Like a shrinking number of North Americans, I grew up in a small farming community. Almost half of my classmates were up before dawn each day to feed livestock, gather eggs, and tend to newborn calves around the farm. Discussions of 4H club assignments were common at school, and class field trips often took the…
Tag: pseudoscience
Attention, Narcissism, and our Anti-Science Culture
My academic background is in ecology and environmental science, and like all other fields of study, science is not immune to politics; many scientific camps are divided by political interests and personal beliefs. This may be surprising when you consider that a field based on such heavy empiricism such as science can still be subject…
5 Tips to Help You Science Better on the Internet
In 2016, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Wollongong was awarded a doctorate after a successful defense of her dissertation. The candidate’s central thesis was that the Australian Government’s vaccination policy was not based on credible evidence. Instead, the candidate asserted that the policy was the result of a conspiracy between the World Health Organization and…
Knowledge Dilution and the Authority Illusion: Now Anyone can be an Expert
When I was a child, my parents would force me to get outside the house almost every day. I questioned their motives, as messing around on my PlayStation or watching TV seemed like a much better option, but their insistence combined with their authority got me out the door each day. Authority is quite a…
The Age of Misinformation II: Watching a Documentary Does Not (Necessarily) Make You Smart
In our age of armchair science, no media outlet provides a lightweight intellectual experience more than the documentary. What were once films of purpose and discovery have been affected by a new breed of documentary, which use pop science and scare tactics to deliver their message. A documentary used to tell a side of a…
Why Quacks Exist
For as long as there have been people, there have been sources of guidance. Deities, prophets, leaders; all have persisted through time and have been highly influential on our world. We look to them for answers to our problems, for ways to improve our lives, and we try to model our own lives in their…
Internet Propagated Pseudoscience: The Alchemy of our Time
Last night’s debate between creationist Ken Ham and scientist Bill Nye illustrated to the world that a subject as fact-based as science still experiences a great deal of controversy. Science, which, contrary to Mr. Ham’s false dichotomy of observational science and historical science, has followed the same natural laws throughout the existence of time, still…
