I saw this headline in my Google News feed this morning: “Acupuncture Reduces Pain in Lung Cancer Patients – New Findings” [1]. The article was posted on a credulous site that promotes acupuncture, a practice that has never been proven to yield any benefit over the placebo effect. So I […]
Monthly Archives: August 2013
7 posts
This morning, I was sent a direct notice on Twitter indicating that something called “FoodIDTheft” had aggregated one of my tweets into some automated news feed. I was intrigued – since “FoodIDTheft” sounded like an inflammatory name intended to convey that this site helps people keep their food’s identity from […]
The Discovery Institute posted a long and painful defense of Intelligent Design as a “scientific idea” today [1]. It was painful because it seemed based on a pre-college level of understanding of the scientific method. Their primary defense was founded on shoe-horning intelligent design into a scientific method-looking structure, but […]
I’ve been engaged in a small conversation on a social network regarding the labeling of food as “genetically modified.” I’ve written specific thoughts about the scientific problems with that labeling recently in this blog [1]. I thought it might be useful to explain here how I got engaged in this […]
Editorial Note (9/1/13): The program “Marketplace” recently looked into Mr. Mills’ claim. They found it to be nonsense. See: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/no-your-phone-doesnt-use-much-electricity-refrigerator. I like that they put the answer right in their headline: NO. Editorial Note (8/23/13): since originally posting the article, a commenter (“Jay”) pointed out that the number I pulled from […]
After owning a Honda Civic since 1998 that was new in 1998 – the only car that persisted in my household after my 2002 marriage to Jodi – Jodi and I decided last year to start saving for a new car. After checking out a Chevy Volt at the Texas […]
Why people think what they think is just as important, if not more so, that what they think. The time when I resume teaching, after a one-semester leave from teaching to focus on research, is rapidly approaching. I’ve started paying closer attention to material that might be useful as supplementary […]