Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
I’ve previously written a few postings on this topic. Back in May I was writing about the censorship of press releases at the US Department of the Interior (a study highlighted an increasing risk of global flooding, but the press release purged all references to the cause being Climate change). A month later evidence was … Read more
A group of researchers from Yale University have published a working paper that discusses two studies that demonstrate that some people have a tendency to be far more prone to an acceptance of Fake News than others. It is entitled “Reduced Analytic and Actively Open-Minded Thinking Help to Explain the Link between Belief in Fake … Read more
Looking back over deep time, we know that periods of glaciation come and go in regular pulses and that there have been variations in climate. It has been clear for some time that there exists a natural variation that is driving this. What is going on, why is it like this? Milankovitch Cycles The Serbian … Read more
Wikipedia articles contain references that enables fact checking. This is the backbone that makes Wikipedia a reliable source and not simply an authority telling you what is correct. Verifiability matters … In Wikipedia, verifiability means that other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source. Wikipedia does not publish … Read more
Yes, you read that correctly, somebody actually ran a conference in the UK dedicated to the idea of a flat earth. For them I guess Terry Pratchett’s discworld is an encyclopaedia of facts. Michael Marchall, the project director of the Good Thinking Society, decided to take a hit for the team. He signed up and then went … Read more
A chap called Bill Dunn has written an essay that has attracted a bit of attention. It has been published within the Catholic Transcript, a magazine of the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut. When I say “attention”, what I actually mean is that it popped up in my Google news feed so it perhaps implies a sufficient … Read more