Psychic Methods Revealed: Hot Reading
Detecting psychic scams & debunking mediums is easier when you know how psychic methods like hot reading work. Don’t be fooled by psychic misdirection. Expert mentalists, skeptics, and magicians Penn and Teller, Derren Brown, Paul Zenon, James Randi, and Mark Edward will reveal the secrets of psychics by exposing disgraceful psychic tricks used by psychic Sally Morgan, The Long Island Medium (Theresa Caputo), Rosemary Altea, Peter Popoff, Joe Power, James Van Praagh, and more. Stay skeptical, dare to be curious, but don’t fall for this bullshit, and don’t drink the koolaid.
Principles of Curiosity
Personally, I would give this video 3.5 out of 5 stars. It felt too lengthy (40 minutes) for the amount of information presented, but still very enjoyable.
The ugly side of the “chemtrail” conspiracy
The ugly side of crazed conspiracists has reared it’s ugly head again with death threats to another meteorologist. Read about it below. – MIB
By Meteorologist Eric Sorensen via WQAD.com
Yesterday, a man called local talk radio with a report of chemicals being sprayed by planes overhead. With no credible evidence whatsoever, the report went on the air to anyone who was listening without any discussion on the subject.
As a Meteorologist, I’m conflicted hearing this. On one side, much like climate change, I want to steer clear of such a divisive, political subject. But the other side of me says, as a degreed Meteorologist I owe my viewers and fans accurate science information.
Anyone who knows me understands I am a lighthearted person. I believe you can have fun while doing hard work, even if that means you’re building a deck, driving a truck, or studying the weather. But I struck a nerve when I posted a video on Facebook about the gentleman who called into local talk radio. I reiterated that the “chemtrails” were actually condensation from hot jet engines, ending dramatically with “be afraid, be very afraid.” Because that’s what the alarmists who believe in the conspiracy are hoping more people do.
[ . . . ]
Within minutes, the comments quickly turned hateful and downright angry. One poster wished that my family be poisoned and that a brick be thrown through my head. Outrageous! Especially since the hateful, hurtful words weren’t coming from just one person. There are dozens and dozens of people who believe I am paid by the government, lying when I cast doubt on the conspiracy theory. And a surprising number of people actually wish some sort of harm.
Ten Facebook Pages You Need to Stop Sharing From
By Dawn Pedersen via dawnsbrain.com
A friend of mine shared an eyebrow-raising article on Facebook. The linked story was along the lines of “private planes stolen by terrorists in the Middle East, and an attack is imminent”. 
The sensible people among his friends good-naturedly mocked him. They ribbed him about how ridiculous the prediction was. And all you had to do was consider the source.
My friend had shared the story from a notoriously crackpot Facebook page. The post lacked any merit, save a few tenuous and unrelated pieces of actual news. This behavior was typical of this particular page. Often, these types of pages hook you with a kernel of truth, and then wrap it in layers of idiocy.
When confronted, this friend said, “well, we’ll see who’s right in time.” The prediction by Natural News has failed to become reality almost a year later.
The Facebook fan pages below have a habit of spitting scientific inquiry and reason in the eye. They also have an unreasonably high number of fans who share their inanity. Shares from the following pages deserve a serious eye roll and shaking of one’s head.
#10 Alex Jones
Facebook fans: 856K
What He Says About Himself
“Documentary Filmmaker, Nationally Syndicated Radio Talkshow & Prisonplanet.tv Host – Free video/audio stream”
What He Really Does
Mr. Jones uses a ton of hyperbole, conspiracy theories, and a loose connection to reality, to whip up fear and loathing in his audience.
Recent Ridiculousness
Whatever your feelings are on using legislation to increase vaccination rates, you won’t find any legitimate support for implications that vaccines contain toxic doses of chemical. Nor that there are aborted fetal cells in any of the shots we get.
Sample Fan Comment
World government, population control, fluoride hysteria, GMOs, illegal cancer cures, and chemtrails. This comment has it all.
