1. How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results

Comment #216669 by Donny Yates on July 23, 2008 at 11:37 am

jenlaferriere - you do realise that is the kind of anecdotal evidence Shermer is talking about - "I have many friends..."

The fact that they were not vaccinated and have led healthy lives is, again, anecdotal.

And, to be honest, I wouldn't listen to chiropractors on this topic anyway. This article is quite interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic

Don.

2. This human's life, decoded

Comment #67947 by Donny Yates on September 5, 2007 at 10:21 am

To Eric Blair

You said: "I would go further than Bonzai and say that psychology, evolutionary or otherwise, is still a pseudo-science. It may "harden" in time but has a ways to go in terms of applying scientific principles."

Quick! You'd better inform the dozens of scientific journals that have been publishing research papers, from psychology departments, that they've been publishing "pseudoscience" all these years!

I apologise for my sarcastic tone, but as a cognitive neuroscientist in training I get a little tired of this rather outdated way of thinking about psychology.

I sure hope my fMRI scanner hardens up soon so I can get my papers published….

Donny.

3. The Bible's literary sins

Comment #63330 by Donny Yates on August 14, 2007 at 12:18 am

Some light relief:

The Old Testament according to Eddie Izzard in Glorious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3REuen54jA

"Rwanda doesn't work very well" Classic.

Enjoy, Don.

4. The Bible's literary sins

Comment #63225 by Donny Yates on August 13, 2007 at 2:53 pm

Note: I've just read back what I wrote, and it still alarms me how proud I am of winning those two quizzes! It was probably 10 years ago - talk about milking it.

5. The Bible's literary sins

Comment #63223 by Donny Yates on August 13, 2007 at 2:49 pm

Hello. When I was a devout Christian (seems like a long time ago) I was asked to be part of the church bible quiz team. I agreed thinking it would make me a better Christian.

So we had our first team meeting. I thought the first thing we would do is read the thing from cover to cover, taking notes as we went. "Er, no. Don't do that - we're just going to learn certain bits of it." I thought this extremely odd at the time. I managed to win the bible quiz two years in a row (this was a national bible quiz - here in the UK). I think it is very telling that somebody could know the bible well enough to win a national quiz, yet not really KNOW they bible.

I now understand why the church didn't want me to read it from cover to cover. Perhaps they were worried I was intelligent enough to see how absolutely vile parts of it are. Maybe they thought me too young to read it.

Having said that, they still taught me some of the stories as if they were nice. I mean who hasn't been taught Noahs Ark as being some nice story about animals and a big boat. They gloss over the fact God, who just created us, is committing genocide of the whole planet(the etcher sketch end of the world as Eddie Izzard puts it - "oh fuck it"). What sort of a lesson is that?

Even though I stayed a Christian for a while longer, I still remember this sowed some doubt in me. Why wouldn't they want me to read our Holy Book?

I suppose I should be glad really.

Donny.