This week’s Insanity: Invitation to a Chickenpox party

One manifestation of the rising tide of the non-scientific anti-vaccine movement has been the arrival of the pox party. The idea is that when somebody has a kid who has chickenpox they hold a party and invite all their friends around so that their kids can catch it and thus get it all over and done with early. … Read more

What Did jesus really look like?

OK, let’s start with the quick short TL:DR; version … anybody who claims that they actually know what Jesus looked like is promoting complete and utter BS. The claim The context here is that I’ve seen a few claims floating about within the media regarding a supposedly “scientific” analysis that has yielded the above picture. … Read more

Why are some inclined to embrace Bullshit as truth?

We live in a world that is awash with rather a lot of pseudoscientific claims that are pure grade one gold plated Bullshit, and so it is worth thinking about why some are very susceptible to such influences and others demonstrate a robust immunity to it all. A fascinating paper that yields some insights has been published within the journal Judgment … Read more

Morality with and without a god

So I have a Morality claim from “TheBlaze” … well yes, identifying that as the source is perhaps sufficient to trigger a “here be some BS” alarm, because taking anything from TheBlaze seriously would perhaps be as viable as using Answers In Genesis as your go-to reference for science. As a bit of background context, TheBlaze was founded by Glenn Beck, a … Read more

UK’s NHS to Blacklist homeopathy .. hopefully.

This has been announced by the Good Thinking Society … Simon Singh and the Good Thinking Society have today welcomed the decision of the Department of Health to consult on adding homeopathic remedies to the NHS ‘Blacklist’.  Following a proposed judicial review by the Good Thinking Society(1), the Department of Health have announced a consultation to … Read more

Dialogue: Faith vs Reason

As a blogger it is perhaps inevitable that I get drawn into discussions on an almost daily basis, and often I learn new things by doing so. One recent example of this concerns an interaction that illustrates the prevailing conflict between reason and faith that can at times manifest. The background context is an article on WND, … Read more