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It was a VERY busy week. There were several big stories not the least of which was the biggest HOAX of the year, the unapocalypse. Luckily, no one engaged in any self-fulfilling prophecies and we all made it through OK. Here is a rundown of the top stories in pseudoscience, hoaxes, and the paranormal and associated skeptical commentary from the past week courtesy of Doubtful News.

The most high-flying hoax of the week went to the film school students who produced a video of a large bird abducting a toddler in Canada. It forced us all look a little bit closer at lift and gravity.

On to tales of giant serpents. We're pretty sure that was definitely not the correct explanation for this strange beach trail in Thailand.

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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.  

A truly homeopathic defense of homeopathy (David Gorski) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/homeopathy-as-nanoparticles/ A review article by Iris Bell attempts to defend homeopathy and show how it might work through nanoparticles. The research she cites is a joke, and her reasoning is a meaningless word salad.  

Storytelling in Medicine (Harriet Hall) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/storytelling-in-medicine/ Anecdotal evidence is unreliable, but patient stories have a role in medical education. Putting a face to a diagnosis serves as a memory aid and a hook to hang the rest of our knowledge on. A book by Paul Griner illuminates important issues in medicine by relating stories from his decades of practice.  

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If you missed The Amaz!ng Meeting 2012, you can still catch great talks, panels, and workshops on science and skepticism given live at TAM 2012 on our YouTube page. Today, we are pleased to share one of those remarkable workshops.

Dr. Google

In this workshop from TAM 2012, Steven Novella, David Gorski, Harriet Hall, and Rachael Dunlop tell you how to find reliable health information online and skeptically evaluate the information you find.

 

Watch for new talks from The Amaz!ng Meeting every week, right here on randi.org. And enjoy new videos the moment they are posted by subscribing to our YouTube channel.

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I frequently get spam e-mail of the snake-oil variety. I don't know if my online activities result in my getting more such e-mails than the average internet-goer, but I certainly get a lot. I have a special folder I reserve for such e-mail. Perhaps one day I will sort through it as a sociological study.

 

I do subject myself to the pain of actually reading the snake-oil spam, and there are definitely certain patterns that emerge - more than just patterns, many such e-mails seem to follow a script. Perhaps somewhere in the dark underbelly of the internets there is a place where you can download a boiler plate snake oil scam - all you have to do is fill in the blanks and you have your own scam.

 

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Back in November 2008 I stumbled across a new skepticism site, called the Young Australian Skeptics. YAS logoNaturally I was curious and intrigued, and with a little investigation learned that they were a group of enthusiastic and supportive Melbourne scientists, science-lovers, artists and freethinkers who wanted to contribute to the growth of youth participation in skepticism - not just in their city but across the country.

While the podcast The Pseudo-Scientists, has continued to release regular episodes over the years, the site itself has been in need of a revamp Now at the end of 2012, the revitalisation of the Young Australian Skeptics is happening. I spoke to Jack Scanlan, Tom Lang, Belinda Nicholson and Rachael Skerritt about the changes to the site, the ambitions they have for skepticism, and even whether they think it's ageist to have a focus on promoting youth in skepticism.

Firstly, how did the Young Australian Skeptics come to be?

Jack Scanlan: Elliot Birch, our Dear Leader (who has sadly now passed to the other side - a life in Sydney, that is), created the site in late 2008, with the podcast, The Pseudo-Scientists, following soon thereafter.

Elliot wanted the site to be a place where young people could discuss issues relating to science and skepticism together, express their opinions and build a community. In order for this to happen, the two main features of the site were a blog and a forum. The forum was just a normal Internet forum board, but the blog, in what was a reasonably bold move by our Dear Leader, was open, meaning that anyone could contribute content by signing up for the site. Essentially, anyone and everyone could be an author, providing some basic editorial rules were followed.

For a long time, this worked well - there was regular content being written by a wide variety of authors, some regular, some less so, and most of this writing was drawing a significant audience and even some media attention. Our bold move was paying off.

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