cases Sylvia Browne made predictions about, explores a new reading, and scrutinizes her other failed predictions about the...
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The Chelyabinsk Event of February 15, 2013
On February 15, 2013, the million inhabitants of the central Russian city of Chelyabinsk experienced a half-megaton explosion from a disintegrating space rock. What happened, and how did the people of...
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The Exciting And Ever Ongoing Scientific Story Of The Infinite Cosmic Genome App
In the words of Richard Feynman, “We are matter with curiosity.” But how can that curiosity be sated? When it comes to curiosity, The Incomplete Map of the Cosmic Genome is here to help—as a different...
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The Mysteries of Leonardo
Leonardo da Vinci not only epitomizes genius and creativity, but he is also one of the most sought-after sources of mysteries, both real and invented. Probably the most famous example of this is The...
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Bigfoot Lookalikes: Tracking Hairy Man-Beasts
Although Sasquatch—after 1958 generally called Bigfoot—is most associated with the Pacific Northwest (a region loosely ranging from northern California to Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and...
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Be Happy if You Want To: How I Became a Raëlian (Part Two)
The Raëlian Happiness Academy was the culmination of our five months undercover with the UFO-believing group. During those five months, we spent many hours in one Raëlian sister’s apartment,...
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Dr. Oz’s Questionable Wizardry
Miracles are pretty rare events. Except on television’s Dr. Oz Show, where they appear with astonishing frequency. Oz of course doesn’t claim to raise the dead or part the Red Sea, but he does raise...
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Has Global Warming Stopped?
The latest public confusion about climate change involves an apparent slowing of the rise of global temperatures. What is the reality concerning this putative temperature ‘plateau’? Human-caused...
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