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There are some frightening statistics about skin cancer. In the United States today, it is the most common form of cancer. Annually, there are more than 3.5 million cases diagnosed in more than 2 million people.1 One in five Americans will develop skin cancer in the course of a lifetime,2 and every hour, one American dies from skin cancer.3

There are three main types of skin cancer; basal cell carcinomas, squamous cell carcinomas and melanomas. Melanomas also have a genetic component, but skin cancers are caused by repeated, unprotected sun exposure, sunburn and tanning. These factors cause DNA damage that triggers skin cells to mutate. Over time, these mutations turn into skin cancers.

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Psychology departments around the country face a series of new and difficult challenges as online universities gain traction in the educational landscape. Without the overhead of a brick-and-mortar institution, online universities can offer courses on the cheap that can be taken anywhere there is an internet connection, at any time, by students who often have full-time jobs during the day. With aging faculty members who are uncomfortable adapting to digital education and who are already spread too thin between standard teaching and research commitments, many traditional academic departments are having a difficult time being competitive in the online market. A second, tangentially-related concern is the status of psychology among the sciences. For most students who are not psychology majors, the only experience they have with the field is in an introductory psychology course, which often waters down the scientific components of the discipline in favor of “touchy-feely” content with broad appeal. This teaching bias tends to be magnified in the realm of online courses where science becomes more difficult to communicate, leading to a widespread misperception that psychology lacks scientific rigor.

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Here is a rundown of the top stories in pseudoscience and paranormal news from the past week courtesy of Doubtful News.

Often, we can't help but notice strands of commonality that run through the doubtful news of the week. Sometimes it's monsters, or terrible harm due to ignorance or superstition. This week, it was conspiracies. EVERY other thing is a conspiracy, it seems.

Let's start out by tying up a loose end from last week. Author David Barton had his strange view of history, The Jefferson Lies, pulled by the publisher. But guess whose publishing company made a bid to put it back out there. Hint: someone who buys into conspiracy thinking and LOVES America.

With the conspiracy mongering about the Aurora and Sihk temple shootings running high, paranoid people are just LOOKING for anything odd to pounce on. The found it in government purchasing bids. Frighteningly, we have politicians who get their information from conspiracy hive minds.

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"The most meticulous regulation of nonsense must still result in nonsense."

– Edzard Ernst, M.D., PhD., professor, Complementary Medicine, University of Exeter, UK  

The FDA seems to be interested in testing Edzard's pithy quip. Homeopathy is pure, 100%, unadulterated nonsense. They are sugar pills, usually lacking in any active ingredient or any possible mechanism for a physiological effect, on which a magic ritual has been cast.  

Further - they don't work. Whatever you might think about the ability of science to rule out a possible mechanism, homeopathic potions have been tested in clinical trials, and they don't work. Edzard Ernst himself completed a review of systematic reviews of homeopathy and (like many others who have reviewed the evidence) concluded:  

"The findings of currently available Cochrane reviews of studies of homeopathy do not show that homeopathic medicines have effects beyond placebo."  

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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.  

Oriental Medicine: A Tall Tale of Outdated Lore ( Ben Kavoussi) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/oriental-medicine-a-tall-tale-of-outdated-lore/ Doctors in Korea and China are calling the claims of oriental medicine “an ancient illusion” with ties to the discarded medieval notions of the 4 humors, and an ineffective and even dangerous derivative of witchcraft. They are calling for it to be abandoned in favor of scientific medicine. Responsible physicians and officials in the West should follow suit.  

  1. New Videos from The Amaz!ng Meeting 2012: Skepticism and the Future
  2. JREF News & Updates for August 2012
  3. Priceline.com: Will You Prove Your Spokesperson Worthy for a Million Dollars?
  4. There Is Nothing Wrong With “I Don’t Know”