Psychic Sylvia Browne screws up yet again.

And ya just gotta love the way she and Montel try to rationalize her failure: by stating that the "drowning" had something to do with putting out the fire, as if a person can drown by pointing an active fire hose away from oneself, which is how firefighters generally hold them.

I believe in other dimensions. There's no proof that they don't exist. Many Eastern religions believe in reincarnation. I believe that G.W. Bush is the reincarnation of Hitler. It's no coincidence that Bush was born shortly after Hitler died. It's not only eerie, it's undeniable.

The existence of higher dimensions, even if true, does not mean that Sylvia Browne has psychic abilities.

And in any event, it is those who advocate their existence who need to provide proof that they exist. It is not the responsibility of the establishment to prove that they do not. The burden of proof for any new scientific idea rests upon those advocating it.

I believe that G.W. Bush is the reincarnation of Hitler. It's no coincidence that Bush was born shortly after Hitler died. It's not only eerie, it's undeniable. - P.R.

So? It's also "undeniable" that thousands, if not millions of other people were born shortly after Der Fuhrer died. What does that prove?

...but Bush embodies the SPIRIT of Hitler. Hitler caused the needless deaths of millions of people. Bush has caused the needless deaths of thousands. The only difference is in the degrees.

Please. The only people who would argue such nonsense are those too ignorant and too relativistic to be able to draw important distinctions. Hitler killed people deliberately, systematically, and for reasons of ethnic genocide. Bush and Clinton, to name two examples, did not. There's a big difference between the unfortunate and (to a degree) unavoidable civilian casualties that occur during a legitimate act of war, and systematically murdering 10 - 12 million people.

So? It's also "undeniable" that thousands, if not millions of other people were born shortly after Der Fuhrer died

I'd go with millions myself because the baby boom started after Hitler died because the returning soldiers got to marry their sweethearts and start famlies when they were no longer over seas.

Exactly. Clinton was a baby boomer too, as he was born just one month after Bush, so what does this prove? It's a completely pseudoscientific thing to argue.

But isn't that the topic?

Yes it is.

Can you prove humans cause Global Warming? You could win $100,000 from Junk Science.com.

Continued from the Counterpoint (VOY) board:

inblackestnight: Also, [polygraphs] are very reliable pieces of technology, when a good baseline is recorded, they're just not very specific. Failure rates of polygraphs are actually quite low, espicially when an expert is operating it.
Luigi Novi: They are not reliable, as there are countermeasures that can be taught to beat it. Also, it cannot distinguish between a person who is nervous and someone who is lying. The questions asked during the baseline questioning tend to be unimportant ones, like "Is your shirt white?" But when they get to the really meaty questions, like "Did you rape and murder that woman?", the person can get nervous when asked such a question. The polygraph can't tell the difference, as it just records the Fight or Flight Response. The control question doesn't have the same emotional impact as the relevant one. They're just medieval devices with a 20th century technology dress-up, and are pseudoscientific.

For more on this, you can see part 1 of an episode of Exploring the Unknown, with Skeptic magazine founder Dr. Michael Shermer here. Unlike Penn & Teller's "gonzo skepticism" approach on Penn & Teller: Bull****!, Shermer is highly respectful towards the experts whose ideas he challenges, and the program has an overall more serious tone than P&T:B!.

A link for Part 2 can be seen in the right hand list of other videos, and probably on the screen of Part 1 after it ends.

Have you undergone a polygraph Luigi? Almost everybody is nervous taking those things, I've taken two myself as part of career advancement and I probably sweated more there then when I excercise. Only the first few baseline questions should be obvious, with an experienced operator, and I hope that no court in this world would convict somebody on polygraph results alone. You are correct, it can give false results with overly nervous people, and there are ways to beat it, but what test can't be defeated with a little training, besides DNA, and a good operator knows not to ask such direct questions like "did you rape and murder that woman?" The polygraph is just a tool and in many cases its results is only one part of the whole person, but as I said, with an experienced operator and a good baseline it is reliable.

Well I have to come in on Luigi's side here. I actually had a friend who recently underwent a pollygraph test. One that the police told him that he failed, but he was really being honest.

