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Science is simply confirming what has already been known for a very long while.

This is a fallacy on two levels. First of all, for every person who "already knew" this finding (altruism is intrinsically pleasurable), you can easily find someone else who "already knew" the opposite (altruism is learned; or alternatively, apparent altruism can be reduced to self-interest). Social and behavioral sciences get a lot of people committing this fallacy because they traffic in familiar concepts like altruism, but the fallacy has precedent elsewhere. The faulty chain of inference goes as follows:

1. Hear a social science finding.
2. Search memory for a personal observation or cultural truism that fits the finding, but not for contradictory observations or truisms.
3. Conclude that you already knew it.

Second of all, the value of studies like this isn't just in providing evidence to support a broad conclusion like "altruism is intrinsically pleasurable." A lot of the value of research comes in understanding how and why that is the case, which I promise you, you didn't already know.

Science is simply confirming what has already been known for a very long while.

This is a fallacy on two levels. First of all, for every person who "already knew" this finding (altruism is intrinsically pleasurable), you can easily find someone else who "already knew" the opposite (altruism is learned; or alternatively, apparent altruism can be reduced to self-interest). Social and behavioral sciences get a lot of people committing this fallacy because they traffic in familiar concepts like altruism, but the fallacy has precedent elsewhere. The faulty chain of inference goes as follows:

1. Hear a social science finding.
2. Search memory for a personal observation or cultural truism that fits the finding, but not for contradictory observations or truisms.
3. Conclude that you already knew it.

Second of all, the value of studies like this isn't just in providing evidence to support a broad conclusion like "altruism is intrinsically pleasurable." A lot of the value of research comes in understanding how and why that is the case, which I promise you, you didn't already know.

Um, no.

I've read about Cayce before. I actually remembered the Atlantis comment and certainly remembered that he'd come up with some total whackjob treatments. Though the remainder of the specifics was from:

http://skepdic.com/cayce.html http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcayce.html http://psychicinvestigator.com/demo/ReinSkp4.htm (James Randi) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Cayce (mostly the links)

And I'm sooooooo truly disappointed that you aren't impressed. However, when deciding who is trusting secondary sources you might want to consider: I don't have to ask my doctor since I am one and can read the research and judge for myself as well as using my own clinical experience. Now, I do ask my doctor because I value her judgment too and it nice to have that second opinion. What I don't do however, is listen to every half-baked conspiracy theorist and whack-job like yourself that thinks that putting eye-of-newt and a pinch of the hair of a newborn baby in a poultice made during the full moon is going to do jack shit.

But please feel free to further embarrass yourself: Cayce, Area 51, can I get a 'Gunman on the grassy knoll'?

She said that she was struck by how intelligent and articulate he was, and that she found him to be extremely charming.

Hmm, that sounds just like someone else, but I can't quite remember who... hmm... could it be... oh, I don't know... maybe.... . . . .

You have no idea what begging the question means. You're welcome to ask other questions though.

Only when you start looking at faith in government as being a religion, do laws like this make sense.

So:

Careless people are being killed because they are not paying attention because of ipods.
The threat of death or extreme physical harm is not enough of a penalty to force them to not wear ipods while crossing the street.
There are far more potentially dangerous automobiles on the roads than there are cops patrolling intersections looking for ipod wearers.

Therefore, the law must rely on one of the following beliefs:

Either a $100 fine is worse than death or serious injury. (I don't think anyone believes that).

Or government manipulates some sort of sympathetic magic ( http://skepdic.com/sympathetic.html ), where by what is made a law has some sort of physical manifestation beyond the simple penalty or enforcement, simple by decreeing something on paper. Much like God says "Let there be light", and there is light... the government says "do not wear ipods while crossing the street", and therefore no-one can wear ipods while crossing the street.

The vast majority of people nowadays, instead of looking at a law as say a 'medicine' (that might work, that might not work, that might have side effects, that might have a greater social cost to use than the problem itself), they look at it as ordination - People assume the will of the state simply manifests itself, and to solve problems all you need to do is make a law forbidding said problem.

You might as well go by star sign. Myers-Briggs/Jung personality tests are complete pseudoscientific BS.

http://skepdic.com/myersb.html

http://skepdic.com/refuge/junkscience.html

You are referring to the guilty knowledge test. Even that is controversial. As you imply, it's only relevant to a pretty limited number of situations (crimes where the police have information that only the perp would know). For mass employee screening, it's not relevant.

Please learn what Begging the Question means.

If you don't like Darwinism, you're welcome to try Lysenkoism. It's got a long, if not exactly proud, history in Soviet Russia. It's been pretty thoroughly proven false, but unlike Creationism, it's at least a falsifiable theory.

