Skeptic

from the *you're-not-anti-establishment-if-you're-pro-authoritarian* dept

Web Archive link because I don’t want to support anyone hosting that vile stuff.

A good dissection of bullshit "science" about vaccines - this dissection also highlights good general points to think about when applying critical thinking to any such out of left field "scientific" claims on the internet or those blathering dolts on TV news segments.

I haven't kept up lately, so this whole thing was news to me. I used to support CFI, but not anymore unless there is a major change.

One question is: can you stop your friend believing these conspiracy theories? Regrettably, almost certainly not, at least not without a huge investment of time and patience. People are free to think whatever they want and some of us put that freedom to the weirdest uses. At least we can be thankful the conspiracies your friend has latched on to are about objects in the sky and not, say, which reptilian species is secretly controlling things.

What if the drones are just drones?

It's going to come as such a shock to Ray Kurzweil when he dies.

If you've been following the politics of the pandemic response, you can pretty much predict the sorts of conclusions the committee's majority wanted to reach: Masks were useless, the vaccines weren't properly tested for safety, and any restrictions meant to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2 were ill-informed, etc. At the same time, some efforts pursued during the Trump administration, such as the Operation Warp Speed development of vaccines or the travel restrictions he put in place, are singled out for praise.

Staff Pick Comment:

So when it comes to Pycnogenol, I wouldn’t recommend it as a daily or routine supplement, but I wouldn’t dismiss it if someone wanted to use it for one of the more evidence-backed reasons for use. Hopefully more trials will be conducted to better establish its place in therapy.

Of all the people on the internet pretending to be geniuses, none are more aggravating than the Weinstein brothers. You have Bret, a fake biologist who tells everyone he deserves a Nobel prize for no reason, and really just spreads misinformation about biomedical topics on the internet which get people killed. Then you have Eric, a fake physicist who tells everyone he deserves a Nobel prize for no reason, and really just spreads anti-establishment tripe all over the internet that degrades public perception of academia and the scientific community. Basically, these guys are gigantic assholes. But they've managed to convince so many people that they're brilliant renegades who have been shunned by the establishment, because their truth is just too hot to handle. How are they able to do this, and can their fans be shown what massive frauds they really are? Let's take a crack at it!

Diary note: it may seem a while off, but the end of the world is still scheduled for 2030, precise date TBC. After once suggesting that nameless devastation could be upon us in 2012, the evergreen eschatologist Graham Hancock subsequently updated his advice to a comet, now six years off. Or thereabouts. MailOnline, which has been exhuming an ancient Hancock text, reminds readers of his “dire warning for our age”.

But the marker is now one of at least 15 that say, without hesitation, that aliens have come to visit Earth.

A long conversation with one of the best people to fight the battle against archaeological pseudoscience on the internet. If you have not seen Milo's epic critical takedown of Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse, I highly recommend checking it out:

It's sad to see the Bowery King mystery mongering.

Come on, Keanu. Not you.

Get ready for another 8 hours of speculative bullshit. This time with Keanu Reeves for some reason.

"Shaken baby syndrome" was a fad medical diagnosis in the 80's and 90's that has led to many miscarriages of justice (e.g. Sally Clark). It has subsequently been widely discredited by most of the Medical community, but that won't stop some prosecuters...

There is an Ancient Aliens game. It's chock full of kooky conspiracies for us to fact check and debunk, plus we get to be hypnotised by Giorgio and turned into an alien. Who could say no to that?

Looking forward to the people coming in to tell us that Adam Conover is annoying.

What Luis Elizondo got very wrong about the UFO videos in his book "Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs"

This is a well produced series. I'm tangentially professionally exposed to the talc issue so I'm aware of a lot of these problems.

In a May 2000 essay published on his website, Hancock writes: “I have consistently argued that the Americas were inhabited in prehistoric times by a variety of ethnic groups – Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid … Such ideas have caused deep offense to some American Indians, who have long claimed to be the only ‘native’ Americans.”

This is from 2021, but it was news to me and yeah, we all know that show is nuts, but to have it all laid out in one place is pretty amazing.

Steven Pinker explains the cognitive biases we all suffer from and how they can short-circuit rational thinking and lead us into believing stupid things. Skip to 12:15 to bypass the preamble.

Milo Rossi, aka Miniminuteman, a YouTuber with an archaeology degree did a multi-part deep dive into exactly all of the things Graham Hancock got wrong or just plain lied about and I highly recommend it:

Journalism/Media - https://www.cjr.org/

(USA)

Was Roger Penrose not completely insane when he proposed his Orch OR theory of the mind? Still doesn't explain the hard problem of consciousness, but a step closer?

The new norms reframe the Catholic Church’s evaluation process by essentially taking off the table whether church authorities will declare a particular vision, stigmata or other seemingly divinely inspired event supernatural.

Excellent essay from Coyne and Maroja that picks apart six widespread examples of biology being corrupted by (often well-intentioned) ideology.

This is a super long debunking video, over 90 minutes, but Miniminuteman is always fun.

Unsurprisingly, these 'mystery walls,' which have been attributed to everything from lost races to giants to extraterrestrials, were most likely built by European settlers.

Brilliant mind. I was lucky enough to meet him at an invited lecture once and he was nice enough to sign Freedom Evolves for me.