Penn & Teller - Anti-Vaccine Campaigns Are Bullshit!

One of the problems with irrational beliefs is that they don't exist in a vacuum of ideas: they have consequences in the real world, and are bound to affect someone in a real way. Take the case of vaccines. There is a growing number of concerned parents who suspect a causal link between them and the incidence of autism, and who are consequently choosing not to vaccinate their children. At first glance, one could make the case that this belief is based on an article published in the well-respected medical journal The Lancet a few years ago.

The problem, of course, is that even though Andrew Wakefield (the research who wrote the article) has been found guilty of professional misconduct and has lost his medical license as a result of the shady, unethical and questionable research published in said journal (now officially retracted), and despite the fact that not a single reputable scientific study has been able to even suggest a possible causal link between vaccines and autism, many people still believe in said non-existent link, and are now exposing their children to the real danger of debilitating diseases that could easily be prevented with a single shot.

Part of this irrationality comes from the fact that a) we are easily persuaded by anecdotal evidence (instead of the rigor of well-conducted statistical analysis), b) we are prone to believe the vociferous ranting of mad celebrities (instead of the cool deliberation of research professionals), and c) we are sometimes more likely to be persuaded by fear-mongering and emotional appeals than by real evidence.

Fortunately, there are antidotes to this irrationality. One of them is the Penn & Teller duo, who, in the following episode of Bullshit, and even before getting into the meat of the 'controversy', manage to beautifully debunk the misguided fear-mongering with a fun statistics lesson :)

Check out more Penn & Teller goodies.
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Mary Roach - Packing for Mars

The human exploration of space is fascinating, not only for the discoveries we make about the cosmos but for the logistics that have to be overcome and the research that has to be done about even the most minute and seemingly trivial of human physiological functions.

We've glimpsed before how astronauts have to deal with their own processes of excretion, for instance, but before we ever made it into space, it was a genuinely open question what would happen to the human body as it reaches a zero-gravity environment. Would blood coagulate? Would the eyes be able to focus? Would muscles deteriorate? Would balance and proprioception be preserved? Would we be able to sleep?

And then there's the logistics of having to plan missions into outer space that have to last anywhere from a few days to a couple of years in relatively small and definitely isolated capsules. In the following entertaining and informative talk, Mary Roach describes some of the fascinating and crazy research that has gone into getting humans into literally alien environments... and why, despite how much you may love America, you'll probably want to go out in a Russian mission :)

There you have it, real thinking out of the box requires that you eat the box :)
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Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give a Shit?

As a new school year is about to begin, I've been contemplating different approaches to my teaching, hoping to peak my students' interest in philosophy and maximize the quality of their work (after all, I do have to read their papers).

I've always assumed that my tests are designed to evaluate my students' comprehension of the subject matter, but it turns out I may have unwittingly been designing tests that unfairly discriminate against some students. The Onion reports.

Now what do I do? :)
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St. Thomas Aquinas and the Miracle of the Herrings

I've read St. Thomas Aquinas' theology and philosophy, but I've never stopped to wonder why he's considered a saint. I probably assumed that being the prolific and influential writer he was, establishing the basic conceptual foundations of Catholicism and thereby becoming one of the Doctors of the Church, was probably justification enough to endow him with such a title.

As it turns out, I was wrong. Being the Church's greatest theologian and philosopher of all time is not quite enough to get you to party with Jesus. For that, it seems, you need some incontrovertible evidence of a miracle, and if the following story doesn't convince you we're dealing with real transcendence here, I don't know what will :)

Of course, Aquinas should have been worshiping Mithras, not Jesus...
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Ken Miller - Where Is the Missing Human Chromosome?

One curious difference between humans and the rest of the great apes is the fact that the latter all seem to have one more chromosome than we do. Now, since evolutionary theory predicts a very close genetic relationship to our closest cousins, this oddity is one that ought to make us question the validity of evolutionary theory: how could we be missing an entire chromosome and not be eating dirt and running into walls?

If you're a creationist or intelligent design theorist, this anomaly might sound like precisely the kind of evidence that would refute evolution. So how does an evolutionary account explain this strange state of affairs?

In the following clip, Professor Ken Miller explains the elegance and sophistication with which real scientists can answer these seemingly difficult questions :)

If you're interested, you can watch Miller's entire lecture here.
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Richard Dawkins - Faith School Menace?

Should the state fund faith-based schools for children? Ignoring questions of law, is it a good idea for the government to provide financial support to schools that are then free to discriminate on the arbitrary basis of what imaginary friends their parents happen to (profess to) believe in?

By the tone of my introduction, you can probably already surmise my position on the issue...

In the following eye-opening documentary, Richard Dawkins courageously explores the philosophical, social and practical implications of the religious indoctrination of children, challenging the long unquestioned faith in faith, and demonstrating that, while presumably attempting to induce a sense of social identity and community, religious education can just as easily foster an egregious and dangerous sense of us-vs-them mentality, and a complete abandonment of reality.