In the late 1960s, Erhard studied Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard became a significant influence. Scientologists to this day accuse Erhard of having stolen his main ideas for est from Hubbard. We do know that when Erhard set up est he considered making it a church, as Hubbard had done with dianetics and the Church of Scientology. But Erhard decided to incorporate as an educational firm for profit in a broad market.

Werner Erhart and Scientology link

BZZZZZT!
Wrong.

http://antipolygraph.org/

http://skepdic.com/polygrap.html

Funny how, as others have mentioned, one can never get a copy of any of the supposed studies which 'prove' whatever it is the product claims. Like Kevn Trudeau and his scam or the now discredited DHEA claim, this too will be shown to be a false promise of getting something for nothing.

And don't forget the clustering illusion.

Plants send all kinds of signals. The problem is that this urban legend has to interpret those signals without much of any interaction from the plant. When I first heard of it, it was being used by people trying to counter vegetarian's arguments about how animals feels when they are butchered(sometime in the 70's).

The story goes that scientist conected an EKG machine and watched for signs of brian patterns. When the plant apeared excited they interpreted it as emotion. I didn't think it was actualy true but i found a few posts about it.

http://skepdic.com/plants.html
http://forums.teamphoenixrising.net/showthread.php ?t=23171

Take them with a grain of salt.

See http://www.skepdic.com/pareidol.html for a definition. A commentary on this particular image (along with some wicked cool visual illusions) is at http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/fcs_face_on_mars/inde x.html

Please excuse me, I have to return to searching my toast for the Virgin Mary now.

its the unprovable-without-confession arrousal that is the sick act.)

> Princeton University disagrees with you.

I'm not impressed with argument from authority.

http://skepdic.com/pear.html

---
However, according to Ray Hyman, "the percentage of hits in the intended direction was only 50.02%" in the PEAR studies (Hyman 1989: 152). And one 'operator' (the term used to describe the subjects in these studies) was responsible for 23% of the total data base. His hit rate was 50.05%. Take out this operator and the hit rate becomes 50.01%.
---

50.01%, eh? Pretty impressive. Randi better get his $1,000,000 ready!

In academia it is in our best interest to try experiments both sound and outlandish (and even outlandish but sound). The fact that Princeton is the university associated with PEAR may give it an air of authenticity, but the real question is: does their data say what they claim? Can we test it elsewhere?

See this skepdic entry on why one should be skeptical of positive claims made by PEAR. There are two meta-analysis of PEAR data that shows a statistically significant increase above chance. One claims there were no star performers, the other claims a single operator (subject), believed to be one of their staff, is responsible for half of all excess hits. Remove his results, and the results of this meta-analysis return to within the expected margin of error of random results.

There are two known attempts to replicate the PEAR results. Both failed.

Bad hypothese, bias, bad statistical analysis etc... etc...
skepdic on pear
sceptic report
And tons of other link...

Years ago at a sports psychologist's office I had these skin-response devices (among other things) attached to me while I was told to close my eyes and imagine being in a relaxing natural setting. It was neat to see my brain activity mapped out on a monitor and change drastically because of those thoughts.

Love them or hate them, the Scientologist's E-Meter is little more than a GSR meter. Of course, L.R. Hubbard takes credit for inventing it, despite clear evidence that it was, in fact, invented by Volney Mathison. Notice that it's the "Hubbard E-Meter"? How else can you take $40 of electronics and sell it for thousands of dollars?!?!? (scroll down about 2/3 down to see prices for various products)

Many would say that scientology is an organization dangerous to free-speech rights, as they seem willing to do almost ANYTHING to supress free speech if they think it's critical of them, even when such speech doesn't mention them. More information is available in this Neat-o video

And, it seems that, despite their best efforts, the church of Scientology is losing their war on the Internet - it was actually difficult for me to find information that was "positive" to Scientology when searching for information on the E-Meter!

For those who are curious as to the correct meaning of "begs the question" I'd recommend reading http://skepdic.com/begging.html

Have any of you heard of The Sokal Hoax? In 1996, a daring and dissatisfied physics professor named Alan Sokal wrote a bullshit paper called "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", which Sokal called "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense", which was "structured around the silliest quotations I could find about mathematics and physics" made by humanities academics. In short, it caused a big scandal because the paper was readily accepted without review by Duke University's postmodern cultural studies journal Social Text. It's probably one of the best and most controversial examples of a hoax on the "academic community," and it is excellent proof of just how much bullshit flies for "cultural studies." Run THAT through your paper detector! Read more about it here: Skeptic's Dictionary and Museum of Hoaxes

>...using science's own philosophical underpinnings to promote some metaphysical belief or belief system, then there needs to be serious investigation

You are making a fine argument for not teaching ID in a science class. Science is not about promoting metaphysical beliefs, no matter how many claptrap popularizations of metaphysics (Wu Li Masters, What The Bleep) try to square the circle.

