Tag Archives: Skepticism

“God’s Lady Problem”

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Jen McCreight writes the blog Blag Hag and became famous last year for attempting unsuccessfully to prove that if a large number of women wore low cut shirts there would be a major earthquake. (It turns out that there was a 7-point-something earthquake on “Boob Quake” day, which requires that the experiment be repeated.)

(It is interesting to note that most people seem to have not noticed that earthquake for some reason. And they call themselves Skeptics!)

Anyway, Jen will be a guest on Atheist Talk Radio this coming Sunday, March 13th.

I predict that if an atheist talks about how god does not cause disasters, on the 13th day of the month, there will be an earthquake of 7.0 or greater magnitude somewhere on the earth later that same day.

Details of the radio show here.

Getting it wrong every single time

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Sometimes, that is what I think news reporters do. There are occasions when you know the story and have the opportunity to watch them spew out incorrect information. Sometimes you do not know the story but you can watch them getting it wrong and see that happening while they appear to remain oblivious to their own clumsy ineptitude.
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Wikileaks Mythbusting: Yemen Cables

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There has been much talk about whether the recent Wikileaks leak of diplomatic cables will be a good thing or a bad thing. I would assume (and that is an assumption … which is why I used the word assume) that there would be some of both, some forward movement of progressive ideals including honest government and reasonably transparent diplomatic policies that value human rights and the environment, etc., and some damage to ongoing diplomatic processes or exposure of ammunition that can be used for nefarious purposes by nefarious figures and organizations. But, since some of that would have happened anyway (a leak of a cable is not the only way to embolden a terrorist, advance a philosophy, fix or complicate a diplomatic problem or solve an historical riddle) we may be better off not asking about the big and essentially unknowable picture, and focusing on individual cases. So, I’d like to look, in a preliminary way, at a couple of such individual cases
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The Fetish in relation to Skepticism

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I was just glancing through the blog of Katheryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, a book about people who were wrong about stuff, often big stuff (for example, she talks about individuals who spent decades in jail owing to false convictions). Meantime, I’m working on posts related to the falsehoods and “Everything you know is wrong” series. And, as I do this, I’m thinking about a way in which people get things wrong that is often overlooked or, perhaps, not recognized as a specific category of irrational thinking.

This has to do with the idea of a fetish. It is likely that I’m using the word “fetish” in a different way than it is usually used in modern English parlance, so some definition is appropriate. Here’s some material from various dictionary sources:
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Retired Officers Break Silence: Aliens Are Here, and Controlling our Nukes.

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‘The U.S. Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it,’ he said.

The former officer said he witnessed such an event first-hand on March 16, 1967, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.

‘I was on duty when an object came over and hovered directly over the site.

‘The missiles shut down – ten Minuteman [nuclear] missiles. And the same thing happened at another site a week later. There’s a strong interest in our missiles by these objects, wherever they come from. I personally think they’re not from planet Earth.’

…

‘I believe that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted – both then and now – to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practised methods of disinformation.’

The six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man, are to present declassified information which they claim backs up their findings. They have witness testimony from 120 former or retired military personnel which points to alien intervention at nuclear sites in the U.S. as recently as 2003.

source

I knew it. I KNEW IT!!!

In a related story:
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Does Cranberry Juice Help Repress or Reduce Urinary Tract Infections? A study in skeptical juice drinking.

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This post was chosen as an Editor's Selection for ResearchBlogging.orgAfter I reported this recent and interesting research paper about urinary tract inflictions, a number of conversations broke out on that post, on my facebook page, and via email, and some of these conversations raised the question of cranberry juice and whether the idea that it prevents, reduces, or shortens the duration of UTIs is real or woo.

Added: After further discussion elsewhere, I would like to clarify what is being asked here: Imagine you are a person who drinks apple juice and cranberry juice as your main hydrating substance. Also, you are are a person who is concerned with UTIs. One day, you ask yourself: “I want to switch to drinking only one kind of juice, apple or cranberry. Should I make it cranberry, with the idea that it could prevent UTIs, to some degree, for me? No biggie if it does not, but is there a reasonable chance that it will?” This is NOT a post about whether or not cranberry juice in any concentration or form can treat a UTI. Obviously.

So, I decided to use Gooogle Scholar (which is a version of Google that you should probably use more often than you currently do) to find out what the peer reviewed literature says. First I entered a few appropriate search terms (bladder infection UTI cranberry, for example) and looked at the first few references provided, then I narrowed the search for the most recent five years. That narrowing gave me a recent review article (which is what I was hoping for).

I came to a conclusion about cranberry juice after just few minutes of looking at abstracts and a couple of full text papers, and then spent considerably more time summarizing my results for you. Here is what I found:
Continue reading Does Cranberry Juice Help Repress or Reduce Urinary Tract Infections? A study in skeptical juice drinking. →

Fear, Loathing and Sleep: Skeptically Speaking

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Did you know that it is a fallacy that poor people have more babies than other people? I’ll be discussing this topic next Friday at 6PM Mountain Time on Skeptically Speaking Talk Radio, with Desiree Schell, in the next installment of “Everything You Know is Sort of Wrong” (This is part of the Falsehoods discussion.)

Speaking of fear, Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things, will be the main (and live) guest on Friday’s show. I’m looking forward to that.

Also, last friday’s show on The Science of Sleep with Kimberly Cote is now up in podcast form, here.