Since over at SciBlogs many of us are blogging about vaccination, I thought I’d take the opportunity to re-post something I wrote earlier this year, concerning the promotion of homeopathic ‘vaccines’ for a range of serious illnesses. Over on Code for Life, Grant’s put up some posts concerning homeopathy (here & here, for example). He’s also […]
Continue readingOrac often talks about ‘crank magnetism’ – the tendency for people who believe strange stuff in one area, to be attracted to other areas of oddness as well. (As far as I can tell, the terms was originally formulated on the denialism blog.) Anyway, having an hypothesis (the above crank magnetism) one must test it – […]
Continue readingFrom the UK’s Telegraph (& via the NZ Herald) comes the attention-grabbing headline: ‘Finding a bargain feels as good as sex‘. Well, I’m a fan of a good bargain (mmmm, coats…) so of course I read on. And was, as usual with such headlines, disappointed.
Continue readingOne of my readers has forwarded an e-mail purporting to warn of the dangers of so-called aspartame poisoning. This particular e-mail has been circulating since at least 1998 & has been eviscerated on sites such as the hoax-busting Snopes.com, but I thought I might address some of its wilder claims here anyway (I feel like […]
Continue readingI was reading a couple about ‘raw foods’ today. This is ‘raw foods’ as in ‘foods that you don’t heat above 40oC in processing them.’ It’s also as in, a vegetarian diet. (I do rather enjoy vegetarian food & when we had a French exchange student staying with us that was pretty much all we […]
Continue readingI’m catching up on my reading of other people’s blogs, so here are some interesting posts to share with you. At Laelaps Brian Switek has commented on the latest fossil hominin find. Dubbed ‘Kadanuumuu’ (or ‘Big Man’), this is a partial Australopithecus afarensis skeleton.Kadanuumuu was much larger than the more familiar (& more recent) ‘Lucy’, & because […]
Continue readingThis one struck a chord with me – it highlights the ‘Intelligent Design’ (cdesign proponentsists) tactics during in the Dover trial, and also various anti-vaccination shenanigans such as the use of celebrity endorsements. Well, any anti-science shenanigans, actually… From Tree Lobsters, via the Millenium Project.
Continue readingIt’s ‘science fair’ time of year again & I’ve volunteered to be a judge at the local fair. I’ve always enjoyed science fairs, starting from way back when my siblings & I regularly entered in the Hawkes Bay event. It’s great meeting a whole bunch of up-&-coming young scientists, & they do some wonderful projects. […]
Continue readingThe idea for this post comes via the team at the most excellent Silly Beliefs blog: Stuff (repository of news & what looks like an awful lot of other stuff) reported about a Massey University research project. The Stuff report kicks off by saying Spirits are increasingly making their presence felt in New Zealand, spurred on by celebrity […]
Continue readingFrom today’s Royal Society compendium of science-related headlines comes this newsflash: Evangelists claim Noah’s Ark discovery on Turkish mountain: Archaeologists have recovered 4,800-year-old pieces of wood from a structure 4,000 metres up Mount Ararat. Well. Claims like this crop up fairly regularly, & then disappear without trace. And I have to say, I’m rather underwhelmed by this one, as […]
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