Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
The source for Today’s news comes, not from an impartial poll, but rather is sourced from a poll by Barna, an evangelical Christian polling firm based in Ventura, California. To be honest, given their specific bias, I’d be inclined to take any polling results they might advance on any topic, no matter how much I … Read more
Radio Canada Internation reports the reactions being made by many in response to a new course that offers to train you in quackery. They are not alone, other have deployed similar criticism. The course on offer is Homeopathy … Starting this fall, Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario, will offer a diploma in homeopathy, a practice the critics … Read more
Over the years various health-scare stories have popped up regarding the supposed dangers of cell-phone radiation causing cancer. This plays very much into the observation that literally billions of humans now use cell phones and so if the danger is real then that is something that we should not only understand but come to terms … Read more
A couple of days ago the UK’s Independent, and several other media outlets, have promoted this claim … Religious people are, on average, less intelligent than atheists, researchers claim. To be clear, this posting is not simply a dig at the Independent. Other outlets ran with the same story. The International Business Times very explicitly … Read more
A formal study entitled “Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign” has been published this month. Just to be totally clear here, the term is a reference to misinformation – news that is presented as true, but is instead partially or wholly false, and so … Read more
If asked to defined the term “Fake News” then like many of you I would have suggested that this describes a story that is presented as “True” but is not. It turns out that this is wrong and that to me was a great surprise. A recent Gallop poll has revealed something I had not … Read more