What happened was that a few of my friends from work were out at the local watering hole where one of the guys met a rather drunk girl who was looking to have some fun. She was boozing it up hard core. She was bumping and grinding all over any guy who gave her some attention and than she threw up on the patio at the bar. They had been fooling around and he even cleaned up the mess she made when she threw up. After some time they left together. They had sex at her place and than he left after helping her into the bathroom to puke agian. The next morning he came back to see if she was OK, at that point he came face to face with this girl's boyfriend and was accused of rape. He was arrested and charged. Her official statement to the police was that she didn't remember having sex with him, that she went to the bar and had one light beer, one shot and than doesn't remember anything; meaning that he must have drugged her.

Well one of the friends who was at the bar went to the cops and told them that she was lying about what she had to drink, as he saw her do several shots. The cops said that they had a video of him putting something in her drink. The showed him a video of him squeezing a lemon into a Long Island Ice Tea and than gave him a polygraph test. Of course he pointed out that was a lemon (a normal garnish for such a drink) and not drugs. They questioned him for hours and later told him that he had failed the test on numerous questions.

As it turned out around the time he was released they were already in the process of dropping the charges. As she had lied several times she said she had ONLY one light beer and one shot around the time she saw him; while the bartenders said that she had been there boozing it up all afternoon before my friends even showed up. There were multiple witnesses (including a female friend, not likely to be sympathetic to a rapist) who proved that she lied. What had really happened was that she went out, got tanked and cheated on her boyfriend. When he found out, the next morning, she made up a story because a drug dropping rapist sounds better than a drunk girlfriend who cheats on her man after drinking.

The thing that disturbs me is my friend who took the polygraph test. The cops told him that he was lying, even though he wasn't. My guess is that he got nervous because he is a bit of a pot head (marijuana user) so questions about drugs or drug use made him nervous. While pot is illegal it doesn't mean that our friend raped that girl.

inblackestnight: Have you undergone a polygraph Luigi? Almost everybody is nervous taking those things, I've taken two myself as part of career advancement and I probably sweated more there then when I excercise.
Luigi Novi: Personal anecdotes are not scientific, and do not mitigate the points brought up by Shermer.

inblackestnight: Only the first few baseline questions should be obvious, with an experienced operator, and I hope that no court in this world would convict somebody on polygraph results alone. You are correct, it can give false results with overly nervous people, and there are ways to beat it, but what test can't be defeated with a little training...
Luigi Novi: Hence my point that it is not that reliable.

inblackestnight:...besides DNA...
Luigi Novi: What does DNA have to do with polygraphs?

inblackestnight: ...and a good operator knows not to ask such direct questions like "did you rape and murder that woman?"
Luigi Novi: Well, then what's the point of it? Isn't the whole point of administering such tests during criminal investigations is to investigate whether a given suspect is the guilty party?

inblackestnight: The polygraph is just a tool and in many cases its results is only one part of the whole person, but as I said, with an experienced operator and a good baseline it is reliable.
Luigi Novi: If the underlying science is flawed, then the experience of the operator and the quality of the baseline is moot. The blonde female expert in the video is an "experienced operator", and her statement that its reliability is 95% was said to be false. The male expert was an experienced operator, and he flat-out stated that he came to understand that polygraphs are unreliable. The problems with baselines was already stated: It is not possible to devise a a scientific control question that will provide a suitable baseline.

If you can refute the actual statements in the video, then please do so.

Did the police tell your friend what questions they thought he was being deceptive on? I obviously have no idea what went on but if they just told your friend he failed and that's it they were probably looking into his potential drug use and social activities. Many people don't know that the police can hold anybody for any reason they want until lawyers get involved, which is usually within a day or two. Despite being innocent until proven guilty, the police will usually side with the victim on potential rape cases, espicially women. As I have learned the hard way, I hope your friend now knows not to mess with drunk chicks, no matter how good looking they are.

LN: LN: Isn't the whole point of administering such tests during criminal investigations is to investigate whether a given suspect is the guilty party?
A suspect is going to know what he or she is being charged with. It doesn't make sense to ask questions he's going to be prepared for. In the words of John Douglas, "Polygraphs are about a state of mind. They can be reliable if the technician can establish an accurate baseline with a sober and stable individual."

