It’s just looking worse and worse. Ars Technica discusses the Dunning widget to stuff cookies, and reveals something damning. It was coded to avoid planting cookies in computers in San Jose or Santa Barbara, where the eBay headquarters are located. If he considered this perfectly acceptable behavior in eBay’s eyes, why did he need to …
Category Archive: Skepticism
Apr 17 2013
Skeptoid slapped down
Brian Dunning, the voice behind the Skeptoid podcast, has pled guilty to wire fraud. In a clever scheme to essentially defraud eBay, visitors to his site had a cookie planted on their computers that did no harm to the visitors, but was recognized by eBay as a flag to credit Dunning as an affiliate referrer. …
Apr 16 2013
In case you ever doubted that Dr Oz was a quack…
Take a look at the “advertorial” featuring Oz. Just the word “advertorial” should chill you, but there’s more! “Fat-busting”. Seriously, if ever there’s a phrase that should make you recognize that a diet pill is garbage, it’s that one. Then, in the video, Oz promises that this dietary supplement will make you lose weight with …
Apr 14 2013
Robin Ince vs. Brendan O’Neill
At #QEDcon (which sounds like a marvelous conference from the enthusiastic tweets resounding everywhere) there was a panel discussion yesterday that I’m looking forward to seeing appear on youtube. Brendan O’Neill, professional conservative ass, put his opening remarks, “Is science becoming a new religion?” online. It’s a bizarre tirade — it cusses out this new-fangled …
Apr 14 2013
Your comparisons make me cry
When we’ve got bad news, we get comparisons that show how deluded people are on other subjects. The NRA has been doing a great job promoting less gun control, and one of their tactics has been the myth of woman empowerment by gun…when on average, women are far more anti-gun than men. But do I …
Apr 09 2013
The dark side of open access journals?
The New York Times has an article on the rise of predatory, fake science journals — these are journals put out by commercial interests with titles that sound vaguely like the real thing, but are not legitimate in any sense of the word. They exist only for the resource that open access publishing also uses, …
Apr 07 2013
Good ideas and bad ideas
Hey, gang, sorry I’ve been neglecting the blog this weekend, but I’ve been off at Skeptech, and this has been a very busy conference…maybe a little too busy. The roster of talks and panels started at 9am, and Friday and Saturday they went on until 10pm, and it was maybe a little too densely packed …
Apr 05 2013
SkepTech Reminder!
Today, tomorrow, and Sunday…SkepTech, at the University of Minnesota campus. I’m leaving for the big city this afternoon after I finish dispensing justice teaching/advising today, so I plan to be there the whole session, and maybe hang about into the evening. Look at all the lovely speakers at this free conference: Brianne Bilyeu Ben Blanchard …
Mar 15 2013
TED Talk: spreading bullshit about the desert
What? TED vectoring pseudoscience? Unpossible! In one recent particular instance, though, a TED talk firmly grounded in bullshit — literal and figurative — is gaining a mortifying amount of traction with people who really should know better. The lecturer is Allan Savory, who for the last couple decades has been pushing his own brand of …
Feb 22 2013
A quick rhetorical question about animal husbandry
Who here can tell me the difference between hay and straw?
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