On the first weekend in April, I flew to Minneapolis to participate in Skep Tech, a brand new skeptic conference organized by several student groups at three universities in that area.  This first year event, which was free to all attendees, was a great success from my perspective.  The talks were well attended, interesting topics were discussed and many new skeptical connections were made.  

If you've been paying attention to the conference scene, you may have noticed a huge increase in the number of skepticism oriented conferences in the last few years. This increase is very real, and may well be evidence of skepticism's continued growth. It's getting to the point that some weekends there is more than one choice of event to attend - Skep Tech itself was held the same weekend as NECSS in New York City.

Here is a rundown of the mysterious, the pseudoscientific and the "what-the-heck?" news from the past week courtesy of Doubtful News.  

Let's start with some good news since this last week was pretty darn awful.

People did not feel that a real Noah's Ark was worth funding. 

Forbes magazine gives Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski a whipping by contrasting with another medical center.

Here is a recap of the stories that appeared last week at Science-Based Medicine, a multi-author skeptical blog that separates the science from the woo-woo in medicine.

Eric Merola’s conspiracy-mongering and more of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski’s cancer “success” stories (David Gorski) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/dr-stanislaw-burzynskis-cancer-success-stories-part-2/ Details reveal the fundamental intellectual dishonesty behind the conspiracy mongering of Eric Merola, the director of the two Burzynski movies. He even accused Dr. Gorski of eating puppies! And two more cases being used to “prove” that Burzynski can cure cancer actually prove nothing of the sort.  

Doves, Diplomats, and Diabetes (Harriet Hall) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/doves-diplomats-and-diabetes/ A new book applies evolutionary principles to the study of diabetes, marshals a mountain of evidence, and proposes a new paradigm that appears to resolve existing paradoxes and better explain the disease. Whether his conclusions are correct or not, the author’s methods epitomize the attitudes of a true scientist. He acknowledges that he could have fallen into a thinking trap and asks readers to critique his arguments.  

There is currently a measles epidemic in the UK, most specifically England and Wales. By the late 1990s measles had been reduced to almost zero in England. It was no longer considered endemic, and there were but a few sporadic cases. This was undeniably the result of the MMR (mumps, measles, rubella) vaccine.

Then Andrew Wakefield happened. He published his 1998 Lancet paper laying the foundation for his claim that the MMR vaccine was associated with a form of regressive autism and GI disorder. Since then his research has been thoroughly refuted, his co-authors jumped ship after it was disclosed that Wakefield had undisclosed conflicts of interest, eventually the Lancet withdrew the paper, and Wakefield was struck off (lost his license to practice medicine) due to ethical violations. In short, Wakefield and his research were as thoroughly discredited as it is possible to be.