For the purpose of learning what science is, Flat Earth Theory (or, if you want to be broad-minded, Velikhovsky's astrophysics)has all the virtues of ID and none of the negatives.

For the purpose of teaching metaphysics ... stay out of science class.

Isn't "homeopathic M.D." an oxymoron? As long as we're throwing links around here are some about homeopathy:

Homeowatch (cousin of Quackwatch)
The Skeptic's Dictionary

And if you want to spew anecdotes, when my dad was in his early 60's he could barely walk across a room without being out of breath and had had a minor heart attack. With 4 weeks preparation with drugs and diet to prep for major surgery, he went through a triple bypass operation. After the recovery of a few months the results were astounding.

Bypass operations are not to be taken lightly, but that doesn't mean there aren't successful results.

Either you misunderstand my position, or you misunderstand the argumentum ad ignorantiam. It applies to the argument that because we do not know that X is true, it therefore MUST be false, or vice versa.
I am not arguing that anything must be true, or that "we should trust" anything. I am saying that I choose to believe that it is true (because it might be), and that I choose to trust (because I can, without compromising logic). I have repeatedly stated that my position cannot be supported logically (nor can it be refuted logically, without further evidence). It may be utterly false. I acknowledge that.

You are arguing that because we cannot know God's masterplan, it must be assumed that it is evil. This is a much better example of the argumentum ad ignorantiam than my own argument is. Please demonstrate how your argument is any more logical or less fallacious than mine.

And I repeat that no one is saying that natural disasters are a good thing. We are saying that they may be a good thing. We do not know. We cannot know. The judgment, either way, is a choice. To decide either way is an act of faith. I would prefer to believe in a benevolent universe; some prefer not to believe that, and that is their (your?) right.

You can read more about the fallacy here and here.

Am I supposed to hate this Developer Group because it was founded by Microsoft, or should I love this Developer Group because Apple is a member?

That fallacy goes by the name of false dilemma.

The Nazis proposed their own "German Science" in reaction to what they called the "Jewish Science" of, among others, Albert Einstein and (the ironically non-Jewish) Werner Heisenberg. The "Jewish Science" was nothing other than modern physics, of course.

And when the Jewish scientists fled Nazi Germany, many came to America to work on the atomic bomb -- a bomb originally intended for use against Germany.

So as the Bush Administration and the Kansas school board repress honest science in America in favor of ideology and religion, ask yourself where we'll be in five or ten or fifty years.

Will any great biologists come out of Kansas if they need, at best, several semesters of remedial training to disabuse them of the lies of "Intelligent Design"? Will the breakthroughs in stem-cell research -- breakthroughs that could cure numerous diseases and extend human life for decades -- happen here, under the Christian eyes of Dr. Frist, or in freer and more open lands like India and Korea?

Or will that not matter at all, as global warming and environmental collapse literally drown America for the profit of the oil companies?

For a hundred years or more, America has been at the forefront of scientific research and development. Scientific leadership has been a pillar supporting our country's wealth and power. Will you let that pillar be chopped down so a few plutocrats can profit while science-hating fundamentalists cheer?

In the next several elections, you'll be voting not just for Representatives or a President -- you'll be voting on the future, or the future decline, of your country. Will you emulate the courage of Dr. Hansen, or will you surrender to an American Lysenkoism of ignorance, ideologically-fettered science, and superstition?

I think that this dissertation on the The Law of Large Numbers is perhaps the best answer to your question. I know that when I posted that reply, it was late in the evening, I'd just finished paying bills, and wanted one more look at Slashdot before I went to bed. I can't say there was any clairvoyance involved -- I noted the title and the image of a planet of Rocky Balboa's was just too funny.

"Alpha waves" not "alpha particles". Presumably, they mean 10 Hz sound intent on stimulating neural alpha waves.

http://skepdic.com/alphawaves.html

But hey, faith's a funny thing. And not funny haha, unless you think drowning cats are hilarious as well.

The Duke Nukem Forever Delayed jokes may now be dead but we now have the undying ID (Intelligent Design) joke, which may indeed be forever.

