Dalai Lama: Savior, or Selfish Jerk?

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Brian Dunning

So this week, the London bureau of CNN reported:

The Dalai Lama refused to answer a question Monday about whether Tibetan monks should stop setting themselves on fire to protest China’s occupation of Tibet.

“No answer,” he said, saying it was a sensitive political question and that he had retired from politics.

What’s going on is that Tibetan Buddhist monks have been killing themselves via self-imolation, setting themselves on fire. It’s about the most horrific way to die imaginable.

The Dalai Lama — who has maintained his headquarters in India ever since the 1959 escape from Chinese forces in Tibet — is today basically a fundraiser. He is, in fact, probably the most successful individual fundraiser in the world. His is the rallying cry of freeing Tibet from Chinese occupation… so westerners seem to think. Continue reading →

Posted in Events, TV & Media | Tagged , , , , , | 50 Comments

Skeptoid T-Shirt Contest

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Brian Dunning

Skeptoid needs new T-shirts.

Although I’m really happy with those that we already have, we need to expand the collection into designs that are more commercial, and that people will actually want to wear around in public and look sharp doing so.

And so, we’re going to have a design contest! And since design talent is valuable, I’m offering a cash prize plus goodies to the winner, and goodies for three more runners-up:

GRAND PRIZE: Your shirt will be selected for print. $100 cash. An autographed Skeptoid book of your choice, a Here Be Dragons DVD, and a custom voice recording from Brian Dunning of the content of your choosing. And some shirts, of course.

First three runners-up: An autographed Skeptoid book of your choice, a Here Be Dragons DVD, and a custom voice recording from Brian Dunning of the content of your choosing. Continue reading →

Posted in Events, Skeptoid Podcast | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Hypersonic HTV-2 bails at Mach 20

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Brian Dunning

HTV-2 computer rendering. Credit: DARPA

Following a seven-month scientific investigation, DARPA has released the cause of the early termination of the Mach 20 flight of the HTV-2 hypersonic flight last August.

The HTV-2 is an unpowered glide test vehicle, accelerated to Mach 20 (21,000 kph, 13,000 mph) atop a Minotaur IV rocket, and released at a classified altitude to re-enter the atmosphere and make a controlled hypersonic glide. A lot about how it works is classified, but it does have maneuvering capability at that speed.

During the flight, the vehicle’s carbon skin began to peel. That resulted in an irregular surface, which caused shockwaves. Shockwaves are like hammers beating on an aircraft, and these disturbed the vehicle’s attitude. It was able to recover and continued flying, but as the peeling increased, the shockwaves eventually produced attitude disturbances 100 times greater than the vehicle was designed to withstand. At this point the flight was aborted and the vehicle was commanded to crash straight down into the Pacific Ocean.

But it’s not all bad news. This data is exactly what we needed to get, and pushing it all the way to failure gives the broadest possible data. These vehicles are designed as one-way flights into the ocean anyway, and are not intended to be recovered, so there was no real loss.

Next stop? Better materials, and better control systems.

Posted in Cool Stuff, Events, Science, Space, Technology | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Skeptoid Dramatic Pause Study

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Brian Dunning

Click for full size

So it’s one of my little catch phrases on the podcast. A lot of times I’ll close an episode with “Whenever you see [some silly claim], you should always… [dramatic pause] be skeptical.”

Well I guess I do it often enough, because one listener (I won’t name him here, but it’s Al Dumbleton) actually went to the trouble to log all of these, and time the length of my dramatic pause. For your convenience and reference, he also did a linear regression to find the trend. And the trend is clear: the longer I do the show, the longer the dramatic pause gets. Continue reading →

Posted in Skeptoid Podcast | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Pseudoscience of Neuroscience in the Media

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Katheryn Rivas

The New York Times and many other respected, well-known newspapers seem to have an unending love affair with the fMRI machine and what it can supposedly tell us about who we are. In the past two weeks alone, we were blessed with the following gems—“The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction” and “The Brain on Love,” both of which try to explain complex human phenomena, like the pleasure of reading or the feeling of being in love, using brain scans. Now don’t get me wrong. Neuroscience is indeed a fascinating field that has and will help tremendously in discovering how the brain works and the reasons which cause it to malfunction. The brain has historically been a mystery to scientists, so to knock neuroscience as a legitimate field is not at all what I’m trying to do. Continue reading →

Posted in Pseudoscience, TV & Media | Tagged | 4 Comments

Pacific Flyer lets me down

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Brian Dunning

I am a fan of, and happy subscriber to, Pacific Flyer magazine. Anyone who loves aviation should be. Pilots are a conservative bunch, and occasionally Pacific Flyer will veer toward anti-government conspiracy mongering; but I forgive them that since the info on classic planes, air shows, aviation news, and current events is the best available.

