30th Skeptic’s Circle

Welcome to the 30th Skeptic’s Circle, the first one with a theme song!

Come and listen to my story about a man named Jed ...

Okay, I didn’t say it was an original theme song, nor did I say it was relevant, but it is kinda catchy. But, to move on to the main subject of tonight’s symposium, come on in, set a spell, take your shoes off, and to phrase things as Jed Clampett would, “let’s commence to skepticking”!

Failed Predictions
Our lead story comes from Kelly Jolkowski at Project Jason — Voice For The Missing Person. Kelly’s son Jason disappeared without a trace four years ago, and Kelly has since had first hand experience with psychics. She writes a five part series (correction: on-going series) on the issue, with the overview here. Says Kelly:

In the course of this fruitless search, and also with the birth of Project Jason, came an undesirable element. That is what I call the “Advantage Takers”. Advantage Takers include any person or organization which uses this tragic situation for personal gain. That gain may not always be in the form of money.

We, the families of the missing, are victims in several ways. If our loved one has been taken from us in a brutal way, we are victims. We may also be victims of a poorly constructed and trained LE (law enforcement) structure. We may be victims of society’s apathy to our plight because of prejudices against missing persons, particularly adults. We again may be the victims of a non-responsive media.
…
There is not one proven case in which a psychic, using special powers or abilities not given to the typical person, has located a missing person, whether dead or alive. It may be possible that some persons have an ability that defies science and logic, but there is no known scientific evidence of this. These persons re-victimize families by taking away hope where it should stand, and giving hope where there is none. No person has the right to do this to another.

Well said, Kelly, and thank you for writing this.

Mentalist Adrian Saint claims to have correctly predicted the score of the most recent Super Bowl. In fact, he claims to have predicted the score before the game even happened! Karl J. Mogel at The Inoculated Mind throws a whole heap of doubt on the claim.

At The Second Sight, we learn from EoR how another “psychic medium” uses cold reading to bamboozle and mislead. Its amazing how many of those dead people that talk to us living people can’t seem to give us useful information!

Scientology
Jim Lippard, at the very creatively named The Lippard Blog, writes a link-filled history of his many experiences with Scientology, and particularly their attempts at harrassing some of the groups enemies. Jim’s efforts have no doubt left Scientologists — to use a phrase from Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies — squawking like a two pound chicken about to lay a three pound egg.

Meanwhile, over at Terra Sigillata, Abel PharmBoy discusses the decision by Isaac Hayes, the voice of Chef on South Park, to leave the show because the show ridiculed his religion of Scientology. Say it ain’t so, Chef!

Autism
Autism has been in the news a lot lately, with Jason McElwain’s recent heroics at Greece (NY) Athena High School. My son attended the game, and since a psychic informed him nothing much would happen, he left at half-time (grrr!). (If you haven’t seen this video yet, do click the link, you won’t regret it.) While this has put autism into a positive spotlight, there are a lot of scare tactics and false science involving autism lately.

Jonathan Semetko at Interverbal debunks a recent study by Geier and Geier, which claims that the removal of Thimerosal containing vaccines has led to a decrease in autism. Semetko castigates Geier and Geier for three major flaws in their article, the most prmoinent being misuse of data. You come away thinking Geier and Geier learned their math from Jethro Bodine. Not to be outdone, Orac at Respectful Insolence also attacks Geier and Geier for “dumpster diving”.

Dad of Cameron at Autism Street digs deeply into the autism treatment at Club Biomed and finds the physician in charge has a delinquent license, uses homeopathy among other dubious practices, all the while helping the family of that autistic child to lighten their wallets. And, to receive treatment you must first sign a document that basically signs your child’s life away. I think the Beverly Hillbillies’s Granny was a better physician.

Critical Thinking
Pooh at The World According To Pooh debunks a “critique” of the Jon Stewart Show. He notes the lack of evidence and the illogical sequence of statements in the “critique”.

Frank The Financially Savvy Atheist takes a humorous look at wild claims in popular women’s magazines.

