Science: Be Very Afraid

May 12, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Skeptic

It was the MMR story that finally made me crack. My friends had always seemed perfectly rational: now, suddenly, they were swallowing media hysteria, hook, line and sinker. All sensible scientific evidence was twisted to promote fear and panic. I tried to reason with them, but they turned upon me: I was another scientist trying to kill their baby.
Many of these people were hardline extremists, humanities graduates, who treated my reasoned arguments about evidence as if I was some religious zealot, a purveyor of scientism, a fool to be pitied. The time had clearly come to mount a massive counter-attack.
Science, you see, is the optimum belief system: because we have the error bar, the greatest invention of mankind, a pictorial representation of the glorious undogmatic uncertainty in our results, which science is happy to confront and work with. Show me a politician's speech, or a religious text, or a news article, with an error bar next to it?

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Skeptical professor tracks paranormal

March 27, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Skeptic

Bob Carroll always knew he was a skeptic. His skepticism started when he was young, with a disbelief in Santa Claus, and it has led the professor of philosophy to spend more than three decades studying the psychology of deception and self-deception, questioning most things supernatural and paranormal and explaining the principles of sound logical reasoning to others.

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Hagelin proposes new U.S. government

March 27, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Skeptic

The man who lost to Pat Buchanan in a struggle for Reform Party presidential campaign funds in 2000 has announced plans to start a second U.S. government: the U.S. Peace Government.
John Hagelin, a physicist based at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, said he is not talking about secession.

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Blowing Up the Moon.s Conspiracy Theory

March 27, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Phil Plait, 38-year-old astronomer and skeptic, was on the California State University, Northridge, campus Friday, punching holes in the tenacious myth that American astronauts never landed on the moon.

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Is It Good for the Jews?

March 12, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Two weeks ago, a group of senior intelligence officials in the Defense Department sat for an hour listening to a briefing by a writer who claims . I am not making this up . that messages encoded in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament provide clues to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. One of the officials told me that they had agreed to meet the writer, Michael Drosnin, author of a Nostradamus-style best seller, without understanding that he was promoting Biblical prophecy. Still, rather than shoo him away, they listened politely as he consumed several man-hours of valuable intelligence-crunching time. Apparently he has given similar briefings to top officials of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.

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Scientists spread the word on evils of pseudoscience

February 25, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Skeptic

Scientists must be the evangelists against the well-financed effort to undermine science education, especially evolution, a physics professor said Monday....

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Scientology Grows Fast, Sparks Debate

February 25, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Skeptic

Last month, Germany's Federal Finance Office granted the Church of Scientology full tax-exempt status, clearing the way for the organization to be recognized as a bona fide religious group. Scientology was founded in the United States nearly 50 years ago by L. Ron Hubbard, an engineer and novelist. Many political leaders in Europe have accused the group of being a cult and the German decision comes at a time when here in the United States, a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the church awaits trial.

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Canada helps shut down suspicious cancer clinic

February 25, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Skeptic

Authorities from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico have shut down a dubious medical clinic that was treating cancer patients with magnets.
Most of the patients were from the U.S., and about 10 per cent were from Canada. The company was based in B.C., while the treatments were given at a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico.

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‘Steves’ support teaching of evolution

February 25, 2003 D. H. McKee
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More than 200 scientists "named Steve" yesterday issued a statement backing evolution instruction in public schools, the latest response to state science standards that allow criticism of Darwinism.
The statement, issued in Denver at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), lists people named Steve to illustrate the large number of evolution backers and to honor Harvard evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, who died last year of cancer.

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New ‘Brain Fingerprinting’ Could Help Solve Crimes

February 17, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Skeptic

A technique called "brain fingerprinting," which seeks to probe whether a suspect has specific knowledge of a crime, could become a powerful weapon in national security, its inventor believes.

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