But in their March 2012 issue, I had to write in about a particular article. It was a very positive review of a book, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen. I haven’t read it, and don’t intend to; you’ll see why in a moment. Sadly, I came across the following in the review: Continue reading →

Posted in Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, Urban Legends | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

More Amelia Earhart Nonsense

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Brian Dunning

As I went into great detail in my Skeptoid episode about the fate of Amelia Earhart, she and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared in 1937 off Howland Island in the south Pacific when they ran out of fuel in the immediate vicinity of their destination. However, in today’s news, it is being widely reported that an expedition is underway to pursue new evidence via expensive underwater searches, that Earhart ended up instead as a castaway on distant Nikumaroro Island (then called Gardner Island). Money is indeed being spent on this expedition, apparently by the Discovery Channel, but that is where the fact ends. This alternate explanation for Earhart’s fate is almost certainly completely false, and exists only for the purpose of sensationalism at the expense of public intellect. Continue reading →

Posted in Events, TV & Media, Urban Legends | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

End of the World Pt 3: Asteroids

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Cath Murphy

For reasons best known to the race of space creatures who pick which films to greenlight, 1998 was the year a meteor was supposed to hit the Earth and destroy all life upon it. In the end, Tea Leonie and Bruce Willis both made noble sacrifices in Deep Impact and Armageddon but the only real damage caused by these films was to artistic integrity and, judging by his pained expression, Robert Duvall’s sense of self worth.

Since then, it’s all gone quiet on the subject of asteroids, at least in a cultural sense. We absorbed the impact of the message – according to Hollywood should a big one come along, it’s adios amigos to anything larger than an earwig – no point digging yourself a hole, or heading for higher ground. We’re talking mass extinction here and the reduction of civilization to a collection of archeological finds a billion years from now, when the octopuses have evolved lungs and the necessary grip to wield a shovel.

Or are we? Putting movie wisdom aside for a moment, what could we expect if said collision did occur?

Continue reading →

Posted in Science, Space | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Room 237

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Craig Good

A movie review on a skeptical blog? Indulge me. I think this film will be of interest to anybody fascinated with how the human mind makes connections and so often reaches the conclusions it wants. We just screened this Sundance hit at work and, while it could use (and may still get) a little trimming, it’s very entertaining and interesting.

In Room 237 Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror masterpiece The Shining serves as a kind of Rorschach Test for a few people obsessed with analyzing the film. Cleverly using mostly clips from Kubrick films as visuals each subject takes us on a tour of his or her pet theory. I don’t want to include any spoilers here, so let’s just say that pareidolia, confirmation bias, and numerology lead these people deep, very deep, down several divergent rabbit holes.

It may be worth noting that Lee Unkrich, who has been obsessed with this movie since the age of twelve, and who has this terrific blog about it, spent days at the Kubrick Archives in London and reports that numerology was deliberately put into the movie. People see patterns and symbols in the everyday world. Just imagine what some of them might find in a work of art designed to resonate with them.

The director and producer report that they got picked up for distribution, so keep an eye out for it. Especially if you’re also a fan of The Shining.

Posted in Conspiracy Theories, TV & Media, Urban Legends | Leave a comment

Naturopath Licensing in California

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Brian Dunning

In 14 US states, quacks are empowered to govern their competitors.

The State of California has a Naturopathic Medicine Committee that licenses naturopaths. This is a terrible idea, because it wrongly implies to consumers that some naturopaths are better able to treat illness than others.

In fact, there is not a single naturopathic treatment that has passed medical scrutiny. If it had, it would be called medicine and would be taught in medical school. Basic nutritional advice, like eat well and get exercise, is valid; but that’s not what naturopathy is. According to its practitioners, naturopathy is:

…based on a belief in vitalism, which posits that a special energy called vital energy or vital force guides bodily processes such as metabolism, reproduction, growth, and adaptation.

And as far as its efficacy? The American Cancer Society states:

Available scientific evidence does not support claims that naturopathic medicine can cure cancer or any other disease.

Nevertheless, California legitimizes it by licensure.  Continue reading →

Posted in Alternative Medicine, Education, Pseudoscience | Tagged , | 9 Comments