LN: What does DNA have to do with polygraphs?
Nothing, that's a test you can't beat, unless you have one of those rare blood disorders.

I'll watch the video when I get to a computer with an internet connection that doesn't stink, like mine does, but I've never heard an expert say polygraphs are 95% reliable. 85% tops, but rarely much over 75%.

It doesn't make sense to ask questions he's going to be prepared for.
Luigi Novi: ????? Then what questions could he possibly be asked that would be relevant to the investigation? If he's not going to be asked questions related to the crime, what's the point of the polygraph test?

85% tops
Luigi Novi: The info in the video indicates it's not even close to that.

"It doesn't make sense to ask questions he's going to be prepared for.
Luigi Novi: ????? Then what questions could he possibly be asked that would be relevant to the investigation? If he's not going to be asked questions related to the crime, what's the point of the polygraph test? "

maybe IBN was suggesting that the polygraph is a test of character in a way. That is, to measure how someone reacts under pressure?

By LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, September 10, 2006 - 7:35 pm:
Exactly. Clinton was a baby boomer too, as he was born just one month after Bush, so what does this prove? It's a completely pseudoscientific thing to argue.


Is this one of those questions like which screwed up first, the chicken, or the egg?

I would like to amend my statement about avoiding direct questions, if I may, that was kinda dum-b on my part. You're right Luigi, there would be little point in questioning people with a polygraph if a person isn't put on the spot, but questions a suspect would be prepared for or cause further nervousness should be limited and either held off until the end or random. Questions about the statement a suspect gave and related background questions are examples of a standard polygraph interview.

LN: Personal anecdotes are not scientific...
No arguement here, I was just curious.

When associated with employment, I definately agree that polygraphs are about a test of character Poly. With criminal investigations, the results are just another thing a prosecuter can use against a defendant if he or she chooses to do so. Although I don't have any statistics readily available, I doubt that many cases with polygraph results that make it to court are actually used.

Polygraphs are not a "test of character". They are reputed to be lie detectors.

The same guy who invented the lie detector spent the rest of his time writing stories about a wonderful device that combined a lie detector and kinky B&D: Wonder Woman's magic lasso.

Marston did not invent the polygraph. He created the systolic blood-pressure test used to detect deception, which became one component of it.

Moreover, the polygraph is not a lie detector, even though it is widely and erroneously thought to be one.

Finally saw the video. Pretty good stuff, thanks for bringing that to my attention Luigi. I think I've seen something else with Shermer but I don't remember what it was, and it wasn't one of the other clips listed on U Tube. Anyway, on one hand there's the woman who's been doing polygraphs for 18 years, performed over seven thousand tests, and claims it's 95-99% accurate, which I thought to be an exaggeration. On the other is a retired detective of 23 years from OK city I believe, performed over six thousand tests, and it was Shermer who said a lot less than the woman's estimates. It would've been nice to get a numerical estimate from the cop for comparison but if he were to say polygraphs are 45-50% accurate, averaging that with the woman's would be in the low-to-mid seventies, which is typically the range I've heard. Since he chose not to offer a different estimate, I of course can't assume what "a lot less" means.

If I were in charge of a police department for a small-to-medium sized community I probably wouldn't get a polygraph because it's expensive not only to purchase but also to maintain with trained people. Also, due to its controversial nature, I wouldn't risk giving a defense attorney ammunition in court. The lady stated that most polygraphers, if that's even a word, are trained to recognize people using countermeasures, which is true, and to prove polygraphs don't work the cop instructs Shermer how to do them, but the average person isn't going to know what countermeasures are, and the people who do know them should get spotted much of the time.

I will always be skeptical about devices or practices that claim to predict or detect anything related to human behavior with accuracy in the ninetieth percentile, even the eighties is pushing it, because as the female sociologist said, "people are too varied," but she was talking about 100% accuracy with lie detection in body language, which I believe is called kinesics. Polygraphs are becoming more common in usage, due to lowering cost, but less in dependability because of its questionable effectivness and if the device records potential deception in just one question the person fails the test, which I find ridiculous. Were polygraphs also refuted on Myth Busters?

