Paul Fidalgo

The nonsense about magnetization is only one example of the kind of vaccine misinformation that science communicators are fighting so hard to counter. Dr. Krishana Sankar has made it her business to reach out to communities where fear of vaccines is particularly pronounced. As she explains in her talk for Skeptical Inquirer Presents, it’s not …

By now you’ve probably seen it in your social media feeds: people trying to stick pieces of metal to themselves, attempting to prove that the COVID-19 vaccine has somehow magnetized them. Perhaps the most infamous example comes from the duo of Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, whose testimony before the Ohio legislature was filled with claims about …

Jesus and Superman: They both have incredible superpowers, were both sent to Earth by their fathers, and both try to save people. But we’re expected to follow only the example of one of them, which is also the one we’re supposed to believe is real. Angel Eduardo of course knows that neither of them actually …

CFI’s Secular Rescue program seeks to assist persecuted freethought writers and activists whose lives are threatened by violent extremists in countries such as Iraq, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, helping them is never as simple as picking them up and moving them to a nicer place to live, especially in the middle of a global …

The seemingly interminable wait for the Supreme Court’s decision on Fulton v. City of Philadelphia is finally over. In a case about whether Catholic Social Services could continue to take public funding while discriminating against same-sex couples in foster care services, we expected the worst. The Court did indeed rule in favor of Catholic Social …

Some fact-checks are easier than others. For example, ridiculous claims about magnets or 5G chips in vaccines are easily debunked. But not all questions about vaccine efficacy are based on conspiracy theories and pseudoscience. One argument being pushed by anti-vaxxers is the idea that COVID-19 immunity gained from actual infection is stronger than the immunity …

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. There is an awful lot of wishful thinking going on. There always is, of course. Even in the face of contrary facts, human beings tend to view the world through a lens that puts things in a more favorable, hopeful light. A prime example: Chances are you’ve heard …

The Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES) has been offering up a wealth of free tools and content for teachers, students, and parents throughout the pandemic, including a series of fun and accessible webinars from experts in evolutionary topics, from the coronavirus to chestnut trees. Its latest webinar is particularly fun, as TIES Director Bertha …

Any day now, the Pentagon is expected to release a report disclosing what it knows about the unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) documented and reported by U.S. military personnel, and indeed, some news outlets have already reported on some of its contents. The long and the short of it is more or less what you’d expect: …

In the 1990s, the Center for Inquiry was one of the very few secular-progressive organizations to oppose the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). A powerful analysis by Marci A. Hamilton in the latest Free Inquiry proves how prescient we were. Hamilton, who had been clerking for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when the RFRA ball got …

The evolution of the American freethought movement, the story of humanism’s coming-of-age in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is now the subject of a major independent scholarly history by Stephen P. Weldon, The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism. In the latest issue of Free Inquiry magazine, Editor Tom Flynn brings his own deep knowledge of …

Not surprisingly, Scientific American already knows how to report on things such as UFOs in a way that is grounded in reality. Leonard David rounded reactions to what is known so far (remember, the report hasn’t even been released yet) from actual astronomers, astrophysicists, and scholars.  Among them are two fellows of the Committee for …