Digital Bits Skeptic

By David Annis
Article ID: 1242

 

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The tail of the peacock is a magnificent and beautiful thing to behold.  In a previous article, I explained how complex structures (like eyes) evolve through a series of small steps, each of which gives the animal better vision. But how do ornamental things evolve, like the tail of a peacock?  The answer is sexual selection.

Charles Darwin actually proposed the concept of sexual selection in his book “On the Origin of the Species” in 1859.  Evolution is caused by the competition to leave offspring. Genes of individuals that have random variations that make them more likely to be able to successfully leave offspring will be passed on to future generations, and the characteristics of those individuals will be inherited by future generations.  One way in which individuals compete to leave offspring is by competing for mates: individuals that mate more successfully are more reproductively fit than their counterparts.

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By Todd Fritz
Article ID: 1241

 

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ABSTRACT

This article looks at the claims and programs of study provided by Atlantic University, and it considers some of the implications from that study.  A brief history of the college’s founder, Edgar Cayce, is given.  It also considers the validity and meaning of the word “university”.

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By Andy Kaiser 
Article ID: 1240

 

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It was a quiet morning on June 30, 1908. The event occurred in a remote location of heavily-forested Siberia, in the Russian Federation.

Instead of leaping ahead to the finale and just saying “kaboom”, we’ll make this a little more dramatic. So get ready.

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By David Annis
Article ID: 1239

 

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Walk into any supermarket, drug store, or health food store and you will find a wide variety of nutritional supplements.  People use these as an alternative to “western” or “conventional” medicine.  Unfortunately, when taking nutritional supplements, you aren’t treating your disease or keeping yourself healthy. You are using yourself as a human guinea pig in a poorly designed experiment, the results of which will be thrown away.

There are two kinds of assumptions, those which can be proven to be true by experiment and those that are inherently not provable.  One can argue that God’s existence is not provable, and so we should just accept his existence on faith (an argument I disagree with. For more detail see the article If you can’t prove God doesn’t exist, why not believe?). However, the claim that a particular plant product can cure cancer is testable.  We can give the product to some people with cancer and give others an alternative treatment or a placebo.  We can see, objectively, whether the product works.  While no process is perfect, a drug needs to be shown to be safe and effective in a well controlled series of trials (usually double-blind placebo-controlled) to be approved by the FDA.  Nutritional supplements are rarely if ever tested in this manner.

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By Tammy Buchli, Science & Reason in Hampton Roads
Article ID: 1238

 

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When my local skeptic’s organization (Science & Reason in Hampton Roads) announced a field trip to Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, I was eager to attend.  We planned a full afternoon at the A.R.E. First, an ESP demonstration, and then an educational film about Mr. Cayce, ending with a tour of the Association building.  I knew very little about Mr. Cayce before our field trip, and I opted not to do any preparatory research, deciding instead to let the A.R.E. itself serve as Mr. Cayce’s monument.

I arrived at the Association for Research and Enlightenment before the rest of my group and decided to wait in the bookstore.  Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of books for sale - turns out there are hundreds of books by or about Mr. Cayce, and most of them are available for sale at the A.R.E.  In addition to the books, there was a large display of alternative medicine supplies.  There were ear candles, homeopathic remedies and - rather perplexingly - bottles of castor oil in several convenient sizes.  Also for sale was an assortment of New Age tchotchkes - suncatchers, dreamcatchers, windchimes, mad varieties of religious statuary, and crystals, crystals, crystals.  A pretty pair of crystal earrings caught my eye.  But my group had arrived, so I made a mental note to stop in at the bookstore after the tour and buy them.

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By David Annis
Article ID: 1237

 

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If you can’t disprove the existence of God, why not believe in Him?  This is a question often posed to atheists by believers.  The basic answer is that there are a lot of improbable things that I can’t disprove, but believing in them leads to a distorted view of the world.  These range from things that nobody else believes, such as the belief that there is an invisible snorg (an alien from outer space) sitting on my shoulder, to things that many believe - as an example, pick the mythology of any religion.

Bertrand Russell gave a rather famous example of an idea that can not be disproved which nobody would seriously ask an atheist to believe called Russell’s Teapot or the Celestial Teapot.  Here’s his original description: read more…

By David Annis
Article ID: 1236

 

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One frequent objection that creationists use about evolution is to question how a complex structure could evolve - what good is half an eye?  What possible evolutionary path could there be that would lead to such a complex structure?

