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An editorial in a Tanzanian newspaper, The Citizen, has rightly identified the belief in witchcraft as a barrier to development in the region. Witchcraft beliefs constitute serious obstacles to progress in the areas of justice, education, health, infrastructure, and more. Witch beliefs remain strong in Africa despite "rapid scientific and technological advancements." In fact, some scholars have argued that the growing trend of witchcraft accusation in Africa is a reaction to the exigencies of modernity. In Tanzania, as in other parts of Africa, witchcraft is a lingering custom that predates modernity. Witchcraft is a way many people explain and react to evil or misfortune, and to strange or extraordinary phenomenon.

The people in Tanzania "fallaciously attribute their existential predicaments to witchcraft. Problems such ill health, tragedies, drought, inclement weather, vermin outbreaks, loss of employment or poor harvests are wrongly believed to have been caused by supernatural powers."

Incidentally, those often suspected of witchcraft are persons who are made scapegoats of the ‘failings’ of the society. And they include women (particularly elderly women), children, and people with disabilities.

According to the editorial, people in Tanzania are “fed with fear, rumours and lies that instil and harbour suspicion, enmity, jealousy, despair and revenge” by pastors and witch doctors. They poison family and community relationships, causing members to turn against each other.

The editorial draws attention to the scale of the problem.

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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 happy to share two more inspiring presentations.

"How Not to be a Paranormal Investigator"

Join James Randi, Banachek, Benjamin Radford, and Matthew Baxter for this panel discussion on the right and wrong ways to investigate paranormal activity, moderated by the JREF's Director of Communications Carrie Poppy.

 

Sean Faircloth - "Beware the Religio-Industrial Complex"

Sean Faircloth of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science warns against the dangers of faith-based decision making in the public sphere.

 

tam2012

 

 

 

See more TAM 2012 videos here. 

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We are wizards of pattern recognition. We swear to witness the Virgin Mary in a water stain. The random smattering of paint on the wall suddenly presents a smiling visage. Psychologists have suggested that this tendency to recognize faces everywhere is an offshoot from our social cognition. It often misfires, but without analyzing the emotions and intentions of others, transmitted through numerous facial muscles, social interactions as we know them would be crippled.  

When we can’t gauge the intentions and emotions of others, frustration reigns. The invention of text messaging surely has ruined many relationships because the communication is bereft of the facial and tonal cues critical to understanding. (What does “OK” mean? Is he mad at me? Was he being sarcastic?)  

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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 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

“What is science?”

I put this question to freshmen in a science college at a Tier-one research university hoping for some creative comebacks in the form of a paragraph or two. I got confusion. Science, apparently, is: everything, nature, technology, “the scientific method,” and, brilliantly, what scientists do. Faced with a barrage of odd, confused generalities, I was dismayed but not surprised. For what is science? It may be among the most elusive questions in the modern world, motivating scholars in history and philosophy of science to write and reflect endlessly. Though this simple question remains foundational to these fields, most thinkers abandon it at a certain point and move on to more concrete, pragmatic concerns. But the question remains.

One way to develop a satisfactory answer is to turn the question around – “What isn’t science?” This was to be my approach teaching an introduction to history and philosophy of science. I would use the concept of pseudoscience to help these budding scientists better understand what it is they think they are getting into. It’s logical. After all, how can one know light without darkness, life without death, love without hate, good without evil? And pseudoscience has such pejorative connotations it’s often seen as dark, even evil, or at least insidious. Value judgments aside, exploring this concept would be a way to draw my audience in and, without them noticing, teach some fundamental principles in history, philosophy and sociology of science.

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As reported in Britain’s The Telegraph this week, a number of organizations devoted to investigating unidentified flying objects are either disbanding completely or turning their attention to other paranormal pursuits. Said Dave Wood of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena: “It is certainly a possibility that in ten years time, [UFOs] will be a dead subject.”

 

Once, I was a true believer that extraterrestrials were visiting our planet. Compared to, say, believing that leprechauns are hoarding their gold at the end of a rainbow, alien visitation is downright plausible. Mathematically speaking, there’s a good chance other worlds speckled throughout the universe have incubated intelligent life. Maybe some of those worlds have dodged asteroids long enough for their inhabitants to become technologically capable of traveling between the stars. Maybe that’s a Star Trek fantasy, but it’s far less fantastical than another Star Trek notion: that the primary fashion of all Milky Way species is some variation of a polyester jumpsuit.

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  2. What You Can Do to Fight Woo
  3. Last Week At Science-Based Medicine
  4. "Mommy Instinct" Continues to Trump Science