More troubling perhaps is the fact that religious education very deliberately permeates and distorts other disciplines (like science, health and sex education, for instance) that ought to remain purely secular subjects of study. The simple and serendipitous example shown in the documentary ought to give everyone pause.

When a "science" teacher doesn't know how to answer such a basic scientific question, she should tell her students she doesn't know what the hell she's talking about... and either she should learn the science or stop being an 'educator.'

Ignorance shouldn't constitute license to indoctrinate and brainwash minds that are too young to question the bullshit ideas presented to them by irresponsible adults... yeah, I'm pissed off!
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Extremist Makeover - Homeland Security Edition

When the voice of reason on the conservative side comes from Charles Heston, your side is in deep doodoo :)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
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Now, while we all have the right to be dicks, it doesn't follow that we should exercise that right...
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Did You Know? - War on Drugs Edition

Whatever your moral or political stance on drugs, whether you think some (or all) of them should be legalized or whether you think drugs are a scourge of evil that should be eradicated from the planet, one thing about which there should be no disagreement is the empirical question about whether the war on drugs has been successful or a failure.

What to do as a consequence of these findings is, of course, something about which we can go right back to disagreeing :)

For more on similar animations, check out Shift Happens.
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Carl Sagan - A Universe Not Made for Us

If we are seriously devoted to the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom, our search for truth must be a courageous enterprise indeed.

Soteriological concerns, pressing on the human condition as they might be, cannot be the basis or the criterion upon which we embark on this journey, for we have no reason to suppose that the truth has any concern for our welfare: there is no logical connection between what is real and what we would rather be real. If the universe has any concern for us, let that be a discovery we make in time, and not an assumption that filters our research from the start.

As the late Carl Sagan explains in the following clip, it is the sign of a maturing individual or a maturing society to overcome its childish egocentrism and its proclivity for anthropomorphism, and to accept to see reality for what it is rather than for what one would like it to be.

Douglas Adams had something similar to say, but with a bit more humor :)
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Laurie Santos - Your Financial Advisor Might As Well Be a Monkey

Are economic crises the result of poorly thought out financial institutional design, or are they the natural consequence of having the kinds of minds we have? To try to get to the bottom of this question, psychologist Laurie Santos and economist Keith Chen have been studying capuchin monkeys in their Yale lab.

The idea is to try to understand how a bunch of monkeys with no training in economics (or even language) respond to different scenarios, and then compare the results to those obtained from human subjects.

The results, surprise surprise, reveal that monkeys mirror human irrationality almost perfectly, probably because both species base their decisions on two main cognitive biases: relative evaluation and loss aversion.

Laurie Santos explains these fascinating findings in the following TEDTalk presentation:

For a bit more on this research, check out this nice article from the Freakonomics folks.
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The Moon Landing Hoax, Finally Revealed!

There are a substantial number of people out there who believe that the Moon landing footage was faked by the government, and probably shot in some desert out West.

As with most conspiracy theories, the 'evidence' presented is usually formulated on the basis of a lack of evidence or a lack of understanding of the evidence, and it is usually followed by some self-congratulatory rhetorical question that reaches a conclusion that doesn't actually follow from the evidence (or lack thereof) presented.

Of course, before you can challenge these logical gaps, conspiracy theorists usually spray you with a series of distractions, one more inane than the next, too quick to keep up with and peg individually. This type of mental prestidigitation works on the tacitly shared assumption that if you don't quite get it right away, it's probably because you're not very smart...

Logically speaking, seriously entertaining conspiracy theories is an invitation to irrationality, since these are usually formulated in ways that can't be falsified. None of that, however, means that they couldn't be true... but perhaps the truth, untestable as it might be, might be stranger than you think :)

Check out these guys mocking homeopathy.
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Overcome Stress by Visualizing It as a Greedy, Hook-Nosed Race of Creatures

I can't imagine how this could possibly go wrong :)

Then again, you could always visualize this greedy hook-nosed bastard :)


Check out more Oniony goodness
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The Perseids (and We) Are Back!

Hi folks! Sorry about the recent silence around here. Went out on a little fun hiatus and visited some truly spectacular places out West. I'll post some pictures here soon.

In the meantime, and while I try to reorganize my life and catch up with everything I've missed for the past few weeks, we have urgent business to attend to! This weekend, with peaks tonight actually, we are visited by residents of outer space: the Perseid meteor showers. These are probably the most impressive of all annual showers, so do your best to go out, lie back and take in the show. You'll thank me for it.

And if that's not enough to motivate you, perhaps this time-lapse footage of a previous shower will convince you.
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Penn & Teller - Shadows

This weekend I had the privilege and good fortune of seeing my first live Penn & Teller magic show in Las Vegas, and I must say it was one of the highlights of my life. Their tricks are incredibly entertaining, excitingly ambiguous and deliciously thought-provoking.

Perhaps the most impressive sequence, at least in my opinion, is the trick you are about to see below... and it seems I'm not the only one amazed by its silent beauty:

After the show, we even got to meet the magicians. First Teller:


And then Penn:


I'll be back in a couple of weeks with lots of awesome new entries :)
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