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Domain: skepticreport.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to skepticreport.com.
Comments · 20
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Re:5th
Check out some of the linked examples here. Etta smith in particular had potential non-psychic access to the information she gave. Or Nancy Myere. The only time psychics are precise or accurate is when the knowledge is available some other way.
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Re:A layman's view
Occam's Razor only lets you choose between two hypotheses which both adequately account for the data.
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Re:The Conscious Universe
http://www.skepticreport.com/pseudoscience/radinb
o ok.htm
I doubt you will be able to find fault with the review. Perhaps the book is just flawed rather than there being rampant 'idiocy' in the world...
Your optimism about these effects is admirable, but if it starts leading to you making sweeping statements about the intelligence level on this world its going to make you look like a self superior, deluded, idiot, yourself.
Open mindedness runs both ways, dont close your mind to the idea that its you, and Dean Radin, that is wrong. Likewise dont accuse the world of being idiotic when its quite possible there is nothing to figure out and you are the 'idiot'. -
Except PEAR is a laughing stock
Bad hypothese, bias, bad statistical analysis etc... etc...
skepdic on pear
sceptic report
And tons of other link... -
Re:Why This Moon Mission Is Important
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Read what he wrote, not what you want
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Re:Some facts.Not quite -- A little research could have saved you some trouble.
By the way, according to the bible, the earth was created around 7000 years ago.
This is incorrect. You were thinking of bishop James Ussher who studied the genealogies in the old testament back in the 1650's. He calculated that the earth was created in 4004 B.C. (Though many think his math is sketchy) -- That would make the earth 6009 years old, not 7000. Oh, and that's not according to the bible, its according to one persons highly suspect interpretation of the bible.The oldest tree in the world is in California.
It is 4200 years old.
That's an old tree, but if this world is billions of years old, why isn't there an older one?
The oldest tree in the world is a Bristlecone Pine named "Methuselah" -- It's 4,767 years old.
Why isn't there an older tree? Perhaps changes in climate and geography over time, natural disasters (think: fire, etc.). It's preaty amazing anything could survive that long.The oldest and biggest reefs in the world are outside the coast of Australia. The Great Barrier Reefs. After a 30 year study, several groups of scientists all came to the conclusion that the reef had to be less than 4300 years old.
That's some pretty old reef. But once again, with a billion year old world, shouldn't that be WAAY older?
Not quite -- the oldest reef in the world is is located in a very odd place -- Vermont -- The Chazy Reef is estimated to be over 480 million years old. Though it has competition from Rowland's Reef in Nevada -- a multi-million year old bioherm. (Perhaps you shouldn't trust info you get from John Ankerberg?)And before anyone mentions Carbon14 dating.. Actually
Other than your apparent distaste for science -- which is most likely founded in ignorance of what science actually is (see this link for some enlightenment) -- The half-life of C14 does not mean that we can only date organic material 5730 years old and newer -- I'm not entirely certain where you got that information. The half-life of C14 is the time it takes for half of a sample to undergo radioactive decay. The effective range of Carbon Dating seems to be about 50,000 years. There is a good article Here that you might find enlightening.The are so many different simple things that we can find in nature that really put a kink in the entire evolution viewpoint.
Not really. A little education will surely clear things up for you. Someone posted this link earlier -- it's a good one just to get your thinking started.
Remember that real scientists don't care about creationism -- as creationism is not science. If creationists want to be taken seriously, they should come up with real scientific evidence in support of creationism, not try to show that the currently accepted theory is wrong. (They'll have a hard time doing that!) The interesting thing about science is when a theory no longer explains the data, it gets tossed out the window. If evolution is wrong, science will get rid of the theory itself -- and replace it with a theory that explains all the data. -- Note that it won't be replaced by creationism, as creationism isn't science. -
Things Creationists Hate
Get to know these things and use them in any Evolution v. ID debate! http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/thingscr
e ationistshate.htm -
Things Creationists Hate
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Things Creationists Hate
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Re:Random number machines predicting the future eh
They've seen it deviate only in controlled experiments (repeatedly), and before major world events (again repeatedly).
You seem to have an odd definition of the word "only" that I am not familiar with. From just one of the many articles that debunks this:
Another serious problem with the September 11 result was that during the days before the attacks, there were several instances of the eggs picking up data that showed the same fluctuation as on September 11th. When I asked Radin what had happened on those days, the answer was:
"I don't know."
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Skeptical Questions
What they claim: When lots of people think the same thing it makes "random event generators" give "less random" output.
When pressed about evidence working against his theories (e.g. assigning meaning to some data spies, but not others), global conciousness proponent Dan Radin replied: "I don't know what happened there."
This is the scientific thing to say -- if you don't know, say you don't know.
However, assigning meaning to some spikes, but not others, tends to erode one's confidence in the assignment of causality.
See Skeptic Report for critical analysis.
-kgj -
Re:Why is this under science?
How's this for starters?
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Re:Superstitious Crackery
These people have set up the experiments so that their claims will either be supported by facts or not.
