I like this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/oct/11/placebos-reiki-cancer-patients-harm

Its basically a (link to a) clinical study that shows that Reiki energy healing has real benefits for cancer patients… it just doesn’t work any better than having some totally untrained person wave their hands around and go “Ohm.”  The author (of the Guardian article, not the study) concludes that, if you’re going to give them a placebo and some soothing human contact, you might as well give them a decent back-rub at the same time.  This should be completely obvious, yet apparently wasn’t to the authors of the original study.  *sigh*

I never, ever, thought I’d say this, but:

This is fanfiction, about Harry Potter, and its really, really good.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality.

Yeah.  I didn’t believe it either.  But its true.  Way, _way_ better than Rowling’s version, to my mind.

We knew his science was bad, but in case you were wondering _why_ he was acting like such a tool, here’s an article explaining how Andrew Wakefield was planning on making money out of encouraging parents to make their kids vulnerable to disease.

Scum.

I love homeopathy; if they weren’t so utterly ridiculous, who would I make fun of?

Oh right; scientologists. Still, homeopathy is fun!

(Click image for the comics homepage, which fairly reliably amuses me…)

Quick post: I was mailing these to Coz and decided I’d share a bit more widely.  Two sites which I’ve only just started following, both of which claim to check politicians on both sides of the fence (and off in the back paddock) purely on their facts.  Or, they being politicians, on their distorted fabrications masquerading as facts.

FactCheck.org

Politifact.com

Since I’ve just found these and started watching them, I’m still maintaining a certain degree of skepticism about _their_ facts, but I’d love feedback on what anyone knows about either site, or if you’ve got other favorite sites for checking peoples numbers.  (I was primarily thinking about politicians as the obvious targets, but others is cool too…)

Interesting article in NPR - if you can get past the fact that its a radio transcript, and they use the phrase “you know” more often than the judges at a valley girl competition - where they discuss the human tendency to hold onto belief more strongly in the face of contradictory facts.  I’ve long believed it to be true myself (in spite of a lack of any formal evidence, I might add) and it has interesting implications on the skeptical movement.  I _don’t_ think that it reinforces the idea (which I’ve heard some people propose, but don’t believe myself) that skeptic education programs are useless, because they’ll never convince the believers.  What I do think it means is that, if you’re trying to get the facts out there, your target audience is not the believers; its the non-believers (who could use some reinforcement) and the undecided.  Answering the believers to their faces _is_ mostly useless (though sometimes fun.)  Marketing that information flow so that it gets to the right people is something that I think the skepticism movement has done inconsistently at best.

It also means we need to make sure we check our facts ourselves, to keep from falling into the same trap.  Which I think we generally do to a reasonable extent, but: Forever Vigilance!

Found via Slashdot, a BBC article explains how North Korea is light years ahead of the West in fruit juice technology:

The official news agency declared they have developed a super drink that has “no side effects”, “helps improve mental and retentive faculties by multiplying brain cells”, and prevents “geriatric diseases”.

Sounds like North Korea with soon be a nation of nuclear-capable immortals with perfect skin–living in abject poverty.

“Fruit juice”, indeed.

Found a link on Slashdot to a story on Ars Technica concerning people who refuse to believe the findings of science. From the article:

It’s hardly a secret that large segments of the population choose not to accept scientific data because it conflicts with their predefined beliefs: economic, political, religious, or otherwise. But many studies have indicated that these same people aren’t happy with viewing themselves as anti-science, which can create a state of cognitive dissonance. That has left psychologists pondering the methods that these people use to rationalize the conflict.

A study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology takes a look at one of these methods, which the authors term “scientific impotence”—the decision that science can’t actually address the issue at hand properly. It finds evidence that not only supports the scientific impotence model, but suggests that it could be contagious. Once a subject has decided that a given topic is off limits to science, they tend to start applying the same logic to other issues.

Would a study find that the inverse is true: the more you accept the findings of science, the more you apply the cold scalpel of reason to all kinds of beliefs? I felt that’s the case in my own experience.