Stop Pissing on Nate Silver

Until a few months ago, Nate Silver was a nerd hero. If you’ve never heard of him, perhaps you’ve heard of sabermetrics (or you’ve seen Moneyball, a movie about sabermetrics). Well, Silver is best known for applying sabermetric models to the study of politics, especially presidential races. The accuracy of Silver’s predictions for the 2008 […]

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Sleep BS and Have I mentioned That I Despise Infographics?

I really, really hate infographics. Really. They’re worse than memes. Well, I guess technically they are memes. They are notoriously inaccurate. They are usually agenda-driven and often spin facts to the point of wrongness. But mostly I just see them as click bait. I have less disdain for listicles, but they sometimes bug me, too. […]

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Does Dexter Like His Coffee Black?

A skeptical friend sent me an interesting link this week. The headline makes the bold claim that a study suggests that people who like black coffee are more likely to be psychopaths. I’m sure you can guess my initial reaction: skepticism. So let’s look at the research. First, the choice of singling out black coffee […]

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Resolving Conflicting Research Results: Vaccine Education is Tricky

Note: This post also appears on Insight, the official blog of the Skeptic Society. A few months ago I wrote about the psychology of vaccine denial. In the post I discussed two publications, one of which (

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A New Bracelet Scam That Will Take a Bite Out of Your Wallet

Sometimes I wish that I didn’t have a nagging conscience so that I could make millions selling crap at a 6000% profit just by claiming that it does something it doesn’t. Unfortunately, I’d be embarrassed by the first skeptic to challenge me. Oh, and then there’s that pesky fact that I’d be scamming people and […]

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