From Russia’s Stalin to Climate Change—The Irrational World of Motivated Reasoning

The early twentieth century in Russia was a tumultuous time. The October Revolution of 1917 saw revolutionary Bolshevik forces establish the world’s first communist nation. This huge transition created political vacuums, eagerly filled by power-hungry and often unscrupulous men. Joseph Stalin is doubtlessly the most infamous occupant of this rogues’ gallery. His vaulting ambition was …

The moment is burned into my brain like a flashbulb memory: I was teaching Introduction to Biology, a general education class for students not majoring in science. It was near the end of the semester, and, having just covered basic genetics, I was lecturing on the stages of mitosis. My students looked completely deflated. I …

In early March 2020, when the United States was just recognizing the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic, I got a text from my college-aged son late one night. At its core was a rumor that America was about to undergo martial law, thus allowing military decisions to take the place of existing laws. My son …

In 1971, the magazine Man, Myth and Magic reported sightings of the ghost of an eighteenth-century vicar on the docks of Wapping in east London (Smyth [anonymously] 1971). The article quoted several witnesses to a sinister vicar whose ghostliness was revealed by his tendency to suddenly disappear. Historically, there had been a local vicar who …

For a number of years, I’ve been teaching a graduate seminar at the University of California, Irvine, titled Memory and the Law. The course has a strong focus on the repressed memory controversy. In the 1990s, thousands of individuals claimed to have recovered repressed memories of extensive brutalization, often after suggestive psychotherapy. Sometimes they claimed …

I realize that the title of this article is a bit confrontational. To be very clear, I’m going to be explicit in a few things that I might be able to take for granted: First, when I use the term skepticism, it refers to the positions taken by Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, and James Randi …

Many conservatives, including religious conservatives, believe there is no such thing as climate change, despite the fact that there is immense evidence that demonstrates it—evidence far beyond the scope of this article to summarize. They simply ignore the evidence and assume climate change must not be real. Perhaps the most astonishing example of this rejection …

On September 20, 2021, the open access journal Scientific Reports posted a paper titled “A Tunguska Sized Airburst Destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age City in the Jordan Valley Near the Dead Sea” (Bunch et al. 2021). The paper cited the Bible as possibly containing a written record of the destruction: “We consider whether …

Why do facts and evidence so seldom sway people from deeply held ideas? It is because we have armament to prevent that from happening. Over the past decade, our pages have been filled with mentions of this problem. In this issue, David Robert Grimes takes a deep dive into the psychological concept that explains it: …

In early October 2021, a mob of several hundred people attacked nurses providing COVID-19 vaccinations and held them hostage. Though details are sparse, the incident happened in the rural Guatemalan village of Maguilá in Alta Verapaz province near Quetzaltenango. One vehicle was rendered inoperable through vandalism, and a cooler used to keep the vaccines effective …

Science is alive and thriving, thank you, and so assertions of its impending demise are noticeably premature. Yes, there are major issues in which people shun findings of science that conflict with their beliefs, but to deal with that problem we first have to properly diagnose it. Those were the two key themes of science …

Can famous celebrity scientists help shape the public’s view on evolution? And how do public perceptions about them change that? In today’s media-saturated world, the public often comes to understand scientific ideas through how they are embodied by famous individuals. Declan Fahy wrote about that in his 2015 book The New Celebrity Scientists and in …

Tim Minchin has delighted and enlightened audiences around the world with his music and comedy. For two decades, he has used his remarkable talents to not only entertain but to open minds to the wonders of science, open hearts to the power of compassion, and expose the folly of pseudoscience and superstition. For inspiring millions …

Lewis Jones died on September 9, 2021. He would have been ninety-seven in November. He will be best known by skeptics for writing eighty-four articles for his column “Inklings” in the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry newsletter, Skeptical Briefs. I first met Lewis in 1980 when I represented Prometheus Books in Europe. Lewis telephoned me to …

In early September 2021, the Center for Inquiry (CFI) announced an initiative to respond to the humanitarian catastrophe that was unfolding in Afghanistan: the Afghan Rescue Fund. Coordinating with David Cowan, a CFI board member and producer of the documentary film Afghan Dreamers, CFI asked the secular and skeptic communities to help with the safe …

In memory of Michael Dennett   As what some would call a skeptical cryptozoologist, I prefer to think of myself as a paranatural naturalist—one who first considers allegedly paranatural/paranormal entities as hypothetically natural creatures, then seeks to identify them. Here I focus on North America’s hairy man-beast. Sasquatch or Bigfoot, long presumed to be a …

Between 1975 and 1980, terror gripped the northwest of England. A serial killer, who with little imagination the newspapers christened “The Yorkshire Ripper,” identified women alone on the streets in the evening, some of them prostitutes, and convinced (or forced) them into his car. The predator, armed with a hammer and screwdriver, killed thirteen women …

With this new column, we are delighted to welcome back to our pages on a regular basis our esteemed colleague the philosopher and evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci. His first SI column, “Thinking about Science,” ran for twelve years from 2002 to 2015. This new column will explore skepticism from the viewpoint of the philosophy of …

Some animals (such as hydras and some jellyfish) can apparently live forever, but we humans are all going to die. Longevity is desirable, but aging—a slow process of deterioration—is not. Hearing declines (half of those older than seventy-five have disabling hearing loss), as does visual acuity (by age eighty, 70 percent of white Americans have …

Almost all of us know someone—maybe a relative, friend, or coworker—who is unvaccinated. In my case, it’s a local craftsperson whose services I use on a regular basis. “I’m just not comfortable with it. I might get it if I had to travel abroad or something, but I don’t go anywhere.” However, I am quite …

I’m not sure when I first noticed that the universe appeared to be sending me coded messages through Jeopardy!, but I know it never stopped, and it never will. I’m not mad. I will explain. Jeopardy!, for the tiny percentage of you who are unaware, is America’s favorite quiz show. Created in the 1970s and …

Q: I know that skeptical explanations for so-called “psychic surgery” involve sleight of hand, making blood and tissue appear on a patient, but how much blood could one successfully palm in the hand for such an act? In the video I’m providing, there seems to be quite a bit of blood on the person’s spine. …

Examining Academic Relativists As a professor of rhetoric, I read Sven Ove Hansson’s article (“The Hidden Connection between Academic Relativists and Science Denial,” September/October 2021) with great interest. I only wish he had highlighted more of the “excellent such research” that he intimated existed. It is clear that rhetoric exists in many areas related to …

Cross Examined: Putting Christianity on Trial. John W. Campbell. An amazingly thorough, well-organized, systematic, methodical dissection of Christianity from the viewpoint of a trial lawyer. If Richard Dawkins leads with the scientific arguments against religion in The God Delusion, Campbell equally applies reason, rationality, legal principles, and arguments to dissecting the case of apologists for …

John of God: The Crimes of a Spiritual Healer is a Netflix true crime documentary series from Brazilian filmmakers Mauricio Dias and Tatiana Villela about the titular scoundrel (real name João Teixeira de Faria). Known for decades in South America, João de Deus (John of God) was a prolific medium who claimed to channel the …

There’s been some strange paradigm shifts among the educated classes of the Western world lately concerning gender. For one thing, in some circles, people are asked to state their gender and give their preferred pronouns. Controversies exist about bathroom assignment. Specialized therapists, speakers, and publications have emerged to encourage the wider public to develop greater …