We spend quite a bit of time on critical thinking during the Schol preparation days. This is because of the need – identified by the examiner’s report every year – for candidates to think critically about both the question (just what is the examiner asking me to do?) and their response to it (what, of all […]
Continue readingTag: pseudoscience
a pile of brown stuff
I was eating my muesli & idly flicking through the ‘lifestyle’ insert that comes with the morning paper when I happened on a page of ways to get oneself healthy for summer. Since at the moment my preparation for summer consists of walking the dog every morning & pedalling madly on the exercycle in the […]
Continue readingpseudoscience? bad science, anyway
Here’s an interesting little press release, about a study that purports to show that women find the sound of fast cars (&, by extension, the men driving them) very exciting! Gosh, that’ll push up the sales of luxury cars… (And thanks to Orac, where I originally saw the story.) But does this study really show what’s […]
Continue readingcritical thinking & journalism
This morning’s NZ Herald carried an item on a study into immigrant doctors in NZ practising non-western medicine: how they perceived themselves & their role in patient health, & how their patients saw them. It certainly caught my attention – so much so that I found the original paper on line & looked at that […]
Continue reading‘the demon-haunted world’
Another in the occasional series of ‘what I’m reading’ (actually, there are 3 books on the go at the moment but I’ve only just started the second & I’m still trying to decide whether or not I like the third). This one is The demon-haunted world by the late, great Carl Sagan.
Continue readingmissing fingers & pixie dust
There was an article in the Herald last week (I think) which set my pseudoscience detector ringing… it had a title something like "Pixie dust helps man regrow finger". The article itself gushed on about how this guy had lost part of his finger to a bit of sharp-edged machinery, but the missing bit – […]
Continue readingback to the oxygen pseudoscience
Time, I think, to return to that pseudoscience on oxygen that I introduced to you a while ago. Have you worked out what it was promoting?
Continue readingfish oil & exam results
Last year I put up a couple of posts to do with suggestions that taking fish-oil capsules would enhance exam performance. You might be interested in this latest comment from Ben Goldacre on the issue, following the Durham 'trial' of fish-oil supplements in the UK.
Continue reading(pseudo)science runs amok
Those of you who've come to one of my Scholarship preparation days may have noticed that I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about pseudoscience. It really annoys me when I see science being mis-used to sell a product or promote a particular point of view. A good friend of mine has […]
Continue readingweird & wacky… science?
Now that things are (sort of) winding down for the year, I thought I'd share some gems of pseudoscience with you. This is an ongoing interest of mine & I'm hoping that you'll apply your critical filters to what follows (& I'd be interested in your comments, too!)
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