August 16th, 2010 by Aaron
Mason Powell’s been spearheading the creation of a skeptical movement in Lawrence. Late last week, we launched a new website at skeptikan.com. Here’s my introductory post.
I read Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World” when I was in high school. At the time, I wasn’t aware of any formalized skeptical movement, but the concept of using science and reason to sort out the woo from the reality resonated with me and excited me. The book’s subtitle, “Science as a Candle in the Dark,” summarizes for me what skepticism is about – a reliance on the scientific method to tell us fact from fiction.
I was first introduced to the skeptical movement several years ago when I was searching for new podcasts. I came across the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, and was immediately hooked. Here was a podcast that was somehow packed full of educational content and yet also entertaining. Through the SGU, I learned that there is a movement of like-minded people who are organizing and advancing the cause of science beyond simply the science itself.
There are many other science- and skeptic-based podcasts, but the only other podcast I’ll mention at the moment is Skeptoid. A weekly series, Skeptoid’s host Brian Dunning spends about 10 or 15 minutes on a specific topic. They’re pithy, short discussions, perfectly suited to learn about any given subject, or perhaps forward to a friend or loved one who may have fallen to believe in a particular pseudoscience or purchased a scam product. Dunning also created “Here Be Dragons: An Introduction to Critical Thinking.” It’s a free, 40 minute video that’s perfect to introduce classes to the concept and importance of critical thinking.
Woo has a very large surface area, and there are many different subjects that deserve a skeptical look. There topics such as some religions and conspiracies that result mostly in a walletectomy – removal of money – from the believer. The topics that concern me the most, however, are those that can actually cause physical harm. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) such as acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, reflexology – the list goes on – can cause both a walletectomy and real damage to people who need medical treatments or cures and are instead led to believe that these woo-jobs can help. The anti-vaccination movement is also particularly troublesome to me since it directly results in an increase in mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases.
That’s all for now. On a personal note, I can’t express how excited I am to be a part of SkeptiKan. I’ve always been jealous of skeptics living in other parts of the country who have meetups and organizations to which they can belong, and now it seems that Kansas is forming its own skeptical community. I look forward to contributing both by making this website attractive, usable and accessible and by participating in the discussion. We have exciting plans for the site and the project, and I thank Mason for inviting me to be a part of it.
June 2nd, 2010 by Aaron
Huge thanks to my friend Kevin Rutter for sourcing this video.
hotauctioneering.com
May 19th, 2010 by Aaron
My friend Carl Carter, over at overcoffeemedia.com, wrote yesterday that citizen journalism is a myth. Writing correctly that journalism is hard work, he points out the expense and overhead inherent to the filtering that permeates modern professional journalism. This filtration, he and others reason, is the reason consumers prefer to source their news from professional entities.
I think we must distinguish between the raw news and the editorializing that has woven itself into the way many modern news organizations distribute their news. I think it is actually the later that consumers prefer to acquire from the pros. The raw news is provided to us in a barrage of disparate sources throughout the day. Whether we get the headlines from Twitter or scanning aggregators like Google News or social news sources like Digg, we already know what happened.
When we get home at the end of the day, we don’t want to hear the same headlines about which we already know. We want to know why it happened and how it may affect us. The reason we turn to the professional journalists is for the back story.
Unfortunately, this trend of wanting not the facts but to know what the facts mean has relegated the truly professional journalists to the margin. Mainstream consumers are turning instead to organizations who will slant news depending on their preferred bias. CNN is experiencing very poor ratings because they are trying to be professional journalists. They’re getting crushed by Fox News – and have actually fallen behind MSNBC in primetime – because they won’t filter their content to cater to one side or the other. Whether Fox News is a source of journalism (it isn’t) or really just a lifestyle channel promoting a conservative ideal is another discussion.
True citizen journalism may be a myth, but for those of us connected enough to hear about most events as they happen, professional journalism needs to provide us with the why and not so much the what.
December 26th, 2009 by Aaron
Image via Wikipedia
Andrew Taylor Still lived near Baldwin City, Kansas, during the time of the Civil War. There, he founded the practice of osteopathy in the 1870s after his father and three children died from spinal meningitis. He founded the American School of Osteopathy in Missouri in the 1890s. Still believed that the bone was the starting point to diagnosing pathological conditions and that he could “shake a child and stop scarlet fever, croup, diphtheria, and cure whooping cough in three days by a wring of its neck.” Right.
True osteopathic manipulative medicine, like it’s cousin chiropractic medicine, is bullshit. Claiming to cure or alleviate a pathological condition by manipulating an unrelated system is an affront to common sense. Curing a fever by manipulating the skeletal system is as ludicrous as thinking you can stop a car’s engine from overheating by rotating the tires.
This post isn’t an attack on American osteopathic physicians. As a baby, I was delivered by a DO, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t shake me. While I don’t technically have a regular doctor, I have in the past received very good care from a local doctor who is a DO.
Since it’s quack roots in the 1870s, American Osteopathy has transitioned to a practice that is essentially real, science-based medicine. Modern doctors of osteopathy in the United States are taught but no longer use osteopathic manipulative medicine – the component that is the modern derivative of Still’s baby-shaking pseudoscience. American osteopathic physicians have real degrees from real universities and have equivalent medical training to real doctors.
Unfortunately, osteopathy has a context outside of American osteopathic medicine. Osteopathy in the rest of the world has parked itself squarely in the purview of complementary and alternative medicine (CAMP). This D in the DO can stand for diploma, not doctor, and the practitioners are more skilled in bamboozling their clients than they are at practicing any kind of real medicine.
Here’s the thing. Real medicine is based on science. If something is “complimentary” or “alternative” to science, it’s not medicine – it’s crap. If something makes you feel better that shouldn’t, like chiropractic or acupuncture or homeopathy or osteopathic manipulative medicine, it’s called a placebo and it’s unethical to present it as a legitimate treatment for anything.