Another problem with the accuracy of polygraphs I'm sure is the internet. It used to be that countermeasures were known only to a select few but these days all someone has to do to find out about them is google "how to beat a polygraph" and they'll have plenty of sites talking about how countermeasures work. If someone has a polygraph test coming up and something to hide the internet is an easy resource.

I wish that Shermer would have done the same thing with his show staff taking a polygraph where they were supposed to lie. Would have been interesting in seeing how they compared to the body language expert. According to the Wikipedia article (which is citing a report from the National Academy of Sciences) the biggest scientific study of the polygraph concluded that it can discern truth at “a level greater than chance, yet short of perfection.” Greater than chance is fine for an interrogation but I wouldn't want to let that into court. The body language expert can detect lies at a greater than chance probability of telling if you are lying but you can't just put her on the stand to say if she thinks someone is lying.

Pseudoscience and AIDS treatment in South Africa.

Breaking the Science Barrier, Part 1 of 3. This is a program with Richard Dawkins, just under an hour long in total, in which he explains the beauty of science, the importance of science education, talks to some imminent scientists about the "eureka" moments in which they made important discoveries (the originator of DNA fingerprinting, the discoverer of pulsars), and illustrates the dangers of when science is misunderstood, and of pseudoscience.

Links to Parts 2 and3 should be in the right-hand column.

Very good special. Also liked how he delved into why science is important.

Wonderful YouTube video that beautifully illustrates how probability theory is sufficient to explain even seemingly remarkable coincidences.

Good video, makes me think of that Bible code, where people think they can take like every 5th letter of the Bible or the Torah, do a computerized word match search for some key words and if they get a match they've found predictions of the future hidden in the Bible, it's even better if they find it within a passage that's subject seems to be relevant to what is being "predicted."

Of course the problem is they aren't looking for actual predictions of our future. They are trying to find things that have already happened being "mentioned" after the fact. Than they claim that the odds of such a thing happening by chance are infinitesimally small, which would be true if you found the prediction before the actual event happened or only looked for one thing and found it. If you take hundreds of key words relating to every major assassination, political movement and war of the modern era and feed it into a computer program that will search a volume of text as large as the Bible forwards, backwards, odds, evens, every 5th letter, every 4th letter forward and in reverse the odds that you will get a few hits are like 100%.

The researchers tried to say that they might consider that they were chasing shadows if someone found the prediction of a major political assassination in Moby Dick they might be inclined to reexamine their conclusions. Of course it took about a week for some researchers to find "referenced" to the assassinations of JFK, MLK Yitzhak Rabin & others in the pages of Moby Dick. My personal favorite was the paragraph where they found Trotsky, executed, ice, hammer and part of it even going through the full phrase "The steal head of the lance" which seems mighty coincidental considering that Soviet exile Leon Trotsky was murdered with an ice ax; until you think how long Mody Dick is and how many key words they had to feed in to find that.

Brian: The problem is they aren't looking for actual predictions of our future. They are trying to find things that have already happened being "mentioned" after the fact.

Exactly. That's postdiction, not prediction.

And I think I read somewhere (maybe in one of Michael Shermer's books) how they did what you described with the Gettysburg Address.

ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The best review of The Secret, and one of the best reviews I've ever read on a book filled with pseudoscience. Looking through Ari Brouillette's other reviews, they're written with the same type of satirical edge. But the fact that The Secret is such a pseudoscientific piece of garbage makes that particular review especially funny, and dead-on appropriate.

A victory against medical pseudoscience!

This guy has some nice videos in his YouTube channel.

Sued for libel for saying some chiropractic claims are not evidence-based.

God, now there's a documentary promoting this garbage.

It's funny. I've long hoped that people like James Randi, the Skeptics Society and The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry would produce documentaries exposing pseudoscience like this, and now, the pseudoscience pushers themselves have gone and made another one with McCarthy and Carey. Imagine how many illnesses and deaths they will cause.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on UFO Sightings.

This cracked me up. I was also pleased about his musing on the contradiction of calling something a UFO and an alien craft, because it's something I've observed myself, but never noticed anyone else mention.

LOL!!!!! What a homeopathic hospital would be like.

