Get off that Armchair and Change the World! – Skeptical Activism in Action

While I endorse what this Richard guy stands for – I’m surprised at the focus on the kind of two-bit charlatinism that sucks in people who will never encounter the Skeptics Society’s bulletins. Instead of sad little showmen and Mrs Charnwood with her ouija board, how about targeting Big Pharma & Blackmores, and the multibillion dollar – and utterly useless – vitamin trade? And while you’re about it, if you have lies about health benefits front-of-mind, how about hassling the meat-industry-skewed and largely fallacious CSIRO diet? Or the CSIRO “barley super food” quackery and rip-off?

I just don’t see the need to ram a particular message down kids’ throats. They’re kids… let them enjoy it. Whatever happened to simple books where the moral of the story is a relevant, applicable lesson like ‘don’t lie’, ‘don’t steal’… ‘don’t attempt to debate a point after midday on a Friday’. :\

Origami ones, meh… as long as it kept them occupied.

Nothing wrong with taking a sceptical look at what we are told by various vested interests and seeing what is actually true. A whole swathe of internet hoaxes would never keep going round and round if people just thought twice before accepting what they are told (PS: it must be time again for Mars to be so close that it will look bigger than the moon?)

I recommend taking a few minutes to listen to this guy expose some “bad science”: http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science.html

I think his best line is: “…it’s so easy to contrive. This is somebody called Dr. Gillian McKeith Ph.D, or, to give her full medical title, Gillian McKeith.” But it’s a great clip. Really gets you thinking.

I think some of the climate sceptics have given sceptics a bad name lately. But proper sceptics have been scathing about the claims made by the likes of Monkton et al: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

Thoroughly Smashed said :

LootenPlunder said :

And I sure as s**t wouldn’t be reading this dude’s books to my (albeit hypothetical) kidlets.

I guess if you want to shelter your kids from ideas that would allow them to mentally separate fact from fiction, that’s your call.

Err… or origami?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpLt0oUWfOk&t=0m50s

Shows the secret on how they work. Quite clever actually.

LootenPlunder said :

And I sure as s**t wouldn’t be reading this dude’s books to my (albeit hypothetical) kidlets.

I guess if you want to shelter your kids from ideas that would allow them to mentally separate fact from fiction, that’s your call.

LootenPlunder said :

.

And I sure as s**t wouldn’t be reading this dude’s books to my (albeit hypothetical) kidlets.

Why not?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Saunders_(skeptic)#Selected_bibliography
Seems like harmless fun to me. Admittedly I only own Horrorgami (how can you pass up a title like that).

“Richard Saunders is a vice president and Life Member of Australian Skeptics, a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a co-founder of the Mystery Investigators science show. He is the host and producer of The Skeptic Zone podcast and appears regularly as a skeptical commentator on television and as ‘the skeptical judge’ on TV’s ‘The One’. He is additionally known internationally as a children’s book author.”

Wait… what…!? Hmm… I’m skeptical about this.

And I sure as s**t wouldn’t be reading this dude’s books to my (albeit hypothetical) kidlets.

I’ll interstate, but I’ll astral travel in and hover for a bit.

Grail said :

If the “body tricks” even fool the peddlers themselves, doesn’t that mean it’s working? Paint me skeptical here, but dismissing something as “placebo effect” doesn’t mean it’s not working, it just means you don’t understand the placebo effect.

The tricks used to convince people are exactly that, magician’s tricks (illusions, but used to con, not entertain), and physically done by the seller. The placebo effect happens after the item has been bought, and is done mentally by the purchaser alone. Two entirely separate and different events, usually with non-overlapping time frames.