© Copyright 2012, vLex. All Rights Reserved.
- Language
Contents in vLex United States
Explore vLex
For Professionals
For Partners
Company
Skeptic
Copyright Millennium Press, Inc.
COPYRIGHT ProQuest. All rights reserved
from April 2004
Last Number: October 2010
ISSN 1063-9330
[Content not included in vLex Global Academic]
All the contents
In a study of 2400 women who had an average of 4 mammograms over a 10-year period, the false positive tests led to: * 870 outpatient appointments * 539 diagnostic mammograms * 186 ultrasound examinations * 188 biopsies * 1 hospitalization. [...] that doesn't count the psychological distress. Colonoscopy is considered the "gold standard" because it directly visualizes the entire colon and permits removal of polyps and other suspicious lesions.\n By the 14th screening test, 60% of men and 49%...
First and Second Language Acquisition theory comes under the discipline of Applied Linguistics, where any language other than the native tongue is deemed a "second" or additional language. [...] language software is categorized as a form of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). Independent academic reviewers found various products to be useful for demonstrating grammar and vocabulary building, but criticized them for linguistic errors, culturally inaccurate information, a lack of conv...
What Poe's protagonist has just demonstrated is the fine art of "cold reading," whereby certain cunning rascals are able to apparently know more than their victims might expect, to come up with facts, names, numbers, and other details - even involved scenarios - that would seem to be unavailable by mere guessing. According to ABCNEWS.com:
The 30% figure probably comes from Beecher's 1955 paper1 where he reviewed studies that compared an active treatment to a placebo, and found that on average 35% of patients in the placebo arm reported improvement.
[...] we need to dispel the myth that we are free from this aspect of our nature, because it makes hypocrites of us all when we pretend to stand on moral high ground while committing atrocities on other members of our species.
Don't Throw Out Positive Psychology with the Bathwater
[...] there is a growing body of evidence indicating that pessimists could lead healthier, less stressful, and more successful lives if they incorporated higher levels of optimism.
Christianity and the Southern Cross
I Could Be Wrong About God, Could You?
[...] as modern society requires greater and greater intelligence to negotiate daily living, those at the bottom of the IQ ladder will drop out of the gene pool and the average IQ will rise.
Why? Because emotions almost always trump evidence. [...] understandably, parents of autistic children want to believe that their children are normal.
The Beverly Hills Battle for Evolution (Against Intelligent Design)
Really? Because inquiring minds want to know! Shermer then read a passage from Meyer's new book (Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence of Intelligent Design, HarperOne, 2009, p. 443): The evidence of intelligent design in biology does not prove the God exists (or that a being with all of the attributes of a transcendent God exists), since it is at least logically possible that an immanent (within the universe) intelligence rather than a transcendent intelligence might have designed lif...
Swine Flu Vaccine Fearmongering
This article was originally written in September 2009 prior to the release of the H1N1 vaccine. As we go to press, one out of six Americans has had H1N1 flu and about 10,000 have died. After the first two months of vaccine use and 46.2 million doses, the rate of Guillain-Barré syndrome in vaccine recipients was lower than expected baseline rates, and the vaccine had not been found to cause any serious adverse event.
[...] Skeptic Dictionary author Robert Todd Carroll attributes the prevalence of the belief that ghosts communicate through tape recorders, radios, and televisions to the 2005 movie White Noise. Science writer Chris Mooney complained that television programs with supernatural themes "shill for religion and the paranormal," while science journalist Matt Nisbet argued that science fiction and fantasy films "attack reason, sell transcendental fantasies, and undermine appreciation for science an...
[...] the hoaxing argument is easily challenged using Freeman's own unpublished interviews with the Samoan woman on whose testimony Freeman so heavily relied. According to Freeman, Mead believed these innocent lies as the truth and published them in her classic 1928 book Coming of Age in Samoa, never realizing her error.
Dolphins have pushed human castaways toward boats or islands.\n There is every chance that intelligent aliens will understand this concept, even if they find "altruism" incomprehensible. Because of this, let me humbly suggest that a fair and open approach based on cautious quid pro quo should be our central theme as we take measured steps toward First Contact, while all the time remembering that we are new and small and weak in a vast universe that seems mysterious - especially in its chilli...
The Top Ten Myths of Popular Psychology
[...] losing far less than 90% of the brain to accident or disease almost always has catastrophic consequences.4 Likewise, electrical stimulation of sites in the brain during neurosurgery has failed to uncover any "silent areas." [...] criminals acquitted on the basis of an insanity verdict typically spend at least as long in an institution (such as a psychiatric hospital) as criminals who are convicted.71 How did these misperceptions of the insanity defense arise?
The DSM jettisoned the flawed Freudian theory that held it together after the 2nd edition, but today it is just a big catalogue of symptom lists. Because of this purely descriptive, medicalized approach untied to verifiable pathology, if I as a doctor want to see bipolar disorder as irritability and daily mood swings (as many do), than that to me is being "bipolar."
[...] the combinatorial number of combinations of neurons that should have been evaluated to construct "the optimal brain" was more than counterbalanced by the combinatorial speed of accumulation of information. [...] the puzzle requiring an explanation was not how the mind evolved over the short period of four billion years, but just the opposite - why life forms as complicated as us, or even much more complicated, "more optimal," did not evolve all over the universe (and maybe they have an...
[...] Dewey has several books to his credit, including Red Hot Cold Readings: [...] many magicians make a point of informing their authence that they are performing illusions.
[...] the sample returned was encouraging: of the 227 completed surveys, 97% of the respondents are men; 25% are under 30 and 25% are 55 and older, with a median age of 45; 63% are college graduates; 65% are married or living with a partner; 4% are gay/bisexual; 80% are white; 20% live outside of the U.S.; 33% live in cities with a population over one million; and 35% listed "none" as their religious preference. [...] a 2005 Gallup Poll (http://www.gallup.com/poll/16915/Three-FourAmericans-B...
Levitt was best known for his relentless defense of science, particularly against those in the academy - generally labeled as social constructivists, deconstructionists, or postmodernists - who tended to lump science in with other cultural traditions as "just another way of knowing" that is no better than any other tradition, and thereby reduce the scientific enterprise to little more than culturally-determined guess work at best and hegemonic power mongering at worst. In the pages of Skepti...
Science: A Four Hundred Page Hissy-Fit
The enormous technological ingenuity of China in the first millennium CE is sketchily alluded to, but without any clear idea of how China may have conceptualized the principles that its technology implemented. [...] the mathematical learning of Chinese adepts - deeper and more incisive than is generally recognized - is simply ignored.
[...] Simons poses a question to himself - and to Darwin - as to how much the scientist's mental powers contributed to conceiving evolution, as opposed to travel itself catalyzing the conceptual leap. [...] Simons reminds us that it was Fitzroy who equipped the Beagle with modern scientific equipment and had sought a scientific person to accompany him.
Philosophical Aspects of the Christian Right's Crusade Against Science, by James H. Fetzer, Open Court, 2007. Fetzer seems certain that he is logically entitled to beliefs that support the legalization of a wide variety of practices including abortion, stemcell research, cloning, prostitution, potsmoking, and flag-burning. In his book The Science of Good and Evil he suggests that an innate moral sense evolved in humans because it offered a survival advantage.
If there was one person in the world associated with no-nonsense critical thinking, surely it was Conan Doyle. Quite a change for a nine-year-old girl! ELSIE WRIGHT Elsie was tall, with beautiful flowing hair, a wide smile, and a great sense of style. On that particular day, however, as water dripped from Frances' black woollen stockings onto her expensive leather shoes, her mother completely lost her temper.