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Pareidolia Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Laboratory pareidolia

Pareidolia is everywhere, as you know. We see Jesus or Mary on trees, pieces of toast, and on sheet metal. Finally, though, through the wonder of science, we finally see some Jesus pareidolia in a molecular biology lab! Are you ready for Jesus on a polyacrylimide gel used to separate proteins? I consider it a […]

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Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

More distortion of peer-reviewed data by HIV/AIDS “dissidents”

I knew there was a reason that I don’t often blog about politics, and yesterday reminded me of it. Maybe I should have just launched another enthusiastic debunking of the distortions and outright false information put out by antivaccination advocates like Dawn Winkler. Instead, I thought it might be educational to return to a topic […]

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Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Here’s one not to miss: Richard Dawkins on the Colbert Report

Thanks to Norm, I recently found out that Richard Dawkins now has a web page (the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science). Certainly, any self-respecting skeptic would have to add that one to his sidebar, which I’ve now done. Even though I don’t always agree with the vociferousness of some of Dawkin’s views, he […]

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Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Need some inspiration to get fired up about science?

Listen to this episode of Point of Inquiry. It includes an interview with Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan’s widow, who cowrote Cosmos and Contact. That’s good enough (although the sound quality of her connection is not so good), but what will really get you fired up is the last half of the podcast contains last public […]

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Medicine Politics Science

It’s a start

It may not seem like much when it comes to dealing with animal rights “activists” who cross the line into vandalism, harassment, and intimidation, but it’s a start: Three animal rights activists who organized a campaign to harass employees and clients of a New Jersey research lab were sen tenced to prison yesterday by a […]