December Picture Puzzles and “Mixed Bag” Questions: http://skeptics.cafe/puzzles/
December 2010 Skeptical Crossword: featuring some of our visitors for the Melbourne TAMOz fringe events! http://skeptics.cafe/puzzles/december-2010-crossword/
1. Three cats
2. (a) noon; (b) madam; (c) level; (d) peep; (e) gig
3. Jean-Claude van Damme
4. There is no legal precedent on which to base an answer; peacocks don’t lay eggs.
5. LBJ (It’s the initials of US Presidents counting backwards from Barak Obama)
6. Sam has 21 balls and Fred has 15 balls.
7. He will never do it.
8. Honduras
9. The top of the mast
10. One shilling
1. Getting a round too-whit
2. Overwhelming Odds
3. Catastrophe
4. Top of the Morning
5. Up for Grabs
6. Up in Arms
7. Formidable
Earlier this year Terry Kelly was interviewed by the RoyalAuto . It was a great opportunity to get the skeptical message out to the wider community. However, with such a large readership the article was bound to have some detractors.
One letter took Terry to task for his views on religion and science, in particular the statement:
But really, science and faith are contradictory.
With due respect to the author of that letter, we’re not going to reproduce it.
We thought Terry’s response was worth posting.
Dear (RoyalAuto Reader),
Thank you for taking the time to write and I am pleased you read the article in RoyalAuto. While there were some hostile letters published afterwards, and a supportive one, I have to say that we have had a lot of formal and informal positive response. Several people I’ve spoken to expressed surprise that the article could be considered controversial at all. You may be alarmed to learn that a hell of a lot of people think like I do.
To address some of your points : I know a lot of Scientists had/have religious and other superstitious beliefs. I think Newton believed View More Religion and Science: a View
Ian Enting drew quite a crowd on the 15th of November at La Notte.
Here is the abstract of Ian’s talk:
The science of climate change has come under public attack through what has been described as asymmetric warfare. Public communication has been flooded with a deluge of misinformation. In parallel there have been attempts to distract, intimidate and gag climate scientists. In 2009 Ian Plimer’s book, Heaven + Earth – Global Warming: The Missing Science, claimed to demolish the theory of human-induced global warming due to the release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. A careful reading of Heaven + Earth reveals extensive examples of fabricating numbers, distorted and misattributed graphics, misrepresentation of the content of cited references and a sprinkling of plagiarism. In spite of its blatant flaws Heaven + Earth has gained considerable political traction in Australia.
The talk was quite an eye-opener. Ian has done a huge amount of work tracking down the mathematical distortions of those arguing climate change is not man-made. Ian has kindly made his presentation slides available in PDF form for those that wish to look back through them.
[File size: 1.04MB]
Ian’s home page can be found here.
Mal.
Journalist Brad Newsome has today launched a new blog, “Sceptic Science“, in The Age’s National Times section.
With a dearth of skeptical content in the mainstream media (indeed, a dearth of anything resembling skepticism), it’s fantastic to see this kind of content getting a run on that kind of forum.
Archaic spelling aside (what, no “k”?) Brad’s blog is shaping up to be an interesting, accessible look at a broad range of skeptical issues.
Right out of the gate, Brad bravely namechecks a number of potentially controversial topics (anti-vax, alternative medicine, chemtrails) before even bravelier (seriously? – Ed.) putting out the call for comments.
We wish Brad all the best with the new blog, and we’d like to encourage our readers to run on over, have a read and indeed leave a comment.
Be quick, though. With any luck the conspiracy-theory-laden-anti-science hordes will be descending soon. This should be fun!
Matt
The promoters of Power Balance wrist bands are in trouble again. This time the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has ruled against them. 
In part the decision says:
In reaching this conclusion, the Panel noted that the claims made in the advertisements were extraordinary to such a degree that no reasonable retailer could publish them on the basis of assurances from the product sponsor, without requesting evidence that such claims could lawfully be made about the product.
The TGA are asking for the: Withdrawal of representations, Withdrawal of advertisement and the Publication of a retraction.
To re-cap; Power Balance wrist bands are coloured silicone rings with two small plastic holograms glued on. The popular silicone bands sell for about $60 (Aus). A pendant version of the Power Balance sells for about $90 (Aus). The promoters of Power Balance claim View More TGA calls on Power Balance to withdraw claims and advertising
How do you get people to think a little more critically? How do you encourage an appreciation of science? Those are questions that skeptics ponder.
However, there are such opportunities right under our noses – things that we’ve been doing for years that somehow don’t get much PR, yet generate huge good will. Victoria’s Science Talent Search is a great example.
Australian Skeptics Inc are major supporters of STS and have been involved since 2003. Vic Skeptics committee members are also represented in the organisation and judging.
The good will generated by STS is amazing. Kids get to exercise their passion for science, science teachers get to show off their best and brightest, and the parents are often there proudly supporting their kids; and most importantly of all, it’s the perfect event for Australian Skeptics to get behind and support.
Participants in the Science Talent search need to demonstrate originality, and the ability to meet a number of criteria specific to the category in which they enter. For example, students who perform an experiment must submit a report which contains an introduction, aims, materials used, the method followed, results, a discussion of the results, a conclusion, and a list of acknowledgements and references. On this criteria participants are judged and graded.
Look at this thank you letter from a Junior Primary age participant.
Surely the financial contribution from Australian Skeptics, together with the effort by those on the Victorian Skeptics committee is worthwhile – just for that one letter? But there View More The Science Talent Search and The Skeptics
Originally posted here; this article shows how convincing-looking graphs can be misused. Robert Webb writes:
The anti-vaccine movement sometimes presents graphs to support their cause, supposedly to show that diseases were on the decline before vaccines came along, and that vaccines had no effect. Graphs seem hard to argue with. They look scientific, represent actual data, and are compelling to many people. And indeed a good graph should be compelling. But their graphs are not good. Let’s have a look at how the true data, which supports the fact that vaccines have had a huge positive effect, can be manipulated to manufacture the conclusion the anti-vax movement wants.
Firstly, most of the graphs they show are of death rates, not infection rates. Yes, death rates dropped significantly before vaccines were introduced because other improvements in medicine and sanitation meant that we were better at treating the disease, but it does not indicate that less people had the disease to begin with.
They also tend to show graphs going back a long time to when death rates for common diseases like measles were very high. To fit these high figures on the graph it’s necessary to scale down all the figures, meaning that by the time the vaccine is introduced you can no longer see any drop it may have caused in deaths.
They never show graphs of death rates from third world countries where due to poor sanitation etc. death rates for diseases like measles can still be quite high.
Here’s a nice graph though showing both infection and death rates in the US and it’s clear from both that the 1963 vaccine had a huge effect.
The anti-vaxxers claim (e.g. here) that death rates are more reliable than infection rates because they don’t trust the diagnoses made by doctors. The idea is that doctors are biased against View More Analysis of Anti-Vax Graphs
