WHEREFORE the 28th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle was convened on February 16, 2006, with the customary formalities...
ALL RISE!
Hear ye, hear ye! This court is now in session, the Reasonable Judge Eh Nonymous presiding. All ye who have business before this Skeptical court, draw near.
Good day to you, counselors. Let me remind everyone that this is not a general subject matter political/social/legal blogfests, where any issue whatsoever is ripe for decision. Appropriate topics are those issues where testable data can produce reasoned conclusions.
Let us have a moment of respect, if we can, for
the Amazing Randi, who at last word was recovering from surgery after a bypass operation.
We have some fascinating topics on today’s schedule, including holistic treatments for dogs, a submission on dowsing, and a great many posts relating to the War On Vaccination. And let me note, while this Court is necessarily neutral in the conflict over Church & State, those who appear before it are not required to be, and generally feel that where religion seeks the privileged status of overruling scientific proof in matters of objective fact, it is out of order.
Time for the first matter on the docket. I understand we have some unopposed motions which shouldn’t take long.
COMES NOW Martin of Salto Sobrius with a brief piece on
Shampoo pseudoscience - because you can't have too much scientifesque nonsense on a bottle of hair cleaning product.
We are particularly impressed by this post, which involves dog care and the lengths gullible owners may go to in an effort to remedy their dogs’ medical conditions. In
Just Think from Christie Keith at Dogged Blog, she cheerfully opens herself to criticism for taking her dog in for acupuncture, but waxes wroth at sloppy thinking and unsafe treatment of worms.
EoR at Second Sight responds to dowsing claims in
Is that a dowsing stick in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me? Dowsing? I didn't realize anyone still supported that. I can't recall the last time we had mention of dowsing in this Court.
This next one should be just a formality. It’s been resolved, and only requires formal approval. In the matter of a 24 year-old public affairs officer versus NASA, as recorded by Phil Plait at his
Bad Astronomy blog, to summarize: the saga began with
outrage over attacks on science at NASA, which included blocking of a complaining scientist from speaking with the press. Then events developed rapidly, as he chronicled at
The outrage grows, followed by the
resignation of the official after a prevarication was discovered in his resume, as published by
Scientific Activist blogger Nick Anthis. Phil continued his coverage at
Deutsch, noch einmal and
People at NASA must be breathing a sigh of relief.
Pharma Bawd moves for summary judgment against Choraphor, a "miracle drug" for herpes which appears to be... copper sulphate, at a hefty markup. The post also includes seller's assertion of lots of confirmation-bias testimonials, and a satisfied-user report from a naturopath. Read all the fun at
Moment of Science: Miracle Cure for Herpes.
In the case of Anti-Vaccination Exaggeration vs. Serious Thinking. Kevin Leitch's complaint is filed at
Peter Fletcher, Melanie Phillips, and the Daily Mail - a Cracked Facade, regarding a doctor whose pronouncements might best be taken with a small dose of NaCl.
Dad of Cameron investigates a study in Arizona of autistic children and chelation therapy, and his summary conclusions (based on
extensive e-mails) are provided in
Is It Science? - a post which receives
amicus support from Orac.
Further anti-vaccination claims are debunked by tacit at
credulity, autism, and vaccination information...oh yeah, and space aliens too.
Clark Bartram at Unintelligent Design has a post on how chiropractic philosophy is often anti-vaccination.
See quacks on vaccs.... Not content with that, he selects
more chiropractic quotes from the Chiroweb forum "Ask a Doctor of Chiropractic," and critiques them.
Two parties wish to draw attention to databases as sources for autism data to support anti-vaccination claims – and to point out that the data is unreliable or should not be used that way. Orac, formerly of the law firm of Orac Knows Blog & Spot, Attorneys at Law, now associated with the Science Blogs firm, see
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence, notes the presence of dubious content in the vaccine-autism link database at
How vaccine litigation distorts the contents of the VAERS database. Meanwhile, Interverbal discusses the implications of the
misuse of quarterly reports of California’s Department of Developmental Services to calculate the incidence of autism. (Warning: extremely well-sourced and detailed.) The Court finds this expert testimony extremely helpful in analyzing what would otherwise be well beyond its lay familiarity with the issues involved.
Aetiology (also a Science Blogs production) has Tara Smith's contribution to the growing body of evidence that Tom Bethell's Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, albeit magnificently partisan, falls down a bit on the science, evidence, and logic side of things.
HIV denial in the Politically Incorrect Guide to Science.
At Unintelligent Design, Clark Bartram registers an objection to the tax dollars earmarked for the study of complementary medicine at NIH's NCCAM in
Your Tax Dollars At Work, while Abel Farmboy at Terra Sigillata presents (
Another Botanical Clinical Trial) on the saw palmetto study (no efficacy, by the way):
Yet another well-designed double-blind, placebo-controlled trial has been doomed to failure by inadequate chemical characteriztion of the study material.
In
the Great Asteroid Mining Con Ronald Brak files an affidavit in opposition to what he sees as dubious numbers in the enthusiastic figures used by supporters of the pie-in-the-sky venture.
Lord Runolfr wishes to put on the record his misgivings about
a new lie detector based on layered voice analysis to determine evil intent based on emotional state. Not "necessarily a bad idea if it works" but, he asks, what's the baseline? Do they have any well-designed performance tests?
Austin Cline at the Agnosticism/Atheism blog on About appeals from a ruling by a non-skeptic, Lorraine Daston, who writes in Social Research that skepticism is inhuman, and whiffs of paranoia. At
skepticism and inhumanity Cline counters that the alternative to skepticism of empirical claims (as opposed to cynical distrust of others' honesty) is gullibility and foolishness.
Mark at Be Lambic or Green propounds the opinion in
Science or a Crisis of Faith that the Intelligent Design movement, by choosing to subvert science and science education, is demonstrating weakness rather than strength of faith.
Counselors, I want to thank you all for arguing your cases ably and with good humor. And speaking of humor, did you hear the new one that runs,
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because I recently came across some funny versions from Skeptico, poking fun at both skeptics and psychics/ quacks/ unskeptics.
I will take judicial notice of the fact that the next Skeptics' Circle will be hosted at
The Huge Entity on March 2nd - perhaps it'll be the Largest Circle yet.
