First things first. Take this quiz. It should take you about five minutes. I’ll wait.
Now that we have the quiz out of the way I have to make some assumptions about you before beginning. I’ll assume that you scored pretty high on the quiz. You probably have some kind of science enthusiasm; you might even blog or podcast or comment on science websites frequently. You are most likely college educated, a man between the ages of 18 and 24, and have been to this website before.
In this workshop from The Amaz!ng Meeting 2012, Ray Hyman instructs participants on how to do “psychic” or character readings. They also perform readings on each other. The goal is not to increase the number of cold readers, but to show how easily a cold reading can convince people they have experienced the supernatural.
In the latest installment of our YouTube series The Randi Show, James Randi gives his thoughts on Sylvia Browne's latest "psychic" disaster. Once again, Browne told the parent of a missing child that her child was dead. Once again, Browne was wrong. This time, Browne's false prediciton involved Amanda Berry, whose gruesome kidnapping has made international headlines and put Browne in the spotlight, we hope for the last time.
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.
The deceptive rebranding of aspects of science-based medicine as ”alternative” by naturopaths continues apace (David Gorski) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-deceptive-rebranding-of-aspects-of-science-based-medicine-as-alternative-by-naturopaths-continues-apace/ Naturopaths deceptively redefine parts of conventional medicine as “alternative” and falsely claim them as their special province. A new study claims to show naturopathic care is superior to routine care, but it didn’t really test naturopathy: it only showed the effects of intensive counseling about lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise. Naturopaths are a poor choice to provide such counseling, since their training is steeped in pseudoscience.
Antibiotics for Low Back Pain (Harriet Hall) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/antibiotics-for-low-back-pain/ A new study showed that antibiotics improved chronic back pain in a select group of patients who had MRI findings of bone edema adjacent to a herniated disc. It was good science, well designed, with a plausible rationale; but it would be premature to accept it before the study can be replicated and confirmed, and it mustn’t be extrapolated to back pain patients outside the limited subset that was tested.
