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Skeptic Magazine, Volume 21 Number 4
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Special Section: Classical Skepticism

The Amityville Hoax at 40: Why the Myth Endures
by Robert E. Bartholomew and Joe Nickell
Bad Anatomy: Do the Mysterious Rhodope Skull and Adygea Skulls Belong to Aliens?: by Donald R. Prothero, Alexey Bondarev, and Tim Callahan
The Nazca Geoglyphs: A Pictographic Creation Story by Darren Iammarino
Clown Panic!: Sightings of Mysterious Clowns Rattle Nerves in South Carolina
by Robert Bartholomew

Reviews

A Betrayal of Confidence: A review of The Faith of Christopher Hitchens, by Larry Taunton
reviewed by Kathleen J. Schultheis
Why Salem?: A review of three books about the Salem Witch Trials and their legacy: The Witches: Salem, 1692, by Stacy Schiff; In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, by Mary Beth Norton; America Bewitched: The Story of Witchcraft After Salem, by Owen Davies
reviewed by Michelle E. Ainsworth

Columns

: Cover illustration by Simone Rein
The SkepDoc: Anti-Aging Claims: The Fountain of Youth is Still Only a Legend
by Harriet Hall, M.D.
The Gadfly: Can Working Memory Be Trained to Work Better?
by Carol Tavris

Articles

The Case for a Galactic Defense System: by George Michael
What is Spirituality, Anyway?: Is “Spirituality” so Broadly Defined that Testing for it is Meaningless?
by David Speed
I am Not Living in a Computer Simulation, and Neither Are You: by Peter Kassan
The State of Tumortown: The Cancer-care Industry’s Marketing Is Among the Most Deceptive on the Consumer Landscape
by L. Kirk Hagen
Luck and Regression to the Mean: One of the Most Fundamental Sources of Error in Human Judgment
by Gary Smith
Political Obfuscation: Thinking Critically about Public Discourse
by Timothy J. Redmond

Junior Skeptic

Mammoth Mysteries! Part Two

Mammoths and mastodons were the first fossil creatures ever to be reconstructed and understood for what they were: animals that lived during a previous prehistoric age and then vanished into extinction. What did this mean for the history of life? What scientific puzzles remained to be solved? And, which mammoth myths and mysteries continue to this day? Let’s find out!

By Daniel Loxton. This issue’s cover features a digital painting of a mastodon by Daniel Loxton.

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