Paul Fidalgo

Anti-vaccine hostility is no longer exclusive to desperate celebrities and fringe activists. In some states, it’s becoming government policy. Last week in Tennessee, Dr. Michelle Fiscus was forced out of her position as medical director of the state’s Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and Immunization program, because she had correctly informed medical professionals that Tennessee law allowed minors …

In 2005, violent protests erupted in Denmark and throughout the Muslim world in response to cartoons published in the Danish publication Jyllands-Posten, the most famous of which was a caricature of what appeared to be the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, drawn by cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who died this week at the age …

Benjamin Radford recently wrote about how misquotes in social media posts, be they misattributed, mistaken, or simply made-up, gain traction and become widely believed. “When people see information that supports their assumptions and beliefs,” he wrote, “they are more likely to believe and accept it—even when there is little or no evidence it’s true.” We ran …

One of the things that makes the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES) such an effective program is that it meets teachers where they are, both literally and figuratively. TIES is a program of the Richard Dawkins Foundation that helps educators teach evolution and answer its critics. With the careful return of in-person events, TIES …

In a time when access to limitless information is immediately available in our pockets and at our fingertips, misinformation and falsehoods can spread further and faster than ever before. Critical thinking has never been more important, and the stakes have never been higher. On the latest Skeptical Inquirer Presents, host Leighann Lord welcomed physicist David …

Many of those who have lost themselves to the QAnon universe of conspiracy theories firmly believe that leading Democrats and Hollywood celebrities operate a global child-trafficking network of Satan-worshiping pedophiles. As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s only the most recent example of how people can be manipulated by playing upon the desire to protect our …

No one knows Nones like Ryan Burge. The so-called “rise of the Nones”—the growing numbers of the religiously unaffiliated in the United States, which includes atheists and agnostics—has been the subject of countless think pieces, op-eds, and hot takes. But perhaps no one has delved so deeply into the data about this ascendant demographic than …

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. Here in the United States, July 4 is our Independence Day, a holiday that not only marks our break with the British Empire 245 years ago, but also celebrates the ideal image of America as a nation made up of independent spirits; a population of millions of individuals …

In too many parts of the Muslim world, apostasy and blasphemy are “crimes” punishable by long prison terms, outlandish fines, and even death. And when the state opts not to inflict such penalties on the accused, often angry mobs or lone vigilantes will do it for them.  Jailed in 2016 on blasphemy charges over sketches …

The truth is out there, and it’s not that interesting. The eagerly anticipated Pentagon report on unidentified aerial phenomena has finally been released to the public, and all we learned was that, yes, there are a few examples of aerial phenomena that have yet to be identified.  Though the report contains not a single mention …

Conspiracy theories and lies about a stolen election fueled the fires that led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. (So abhorrent were these lies that they led to Rudy Giuliani’s “win” in CFI’s Full of Bull award.) But researchers are finding that the real animating force for that kind of mob …

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. We were bracing for the worst, and we may well have gotten it. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Catholic foster care agency in Philadelphia could continue to discriminate against same-sex applicants while taking taxpayer funding. The narrow scope of the ruling—and the multiplicity of …