There’s a time and place to preach to the choir, but for skepticism to be truly effective, we need to take our message beyond our own community.
Of course, once we venture outside of our group, we face people who haven’t heard of pareidolia, cold reading, logical fallacies, or even…gasp…James Randi!
On the other side of the coin, there are people who have heard of James Randi, but think he’s a closed-minded cynic, and that his check for one million dollars isn’t real.
According to a report from the U.K. news source Forest of Dean and Wye Valley Review, a local bus stop may be haunted. "Fair enough," I thought upon first reading the headline. "My local bus stop is also haunted, mostly by some guy in an Ed Hardy shirt who always calls me 'Dynamite'." But this article is about another kind of haunting. This article is about a ghost.
Still, it's interesting that these stories count as news. Sure, a ghost, were it proven to be genuine, would be a monumental scientific discovery. It would answer one of humanity's fundamental questions: Is there life after death? And it would raise a host of new questions about the nature of physics, the spirit, and why one of the favorite activities of the disembodied seems to be amateur interior decorating.
I started feeling sick a month ago, now. First it was a sore throat-- always the harbinger of my winter viruses. Then the brain fog that makes me ask myself questions like "Why is 'un-derstand' a word, but 'derstand' isn't?" And finally the muscle weakness and fatigue that sets me on my couch for hours at a time, watching Newhart on loop. It was time to get serious about getting better: it was time to go to the pharmacy.
For most Americans, that means a quick stop for some Sudafed or a longer trip to the doctor for a prescription. For almost 5 million of us, it means stopping by the local drug store for something deemed gentler and more "natural" by the alternative medicine community: homeopathy. So I thought I would experiment a little and try to cure my illness with Coldcalm, a popular homeopathic cold remedy available at my local Rite Aid, and manufactured by Boiron Laboratories, the largest homeopathic peddler in the world. Knowing my symptoms would normally improve in four to seven days, I thought, if I felt better any sooner, I would give some credence to the medicine's potential power. Here's what actually happened:
Yes, after seven days of attempted contact, Boiron finally told me I could have my money back-- but only if I sent them a receipt dated within the last 14 days, and the bar code from the original box. That sounds fair until you consider that homeopathic remedies only seem to "work" when people feel better on their own, and that's often after a week or more has passed since the product was purchased. The company has conveniently picked a tiny window for returns, in which most people not familiar with the homeopathic scam are virtually guaranteed not to come to the same conclusions I did… yet.
Boiron is selling people fake medicine and profiting off their misinformation, knowing that by the time their customers have found out the truth, it will likely be past the chance for a refund on their bogus product. Will you join me and the JREF in telling Boiron to refund any customer who ever bought their products? If you've bought Boiron products and want your money back, "add a reason" when you sign the petition, and say so!
In South Korea, a pastor and his wife are currently in police custody for killing their children, according to a report by CNN. The pastor, Park, and his wife, Cho, were accused of killing their three children by starving them to ward off evil spirits. The three kids, aged nine, seven and three, had been ill. But Park and the wife, who reportedly opened a church in 2009, believed it was a sign of evil spirits. They claimed that the children were possessed by demons. So, they subjected the children to a process of deliverance which eventually led to their death. They cut the children’s hair, starved them from January 24 to February 2, and gave them only water. Pastor Park and his wife tied the children’s arms and legs and beat them several times. The three died the same day, within hours. According to the police, the couple in their statement said they were praying in the hope of resurrecting the children! The police in South Korea are currently investigating the case and plan to prosecute the couple soon.
Political bodies are notoriously unreliable as authorities on scientific controversies. Sometimes they get it right - sometimes they get it horribly wrong. The outcome depends heavily on the people involved (what is their ideology and agenda) and political forces that are putting their meaty thumbs on the scale. But also on which experts are relied upon for information, analysis, and advice.
Politicians are generally not scientists. As with journalists, even the science savvy among them still lack sufficient expertise to formulate a definitive opinion (although that often does not stop them from trying), so they need to consult experts. This can be tricky when experts disagree, in which case (unless a thorough sampling is done) expert advice can be a crapshoot.
