Have you ever noticed how irrationalities (a) tend to cluster, (b) tend to offer hope to the desperate, and (c) tend to appeal to folks with strongly held dogmatic beliefs? No? Well here’s an interesting example of the genre: Get a load of Alive!, a FREE Catholic newspaper produced in […]
Exhibit A: 1989 and Pons and Fleischmann announce cold fusion — an “inexhaustible source of energy” — at a press briefing in Utah, before they had applied for patents or published their technology. Too bad they were just plain wrong. I bet they feel embarrassed now. Exhibit B: 2002 and five-word […]
Hat tip to c*nty_mc_sh*tb*lls over on Reddit for this one. Irish patients warned ‘miracle cure’ from US church is bleach A CONTROVERSIAL American Church which is coming to Ireland this weekend is promising a “miracle” cure for patients – but it is, in fact, industrial-strength bleach…On its website it is […]
Here’s a classic science communication fiasco. Many of us believe empiricism enables the resolution of uncertainty with data, and that more information is better than less. That’s why we do science. One of the moral imperatives that drive us is that carefully scrutinized, systematically replicable, and objectively verifiable information trumps […]
Well, kind of. Here is a video of the keynote lecture I gave as part of the #celt12 ‘Written Word’ conference held last June in Galway, Ireland. Why not set aside 29 minutes or so of your life and watch something exciting, witty, and informative? Okay, shhh down the back. Get […]
As you can see above, this here blog caught the attention of the Irish Times yesterday, with founder skeptic Paul O’Donoghue using it as the hook for his latest column in the science section. [Greetings, Irish Times readers! By the way, here’s some stuff just for you. And here’s some more.] O’Donoghue was referring […]