Todd at ChemJerk challenges secondary school teachers to teach critical thinking. He gives specific examples of how this could be done, including (my favorite) having science teachers assign summer reading such as Bob Park or Carl Sagan.

Caspar, blogging at the interestingly named onemonkey, visits the ChritianityToday website and learns that three large numbers allegedly prove the existence of God. Really! That’s what he learned. Then he goes ahead and disagrees, to put it mildly.

Many performers thank God when they are successful, so who do they blame when they are not successful? That’s what I asked recently about sports. Mark at Be Lambic Or Green asks the same question about performers on American Idol.

Evolution
Hey what do you know! There’s a lot to debunk in this category! How come no psychic predicted this?

Immunoblogging’s JM O’Donnell likes to watch the “mental gymnastics that creationists try to go through in explaining the immune system of vertebrates”. He gives a nice description of just one particular feature of the immune system, the Toll-like Receptor, and how it presents major problems for creationists.

Lord Runolfr (love that name!) explains the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and how creationists continuously misquote and abuse the law.

What about this use of “Information Theory” by Creationists? Is there anything to it? I doubt there is any information of any kind in Intelligent Design, but Mark Chu-Carroll at Good Math, Bad Math goes into much more detail about how creationists attack evolution by misusing and abusing information theory.

Courtesy of Robert Todd Carroll at Mass Media Funk, we learn the story of how the Sacramento Zoo took on the Creationists and by hosting a series of talks about evolution. (No permalink, so scroll down).

Are science and religion incompatible? Robert Todd Carroll looks at the issue, highlighting the recent statement by the American Association for the Advancement of Science denouncing legislation that would undermine the teaching of evolution. Click here and scroll way down. The effect this has on teachers, and the effect of the anti-science creationists and intelligent designers on teachers, are discussed.

Health Care
Tommyrot — that’s what John at Gordon’s Notes calls a New York Times study claiming psychoanalysis is an alternative medicine.

Memoir of A Skepchick’s Rebecca tells us why a new cold-remedy named “Airborne” had to remove an alleged clinical trial from their website. Guess what? They claimed it had nothing to do with the fact that the trial was most likely bogus; they claimed it that consumers are not intelligent enough to understand a clinical study.

Rebecca also tells us about a claim that a chocolate bar is healthy. And that claim isn’t true! How dare you, Rebecca, say bad things about chocolate? To quote Ellie Mae Clampett, “I’m starting to feel lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut.” How can chocolate not be healthy? Go figure!

Divine Epidemiology is what Martin Rundkvist at Salto Sobrius calls the belief that you get diseases as punishment for bad behavior. It even extends to Mad Cow Disease!

Tara C. Smith at Aetiology talks about Edenomics 101, the belief that you can minimize the occurrence of diseases and maximize your health by following Biblical principles. Naturally, Tara disagrees.

Other Categories
We had to have at least one entry on the subject of global warming. To the rescue comes IAMB of Pooflingers Anonymous who expresses his frustration at some of the ridiculous questions of those opposed to global warming. Similar to arguments creationists pose, the anti-global warming posse ask “If global warming is true, why are there still snowstorms?”

The Uncredible Hallq talks to Don Barker, who was once a faithful follower of faith healer Kuhlman, but then parted ways with Kuhlman and is now an atheist. Says Barker, summing up his opinion of Kuhlman: “I was not a phony, and I don’t think she was either.”

Finally, but no less importantly, Clark Bartram at Unintelligent Design describes the successes Brazil has had in reducing HIV/AIDS, and how the United States has chosen a different and ineffective approach.

That’s It!
Well doggies! I think Granny has been whomping up a mess of victuals for all you fine visitors. I hope you all like possum belly and pickled crawdads!

Now its time to say goodbye to our skeptics and all their kin, and we would like to thank you folks for kindly dropping in. You’re all invited back next week* to this locality** to have a heaping helping of our skepticality! Y’all come back now, you hear?
* — actually, the next Skeptic’s Circle is held in two weeks, but there’s that darn theme song that says one week...
** — hosted by Abel PharmBoy at Terra Sigillata, so send your submissions to Abel!