Tomorrow, the JREF and PhACT (the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking) will put therapeutic touch to the test at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute. James Randi and JREF President D.J. Grothe will be in person at this latest attempt to discover the truth behind TT practitioners' million-dollar claims. You can learn more about the JREF's history testing therapeutic touch right here.
But if you're unfamiliar with the practice, you can also listen to the latest episode of our podcast "Consequence", in which we talk to Bob Glickman, a nurse who's spent years investigating and challenging therapeutic touch practitioners' claims. Learn about the history of TT, how it has managed to creep into mainstream medicine, and what can be done to stop it from doing harm. You can listen right now here, or subscribe to "Consequence" on iTunes.
JREF senior fellow, magician and scientific skeptic Jamy Ian Swiss, "The Honest Liar", presents JREF’s newest video series, aptly titled The Honest Liar. Follow Jamy as he uses critical thinking, skepticism, and a healthy dose of humor, along with his expertise in legerdemain, to explore the facts behind false claims.
In our first episode, “Money for Nothing”, Jamy punctures the pretense of homeopathy. How much is too much to pay for a remedy with nothing in it?
"How to Think about Dubious Claims" is a comprehensive, 10-hour lecture series presented by Ray Hyman, and we invite the public to attend this course at the JREF's Hollywood headquarters later this month. Smart people can act stupidly by failing to apply their intelligence wisely. This course draws lessons from scientists and smart people who went astray, and it provides a framework to help you avoid their mistakes.
Congratulations to the Tampa Bay Times, which on Monday won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing - their ninth Pulitzer. They did so by diligently following up on a topic well known to skeptics, anti-fluoridation pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
In October 2011 the county commission of Pinellas County, Florida (part of the paper's coverage area and location of the city of St. Petersburg) voted to end fluoridation of the water supply. When it went into effect in January 2012, this anti-science decision made the county's water system one of the largest in the United States without fluoridation - affecting over 700,000 people.