I have blogged and posted interviews about the fight against anti-vaxxers, the science-deniers who have convinced far too many people that vaccines cause autism (listen to Dr. Phil Plait take on Jenny McCarthy). Much of this nonsense began when researcher Andrew Wakefield published a study in Lancet, the British medical journal, that showed a connection. […]
Over the weekend, British authorities arrested Jim McCormick for fraud — the kind of fraud that put lives at risk. McCormick sold bomb-detecting equipment to security forces in Iraq, to the tune of $85 million. The problem is that his devices were useless. They were in essence nothing more than divining rods, the pseudo-science quackery […]
I have featured the work of Dr. Richard Wiseman several times on this blog, from my interviews with him about “Quirkology” to his Color-Changing Card Trick video. Now he and his colleague Sarah Angliss have developed Telepath, the iPhone app that reads minds… You can buy it here.
A few days ago, NASA announced that they don’t have the funding to track all of the asteroids that could hit the Earth and wipe out life as we know it. Today on KTRS/St. Louis, I asked my friend Dr. Phil Plait, the astronomer and author of “Death From The Skies,” about the possibility of […]
My friend Dr. Phil Plait has been taking on Jenny McCarthy lately. Why does an astronomer (and one of the web’s top science bloggers) have a problem with a has-been actress? Turns out McCarthy is part of the anti-vaccination movement, and has been going around proclaiming that vaccines cause autism — a claim that has […]
Phil Plait finds a link behind a new A&E series called “Paranormal Cops” and the murder of a woman in Papua New Guinea because she was accused of being a witch: They are both shameful (on different levels, but still), and both are driven by ignorance. Ignorance of science, ignorance of logic, ignorance of reality. […]