"Aquamarine quartz"???

Aquamarine is a beryl, not a quartz!

No wonder the patient died!

Pseudoscience kills.

I recently read Robert L. Park's new book, Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science. I was glancing through its Amazon.com page yesterday, and noticed a negative review by Publishers Weekly in the Editorial Reviews section that surprised me. The reviews seemed written to deliberately distort the content of the book, and possibly mislead the prospective reader, so I wrote a review of my own that focused on addressing Publishers Weekly's review.

The Malaysian Government Thinks that Homosexuality Causes Swine Flu

Here is the actual press release.

7 ways to promote positive skepticism.

LOL!!! Remember that "Homeopathic Hospital" skit from ''That Mitchell and Webb Look" that I posted on July 10? (Scroll up 7 posts.) Well here is their answer to all those people who believe that they can see the face of Jesus or Mary in mundane objects like grilled cheese sandwiches or dirty windows. Hysterical.

"It's probably just some random mutation in the fruit's genetics. -- OH WAIT! Not that."

Lovely

Another example of how pseudoscience can be potentially lethal.

Lancet finally retracts the Wakefield MMR Study.

Well, good for them.

It only took 'em 12 friggin' years.

Wonder how many kids got preventable diseases or died during that time.

And how many more will continue to do so because of it.

Simon Singh is vindicated.

Singh victorious! The libel case has been officially dropped. Congratulations to Mr. Singh.

More on the Quadro Tracker, which has cost lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The January 6, 2011 edition of ABC World News with Diane Sawyer featured a segment called "Seeing the Future?", which focused on Dr. Daryl Bem, a "respected" Cornell University psychologist (one of the most respected in the country, according to the segment’s presenter, Sharyn Alfonsi), who claims to have evidence of ESP, who tested 1,000 students over the course of a decade.

In Bem’s study, students were placed in front of a monitor whose screen was divided in half. An image would be shown on one half of the screen, and the subjects had to guess whether it would show up on the left or right half. According to Bem, the students correctly guessed where the image would be posted 53% of the time.

This of course, is well within chance. But Bem argues:

“Fifty-three percent would sound very small when chance would be fifty percent, but you look at political campaigns, if you win a campaign in a two-candidate race, such as Obama versus McCain, then fifty-three percent is sometimes be considered a landslide.” Alfonsi continues, “Landslide proof, he says, that ESP exists.”

I was stunned at the conflation that lies at the heart of this fallacy.

First of all, I am not familiar with any circumstance in which a 53% victory in an election is thought of as a “landslide”, since a landslide refers to a victory with an overwhelming margin, at least according to the Random House Dictionary. A 53% victory would only represent an overwhelming margin if the second candidate received a percentage somewhere in the 30’s.

But this is really beside the point. The real fallacy is not whether 53% is a landslide, but the fact that Dr. Bem is conflating what is needed for victory in an election with what is needed for results to be considered unaccountable by chance. Or perhaps he genuinely doesn’t know anything about chance percentages, thus illustrating once again that even trained doctors and scientists do not necessarily know how to determine whether an idea is scientific or pseudoscientific. To Dr. Bem, if I correctly predict 53 out of 100 coin flips, this constitutes evidence that I’m psychic.

I wondered if there would be any token skeptic to point out confusion between victory in a contenst and mathematical chance, and was a bit heartened when Alfonsi then mentioned that some of Bem’s colleagues disagree, pointing to Professor Robert Park, who was then shown saying:

“Nonsense radar is going off loudly, yes. Yeah, this is pure nonsense.”

That’s it? Nothing more articulate or detailed than that? No mention of how Bem doesn’t seem to know the difference between majority rule and the mathematics of chance? One wonders how elaborate Park’s answer was, and how much was left on the cutting room floor. You’d think those interviewing him would at least allow him to make one specific counterargument.

The segment then continued by mentioning how the U.S. intelligence community studied ESP, and that psychics helped them, as when they aided in the discovery a kidnapped U.S. general in the 1980s, at least according to a 1995 Nightline clip that they then show, in which some unnamed official attests to the accuracy of remote viewing. Sharyn Alfonsi concludes the segment by noting that critics point out that those psychics were used in about 500 cases, and were only right in about a dozen of them.

