Eyewitness Memory: Wrongfully Convicted

I felt compelled to write about eyewitness memory by a recent blog entry which I feel paints a misleading picture of the nature of memory and the (un)reliability of eyewitness memory. Other skeptics have written about the subject and coverage has ranged from the pretty good to not so great. This blog post is somewhere […]

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Hope for Narcissists? Not Here.

A piece by Joseph Brean that I read recently displayed the headline New hope for narcissists: New Canadian study suggests there may be a cure for self-centred[sic] grandiosity after all. My first thought was “I doubt it.” The press release for this study is pretty accurate and, although I have some criticisms of the study, […]

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If you buy into scientism, does that make you a scientist?

While I was on vacation, I missed a post by Sharon Hill on Skeptical Inquirer online. She recently re-shared the piece on Facebook, so I had an opportunity to give it a good read. Sharon’s pieces are usually filled with thoughtful reminders to reign in arrogance and do more than just tolerate other view points, […]

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Why Skeptics Pick On Jenny McCarthy and Bill Maher

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 […]

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On Oversimplification and Certainty

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 […]

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