The Baloney Detection Kit « The Skeptical Teacher

June 2009
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Staring at Men Who Stare at Goats November 10, 2009

The Men Who Stare at Goats had so much potential as a film given the bizarre and comical nature of the weird things the United States government believed about the paranormal in its two-decade long secret psychic spy program, so wonderfully captured by the British investigative journalist John Ronson in his book of the same [...]

Michael Shermer

Carl Sagan Day November 9, 2009

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. - Carl Sagan Since I started blogging I have written about Carl Sagan on or about his birthday – November 9th. This year Sagan would have been 75 years old – we definitely lost [...]

Steven Novella

Jesus Passes the Waterproof Test November 7, 2009

“Every morning, Jim Stevens of Jonesborough goes out to his vehicle and sees what appears to be the face of Jesus in the condensation on the driver’s side window. When Mr Stevens first saw the image, he expected it to evaporate that day and that would be the end of it. But the next day, [...]

Mark Edward

More Fun with Manga November 5, 2009

People always used to make fun of me for learning calculus, on my own, for fun. For some reason my formal educational track always managed to swerve around calculus and I missed out, leaving me forever jealous of my friends who knew what integrals were. And so it was with some nostalgia that I recently opened [...]

Brian Dunning

Miracle baby or child abuse? November 4, 2009

In Russia, thousands of Muslims are flocking to see a baby who has verses from the Koran mysteriously appearing on his body: I’d like to be very clear here: this is not pareidolia, our ability to see patterns in random objects. The verses are clearly there, and not just random. As one pilgrim said, "It’s proof [...]

Phil Plait

A Skeptical Triumph Over Medical Flim-Flam November 3, 2009

Skeptic Bruce Flamm, M.D. is vindicated in his drawn-out court case On Friday, October 24, 2009, a California Court of Appeals vindicated Dr. Bruce Flamm, an OBGYN physician and professor at the University of California, Riverside, and member of the Skeptics Society, by throwing out a defamation lawsuit filed against him by a man who claimed [...]

Michael Shermer

Spooky November 2, 2009

Have you ever had the chills? You know, the frights, spooks, willies, nerves, jitters, heebie-jeebies? Do you get these feelings when you have to enter a dark room alone, or if you find yourself on a lonely street at night? Even the most hardcore skeptic can still be frightened by dark or scary places. One does [...]

Steven Novella

Death Becomes Us October 31, 2009

Last weekend I took a few hours to go back in time and see up close and personal an era where death and the hereafter had an integrity and tradition that barely exists in my celebrity drenched neighborhood of Hollywood. I left behind the moral nihilism of Los Angeles for a beautiful afternoon of walking through the fall [...]

Mark Edward

Grammar Contest Winner Announced October 29, 2009

Secretly I’ve been holding a public grammar contest, open to anyone who sends me an email. Today, the winner is announced: Mr. Daren Lee of “The Zeitgeist Movement”. Initially, as his writing suggests that Mr. Lee has only a fifth grade education, I was going to disqualify him (must be 18 or older to enter). [...]

Brian Dunning

Chiropractor goes down, under October 28, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, a chiropractor lodged a complaint with the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) against the Australian Skeptics. Why? Because they had reprinted journalist Simon Singh’s article about chiropractic, which said that in the UK they were making bogus claims about how chiropractic can cure all manners of ills such as [...]

Phil Plait

The Baloney Detection Kit

Posted by mattusmaximus on June 24, 2009

There is a video out from the Richard Dawkins Foundation featuring Dr. Michael Shermer called The Baloney Detection Kit. This is a quick 15 minute Youtube video which outlines the basics of skeptical & scientific thinking. Give it a quick look and pass it on…

This entry was posted on June 24, 2009 at 8:25 pm and is filed under scientific method, skeptical community. Tagged: Baloney Detection Kit, Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, pseudoscience, RDF, Richard Dawkins, Richard Dawkins Foundation, science, scientific community, scientific method, skeptic, skeptical community, skepticism, youtube. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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