E.O. WILSON MEMORIAL

In what he described as an “accident in a haphazard life,” as a child E.O Wilson lost vision in his right eye when a spine from a perchlike pinfish he had caught while fishing jerked out of the water and penetrated his pupil. That injury coupled with a congenital loss of hearing left a teenaged …

We invited three prominent scientists, all CSI fellows, to give readers their own personal perspectives on E.O. Wilson. Richard Dawkins E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology was published around the same time as my The Selfish Gene, and I came in for a bit of backlash from the wave of misconceived controversy that enveloped Wilson. It had been …

Mathematics has long had a place in the arsenal of anti-evolutionism, but in recent years it has become especially prominent. This is understandable because mathematics affords the possibility of an “in-principle” argument against evolution. If you can carry out a calculation to show that evolution is impossible or can appeal to an abstract mathematical principle …

On Sunday, July 7, 1996, what has been called “one of the most complex and spectacular crop circle designs ever seen” (Andrews 2009) appeared in England. It was an astonishing fractal pattern called a Julia Set, which clearly demonstrates some sort of intelligence. It is unique in crop circle history for several reasons, including the …

There is a traditional belief that moonlight can be used to bleach laundry linen. Because of the low intensity of moonlight compared to that of sunlight, this appears implausible in light of current scientific understanding. However, J.P. Parisot (1986) suggested that the bleaching effect is real and is caused by the presence of hydrogen peroxide …

In India, astrological matchmaking is invariably the very first filter applied in the selection process of arranged marriages. Close to 90 percent of marriages in India are arranged, so clearly astrology is very popular. This popularity warrants scientific and transparent testing of Indian astrology, but, perhaps surprisingly, to date no astrologers have aggressively sought to …

Science simplification is considered one of the most useful tools for communicating about science, whether through scientific books, articles, interviews, or documentaries. Depth of the scientific writing employed varies greatly depending on its intended audience. It can range anywhere from educational material for secondary and primary schools, to material appropriate for those pursuing undergraduate degrees, …

For several months in late 2021, a panic swept through the United Kingdom after dozens of people reported having been attacked by needle-wielding criminals in bars and nightclubs. As Adela Suliman of The Washington Post reported on October 23: There have been multiple reports of “needle spiking”—which involves an injection being administered to someone without …

It is not just an artifact of media coverage. Political polarization in attitudes toward science has greatly increased. That is the result found by an analysis issued in late January 2022 of the 2021 General Social Science Survey (GSS) data by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago. The …

As a scientist and former clean-energy CEO elected to Congress on a protect-our-climate platform, Sean Casten is something of an anomaly in the U.S. House of Representatives. But he has gained the respect of colleagues for his command of energy issues and his willingness to listen. Casten is a second-term Democrat first elected in 2018 …

Zixin Lin, a strong fighter for safeguarding scientific rationality and promoting scientific spirit, died on December 26, 2021, in Beijing at the age of ninety-three. Mr. Lin was a colleague to the Center for Inquiry (CFI), a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and an honorary chairman of Center for Inquiry China (CFIC). Born …

Are you continually surprised at the lengths intelligent people will go to rationalize belief systems contrary to good science? Even to common sense? I still am, and I’ve been involved in science-based skepticism for a very long time. So even if you are a longtime reader of SI, where we repeatedly explore the psychology of …

“Unexplained” mysteries are intriguing to read, but compilations of such may exaggerate mystery by omitting facts. It is certainly easier to present some supposed enigma than to try to explain it. Here are three short cases from World War II that readers may enjoy trying to solve, together with my proposed solutions. (One is a …

In 1747, one of the first controlled clinical trials in the history of medical science involved vitamin C, though the researcher had no idea what a vitamin was; the vitamin wasn’t discovered until 1912. Scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency, was rampant in the British Royal Navy, disabling and killing more sailors than …

We have Queen Hatshepsut, fifth sovereign of the eighteenth dynasty, who reigned in Egypt between 1479 and 1458 BCE, to thank that scholars and travelers have always been fascinated by an elusive place called the Land of Punt. In fact, the lost land has been mentioned several times over the course of two thousand years …

“Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon—it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.”1 This famous quote is by Scott D. Weitzenhoffer, who wrote it as an Amazon.com review for Eugenie Scott’s book Evolution vs. …

In the fall and winter of 2001–2002, school children across the United States began to break out in a strange rash (Talbot 2002). Groups of children—overwhelmingly girls—in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Virginia turned up with itchy red blotches at school that disappeared when they went home. All this happened in the post-9/11 environment of anthrax scares …

How should skeptics treat Joe Rogan? Should we ignore him? Should we engage with him? Should we write long articles about him? If invited, should we go on his podcast? I first met Joe Rogan in May 2013. He was filming a TV show called Joe Rogan Questions Everything. It was a kind of fringe-science …

Q: If the famous Patterson/Gimlin Bigfoot film is fake, as skeptics say, then why hasn’t anyone been able to duplicate it? —M. Morrow A: I’ve heard some version of this question dozens of times during my career as a monster investigator. I have investigated the best photographic evidence for several mysterious creatures—most prominently the 1977 …

This is not a commentary about false news, fake news, misinformation, or disinformation. That’s for another day. This is about how television news alerts have changed over the years—mostly thanks to cable TV—even if the content is accurate. A Google search for “TV breaking news definition” yields the Wikipedia result first, which reads, in part: …

It’s common knowledge that Prince Charles is a persistent and outspoken champion of alternative medicine, but the full story has never been told—until now. Edzard Ernst reveals all the shocking details in this unauthorized biography. The shocks come from Charles’s own words, which Ernst quotes extensively. It is ironic that Charles’s supporters were responsible for …

Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley isn’t just a film experience; it’s a tutorial in the practices and techniques of the psychic marketplace we live in and a dark reflection of the world we have come to accept as normal. We can no longer deny lying has become a successful business practice, and del Toro has …

THE CONJUROR’S CONUNDRUM: My Life in Magic and Skepticism. Jamy Ian Swiss. Swiss, a professional magician and longtime book reviewer for Genii magazine, has been active in the skeptical movement for nearly forty years. The title of his new book comes from the seeming paradox that many magicians (e.g., Houdini, James “The Amazing” Randi, Banachek, …

Dissonance and Reasoning I enjoyed reading David Robert Grimes’s article concerning motivated reasoning (“Schrödinger’s Bin Laden: The Irrational World of Motivated Reasoning,” January/February 2022). The background discussion of Dr. Festinger’s origin of the cognitive dissonance (CD) theory, along with the admission toward the end of the article that CD is sometimes selective, affirms my long-held …