Joke Intelligent designers:
Aliens(1)
Aliens(2)
God(1)
God(2)

General:
The Skeptic's Dictionary
Creation & Intelligent Design Watch
National Center for Science Education

It is not a useful site for anything other than to learn what propaganda points Bush and his cronies are pushing this time around. Please see this entry in skeptics dictionary.

By the way, just do a google search.....it's MORE then just religious right people proposing teaching of Intelligent Design. There are many PhD's and non religious people asking it be taught as well...

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.ht ml
http://skepdic.com/intelligentdesign.html

Either way you stand, I think a intelligent debate on this should be allowed in a classroom setting and it should be touched upon in a science class. If it's never taugh much less researched, then how can evolution be provded as the defacto truth? Can we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that evolution is a natural process??? No. Can we prove some intelligent species planned all of this? No. Can it be debated in class? Why not? When ID can be presented in a non religious way, then why the heck not?

http://skepdic.com/begging.html

Or that could just be apohenia.

Insightful? Try Bunk

In particular, Voice Stress Analysis appears to be a total fantasy. Don't believe it? Get some VSA freeware and run some double-blind experiments yourself.

I'm not sure how to reconcile these two statements, especially since the 12% figure was used in a "those who fail" context. I would guess that the former statement is marketing spin, especially since it makes claims about the plans of the people tested, and the false positive rate is going to be much closer to the 12% rate from the second quote.

Also a consideration, what is the false negative rate? It's pretty common for law-abiding people to get nervous when confronted by law enforcement---they're not used to it. By the same token, actual criminals often are used to dealing with law enforcement, and hence are often calmer than many normal folk!

When combined with active spoofing of the test (examples), I would be surprised if this procedure was particularly more accurate than a standard polygraph, which is to say, not very.

Given that, I strongly suspect this will turn out to be a security procedure with no benefit beyond allowing people to point at it and say "see, we're doing something to improve security!!" without having to go to the trouble of finding a way to actually improve security.

The problem with that (beyond the waste and hypocrisy) is that the more useless steps there are in a security procedure, the more the useful steps are diluted and rendered ineffective. If Joe Smith looked kinda funny but passed the lie detector, well, I gotta let him go so I have time to interrogate and search Gertrude McGrandma who flunked it.

A measure which gives no information is worse than useless. Hopefully either this won't be one, or we won't use it.

available here. I've not seen such a good treatment of it before.

Keep surfing -- there's a link in the comments section of that blog to an FAQ on DDT that's more convincing, better documented, and entirely in favor of the original poster's thesis.

Consider the source. According to the Skeptic's Dictionary (not exactly a front for environmentalists), corporate whore Steven J. Milloy of junkscience.com is not exactly a source of objective information.

Bob Park had this to say:

"Here's the picture: a few thousand years before it was known that blood circulates or germs cause disease, doctors who had never dissected a frog, claimed that yin and yang could be balanced by inserting needles into the right points, among the hundreds of points strung along 12 meridians....Scientists suggest the needles stimulate release of endorphins. Jalapeno peppers do the same thing. So it wouldn't matter where you stick the needles would it? Then who needs an acupuncturist?"

He has a point. Clinical trials suggest that acupuncture controls pain. However, acupuncture claims to work by controlling the balance of yin and yang. This is the paranormal part. You have to control for the endorpine release as well as the placebo and regressive effect. Since practitioners claim yin and yang are beyond the measurement of science, then it is by definition, paranormal.

from http://skepdic.com/acupunc.html

"The NCAHF issued a position paper on acupuncture that asserts, "Research during the past twenty years has failed to demonstrate that acupuncture is effective against any disease" and that "the perceived effects of acupuncture are probably due to a combination of expectation, suggestion, counter-irritation, operant conditioning, and other psychological mechanisms." In short, most of the perceived beneficial effects of acupuncture are probably due to mood change, the placebo effect, and the regressive fallacy. Just because the pain went away after the acupuncture doesn't mean the treatment was the cause. Much chronic pain comes and goes. An alternative treatment such as acupuncture is sought only when the pain is near its most severe level. Natural regression will lead to the pain becoming less once it has reached its maximum level of severity. Also, much of the support for acupuncture is anecdotal in the form of testimonial evidence from satisfied customers. Unfortunately, for every anecdote of someone whose pain was relieved by acupuncture there may well be another anecdote of someone whose pain was not relieved by acupuncture But nobody is keeping track of the failures (confirmation bias)."

I've worked with many credulous people and our offices are haunted. After a little investigation I've found the ghosts:

1. Mysterious cold draft: The HVAC vents

2. Mysterious shaking: Skyscrapers are designed to sway a little in the wind.

3. Mysterious misc: humans are spending more time indoors than outdoors thus the ghosts have "moved" with them. No, people are just letting their imaginations run wild wherever they go.