#9 Food Babe
Facebook fans: 938K
What She Says About Herself
“Vani Hari started FoodBabe.com in April 2011 to spread information about what is really in the American food supply. She teaches people how to make the right purchasing decisions at the grocery store, how to live an organic lifestyle, and how to travel healthfully around the world. The success in her writing and investigative work can be seen in the way food companies react to her uncanny ability to find and expose the truth.”
What She Really Does
Ms. Hari, the “Food Babe”, parrots Dr. Mercola and cobbles together cherry-picked blurbs from questionable studies and Wikipedia. She uses the term “investigation” to excuse the fact that she often gives medical advice without having any education in the life sciences. She picks the weirdest ingredients to go after.
Recent Ridiculousness
This from the woman who claimed to have cured all her allergies with acupuncture and “clean eating”.
Sample Fan Comment
On Facebook, it’s only a matter of time before someone pulls out the EO sales kit.
Mars Hoaxes: Why We Believe
by Stephanie Pappas via Live Science
First, let’s get one thing out of the way: Mars is not going to look as big as the moon in the night sky tonight. Or tomorrow night. Or any other night, barring some sort of unforeseen planetary catastrophe.Continue Reading: Mars Hoaxes: Why We Believe
Chemtrail Plane Interior!!!!
The photos below have surfaced showing the interior of a chemtrail plane! I didn’t believe in chemtrails – i didn’t believe there was evidence – but I may have to re-think my chemtrail beliefs!!!
But wait! There’s more!
Click here to find out more! 😉
A Convoy of Conspiracies!
By Mason I. Bilderberg
Before i forget …
This is a video i recently saw on a facebook webpage.
The video shows a large convoy of tractor trailer trucks traveling on Virginia’s Interstate 64 being escorted by State Troopers. Take a look:
As i watched the video i couldn’t think of why these trucks would be driving in such a formation (I’ve included the answer at the bottom of this post). I didn’t think much of it, really. Most people didn’t think much of it. That’s because when most people don’t know who, what, where, why or when, they simply say “I don’t know.” But not conspiracists …
When confronted with an unknown, conspiracists immediately fill their information void with something they want to believe (usually some kind of apocalyptic plan by lizard people to starve, kill, destroy and otherwise control earth people). It’s this ability by conspiracists to build a confirmation bias echo chamber out of absolutely nothing that i find really, really entertaining.
So now, for your entertainment, here are just a few of the comments i found associated with this video. Enjoy the lunacy.
So what is reality? Why were these trucks being escorted down a highway in Virginia? Read the government’s “cover story” here courtesy snopes.com.
Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB)
How People Consume Conspiracy Theories on Facebook
… in much the same way as mainstream readers consume ordinary news, say computer scientists.
Do you believe that the contrails left by high-flying aircraft contain sildenafil citratum, the active ingredient in Viagra? Or that light bulbs made from uranium and plutonium are more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly? Or that lemons have anti-hypnotic benefits?
If you do, then you are probably a regular consumer of conspiracy theories, particularly those that appear on the Italian language version of Facebook (where all these were sourced). It is easy to dismiss conspiracy theories as background noise with little if any consequences in the real world.
But that may be taking them too lightly. In 2013, a report from the World Economic Forum suggested that online misinformation represents a significant risk to modern society. The report pointed to a number of incidents in which information had spread virally with consequences that could hardly have been imagined by its creators.
“Readers of conspiracy news are more likely to both share and like a post than readers of mainstream science news.”
In one case, somebody impersonating the Russian Interior Minister tweeted that Syria’s President Basher al-Assad had been killed or injured. The tweet caused the price of crude oil to rise by over one dollar before traders discovered that the news was false. In another case in 2012, 30,000 people fled from the Indian city of Bangalore after receiving text messages that they would be attacked.
Clearly, the rapid spread of information can often have little to do with whether it is true or not.
And that raises an interesting question. How do conspiracy theories spread through the Internet and do people treat these ideas in a way that is fundamentally different to conventional stories from established news organizations?
