Dr Steven Novella describes how to spot quackery:
Excellent stuff. Add this to your toolkit alongside Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit.
Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2012
Eric MacDonald on Charles Moore’s article in The Telegraph:
Of course, Moore has deceived himself, that he thinks that his “beliefs” are representative of reality irrespective of evidence and reason which indicate otherwise. The evils of religions are plain to see and described at length by Hitchens, Dawkins, MacDonald, et al. A base morality is inherent in us all, something that evolved with us, giving our species an ability to interact with each other, and adapted through the ages. Even Moore’s beloved Christianity has changed its message on what is moral and acceptable. It changes, it has no absolute truth; people loved their children before Christianity.
So it is sad when someone dedicates their life to irrationality and delusions. How would you deal with someone who believes that an invisible fire-breathing dragon lives their garage and which leaved no footprints or other evidence. How about someone who believes that they have fairies living at the end of their garden which leave no evidence, or that evidence is shown to be fake? And after you have highlighted to these persons that their worldview is untenable but they persist in their views, how would engage further with them? Discuss the size of fairy wings? I think not.
Those who persist in delusion, to promote such delusion, deserve no special privileges and should not be protected from criticism; irrationality should not be allowed to reign our societies again.
Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2012
I think most of us know that homeopathy is nonsense, that it’s nothing more than a placebo. And I thought I’d heard all homeopathic nonsenses until I watched this:
It’s almost as if she’s had a dose of woo from Deepak Chopra!
This raises an interesting question: Why do people believe in nonsense? The great Carl Sagan explored this many years ago in his book “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, and by Michael Shermer in several of his books such as “Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time”.
It seems to me that people want to believe in something fantastical regardless of the weight of evidence that show that their beliefs just ain’t so. Is this a result of their upbringing, a failure to use tools such as common sense and critical thinking? Education is always important but we are unlikely to be totally free of wackos.
Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2012
Inspirational quote from Carl Sagan set against a cartoon strip:
Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2012
From the ThinkingAthiest:
Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2011
DC’s Improbable Science has an article about the strange decisions made by the Science Museum for an exhibit on medicine. Unfortunately it seems that the Science Museum has ended-up promoting anti-science. Coupled with their PR statements it seems that the Science Museum doesn’t actually know what Science is.
I hate to use a Carl Sagan quote against the Science Museum but I’m left with no choice:
Science has beauty, power, and majesty that can provide spiritual as well as practical fulfillment. But superstition and pseudoscience keep getting in the way providing easy answers, casually pressing our awe buttons, and cheapening the experience.
Carl Sagan, “Does Truth Matter? Science, Pseudoscience, and Civilization”
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/does_truth_matter_science_pseudoscience_and_civilization
Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 20.2, March / April 1996
Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2011
I was going to post something about the recent BBC Horizon episode “Science Under Attack” but I held off as I needed to calm down after witnessing, in my humble opinion, the bizarre behaviour of Daily Telegraph journalist James Delingpole. Well, I’ve calmed down now and have seen that richarddawkins.net has some commentary on this so I’d recommend people to go there and contribute to a very interesting discussion.
I would just like to add that, after slagging off the general state of Horizon a while ago, I was most impressed with this week’s episode “Science Under Attack”. It looks as if someone at the BBC has been putting some hard work into making Horizon a premier science documentary again. Well done BBC.
The main point about “Science Under Attack” is that the scientific community needs to become a bit more media-savvy. This is especially important when cranks and kooks, with their siren songs of unreason, get equal or more air-time than true science. And, as Ben Goldacre so wonderfully explains in his book Bad Science, the public have a warped idea of what a scientist is and this is reinforced by the behaviour of the media such as when a newspaper reports “scientists have come up with an equation that indicates that your best chance to meet your most compatible partner is on the first Friday after a public holiday” or other such nonsense. Science is not decided by journalists; there are established processes, the scientific method, presentation of evidence, peer review, etc. It isn’t done in the headlines of a newspaper. But at the same time, science needs to be more inclusive of the general populace. And that’s a real challenge.
The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
- Carl Sagan
Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2011
Quackometer has written a well-thought and damning article on Doctor’s Data and Bogus Tests:
Carl Sagan said:
We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
And those who perpetuate known falsehoods, fraudsters if you will, drag society, drag science, drag progress and drag humankind into cesspool of darkness, ignorance and superstition. We need candles in the dark; resources such as QuackWatch and Quackometer provide that light.
Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2010
Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark” includes ideas and tools for skeptical thinking.
The following are recommended as tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent reasoning:
TOOLS
(1) Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts.
(2) Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
(3) Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no “authorities”).
They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
(4) Spin more than one hypothesis – don’t simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you have simply run the with first idea that caught your fancy.
(5) Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours.
It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
(6) Quantify, wherever possible.
If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are thruths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
(7) If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.
(8) Occam’s razor.
If there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.
(9) Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (ie. shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?
Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle – an electron, say – in a much bigger Cosmos.