I suppose we could be grateful that that little bit of info was used to close out that segment. Still, there was nothing new about Bem’s ignorance, and I’m left wondering why ABC would bother with this prosaic entry into woo-woo reporting.

You can currently view the segment here.

The segment begins Act II of the episode, at the 14 minute mark.

"... the U.S. intelligence community studied ESP ..."

These are the infamous "Men Who Stare at Goats," right? Give me a break.

I could see 53% being regarded as a "landslide", but only under certain circumstances. Some people regarded the 2008 U.S. presidential election as a landslide (53%-45%) because
1)8% translated to 10 million votes in such a large election and
2) because it was the biggest margin in over a decade.

That said, Dr. Bem's comparison is totally flawed. Someone needs to check the ventilation in his office...

>“Fifty-three percent would sound very small when >chance would be fifty percent, but you look at >political campaigns, if you win a campaign in a >two-candidate race, such as Obama versus McCain, >then fifty-three percent is sometimes be >considered a landslide.” Alfonsi >continues, “Landslide proof, he says, that ESP >exists.”

There are only two pissible explanations for this statement. Either Dr. Bem has the intellectual capacity of a hummingbird, or he is betting that his target audience will have the intellectual capacity of hummingbirds. Unfortunately, the latter is a gamble he is likely to win.

Here's an article from Psychology Today about similar experiments conducted by Bem. I don't think the one Luigi cited is mentioned, but it may be in the same set of experiments that this article is about (which are going to be published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). There are also some interesting responses by bloggers at the site. One points out that one of his studies came up with 53.1% correct predictions, which the author implies is not statistically significant. Lack of evidence for causality is another major flaw mentioned, as well as Bem spreading his bets among multiple hypotheses, not knowing in advance what he was expecting to find. Anyway, the articles explain it better than I could.

Professor Burkley (Author of the PT puff piece article) may be a specialist in "Social Psychology" but she is no scientist.

She does not know the difference between a "small effect size" and a statistically insignificant difference. While at their edges there might be some overlap where it's a judgment call whether or not to refine and continue, such judgments are usually based on clearly understood causes and effects. She admits that in Bem's experiments there are no clearly understood causes or effects.

Neither does she understand Quantum physics or why some of its results are confusing, and even contradictory to a classical or relativistic model of the Universe. And she missed the entire point of Einstein's "spooky action at a distance" quote. He was explaining why he could not endorse Quantum Mechanics despite the consistent results Bohr and others were getting from its equations.

And apparently she never heard of Schrödinger's Cat. How can anyone write about the importance of the observer in Quantum Mechanics without mentioning it?

The James Randi Educational Foundation has republished my January 8 piece above on their website.

Neal Adams' expanding Earth hypothesis.

I asked Adams about his advocacy of this the second time I met him last July. (One of the photos I took of him is in the Personal life section of his Wikipedia article, whereas a pic I took the first time I met him is the article's main photo at the top). He tried to offer general explanations, but could not explain where the matter came from, or how this theory jibes with plate tectonics, for which there is plenty of evidence. He said to check out his video, which I have in the past, but in the video, he merely says that there is "no subduction", but doesn't explain how he knows that there isn't any.

Good artist. Nice guy.

But doesn't know science worth squat.

I've noticed most comic book writers & artists have a poor knowledge of science.

BTW John Byrne, in issue 263 of Fantastic Four had the villain Alden Maas (re-arrange the letters) with a similar idea about Earth.

Me, I can't stand it every time Peter David refers to Darwin's power as "evolving" in the pages of X-Factor. What Darwin does is mutate. Evolving only happens to groups over a long period of time, not individuals.

I'm stumped. What does Alden Mass rearrange to? I tried using an online anagram generator and couldn't find anything viable.

Maas, not Mass.

It rearranges to "Neal Adams"

Oh, so Adams had that idea that far back? I didn't know that.

Finally watched the Neal Adams clip. Tarim. First of all, it looked to me like in several places where he tries to demonstrates how well the land masses fit together, he tweaked things to make it all fit.