A quick search on the Net shows that the experiments themselves may not have been set up correctly, that the experimenters choose their data to fit the facts, seem to skew results, have a patent that presupposes their results and that plenty of bona fide quacks treat this as "truth" which always gets skeptics (like me, who do not take such publicity at face value) jumping all over gullible posters. -
Re:Atoms
And there's plenty of stuff that people believed in, or still believe in, that are still wrong. Ether, the heart being the centre of emotion, the world being flat.
I haven't seen any convincing data, the people running this project pick and choose 'world' events as they decide it.
For example:
"Radin gave several examples of how GCP had detected 'global consciousness'. One was the day O.J. Simpson was acquitted of double-murder. We were shown a graph where - no doubt about that - the data formed a nice ascending curve in the minutes after the pre-show started, with cameras basically waiting for the verdict to be read.
And yes, there was a nice, ascending curve in the minutes after the verdict was read.
However, about half an hour before the verdict, there was a similar curve ascending for no apparent reason. Radin's quick explanation before moving on to the next slide?
'I don't know what happened there.'
It was not to be the last time we heard that answer."
And if upward curves start before the 'world' event taking place? It's collective pre-cognition folks! And how much before the event counts as pre-cognition? As much (or as little) as these 'experimeters' require.
Look, even the director of the project himself says: "...this idea is really an aesthetic speculation. I don't think we have real grounds to claim that the statistics and graphs representing the data prove the existence of a global consciousness. On the other hand, we do have strong evidence of anomalous structure in what should be random data..."
That's the real telling point: "...should be random data...". I bet some in-depth tests might show the 'eggs' are simply not entirely random. -
Re:Random number machines predicting the future eh
Quite a few, according to this interesting, skeptical report
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A rebuttal on SkepticReport.com
Article by Claus Larsen is here:
http://www.skepticreport.com/psychics/radin2002.ht m
Makes a number of strong points. -
Re:Random number machines predicting the future ehRed Nova has lost a lot of credibility with this article, in my book.
Here's what the Skeptic Report has to say about the "Global Consciousness Project".
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Re:Random number machines predicting the future eh
It took me all of 5 seconds to find this article which pretty much debunks the entire project:
http://www.skepticreport.com/print/radin2002-p.htm -
Re:Old News
> Earning a Ph.D. in the sciences generally indicates that
> some one is a scientist, which is why I said "reputable scientist".
You're wrong and too proud to admit it. Read this, hopefully that settles it for you: Do Creationists Publish in Notable Refereed Journals?.
> You ignored
The arithmetic works out.
> How many variations did you try before you got it to work out?
The beauty of what you're fighting is that it all converges. Other studies are saying the same thing (these papers were quoted here)
In fact, a number of recent studies on living populations have indeed come up with results which indicate a much higher rate of mutation in human mtDNA.
The review in Science's 'Research News' goes still further about Eve's date, saying that 'using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old.' The article says about one of the teams of scientists (the Parsons team5) that 'evolutionary studies led them to expect about one mutation in 600 generations
Loewe, L and Scherer, S. 'Mitochondrial Eve: the plot thickens.' Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 12(11):422-423, November 1997.
Gibbons, A. 'Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock'. Science 279(5347):28-29, January 2, 1998.
> The Family tree article doesn't say that there
> was only one family tree at 1415BC.
Talk is cheap. As I said multiple times in those posts:
Give me a reason how the study _disproves_ a single ancestor.
> As far as what Newton believed in. Alchemy, Astrology,
> and Creationism were all appropriate for his time,
> but just as Alchemy and Astrology have been relagated
> to quaint history, so has creationism.
I warned about slandering the dead. According to this article, Newton bought books on astrology, but was "soon convinced of the vanity & emptiness of the pretended science of Judicial astrology". As for alchemy, that was the chemistry of the day.
> You can read reputable to mean a scientist
> working to increase knowledge in his field of study
> and submitting his work for review by other scientists
> in the same field of study.
Generally, people don't get Ph.D. unless they publish.
> The 521 scientists named Steve that have signed the
> statement supporting the age of the earth and evolution
> statistically represent 52,100 scientists.
Science isn't a democracy. The theory-of-the-day has to account for the evidence, or change.
> As far as some of your other "facts", dendrochronology using
> crossdating for bristle-cone pines has documented a continuous
> history for 8,200 years.
Crossdating hopscotch again. I _had_ asked for a single tree and pointed to problems of crossdating.
> There even other older living things, for example, an
> 11,000 year old creosote bush in the Mojave Desert,
Evidence? As it turns out, all of the rest of your mentions were bushes, with age estimates based on _current_ rate of growth and _current_ weather conditions (assuming both persisted for thousands of years)...
Except for this one...
> a 13,000 year old eucalyptus in Australia,
Aha - could be there treerings in the one trunk then? Er, no...
" grow 40 metres apart, may be part of the same original tree. If so, they are estimated to be 13,000 years old! If not, the individuals themselves may be 3,000 years old, making them Australia's oldest trees "
I've asked time and again for more than 5500 rings in one trunk. Actually, the Bible s