Environmentalism and the Fringe

Environmentalism is more popular than ever—and with good reason: never has our dependency on the natural world or our culpability in its ongoing destruction been clearer. I’ll spare you the customary roll call of ecological crises that tends to open articles about the environment (for every person spurred into action, another is sunk into despondency), …

March 11, 2021, marked the tenth anniversary of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, which, together with the tsunami it triggered, devastated the northeast coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu and triggered the Fukushima nuclear accident. However, it is Fukushima that has remained in public awareness. The event’s memory is shaped mainly by unsubstantiated horror stories …

Several activities are part of the scientific endeavor. Scientific activities obviously include things such as generating theories, gathering empirical data, and testing hypotheses. However, scientists also communicate their research to scientists and the general public. Scientists try to convince other scientists and the general public of the truth of their claims, but non-scientists also take …

On Skeptoid, we’ve listed the best pro-science celebrities, the worst antiscience celebrities, the unsung women of science, and even the scientists who took one for the team by experimenting on themselves. Here we’re going to look at a group that we haven’t before: science superheroes from the realm of fiction, including TV, movies, books, and …

When I was a sophomore at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1977, I was excited to attend my first real science seminar. I was on my way to hear Lynn Margulis, one of the greatest biological thinkers of modern times. First, I ran into the wrong room and sat down, only to realize …

When many adults talk about adolescence, they often invoke depictions of “teens these days” whose lives are sex-crazed and drug-filled. Ironically, these same adults often support prevention programs that are ineffective. In this article, I present two of the prevention myths that are adapted from the book Great Myths of Adolescence (Jewell et al. 2019) …

I am hoping my book A Christian Geologist Explains Why the Earth Cannot Be 6,000 Years Old (published by Dorrance Publishing) will be of interest to skeptics and atheist readers of this magazine. This book is not only for Christians but also for those seeking the truth and who object to fake science. It gives …

Anti-vaxxers all over the world have capitalized on the temporary hold some European countries have placed on the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine due to some cases of blood clotting. We now know that reports about its risks have been overblown, and after a thorough evaluation, European authorities once again resumed the use of this vaccine. Yet …

We all want to protect our planet: our land, water, air—all life itself. Environmentalists bring passion and dedication to that cause, to enormous positive effect. But there is another aspect. As David Mountain writes in our cover article, “Environmentalism has been shaped by a range of fringe beliefs that have nurtured a tradition of unscientific thinking …

The Aspen Institute Science & Society Program (based in New York City) and the Instituto Questão de Ciência (Question of Science Institute, based in São Paulo, Brazil) cosponsored the first Global Congress on Scientific Thinking and Action March 17–20, 2021. It was originally planned to take place in Rome but was conducted over Zoom due …

In April 2021, dozens of viral videos circulated on the social media platform TikTok, shared by young women offering dire warnings about abductions at Target stores. The videos, typically hashtagged with phrases such as #sextraffickingawareness, were seen tens of millions of times.  “If you’re seeing this—stop scrolling, especially if you’re a female!” one video began. …

A group of advocates working to oppose the use of a discredited communication technique used with autistic children have launched http://www.facilitatedcommunication.org. The site provides information about facilitated communication (FC) and resources for parents, educators, and members of the media. There are links to the available research on FC and its spin-offs, rapid prompting method and …

Two recent papers on lunar influence were recently published in the journal Science Advances. They made some buzz but do not really advance science. Moon and Sleep Leandro Casiraghi et al. (2021) asked twenty-five to forty people in each of three Argentine villages (one rural without access to electricity, one semi-rural, and another in an …

The American Philosophical Society has awarded its 2020 Patrick Suppes Prize in Psychology to noted psychologist and CSI Fellow Elizabeth Loftus “in recognition of her demonstrations that memories are generally altered, false memories can be implanted, and the changes in law and therapy this knowledge has caused.” “Of all the world’s cognitive scientists,” the Society …

Bernard Dixon, British science writer and former editor of New Scientist magazine, died October 30, 2020, at the age of eighty-two. Dixon was elected a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (then CSICOP) in 1980. He was also active with the British Association for Science (then the BAAS) and the Council for Science and …

I knew I was a detective at the age of eight, but my career did not actually begin until I was twenty-five in 1969. In the more than half a century since, I became various kinds of sleuth—ranging from paranormal to literary to homicide—including police-licensed private investigator for the first American detective agency, the Pinkerton’s. …

Disease vs. Illness The words disease and illness are often used interchangeably, but their meanings are very different. Diseases are biomedical entities that cause impairment of the normal functioning of the body, while illness refers to the way a patient experiences a sickness. There can be disease without illness and illness without disease. Diseases may …

As he drove from his home in North Carolina to Comet Ping Pong in the northwest neighborhood of Washington, D.C., Edgar Maddison Welch recorded a message for his two young daughters: “I can’t let you grow up in a world that’s so corrupt by evil, without at least standing up for you and for other …

Q: Why doesn’t the paranormal community police itself better when it comes to scientific rigor and fraud? In many areas—including ghosts, cryptozoology, and UFOs—it seems that pretty much anything goes. —B. Baker A: This question hits on one of the key issues in critical analysis of mysterious and paranormal claims: Why—despite enormous amounts of time …

Fighting Creationism Great anti-creationist articles from Nathan Lents and Richard Dawkins, but both are preaching to their choirs (Lents, “Behe, Bias, and Bears, Oh My!”; Dawkins, “Science: The Gold Standard for Truth,” both March/April 2021). Time is of the essence. This is spiritual warfare. Offense is needed, not defense. Fight on their turf. Jesus was …

BOOKS DO FURNISH A LIFE: Reading and Writing Science. Richard Dawkins. Edited by Gillian Somerscales. A fine collection of short writings by Dawkins, the noted zoologist and master of science communication. All are in some way connected with books (“the love of books,” Dawkins says) that have furnished his life in science. They include forewords, …

Readers of Stuart Vyse’s engaging, enlightening, and fair-minded Behavior & Belief columns in Skeptical Inquirer magazine and at Skeptical Inquirer Online won’t be surprised that his Superstition: A Very Short Introduction makes another significant contribution to promoting skeptical inquiry. The book is part of Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introductions series of more than 600 …

Broadly speaking, there are three categories of the unknown: stuff we don’t know but should, stuff we don’t know but may know eventually, and stuff we will (almost certainly) never know. Topics examined in Big—If True: Adventures in Oddity by Benjamin Radford somehow fall within those three categories—even though most of them could safely be …

Has the world seemed a bit extra irrational, a bit extra crazy, the past few years? If you feel that way, you are not alone. Russell Muirhead, a professor of politics and democracy at Dartmouth, and Nancy L. Rosenblum, a professor of ethics in politics and government at Harvard, clearly have also felt this way. …

As a film fan, I have been delighted to be able to see film festivals even during the pandemic. It was in that capacity that a short documentary film titled Unspoken caught my eye. It’s about Emma Zurcher-Long, a girl with autism. The film screened at the Slamdance Film Festival earlier this year. Executive produced …