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“There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know.” 
― Ambrose Bierce

Science and discovery - expanding the limits of our concepts of reality - takes real imagination. Pseudoscience (or the cheap imitation, as Sagan called it), not so much. Perhaps that is why old ideas are recycled over and over again as if they were new with the world of pseudoscience. Alternatively, new ideas are stolen from real science and then twisted into the latest scam.

In my previous post for Swift I covered the common features of the "quack clinic" - clinics or practitioners making dubious claims that are not based upon science and evidence. In this article I will cover the different categories of unscientific medical claims.

While there is an endless parade of new unscientific health products and services, they are largely a repackaging of the same basic themes. Understanding these themes is helpful in dealing with the flood of nonsense. Being able to say, "Oh, that's just another version of X," is a huge time saver. Here are some of the most common "flavors" of medical pseudoscience you are likely to encounter.

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With The Amaz!ng Meeting 2012 just around the corner, now is a great time to look back at some of the remarkable talks delivered by skeptical luminaries at TAM 2011. Just as it is again this July, last year's schedule was packed with fascinating and entertaining speakers from all corners of our community. We've made many of their presentations available for free on our YouTube channel.

Below, we've embedded just some of these talks: Michael Shermer on the "believing brain", Eugenie Scott on evolution and climate change denialism, Carol Tavris on the lessons of social psychology, and PZ Myers on alien life. We'll be posting more in the days and weeks ahead.

Now is the perfect time for past TAM attendees to reminisce about seeing these talks in person. And hopefully those of you who have never been to a TAM will get some idea of the educational and inspirational time in store at TAM 2012.

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One of the most famous early parapsychologists was Joseph Banks Rhine.  He didn’t initially set out to study psychic powers. He was trained as a botanist at the University of Chicago. His life would change after he had a fateful encounter with none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Doyle, who was born May 22, 1859, is best known as the author who created the character of Sherlock Holmes.  Later in his life, Doyle became a major advocate of Spiritualism.  In 1922 he embarked on a multi-city tour of the United States in an effort to popularize it.

Doyle gave two talks in Chicago that year.  On May 23, 1922 his talk was entitled “Proofs of Immortality” and on May 26 his second talk was titled “Recent Psychic Evidence”. It was at this talk that Doyle exhibited newly obtained spirit photographs and talked about other alleged spriit evidence such as ectoplasm.

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At the Sixth World Skeptics Congress in Berlin this year, I'll be presenting a talk on "Why Can't a Teacher Be More Like a Scientist? - Pseudoscience In Education". I wish I could take credit for the start of the title: I was initially inspired by a paper written by Mark Carter and Kevin Wheldall, published in the Australasian Journal of Special Education, back in 2008. Although it is now many years after that paper's publication, many of the things it discusses are pertinent to educators still - for me, it encourages collaboration with educators and educational systems, to prevent pseudoscience from entering classrooms and playtime. The paper by Carter and Wheldall investigates how teachers access good material and what influences their views on educational practices:

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Just a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking about grassroots organization at the SkeptiCal conference in Berkeley. While our database of grassroots skeptics' groups shows that it's easier than ever to find like-minded critical thinkers in areas all over the world, there are still plenty of gaps to fill. In the U.S. alone, there are over a dozen states with no such organizations at all. There are plenty of great resources and role models for established groups looking for a way to spread skepticism to the wider culture, but what about those of us who are starting from nothing?

To help those people, the JREF is creating a definitive guide to creating a skeptics' group from scratch. How do you find fellow skeptics in your area? Where are the best places to meet? What sorts of things can your group accomplish? We'll answer all these questions and more. But we aren't interested in reinventing the wheel. With so many successful groups already in existence, there's a huge knowledge base from which to draw tried and true methods for making sure your grassroots organization runs smoothly.

  1. This Week In Doubtful News
  2. Last Week At Science-Based Medicine
  3. The Quack Clinic Checklist
  4. Skeptic History: Spam, Spam, Spam