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Bigfoot at Mount Rainier?
As part of the Pacific Northwest, Washington State is a prime location for reports of Sasquatch—usually known since 1958 as Bigfoot. In one study (Nickell 2013, 15), involving 1,002 reports from 1818...
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IIG at IAC
On November 13, 2014, a few representatives from the Independent Investigations Group (IIG) in Los Angeles visited Culver City, California, one of the three U.S. locations for the International...
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Your Holiday Dinosaur
Most vertebrate paleontologists agree that modern birds evolved from dinosaurs. To paleontologists, there is no simple bird-dinosaur dichotomy. Rather there is a continuum of animals that are at...
View ArticleHappiness, Religion, and the Status Quo
It is no defense of superstition and pseudoscience to say that it brings solace and comfort to people... If solace and comfort are how we judge the worth of something, then consider that tobacco...
View ArticleThe $100,000 Flying Reindeer Challenge
What happens when the Independent Investigations Group and CSI go after “the mother of all extraordinary claims”? The IIG’s Dan Geduld takes the long arm of skepticism to North Pole Alaska to put our...
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Discovery’s Mountain of Mystery Mongering: The Mass Murdering Yeti
A much-hyped two-hour Discovery Channel “documentary” aired on June 1, 2014. Titled Russian Yeti: The Killer Lives, the program delved into a decades-old pseudo-mystery known as the Dyatlov Pass...
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An Introduction to Homeopathy
A brief guide to a popular alternative system of remedies based on a nineteenth-century concept that has no scientific validity. Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, originator of homeopathy In 1800, conventional...
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The Rhetoric of Extraordinary Claim
Although unfamiliar to many skeptics, rhetorical analysis can provide a useful complement to the traditional critical thinking approaches that comprise the “skeptic’s toolbox.” Certainly, the place to...
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Josh Zepps with Ann Druyan: Cosmos, Carl Sagan, and Culture
We present a condensed version of an earlier interview about Ann Druyan’s experience with the first and the new Cosmos series by Josh Zepps for our Center for Inquiry’s Point of Inquiry podcast. (That...
View ArticleOn Biblical Kinds
There are several alternative hypotheses offered by theists to counter the scientific theory of evolution. These tales of special creation generally posit that all organisms on this planet were placed...
View ArticleThe Yukon’s Bigfoot Bears
Canada’s Yukon Territory is a wild, rugged land, its summers having a “midnight sun,” and its winters a day-long dark. Bordered on the west by Alaska, the east by the Northwest Territories, the south...
View ArticleFive Myths about Airport Security
On April 20, 2014, a fifteen-year-old boy wandered onto a supposedly secure airport ramp at Mineta San José (California) International Airport, then climbed into the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines...
View ArticleThe Kaspar Hauser Mystery
On May 26, 1828 (Easter Monday), two men were talking together in the Unschlittplatz near Nuremberg’s New Gate when they were approached by a teenage boy. By all accounts, he was a fresh-complexioned...
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In the Media: 2014 Activities of Joe Nickell
In the middle off his fifth decade of investigating the world’s strangest mysteries, CSI’s Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell continued to address paranormal, historical, and forensic mysteries—both...
View ArticleFeeding the Mind—Challenging the Myths—Science Babe
2014 could very well be called the Year of the Anti-Food Babe Brigade. One of the forerunners when it comes to challenging the pseudoscientific claims of Vrani Hari is her skeptical antithesis: The...
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A szkepticizmus két évtizede Magyarországon - Személyes vélemény
Bár egy évenkénti konferencia 20 éven át való fenntartását önmagában is komoly vívmánynak tekinthetjük bármilyen szervezet vagy csoport esetében, védhető lehet az az álláspont is, hogy az események...
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Two decades of skepticism in Hungary: A personal view
Although having held 20 annual conventions in a row could be considered a major success for any organization or group, the number of events in and of itself should not be something to take credit for,...
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Anti-Science Trends at Mid-Decade
I recently had the opportunity to revise a chapter I contributed to the 2005 book Controversial Therapies for Developmental Disabilities: Fad, Fashion, and Science in Professional Practice.[1] A...
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Remembrance of Apocalypse Past: The Psychology of True Believers When Nothing...
Research on belief in the 2012 “apocalypse” demonstrates that specific psychological processes contributed directly to the maintenance of paranormal apocalyptic beliefs, even after the apocalypse did...
View ArticleSome Popular Global Warming Factoids
Norman Mailer coined the word factoids to describe facts that have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, but once they do appear they are accepted without question. Some global...
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