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Skeptic Magazine, Volume 22 Number 3
Table of Contents

Skeptic magazine, vol 22, no 3 (cover)

Special Section: An Academic Hoax

Failure to Communicate
Why We Published the “Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” Hoax Exposé
by Michael Shermer
The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct
A Sokal-Style Hoax on Gender Studies
by Peter Boghossian (aka Peter Boyle, Ed.D.) and James Lindsay (aka, Jamie Lindsay, Ph.D.)
More Fashionable Nonsense
Some thoughts on “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” Hoax
by Alan Sokal

Cover Story: Evaluating Lost Civilization Evidence

Debating Science and Lost Civilizations
My Experience on the Joe Rogan Experience
by Michael Shermer
Conjuring Up a Lost Civilization
An Analysis of the Claims Made by Graham Hancock in Magicians of the Gods
by Marc Defant
Lost Civilizations and Imaginative Conjectures
An Analysis of the Myths and History of Graham Hancock’s Magicians of the Gods
by Tim Callahan

Columns

The SkepDoc
Juicing for Health or Torture
by Harriet Hall, M.D.
The Gadfly
Our Angry Era
by Carol Tavris

Articles

Big News on Homo naledi
More Fossils and a Surprising Young Age
by Nathan H. Lents
Publicly Funded Stem Cell Research
California’s $3-Billion Experiment in Public Science
by Raymond Barglow
How to Tame a Fox and Build a Dog
by Lee Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut
Science, Facts, and “Provisional” Knowledge
by David Zeigler

Junior Skeptic

Zombies: The Gruesome True Story

Our world has been conquered by hordes of zombies! They menace us in video games, comics, television, and movies. They lurch gruesomely down city streets in “zombie walk” events. After decades of zombie fiction, the walking dead are more popular than ever. Mindless, moaning, hungry for human flesh, zombies may be the ultimate modern monsters. They’ve spread like a virus through tales of terror and horrified imaginings. But where did the idea come from? Were zombies invented for fiction, or do they have a basis in legend—or perhaps even in reality? Could anything like fictional movie zombies actually exist in the real world? Let’s find out!

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

CORRECTION: In Skeptic 22.2 we published an article titled “Area 51: What’s Really Going on There?” by Donald Prothero. It was credited as an excerpt from the forthcoming co-authored volume by Prothero and Tim Callahan, titled UFOs, Chemtrails, and Aliens: What Science Says (Indiana University Press, August 2017), which it is. But it was originally published in a book consisting of a collection of articles edited by Karen Stollznow titled Would You Believe It?: Mysterious Tales from People You’d Least Expect (January, 2017) under the same title. This work should have been properly referenced in the SKEPTIC issue. Our apologies to Karen Stollznow and to our readers for this oversight. —Michael Shermer, Publisher

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