Last Week In Science-Based Medicine
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- Written by Harriet Hall, MD, The SkepDoc
- Category: Newsflash
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Here is a recap of the stories that appeared last week at Science-Based Medicine, a multi-author skeptical blog that separates the science from the woo in medicine.
For Good Reason with D.J. Grothe Premiers
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- Written by Jeff Wagg
- Category: Latest JREF News
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D.J. Grothe, host of the weekly radio show and podcast Point of Inquiry for the last four years, has launched a new podcast in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation. Each episode of the new show will feature long-form interviews with leading thinkers on issues at the intersection of skepticism and belief. For Good Reason will also feature regular audio essays by acclaimed magician and skeptic Jamy Ian Swiss, The Honest Liar. Grothe's podcast compliments the format of the popular Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, which is also produced in association with the JREF.
FURTHER SUPPORT OF QUACKERY EXPRESSED!
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- Written by James Randi
- Category: Swift
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Concerning the current ADE-651 dowsing-rod brouhaha in which the “inventor” and manufacturer James McCormick was arrested and then released on bail, BBC news has just quoted a senior Iraqi interior ministry official, Assistant Deputy Minister General Tareq al-Asl, as stating:
The reason the director of the company [James MCormick] was arrested was not because the device doesn't work, but because he refused to divulge the secret of how it works to the British authorities, and the Americans before them.
Well, I don’t think so.
THE IDIOT'S TALE
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- Written by James Randi
- Category: Swift
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I give you here a transcript I prepared of an exchange between a BBC commentator and the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu. It was sent to us by our UK friend Ian Rowland. I present it verbatim, with the bad grammar, wrong verb tenses, and the uncertain umms and ahhs of the actual interview. You may listen to the audio here. (Scroll down to minute number 0831.) The archbishop’s responses are so infuriating, disconnected, vapid, meandering and evasive, that he sounds like a child — an uninformed one. If this is the best that the Church can do, I suggest that they stick to Bingo…
Just as we post this, it seems that God sent Haiti another earthquake, strength 6.1, as his reminder that he has a sense of humor. Very funny, you capricious, malicious, merciless, vengeful, egomaniacal deity… But I’ll let your quavering servant Sentamu speak for you.
Ben Stein Hates All Superstitions, Save His Own
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- Written by Brandon K. Thorp
- Category: Swift
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The JREF doesn’t pick sides in political races, but we do frequently take issue with the journalists who cover them. And as Massachusetts voters drive to the polls to choose the new occupant of the Senate seat once occupied by Ted Kennedy, there is one pundit who must be singled out for attention before somebody — I’m guessing Scott Brown — wins.
That pundit is conservative, creationist, monotonous Ben Stein, of Ferris Bueller fame. Here’s what he had to say, in part, about Brown’s opponent, Martha Coakley:
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