Some people are upset that Rupert Sheldrake is a pseudoscientific kook whose nonsense has been purged from the official collection of TED talks. To my surprise, I just learned that it is all my fault. Talks from Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock given at the TEDx Whitechapel event titled “Visions for Transition: Challenging Existing Paradigms …
Category Archive: Bad Science
May 13 2013
Fossil fish found on Mars!
Wait, not really. I should change that headline to “Pareidolia found on Mars!”, but then you’d all shrug your shoulders and say, “so what else is new?” I’ve got to do something to suck you in. Anyway, there’s this whole weird subculture that’s been around since at least the 90s — I recall spending some …
May 13 2013
Aquatic apes and puddin’ elephants
Oh, no. I had just begun to absorb the astounding implications of the Space Ape Theory, when along comes Henry Gee to blow my mind with a new theory of proboscidean evolution. Q: Why do elephants paint the soles of their feet yellow? A: So they can hide upside down in bowls of custard. So, …
May 08 2013
Will Smith must be stopped
He has a new movie coming out this summer, After Earth. It looks awful, but then, that’s what I’ve come to expect from Will Smith’s Sci-Fi outings. Jebus. Anyone remember that abomination, I, Robot? How about I Am Legend? I steer clear of these movies with a high concept and a big name star, because …
May 01 2013
Louisiana replaces science with voodoo
Literally. A number of intelligent people have been trying to get the Louisiana Science Education Act repealed, a law that opens the door to teaching creationism in the public schools. The efforts have been stymied, though, and the Louisiana Creation Science Miseducation Act is still in effect. One of the people who acted to kill …
May 01 2013
The comets explain everything
People are always sending me links — sometimes it’s to a cogent rebuttal of lunacy, sometimes it’s something advocating lunacy, and sometimes…it takes me a while to tell. For instance, here’s this site called “The Truth of Genesis”. I read this and thought for a moment that it was a site debunking creationism. The biggest …
Apr 28 2013
Best response to the Aquatic Ape nonsense yet
Mockery is good. Behold the #spaceape hypothesis: humans clearly evolved in outer space! #SPACEAPE Basic Arguments of the Space Ape Theory: 1. we have evolved big brains relative to our bodies because we don’t need our bodies to move around in space. 2. we don’t have much body hair because what would be the point …
Apr 28 2013
Oh, no, not the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis again!
I think BAHFest — the festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses — has been made entirely redundant. It’s an event to mock the absurdly adaptationist hypotheses put forward by some scientists, and it’s intended to be extravagantly ridiculous. But then, you look at some ideas that are inexplicably popular among scientists, and you realize…it’s a …
Apr 27 2013
Musings from the mind of a mouse
Casey Luskin is such a great gift to the scientific community. The public spokesman for the Discovery Institute has a law degree and a Masters degree (in Science! Earth Science, that is) and thinks he is qualified to analyze papers in genetics and molecular biology, fields in which he hasn’t the slightest smattering of background, …
Apr 24 2013
Cupping is a thing? Really?
Taslima points to celebrities who are actually getting cupping done. It makes me wonder if they’re also getting bled, and whether they prefer leeches or the lancet. It’s medieval nonsense and total quackery. I was wondering if there were any good analyses of this stuff, though, and my search turned up an unsurprising fact: WebMD, …
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