Neal Adams claims the platypus was on like the African continent, South American and Antarctic continent, IIRC. Uh, what evidence does he have of this? As far as I know, the platypus is strictly an Australian native. Haven't heard of any fossil remains being found in Africa. Or have I missed something?

He also claims that his theory is true, and scientists only reject it because they'd have to scrap every bit of scientific knowledge mankind has accumulated. Really? Why? Exactly how would the expanding Earth theory threaten all of science? It's a pity Adams doesn't explain how this is true. And if current science is wrong, wouldn't that affect his theory, too?

Adams claims that "you must have spreading or you can ignore the facts" and subscribe to the geocentric theory of ancient times. Really? Why? Why is that such a logical conclusion/choice? If I agree with science and reject Adams' "spreading theory", why does that mean I believe in geocentricism? (I know it's rhetoric whose purpose is to get idiots to think, "Well I don't believe the Earth is the center of the Universe. I'm not that stupid. And because I'm not stupid, I believe in the 'spreading theory.' See how smart I is.")

If Mars is actually growing, as Neal claims, shouldn't such growth be noticeable? Shouldn't some astronomer have detected it and commented on it by now?

Man, between Stan Lee and Neal Adams' faulty grasp of science, I'm almost tempted to turn away from comic books.

BTW, I recently watched the commentary for the "Angry Dad" episode of "The-Show-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named". Stan Lee was one of the commentators. I couldn't believe it when Stan the Man stated that he based the old Marvel Comics stories he wrote on science. Seriously? Stan, from what all I've read, "You Fail Science Forever". I mean, just to give the obvious example: Radiation kills people, Mr. Lee. It doesn't turn them into the Hulk, Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four. I don't have time to mention all the others faulty science that Stan wrote in his books. "Based on science" my ass.

(I love and respect Stan for what he's done for comics, but seriously. "Based on science"?)

Benn - I don't believe the Earth is the center of the Universe.
Although if the Universe is infinite then the Earth (& every other point in space) would be equidistant from the edges & therefore the center. ;-)

Stan the Man stated that he based the old Marvel Comics stories he wrote on science.
More likely his "understanding of science". I believe it's been stated that some radiation can result in mutations. Therefore, if you are not a scientist, you might assume that radiation would be a good way to give someone superpowers.

Take a scientific tidbit out of context and squint, and you too can create a story "based on science"! ;-)

Man, between Stan Lee and Neal Adams' faulty grasp of science, I'm almost tempted to turn away from comic books.
Luigi Novi: ?????????????? What does one have to do with the other?

I couldn't believe it when Stan the Man stated that he based the old Marvel Comics stories he wrote on science. Seriously? Stan, from what all I've read, "You Fail Science Forever".
Luigi Novi: I think when he says "based on", he essentially means inspired by, and not it's completely consistent with. This is also true of Star Trek. You can't most popular base science fiction on science, at least in the latter sense, because it wouldn't work.

?????????????? What does one have to do with the other? - Luigi Novi

Stan and Neal were just the immediate names/examples, but it's just that the science in comics, especially in the Gold, Silver and Bronze Ages is so horribly wrong, it's almost embarrassing to read them. The statement was also meant as a bit of a joke. I'm too addicted to comic books to give them up. Hell, if I haven't stopped reading them at my age and after all these years, it's not like I'm really gonna let crappy science turn me away from them.

I think when he says "based on", he essentially means inspired by, and not it's completely consistent with.

Even then, I'd say his sense of science is extremely faulty.

You can't most popular base science fiction on science...

And "??????????????" right back at you. "All your base are belong to us."

Erm, I was making an anagramatic sentence, in honor of Keith's previous use of an anagram. Yeah, that's it.

Dr. Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine has some fun with a scammer who tried to scam him, which he recounted at JREF's site.

Jenny McCarthy continues to get the facts wrong.

Pseudoscience kills again.

In case anyone thinks that belief in sorcery is dead on this planet:

On February 6, a 20-year-old mother of one, was stripped naked, tortured with a hot iron rod, bound, doused in gasoline, and burned alive in Mt. Hagen, Papa New Guinea, after being accused of sorcery by relatives of a six-year-old boy who died in Mt Hagen hospital the day before.