Unidentified Flying Insects
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- Written by Dr. Karen Stollznow
- Category: Swift
- Hits: 10577
On November 8, Fox affiliate KDVR reported an alleged “UFO” sighting in the Denver skies. They broadcast an edited clip from a home video showing several blurry, fast-moving objects.
An unidentified man had captured the footage of the unidentified object in a dirt field in the Federal Heights area. According to the witness, who suspiciously wishes to remain anonymous, the UFOs appear multiple times each week, normally between noon and 1pm. The man believes that there is a fleet of UFOs launching and landing in the suburbs. Strangely, no one else in the entire Denver metro area had seen these UFOs. Investigative Reporter Heidi Hemmat didn’t perform a very thorough investigation for her story as she declared, “nobody can explain what this is”.
A Fight Worth Having
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- Written by D.J. Grothe
- Category: Newsflash
- Hits: 6509
Friends,
If you really believe that pushing back against the purveyors of harmful nonsense is a fight worth having, then we need your help today.
Like most non-profits, the majority of our annual support comes during the critical year-end period and we couldn't continue fighting charlatans and promoting critical thinking about pseudoscience and the paranormal without it. Please donate now to help us meet our funding goals going into 2013.
And now, for a limited time, you can actually double the impact of your giving thanks to a generous JREF supporter who has pledged to match your donation dollar-for-dollar—if you act today. That means your gift will go twice as far—providing more free resources to educators to teach scientific skepticism, supporting more grassroots campaigns to fight charlatanry, and taking on more public figures and companies who promote dangerous nonsense.
We do all this because of the work Randi has been doing for decades to make the world a better place — a world where paranormal fakers are on notice, and the beguiled have a place to turn to get the truth. Randi’s tireless work inspires us to keep pushing back against the nonsense, and makes me unapologetic about asking for your help. The fight is worth it.
Please take a moment right now to double your impact and to help keep the JREF on firm footing.
On behalf of Randi and the rest of our team, thank you in advance for your support.
D.J. Grothe
President, James Randi Educational Foundation
The Conspiracy Wiki Experiment
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- Written by Bob Blaskiewicz
- Category: Swift
- Hits: 10599
The following is a contribution to the JREF’s ongoing blog series on skepticism and education. If you are an educator and would like to contribute to this series, please contact Bob Blaskiewicz.
During my first year at Georgia Tech, I taught three sections of a conspiracy theory-themed research and writing class. I use conspiracy theories in my composition classes because every single claim made by a conspiracy theorist needs to be fact checked. Any bit of information they offer as evidence can be faked, taken out of context, or misinterpreted, and bad information often cozies up next to good information. Conspiracy theories are factual and logical minefields and are generally difficult to evaluate. I teach students to identify the relevant claims, how to evaluate them, and how to find better, more reliable information. Conspiracy theories are a sort of critical thinking and research bootcamp.
Tech’s First-Year Writing Program is pretty innovative and stresses communication in a variety of media, including online media. As a new postdoc, I felt inspired to experiment with assignments that made use of new media. So, in lieu of a traditional final paper, I designed a final project where students in my three sections would collaborate with one another on a massive wiki about conspiracy theories.
For the Georgia Tech Conspiracy Wiki, I used MediaWiki, the open source software behind Wikipedia. My college’s IT staff installed and configured the software. I designed a logo and outlined the project, including what I think is perhaps the best grading scale I have ever devised. As the backbone of the project, I used the conspiracy classification system that Michael Barkun’s lays out in his A Culture of Conspiracy. The three principle types of conspiracy theory he outlines are event conspiracies, supposed conspiracies with limited goals (like the assassination of a president or bringing down an airplane), systemic conspiracies, which are more extensive and have more ambitious goals (like the Jesuits taking over the world or secret Islamists trying to impose Sharia on America), and superconspiracies, which involve nested hierarchies of conspirators and draw on any number of eclectic “alternative knowledge” traditions (like David Icke’s interdimensional, shape-shifting, mind-controlling, reptilian alien overlords). Each section of the class would be responsible for building up a portion of the website under one of those headings.
Students selected individual topics that they wanted to work on, and I gave them a template for a wiki entry that would help them sort and and evaluate their sources. Students were free to pick and choose which elements to retain in their final write-ups:
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History/Event (what conspiracy theorists would call “the mainstream account”)
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The Conspiracy Theories
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Conspiracy Theory Proponents
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Analysis (breakdown of the conspiracy theory and relevant debunkery)
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Cited References (the footnotes)
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External Links
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Additional References (relevant sources that did not make it into the wiki)
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Related Topics (links to elsewhere in the wiki)
It turns out that a wiki was an especially appropriate medium for writing about the convoluted webs of interconnected plots and agents found in conspiracy theories--the “links” that conspiracy theorists make became literal links to other pages in the wiki. Students were graded weekly on the quality and frequency of their weekly contributions. The only downside to this approach was that it was an utter monster to grade. I still wake up in a cold sweat just thinking about it, but it was a worthwhile experiment, I think.
The final product was not perfect--I wouldn’t expect them to be since these were motivated but novice researchers and writers. Also, because ability varies between new college writers, the projects have some fairly rough bits, including formatting inconsistencies, unfinished entries, orphaned links, and the occasional willingness to give conspiracy theorists more credit than they have perhaps earned. More frequently, however, I found that students put were able to collaborate on interesting and useful summaries and explorations of complex topics raised by conspiracy theorists. I was very pleased on the whole with the quality of the website and the range of topics that 75 students discussed together. You can visit the now closed Georgia Tech Conspiracy Wiki here.
Bob Blaskiewicz is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, where he teaches writing. He is co-editor of the site SkepticalHumanities.com, writes “The Conspiracy Guy” column on the CSI website, and is a panelist on the new skeptical panel show, The Virtual Skeptics, which records a live show every Wednesday night at 8:00PM Eastern.
This Week In Doubtful News
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- Written by Sharon Hill
- Category: Swift
- Hits: 7569
Here is a rundown of the top stories in oddities and paranormal news from the past week courtesy of Doubtful News.
Early in the week, the big news was the arrest of notorious spammer Dennis Markuze.
Also known to many of us as David Mabus, a name he adopted, he was familiar via the many many, oh so many various accounts he created in order to email, comment and tweet insults and links to terribly incoherent videos. But he did slide back into the threat mode and was subsequently arrested. This link includes the news stories about his second arrest and a link to a VERY complete summary by a true skeptical hero (and JREF fellow), Tim Farley. Thank you, Tim, for all your hard work.Last Week At Science Based Medicine
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- Written by Dr. Harriet Hall
- Category: Swift
- Hits: 8021
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.
Getting NCCAM’s money’s worth: Some results of NCCAM-funded studies of homeopathy (David Gorski) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/getting-nccams-moneys-worth-some-results-of-nccam-funded-studies-of-homeopathy/ A review of two very misguided studies of homeopathy that were funded by the NCCAM, their questionable results, and the published articles (in obscure journals) that resulted from them. NCCAM director Josephine Briggs has assured us that such studies will no longer be funded, but the author of one of the studies has been awarded a training grant authorizing study of dubious alt-med subjects including homeopathy. Our tax dollars continue to fund woo.
True Informed Consent Is Elusive (Harriet Hall) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/true-informed-consent-is-elusive/ Recent studies show that patients have false beliefs about the efficacy of cancer chemotherapy and the benefits of screening tests. So do a lot of doctors. If patients are to give truly informed consent, doctors must have accurate science-based information and find ways of effectively communicating their knowledge to patients.
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