Skepticism

By John Horgan Richard Dawkins, the biologist and author, is complicated. I reached this conclusion in 2005 when I participated in a fellowship for journalists organized by the pro-religion Templeton Foundation. Ten of us spent several weeks at the University of Cambridge listening to 18 scientists and philosophers point out areas where science and religion …

By Craig A. Foster The Denver Post recently featured an article about Coloradans who believe that the Earth is flat. As if that wasn’t surprising enough, some members of this community also believe that they are the recipients of flat-Earth prejudice, which I will now term “terrashapism.” I don’t believe the Earth is flat; given my background, …

By Dean Peterson A 2012 poll shows that 45 percent of Americans say they believe in ghosts. More amazingly, in that same poll, 28 percent of the respondents said that they have personally seen a ghost before. With such a widespread belief in ghosts, I was curious if there was actually any scientific evidence to fuel …

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By Tennessee Watson Fake news has been on Maggie Farley’s mind further back than 2016 when President Trump brought the term into the vernacular. Farley, a veteran journalist, says we’ve had fake news forever and that “people have always been trying to manipulate information for their own ends,” but she calls what we’re seeing now …

By Maureen Callahan LOS ANGELES — Gwyneth Paltrow’s inaugural health-and-wellness summit on Saturday kicked off just as you’d expect: well-groomed women wearing yoga pants and expensive handbags hooking themselves up to IVs and oxygen tubes in a parking lot, experiences otherwise associated with the glamour of getting triaged at a disaster site. This is Paltrow’s …

By Michael Shermer Graham Hancock is an audacious autodidact who believes that long before ancient Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Egypt there existed an even more glorious civilization. One so thoroughly wiped out by a comet strike around 12,000 years ago that nearly all evidence of its existence vanished, leaving only the faintest of traces, including, Hancock …

By Julia Belluz and Alvin Chang Andy Oxman is obsessed with the study of bullshit health claims and how to prevent them from spreading. For decades, he’s been trying to find ways to get adults to think critically about the latest diet fads, vaccine rumors, or “miracle cures.” But he realized these efforts are often …

By Kristin Wong Despite your best intentions and efforts, it is inevitable: At some point in your life, you will be wrong. Mistakes can be hard to digest, so sometimes we double down rather than face them. Our confirmation bias kicks in, causing us to seek out evidence to prove what we already believe. The …

By Kavin Senapathy The thoroughly answered question of whether vaccines cause autism isn’t really a question outside of conspiracy-theorist circles. The body of evidence shows that vaccination has eradicated smallpox and vastly reduced suffering and death from other diseases, and that vaccines don’t cause autism, cancer, dementia, or long term health problems, and that any …

By Julia Belluz The YouTube video shows girls convulsing in hospital beds, on the floors of their schools, losing control of their bodies, unable to walk or talk. The young women have allegedly just been given shots of the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer. Instead of a lifesaving treatment, they’re left crippled, “chemically lobotomized.” …

By Steven Novella It’s fun to run into such a wonderful example of pure pseudoscience. Let’s deconstruct this one: Field Effects of Consciousness and Reduction in U.S. Urban Murder Rates: Evaluation of a Prospective Quasi-Experiment. This study comes from the Maharishi University of Management. The idea here (which, let’s be clear, is a tenet of religious …