Using the fear of God to promote an Anti-Vaccine agenda
By The Locke via The Soap Box
Yesterday I saw an article making rounds on pro-science and anti-anti-vaccination Facebook pages that was written by a “Christian” blogger who was claiming that God does not support vaccines. (Read the article here)
The author of the article uses several classic anti-vaccination claims to spread her propaganda, although the one that was mostly talked about in that article is the claim that vaccines contain parts from aborted fetuses, which is false.
She combines this along with passages from the bible and her “interpretation” of those passages in an attempt to make it seem like God does not approve of vaccines.
Before I begin I’m very well aware that many of you reading this are atheists, but for the moment just for fun consider the possibly that God exists, and if you are someone that believes that God exists then please and hear what I have to say.
First, God is, according to Judea-Christian beliefs, an all powerful being that created the Universe and everything about it, including what does and does not work.
If God is all powerful and didn’t want people to use vaccines, then couldn’t God just will vaccines not to work?
I asked this question in the comments section, and the author responded to me:
First, before anyone points it out I believe she meant to say (although I could be wrong) that research into vaccines have not been proven to be clinically effective. This is ofcourse not true. Vaccines are very effective, and there are multiple published research papers showing how effective vaccines are. 
Doing a simple Google Scholar search for vaccine effectiveness will bring up thousands of papers concerning vaccine effectiveness.
The second thing the author claims is that no vaccines have a life time immunity. This is completely false.
Certain vaccines (as seen here) only provide immunity for a few years, but for other vaccines they could give a person immunity against a disease for the rest of their life, although for most additional vaccinations are recommend just to be safe, and with certain vaccines, such as the MMR vaccine, getting another vaccination several years after the first one is usually all that it takes for lifetime immunity.
I replied to the author’s reply to my comment pointing these things out to her, and also once again asking her the question if . . .
9GAG and the AIDS Cure
By Myles Power (powerm1985) via YouTube
9GAG recently posted an image on their Facebook page that referenced a patent for an AIDS cure. I could go into detail about how this AIDS cure is bullshit, and how the 105,047 people who liked this post are idiots but I am far too lazy. Instead I simply ran my own google searches to find patents that show how ridiculous these people are.
Facebook needs to start enforcing it’s own rules!
By The Locke via The Soap Box
Yesterday I saw something on Facebook that really p*ssed me off!
Granted I see lots of things on Facebook that p*ss me off (sometimes on an hourly bases) but the things that usually get my teeth grinding are just rude, or offensive, or ignorant, or all of the above. What I saw wasn’t neither rude nor offensive, but it sure was ignorant, and it was definitely dangerous.
What ticked me off was an infograph posted on Green Med Info’s Facebook page concerning a “study” about “GMO” insulin (which all insulin is) that claimed that certain people with type 2 diabetes can develop type 1 diabetes from injecting insulin. (Link to original post here)
While people with type 2 diabetes can develop type 1 diabetes over time there are usually several factors that can cause this, such as a person’s diet, or whether they exercise, or if they take the medication that has been prescribed to them, or genetics. Insulin is not one of the causes. Infact it could prevent a person with type 2 diabetes from developing type 1 diabetes.
What gets me so angry about that post isn’t just the sheer ignorance of it, or how outright dangerous it is for the people at Green Med Info to promote something like this (because despite the fact that it promotes quackery and fraud medicine, better known as alternative medicine, people do listen to and take “advice” from that page) this type of “info” could kill a person with type 2 diabetes if they take it to seriously and decide to stop taking insulin. Either that or result in a person developing type 1 diabetes, or slipping into a diabetic coma, or losing a body part. The very worst thing that could happen is that the parent of a child with type 2 diabetes reads that and decides not to give their child insulin and what I listed above happens to that child, and there is little they can do about because they are at the mercy of their parent (unless they tell a teacher or family member about what their parent is doing and that person gets the authorities involved).
Now, back to the original reason why I’m writing this.
