Knowledge, science, reason, education, philosophy, behavior, politics, religion, and B.S.
Why do skeptics criticize Jenny McCarthy and Bill Maher?
Because they publicly trash mainstream science despite lacking the expertise to properly analyze methodology and draw different conclusions (how scientists do it).
Science uses peer review (not just “review”) to weed out bad studies, test the robustness of findings, and discuss appropriate conclusions. Peers are people who work in the same … Keep Reading…
Responses to requests, demands, and criticism in the blogosphere in recent months has prompted a great deal of discussion, most of it terribly unproductive. In fact, most of it has been downright silly – a childish back-and-forth which, to an outsider, might appear to be violent agreement. In other words, camps do not appear to disagree, in general, about … Keep Reading…
I hope I grabbed your attention with that title, but do not expect to find the answer to that question here. What I am going to discuss today is a study that many people seem to think answers that question, but it doesn’t.
As I noted in my last post, the study I’ll be discussing was grossly misreported, starting … Keep Reading…
It seems that the best motivation for me (to write) is frustration.
A press release by UC Berkeley about a study that was recently published on the relationships among religiosity, compassion, and prosocial behavior has been making the rounds over the last couple of days, waved by proud atheists as evidence of superiority and bashed by the more skeptical as … Keep Reading…
NOTE: this post also appears on the wonderful site about crazy coincidence, theoddsmustbecrazy.com.
I have always been amused and intrigued by responses to “The Monty Hall Problem”, especially when I talk about it to audiences with a high concentration of engineers and mathematicians. If you are familiar with it, but you’ve always struggled with an unsettled feeling of “this … Keep Reading…
