The Reading Room
The Reading Room is a comprehensive, free resource of articles relating to science and skepticism. The Library contains an ever-growing index of articles, reviews and opinion editorials culled from our extensive archives, offering an in depth look into the myriad of subjects the Skeptics Society has explored over the years. You can help us continue to expand on the Reading Room by donating to the Skeptics Society.
Aug 18, 2020 by Michael Shermer

Today, August 18, marks the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing women the right to vote. We honor that momentous event with an excerpt adapted from the chapter on women’s rights in Dr. Shermer’s 2015 book The Moral Arc.
Aug 07, 2020 by Michael Shermer

On the 75th anniversary of nuclear weapons, Dr. Michael Shermer presents a moral case for their use in ending WWII and the deterrence of Great Power wars since, and a call to eventually eliminate them.
TAGS:
atomic bomb,
deterrence,
mass murder,
morality,
national security,
nuclear deterrence,
nuclear war,
nuclear weapons,
nuclear zero,
war,
WWII
Jul 17, 2020 by Michael Shermer

What is a conspiracy, and how does it differ from a conspiracy theory? Michael Shermer explains who believes conspiracy theories and why they believe them in the following essay, derived from Lecture 1 of his 12-lecture Audible Original course titled “Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories: What We Should Believe and Why.”
TAGS:
agenticity,
belief,
Bilderberg Group,
cognitive bias,
cognitive dissonance,
confirmation bias,
conspiracies,
conspiracy theories,
hindsight bias,
JFK,
Knights Templar,
patternicity,
Rothschilds,
Zionist Occupation Government
Jun 29, 2020 by Harriet Hall, M.D.

Masks have been proven to reduce the spread of COVID-19, but instead of believing the evidence and following public health guidelines, many people have turned mask wearing into a political statement. They are refusing to wear masks for reasons that are laughable. Rejecting masks is selfish: it means they don’t care if other people get sick and die. Here’s what Harriet Hall, M.D., The SkepDoc, has to say about it.
Jun 25, 2020 by Michael Shermer

Is post-truth the political subordination of reality? Is truth itself any more under threat today that in the past? Have the populists & postmodernists won the day? In response to Dr. Lee McIntyre’s essay, Dr. Michael Shermer asserts that people are not nearly as gullible as some believe.
TAGS:
alternative facts,
conspiracy theories,
Donald Trump,
epistemology,
fake news,
fascism,
human delusion,
politics,
post-truth,
postmodernism,
progress,
propaganda,
reason,
science,
spindoctoring,
truth
Jun 25, 2020 by Lee McIntyre

Are we living in a Post-Truth era of fake news and alternative facts? Dr. Lee McIntyre avers that we must take seriously the threat to truth posed both by those who would subvert the truth for political gain, and also by those who would deny that such a threat actually exists.
TAGS:
belief,
disinformation,
Donald Trump,
epistemology,
fake news,
fascism,
lying,
objectivity,
politics,
post-truth,
propaganda,
relativism,
truth
Jun 09, 2020 by Robert Adam Schneiker

Archaeologists believed that construction of megalithic monuments were beyond the capabilities of hunter-gatherers until they discovered Göbekli Tepe, a 12,000 year old site in Turkey. Is it proof of a lost civilization, or is there another answer?
Jun 02, 2020 by Carol Tavris
In this column social psychologist Carol Tavris discusses two new books whose authors separate what’s right in the pursuit of justice from what’s self-righteous. As skeptics, they repudiate received wisdom and party loyalty, showing that by separating what we wish for from wishful thinking, we can find better, more creative, more flexible routes to attaining the former.
TAGS:
feminism,
homophobia,
human rights,
metoo,
politics,
restorative justice,
retributive justice,
review,
sex,
sexual abuse,
third-wave feminism,
vengeance,
violence
May 31, 2020 by Michael Shermer

Part 2 of the documentary film “Lance” airs tonight on ESPN and served as a catalyst for this article that employs game theory to understand why athletes dope even when they don’t want to, as well as thoughts on forgiveness and redemption. The article is a follow up to and extension of Dr. Shermer’s article in the April 2008 issue of Scientific American.
TAGS:
cheating,
competition,
cycling,
doping,
drugs in sports,
ethics,
game theory,
Lance Armstrong,
Nash Equilibrium,
performance enhancing drugs,
restorative justice,
retributive justice
May 05, 2020 by Frank S. Robinson

Frank S. Robinson reviews The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, The Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies by Robert Boyers.
TAGS:
academia,
culture,
dissent,
free speech,
freedom,
hate speech,
illiberalism,
microaggressions,
political correctness,
political extremism,
postmodernism,
review,
rights
May 01, 2020 by Robert Sheaffer

The media keeps making claims that the Pentagon supposedly announced that UFOs are ‘real.’ How much of that is really true? Robert Sheaffer — a leading skeptical investigator of UFOs — separates the facts from the hype.
TAGS:
aliens,
conspiracy theories,
critical thinking,
evidence,
extraterrestrial intelligence,
government conspiracies,
government cover-ups,
Pentagon,
UFO artifacts,
UFO evidence,
UFOs,
unidentified aerial phenomena
Mar 24, 2020 by Harriet Hall, M.D.

A spring whose waters restore the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in them is a myth that dates back to prehistoric times. Harriet Hall, M.D. reminds us that though many wines improve with age, human bodies don’t; we deteriorate.
Mar 03, 2020 by James P. Sterba

In this excerpt from his book Is A Good God Logically Possible? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Pp.xi, 209.) James P. Sterba provides his answer to the question: “Is there a greater good justification for God’s permitting significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions?”
Feb 25, 2020 by Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay

An excerpt from How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide provides some tools to help people navigate contentious conversations.
Feb 18, 2020 by Carol Tavris

Carol Tavris avers that organizations’ Codes of Conduct that try to specify each and every possible behavior they wish to prohibit (or encourage), will find themselves in linguistic and psychological quicksand.
TAGS:
behavioral psychology,
code of conduct,
communication,
consent,
harassment,
human behavior,
human values,
morality,
psychology of human interactions,
sexuality,
social context
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