So, how would an eye evolve?  Start with simple organisms that don’t have an eye.  In my fish tank I have a Tridacna maxima which is a saltwater clam.  It has no eyes, but if I move my hand between the light and the water in a way that makes a shadow pass over the clam, it will close its shell.  The clam has no eyes but is able to avoid predators by being able to sense light and dark.  It is easy to see how this example of something that isn’t even half an eye results in a competitive advantage.  Many organisms, not just clams, have the ability to sense light and dark.

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By Peter Booth
Article ID: 1235

 

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Mentalism is a form of performance magic that simulates the paranormal, most commonly mind-reading, predicting the future and psychokinesis.  Magicians get involved in skepticism because much of the time the so-called real psychics are doing very standard magic tricks.  But what makes the difference between appearing to be a magician and appearing to be the real deal?  Here I present a few rules for any half-decent magicians who would like to throw away their morals, break all the mirrors in their houses so they don’t have to look at themselves anymore, and most importantly, start making some real money by making the jump to pseudo-miracle worker.  Being a cold reader, for example, has an excellent profit margin!  Think of it this way:  you can charge the same prices per ticket as David Copperfield, or a world-famous rock band, and you don’t even have all that heavy stuff to carry around!  It’s just you on a stage.  That’s profit!

For many audience members, the worlds of entertainer and genuine psychic are separated only by the inclusion - or omission - of a straight-forward disclaimer.  As many mentalists will attest, some people only believe what you’re doing is real if you make an explicit statement that you’re not using tricks.  Others are the opposite and will believe it is all real unless you explicitly state you are doing tricks.  Some people will believe your ability is real, even after you’ve said you’re using trickery!  Once you’ve decided what disclaimer you are going to use, here are the four main rules of changing from magician to real psychic.

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By Tammy Buchli, Science & Reason in Hampton Roads
Article ID: 1234

 

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Everybody has a story, and most people are eager to share their stories with anyone who will listen.  A problem is that some like to use their stories as scientific evidence.  Alternative medicine advocates, in particular, love to use anecdotes in order to justify the efficacy of their wares.  After all, if something seems to work, it’s pretty easy to make the claim that it actually is working.  The problem, of course, is that anecdotal evidence can be deceptive.

My daughter, now 21 years old, is disabled with cerebral palsy.  She was diagnosed at 8 months old, and her level of disability is fairly severe.  I soon discovered that having a disabled child made us attractive to people attempting to sell alternative cures.  This was particularly obvious after we got our first home computer. Typing ‘cerebral palsy‘ into a search engine unleashed a deluge of snake oil salesmen, each of whom urged us to buy their product or service and offered a long list of satisfied customers as proof that they could help our daughter.  We chose instead to limit our daughter’s medical care to therapies which had been vetted by science.  But still… sometimes those alternative therapies seemed mighty attractive - some of these things did seem to work for some people.  Were we wrong not to take the chance that some of these cures might help our daughter?  Finally, though, an event occurred which convinced me of the error of using anecdotal evidence as the sole claim for the efficacy of a treatment or therapy.  This is our story - what I like to call anecdotal evidence against anecdotal evidence.

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By David Annis
Article ID: 1233

 

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Evolution can easily be observed in the laboratory and in the world around us.  We can see moths evolve their coloring to match the color of soot that covers their habitat, watch bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance in hospitals, and my favorite variety of grapefruit (that’s Rio Star) was made by scientists who exposed seeds to radiation to increase the mutation rate.  In the face of such overwhelming evidence - including knowing the exact DNA changes effecting such change - it is impossible for the creationists to deny evolution with a straight face.

To get around the problem, creationists often try to separate evolution into two types, micro-evolution and macro-evolution. They argue that micro-evolution can make minor changes, but can¹t build new structures or make other major changes to organisms. Although “the attempt to differentiate between micro-evolution and macro-evolution is considered to have no scientific basis by any mainstream scientific organization” (according to Wikipedia), creationists often claim that a chain of small micro-evolutionary steps can¹t add up to a macro-evolutionary step. 

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