4. Mysterious flicker of the light: florescents going out.

Above mixed with "it only happens when..." thus it must be supernatural is nothing but selective thinking.

The only truly ghoulish things I've found in my office ironically were:

1. The jehovah's witness who keeps the Watchtower laying around and preaches to new hires. Sorry, but missionary work on the job should be grounds for an immediate firing. Period. Unfortunately, I would think american politicians and judges would quickly call this some sort of discrimination due to vested interests.

2. Setting up a special prayer room for a muslim students at my old school. Hey, I'm all for it, but say I declare myself a discordian tomorrow can I get a chaos room full of nerf guns and classic videogames? Thought not. Double BS standard. My imaginary friend is just as real as yours.

3. Email chains full of "pray for so-and-so." Well, if so-and-so's kid is dead or if they have cancer I doubt some clasped hands are going to make any difference. Sorry, but life is rough. Sometimes really rough, and people have my sympathy, but I won't "share in a prayer with you" thank you ever much. Not to mention, the root question of begging the god who gave so-and-so cancer to take it away seems to spit the face of the whole allowing god(s) to control human affairs. The religious never seem to see it this way.

4. Email chains from the Dali Lama. Oh please, just because you're into Eastern religion doesnt make you *any* different than the Catholic down the hall. The snobby white suburban buddists have more disdain for Christianity than I do. You're both on par with my imaginary friend Eris, but just afraid to really admit it.

I may seem anti-religious, but I just wish people would keep it to themselves for once.

No, it really doesn't beg the question.

http://skepdic.com/begging.html

Been done before, except with more monkey.

I suggest you start with the World Health Organisation.

Among the most misused phrases EVER. Read this or do a search on your favorite search enging for "begs the question" and you'll see why some find this one of the most obnoxious phrases ever.

For more fun, see the reaction of people when they are making an argument that begs the question, and you tell them "you're really begging the question." Most of the time they'll respond with something similar to "what question?"

For those who don't wish to read the link - "begs the question" means to assume your conclusion as part of your argument, not forces one to ask a particular question.

I see the point you're trying to make, but you haven't made it very well.

"The average man scores 5 IQ points higher than the average woman", backed-up by statistical evidence from thousands of tests, is uncomfortable to consider, but is (apparently) backed up by the evidence. Both authors are professors of Psychology - pretty much the only resource an academic has is his reputation, so it's reasonable to assume they likely wouldn't have risen as far as they have without being careful about making stupid, inflamatory and baseless claims. Obviously we'll be able to better judge its veracity or accuracy once the study is published and the precise methodology known, but the paper has been peer-reviewed and accepted by a mainstream psychology journal, and was co-authored by someone not from northern ireland.

In contrast, if you'd like to submit a peer-reviewed scientific paper to a major sociology[1] journal with evidence for your assertions that the Northern Irish "tend to be primitive atavistic throwback to a less evolved species", or that NI universities are on balance incompetent enough to misunderstand basic scientific method or disreputable enough to actively misrepresent their conclusions... well, then I'll believe you have a point.

"(cf rev. Ian Paisley, female to male drop out rates for Queens University Belfast). Under no circumstances take anything these people say seriously."

One data point. Ok, two if you include the drop-out rates from QUB (thought I have no idea what they might be or what the relevance is). Two data points does not make a trend, and you certainly can't generalise from two different data-points to "anything said by the entire population of Northern Ireland". You appear to have a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics, or you're trolling now.

"Oh and hey if my sweeping generalisations offend, you might want to ask yourself how long you have lived in Ireland, and then you might want to ask yourself why my generalisations offend (true thought they are) and the ones made by the UU crowd do not."

First, I've never lived in Northern Ireland, although I've had several friends from there. Secondly, your "generalisations" (as you loosely phrase it) are non-specific, extrapolated from one or two data-points at best, haven't been peer-reviewed by a panel of qualified experts in the field, and you have absolutely no reputation in this area. You also indicate a very basic misunderstanding of statistics, and since this is a question of statistical inference that just makes your conclusions even more suspect.

While the UU study may be wrong, it has been peer-reviewed, was judged fit to be published in a respected scientific journal by a panel of experts, and was carried out (and defended) by people with a reputation in the field. It is also composed of thousands upon of discrete, unrelated data-points.

Does that explain it?

[1] Not even a psychology journal (I'm making it easy for you ;-). You also don't have to bet your professional reputation on it, or go in front of the country's (world's?) media and defend the assertion.