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I Watched a Week’s Worth of RFK Jr.’s Fear-Inducing “TV Channel”

7 Jul 2023

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. throws his hat in the latest American presidential race, it would be easy to confine his bad ideas to the label “anti-vaccine.” He is, after all, the founder and chairman...

Outfoxed!

26 Apr 2023

Tucker Carlson, the FOX Network’s brightest star shines no more. He and the network have “agreed to part ways” which is an obfuscating way of saying he was fired. Why should I care? Because Carlson...

Pseudoscience's Constant Appeal in the Shadow of Beautiful Science

10 Mar 2023

Fifty years ago, polymath Jacob Bronowski, creator of the TV series The Ascent of Man, and author of the book by the same title wrote:

One of Last Century’s Most Influential Social Science Studies Is Pretty Bad

17 Feb 2023

We love putting names to things, especially if those names are scientific. Just look at the variety of phenomena people love to refer to as the Dunning-Kruger effect: the idea that other people ...

Let’s Hear It for the Voices of Reason

8 Apr 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a golden opportunity for schemers, contrarians and conspiracy theorists to use public distress and thirst for knowledge to widen their reach. It is easy to get lost...

Here's Jeopardy!

10 Nov 2020

In many households, 7:00 pm is time for Jeopardy (although these days, with video recording and repeats on Netflix, any time can be Jeopardy time). For thirty-seven years many of us have invited...

Conclusions Change as Evidence Accumulates

1 Apr 2020

I remember once giving a talk on vitamins and having someone come up to me after with a comment along the lines of “I was in your class years ago and you were talking about the benefits of vitamin...

The Goop Lab Experiments With Viewers’ Credulity

24 Jan 2020

There is a lot of schadenfreude at the sight of Gwyneth Paltrow, high priestess of aspirational brand Goop, sadly eating a reconstituted soup that looks like it was partly digested and regurgitated...

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