Why So Few Habitable Exoplanets Found? It May Be Due To The Wrong Tools

"The Planetary Habitability Laboratory database at the University of Puerto Rico’s Arecibo telescope facility counts just 10 exoplanets that are likely to be habitable.² Ten, out of 3,375. That statistic creates an image of a universe filled with gas giants, flaming hot lava spheres and frozen snowballs — with nary a cozy, just-right second Earth to be found.

"Appearances, however, can be deceiving. The list of habitable exoplanets is so short not because there aren’t many, scientists told me, but because the tools we use to find exoplanets are biased."

Why It’s So Hard To Find The Next Earth, Even If You’re Looking Right At It

It's Not Just Your Local Pharmacy

"Amazon’s websites are hawking a universe of dangerous, pseudoscience health products — from electronic "zappers" that promise to cure HIV to bleach enemas for autism."

Amazon is a giant purveyor of medical quackery

Rearranging The Chairs On The Deck Will Not Do It

"Ritual, mentors, and personal experiences. If you have doubts about Catholic teachings, though, those things will not address your concerns. The Church doubling down on its own awful beliefs will not change the mind of a child who knows better."

Catholics Fail to Understand Why Kids As Young as 10 Are Leaving the Faith

Quackery Is Harming Animals Other Than Humans

"This is a horrible proposal. It would allow veterinarians to get 2/3 of their continuing education credits from courses based on fantasy rather than on science. It doesn’t address approval criteria for CAVM courses. It doesn't even define what it means by conventional medicine."

Alternative Medicine Is Infiltrating Veterinary Continuing Education

Race Is Not Biological, But A Social Construct

"Recent advances in the sequencing of the human genome and in an understanding of biological correlates of behavior have fueled racialized science, despite evidence that racial groups are not genetically discrete, reliably measured, or scientifically meaningful. Yet even these counterarguments often fail to take into account the origin and history of the idea of race."

Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on the Social Construction of Race

Personal Experience And Evidence

On my Facebook page recently, I posted a link supporting my opinion that personal experience is not evidence   The push-back on this statement was significant.  Many had a flexible definition of the term evidence which included personal experience.  Following is a clarification of these two terms.

Absence Of Evidence IS Evidence Of Absence

"Absence of evidence, or the failure to observe evidence that favors a hypothesis, is evidence against that hypothesis. This is because we are significantly more likely not to see evidence for a hypothesis when it is false than not to see it when it's true — some assertions demand that the universe be screaming with supporting evidence, so when that evidence is not actually observed, it counts against it."

(NOTE:  This is true when an hypothesis has been thoroughly investigated)

If evidence is lacking when we expect it to be abundant, then it very much allows us to dismiss a hypothesis.

Facebook Is Censoring Science And Journalism

"FB removed the page of a pro-GMO advocate but allows the controversial Dr. Oz to promote miracle cures."

Facebook’s policy seems clear: If somebody is offended, it is best to censor first and ask questions later.

Taking The Mystery Out Of Consciousness

"Sensations are the building blocks of consciousness. They must first be combined into perceptions and converted into objects in the environment. Then neural systems must evolve mechanisms by which they can be remembered or recalled (neurobiologists identify the first appearances of memory in habituation, sensitization, and conditioning); and finally plasticity must develop—the capacity to shape, edit, and organize this neural content, present or remembered, into a picture, experience, or awareness of the 'world.' This, in the modern metaphysics of Democritus, is the way consciousness emerges in neural systems."

Consciousness Is Made of Atoms, Too

NCCIH: A Government Agency That Should Be Shut Down

"Basically, this review is most consistent with none of them working for chronic pain. However, NCCIH can’t admit that, which is why the NCCIH has discussed how to do 'innovative clinical trials' by using 'pragmatic clinical trials to address questions about the integration of complementary health approaches into health care systems, or to study the effectiveness of complementary or integrative approaches in comparison to standard care.' Unfortunately, pragmatic trials are trials that are done only after more rigorous trials actually show that an intervention works, with the intent to see how it works in the 'real world.' Doing pragmatic trials of treatments not yet shown to work is putting the cart before the horse."

“Non-pharmacological treatments for pain” ≠ CAM, no matter how much NCCIH wishes it so

Colleges Measure Student Satisfaction, Not Learning

"When we do attempt to measure learning, the results are not pretty. US researchers found that a third of American undergraduates demonstrated no significant improvement in learning over their four-year degree programs. They tested students in the beginning, middle and end of their degrees using the Collegiate Learning Assessment, an instrument that tests skills any degree should improve – analytic reasoning, critical thinking, problem solving and writing."

Why Universities Should Get Rid of PowerPoint and Why They Won’t

It Wasn't Only Hitchens Who Had Mother Teresa Figured Out

"All I can say after reading all this (Chatterjee and Hitchens were both the formal “Devil’s Advocates” at Mother Teresa’s sainthood vetting) is that any religion that would turn this woman into a Pipeline to God is deeply dysfunctional. As Hitchens says, she is venerated in the West not so much for her actual deeds as for the perception that somebody from the West was doing something tangible to help poor brown people."

Criticism of Mother Teresa: Too little and too late

5 Reasons Why Mother Teresa Was Cringetastic