reviews Archives • Skeptical Science

Many Amazon Reviews are Fake

December 2, 2020September 16, 2020 by Dave

There has been a huge uptick in fake amazon reviews. How can you spot and identify these fraudlent reviews designed to trick and con you?

The Amazonian Book of Mormon Wars

July 23, 2023March 7, 2016 by Dave

The Amazon review system is one that often cries out for parody and humour to be deployed, or perhaps even simply “truth”, and so it should perhaps come as no surprise to learn that a rather heated war has broken out within the reviews of the Book Of Mormon on Amazon. So far, (at time … Read more

Can Review Skeptic help you to spot a fake Hotel Review?

March 31, 2024January 9, 2016 by Dave

I’ve come across a fascinating little site named “Review Skeptic”. There they explain … Review Skeptic is based on research at Cornell University that uses machine learning to identify fake hotel reviews with nearly 90% accuracy. So the idea here is that you can cut and paste any review in and then click “Test It”, and the … Read more

The Lost Island – The hardest place in the world to visit

March 13, 2017July 22, 2015 by Dave

Just a bit of fun today, nothing too serious. North Sentinel Island, is a remote tiny little place out in the Bay of Bengal, covered in forest, and peopled by a tribe who are extremely hostile. Anybody who dares to step on their island is immediately slaughtered, and so the amount of contact they actually … Read more

Wine-tasting … even the supposed experts are fooled.

December 6, 2020June 24, 2013 by Dave

There are many things that quite a lot of people now know are complete nonsense … astrology, homoeopathy psychics, etc… Why? Well because when you test them in a truly double-blind scientific manner you eliminate the normal human bias, and soon discover in a consistent manner that the claim asserted is not true. You will of … Read more

IMDB reviews of “The Ledge”

December 15, 2018July 29, 2011 by Dave

Hopefully most of you within the skeptical/atheist community are aware that Mathew Chapman’s latest movie “The Ledge” (starring Charlie Hunnam, Terrence Howard, Liv Tyler ) is very much one you should check out if you ever get the chance to. The film deals with an intellectual, personal, and ultimately fatal feud between an atheist and an evangelical Christian (least you wonder, the Atheist is the hero here, hence its a movie of interest to us all).

OK, it is just a movie, but the portrayal of an Atheist as the hero in a movie that has an A-list cast is new, and so this is a direct attack upon the public myths regarding non-belief. Will it make a different out there? You bet, I heard an interview in which Matthew Chapman, (the writer and director) recounted the story of a Christian who had a relative that was a non-believer and for that reason alone, had not spoken for many years. Apparently after watching the movie, as the end credits were rolling, she was on the phone to reconcile.