Original articles relating to pathological skepticism.
Science Journalists Are Only Telling the Stories Which Make Science Look Good, But Science that Guides Public Policy Must Also Be Informed By the Lessons of Science’s Mistakes The unspoken truth of modern science is that many of the ideas […]
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Mainstream skepticism is for the most part what could be called cargo cult skepticism. The term comes from the practice of ritualistic acts by indigenous peoples. These acts involved the mimicking of the behaviors of colonizers in the hope that […]
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Fake skepticism is a scourge. Yet I enjoy discussions with fake skeptics. Why? The same reason an entomologist studies bugs. To others, bugs are excruciatingly stupid, repulsive and boring but for whatever reason, the entomologist has developed a fascination with […]
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“Principles of Curiosity”[1] is a documentary by Brian Dunning and Ryan Johnson. Brian Dunning is the “skeptic” who was sentenced to 15 months in prison for committing wire fraud[2]. Fraud in this context involves stealing from others by way of […]
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A few years ago the great “skeptic” Michael Shermer publicly committed a hasty generalization fallacy[1]. In his tweet he said: ‘Sandy Hook truthers (as bad as 9/11 truthers) vandalize memorial, taunt victim mother claiming it was a “hoax.”‘ What he […]
Continue reading »I don’t know much about the topic of homeopathy. I have really only read mainstream “skeptics” railing about how ridiculous it is. I came across a twitter post by someone called Yvette with the Twitter handle of @TheSciBabe. For some […]
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This April I was excited to finally be contacted by a mainstream skeptic podcast inviting me to be on their show. I had contacted just about every such podcast and radio show I could find. The rest either ignored me […]
Continue reading »A common claim of mainstream skeptics is that people they believe are “pseudo-science advocates” regularly engage in anomaly hunting. Stephen Novella has championed this notion.[1] The idea here is that uncritical thinkers attempt to disprove established consensus beliefs by actively looking […]
Continue reading »The Shill Gambit is a type of faulty reasoning in which a person’s argument is dismissed by proclaiming that the person is on the payroll of some agency. Such an argument definitely is fallacious. It is a form of ad […]
Continue reading »A popular gambit used by pseudoskeptics is to claim that the objects of their ridicule suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low competency individuals believe that they performed much better than they actually had. […]
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