Another Herb Bites the Dust
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- Written by Dr. Steven Novella
- Category: Swift
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A recent scientific study published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) looked at the drug silymarin for the treatment of liver disease due to chronic hepatitis C that has not responded to standard therapy with interferons. This would be just another obscure study except for the fact that silymarin is an extract of milk thistle, an herb commonly used to treat liver disease. Further, the study was funded in part by the NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine).
The Skeptical Disconnect Redux
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- Written by Kyle Hill
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“I think I have you skeptics figured out,” he said with a cautious smirk. “For you this isn’t about the science. It’s more of a political agenda. The science isn’t settled and it isn’t a popularity contest. Why can’t you see that?”
I feigned an understanding smile. This was the third time in so many days that I had to confront a denier of anthropogenic climate change (AGW) at the James Randi Educational Foundation’s 10th annual Amaz!ng Meeting.
“Politics has nothing to do with it. We have multiple lines of evidence all pointing towards the same conclusion: the Earth is warming and humans are the main cause. Nearly everything else has been ruled out,” I said.
“But the science is not settled…” he began.
TAM In Memoriam Presentation
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- Written by Tim Farley
- Category: Swift
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For the last few years at The Amaz!ng Meeting there has been a brief presentation to remember people whose lives impacted skepticism in some way. These are people who have died in the last year. This year it ran on both Friday and Saturday in the morning. For those of you who were not attending TAM, or perhaps were there and missed it, here it is:
Thanks to Tim Binga, Sharon Hill, Natalie Jaran, Jim Lippard, Daniel Loxton and Lei Pinter for their help in collecting this information and the photos you see.
Tim Farley is a JREF Research Fellow. He is the creator of the website What's the Harm and blogs at Skeptical Software Tools. He researched the dates in JREF's Today in Skeptic History iPhone app and has presented at four TAMs. You can follow him on Twitter here.
The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street
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- Written by Bob Blaskiewicz
- Category: Swift
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The JREF is proud to announce a continuing series on randi.org featuring articles by skeptical teachers exploring critical thinking in the classroom, using the investigation of the paranormal, fringe science, and pseudoscience to teach methods of science and reason. We welcome feedback, discussion, and further suggestions from educators and parents in the comments section. If you would like to be involved in this project, please contact Bob Blaskiewicz .
***WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUT A SHOW THAT AIRED 50 YEARS AGO***
In my current short-session summer class about the rhetoric of the Cold War, I showed the classic Twilight Zone episode, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” (1960). The story: A strange flash of light is seen over Maple Street, USA on a lazy summer day. The entire neighborhood soon discovers that the electricity is out and that their cars, telephones, and portable radios no longer work. As two men of the neighborhood, Steve and Charlie, are about to set off on foot to look for help, one of the neighborhood teenagers, Tommy, warns them not to leave because “they,” the ones who were in that thing that flew overhead, don’t want them to. Tommy says that’s how it always is in the science fiction that he’s ever read. And anyway, if the stories are true, the only ones who could leave the block would be “the ones they sent ahead,” the ones who just look like humans. The neighbors are inclined to laugh until Steve, who seems to have some authority on the block, tells Tommy to go ahead and finish his story, planting the idea that a family of alien imposters may be living among them. The families start suspecting one another of being aliens and interpret all sorts of otherwise meaningless observations about one another--one man’s car starts when the others’ don’t, another man is known to stay up at night talking on some sort of “radio” (a ham radio, it turns out)—as evidence of their neighbors’ extraterrestrial origins. (Of course, in the end it turns out that real aliens have been messing with the lights in order to illustrate what irrational ninnies humans become when they face uncertainty.)
This Week In Doubtful News
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- Written by Sharon Hill
- Category: Swift
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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.
As mentioned by Professor Bruce Hood and several others at The Amazing Meeting this past week, Jim McCormick, maker of a phony, dowsing-rod-based bomb detection device, has been charged with fraud along with five others. A BBC Newsnight investigation in 2010 showed the device did not work and led to the British government banning its export to Iraq and Afghanistan. Here's hoping justice is served and this garbage device disappears forever.
Other claims that don't hold up - those made by Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioners. Professor Richard Wiseman showed this technique did not improve people's lie detection skills.
In psychic news, Louisiana judge declares fortune telling is free speech. And, do not miss this VERY interesting article where John Edward ADMITS he is a "psychic improv artist" just out to "help somebody in their healing process".
In a tragic story, a pregnant woman's odd behavior was seen as a sign of being possessed by djinn, when in reality, she could have been suffering from a mental illness. Her family was found guilty of killing her.
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