Skeptic: Examining Extraordinary Claims and Promoting Science

In a soon-to-be-published controversial paper entitled “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect,” Daryl Bem claims to have found significant statistical data in support of precognition in various situations through a series of nine experiments. Nicolas Gauvrit presents several analyses critiquing the methodology and statistical data presented in Bem’s study.

In this week’s eSkeptic, Bob Conrad reviews Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God by Greg Graffin and Steve Olsen.

In this week’s eSkeptic, we announce Science Symposium: 100 years of adventures in science and pseudoscience. Skepticism’s leading luminaries offer their expertise in a series of lectures and workshops designed to sharpen your skepticism and fine tune your critical thinking skills. Friday–Sunday, June 24–26, 2011.

In this special dual lecture event, Venderbilt University astronomer David Weintraub explains how old the universe is and how we know in an enthusiastic way. Following that lecture, Dr. Shing-Tung Yau tells the story of “Calabi-Yau manifolds,” — one of the smallest things you can possibly imagine — six-dimensional geometric spaces that may be more than a trillion times smaller than an electron. They might also be one of the defining features of our universe!

Skeptic is a science magazine, and as such we only deal with non-scientific issues when they come into contact with science. Foremost in this category, in our culture during the past decade, is the intersection of science and religion; in fact, science and religion studies have become something of a cottage industry in academia, with conferences, journals, magazines, and books on the subject being generated at a prodigious rate. Our primary focus in this area has been on evolution and creationism, most notably Intelligent Design creationism. Related to that in vol. 12, no. 3 of Skeptic is an article reporting for the first time the results of a study on the attitudes of Orthodox Jewish college students on the theory of evolution. Although one might expect skepticism of evolution to be found in this cohort, we were surprised by just how skeptical Orthodox Jewish college students were — not just about the theory of evolution, but about most aspects of science. For details, read on … and pass along this article to your friends and colleagues and encourage them to subscribe to Skeptic and eSkeptic.

In this week’s eSkeptic Massimo Pigliucci reviews Sam Harris’ latest book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.

HUMAN BEINGS DO NOT STAND OUTSIDE NATURE; we are a part of it. Ultimately we are made of particles, evolving and interacting according to the laws of physics. And we know what those laws are — the progress of modern science has reached a point where the laws underlying everyday life are completely understood. This is a lecture you won’ want to miss!

In this week’s eSkeptic, Barry Rein reviews Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It by Gary Taubes (Knopf, 2011, ISBN-13: 978-0307272706)

In the tradition of making end-of-the-year lists of the “Top 10 X” Michael Shermer presents his personal picks for the Top 10 Science Books of 2010.

In a stunning visual presentation, UCLA Professor of Geography and Earth and Space Sciences, Dr. Laurence Smith, forecasts what our planet will be like in the year 2050, distilling his 15 months of research traveling the Arctic Rim with cutting-edge research into four global forces: demographic trends, natural resource demand, climate change, and globalization.