I, along with many other people reported this post to Facebook hoping that the social media website would take down the post due to the fact that it could cause some people to do something that was dangerous and hazardous to their health, and warn Green Med Info not to post something like that again.
Facebook has done nothing.
10 Goofy Conspiracy Theories About Mind Control
By Gregory Myers via Listverse
Sometimes, we want other people to do things, but those people don’t want to do those things. In many cases, people have tried to solve this problem with violence or other forms of direct coercion, but some craftier people have looked into the idea of mind control. Science has found little evidence that such techniques work, although conspiracy theorists would tell you that those scientists are in on the plot. Whether it is the Illuminati, the mysterious powers that be, or your nation’s government, there is someone out there with incredible, malevolent power working to control your every move, theorists claim, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
10 • Facebook Is A Mind Control Plot
To many people, Facebook is just an annoying—if somewhat necessary—social tool, but some are convinced that it is far, far more than that. They believe that sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Digg came to prominence a little too easily. As such, they must have had backing from powerful media moguls like Rupert Murdoch as well as faceless government benefactors. In turn, the media promotes these sites to encourage the masses to publicly post about their lives, making it easier to spy on them. This theory also claims that part of the point of social media is to brainwash you into silence, so you will slowly conform to what those lurking in the shadows would prefer you to be.
Some people even think that the Facebook plot goes beyond simple social engineering. The Weekly World News claims that they talked to some “anonymous men” from the CIA, who divulged details of an operation planned for 2012. These nameless sources claim that data gathered from Facebook was being used to create mind-controlling applications that would compel users to do the CIA’s bidding, leading to total enslavement of the world’s population.
9 • Brainwashing During The Korean War
During the Korean War, many US soldiers were captured and kept as prisoners of war by the North Koreans. The North Koreans were known for being incredibly cruel to their prisoners, either killing them or simply letting them die from neglect. After the Chinese took over the prison camps, they maintained an iron grip on their prisoners but halted the unnecessary killing. Instead, they attempted to undermine prisoners’ beliefs in democracy and capitalism, often holding sessions with prisoners for the purpose of indoctrination.
After the war, many people were concerned about defectors, and the specter of Chinese brainwashing was raised. However, researchers found that the number of defectors was greatly exaggerated. Very few people collaborated with the Chinese in any meaningful way, and most of those who did were already sympathetic to their cause. In fact, experts believe that these so-called “brainwashing” techniques were merely a strategy for keeping prisoners busy, preventing them from organizing. Once the Chinese got their hands on the prison camp, no one escaped.
Despite this explanation, the conspiracies theories that the Chinese were experimenting with turning prisoners against their own country for dark and sinister purposes have persisted to this day. It could be argued that this conspiracy was the inspiration for many future theories about supposedly compromised former soldiers and spies.
8 • Jonestown Was A CIA Experiment
You already know that the Jonestown cult ended with an incredibly tragic mass suicide. Shortly before the events (which were caught on tape) that created the expression “don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” a congressman named Leo Ryan had arrived to investigate the cult but was gunned down shortly after disembarking his plane. Official sources claim that the attack was perpetrated by cultists from Jim Jones’s group, who chose their own destruction under his enigmatic influence, but some theorists are convinced that something far more shocking occurred.
The theorists claim that there were signs that the body count was initially inaccurate, leading them to believe that some tried to run away. Others claim that many of the cultists were murdered by cyanide poisoning, citing injection marks on the bodies that couldn’t have been reached without help. Along with the likelihood that the CIA had infiltrated the group for the purpose of investigation, this evidence has led to some very strange theories, such as the claim that the entire Jonestown cult was a camp set up by the CIA to test mind-controlling techniques. The theorists claim that the congressman was actually gunned down by the CIA, after which the camp was quickly cleansed so that the truth of their gruesome experiments didn’t get out.
It might seem odd to believe that the CIA was present after the recording of the massacre came to light, but some theorists think the audio tape was heavily edited. One theorist claims that the lack of proof is itself evidence of a conspiracy, explaining that the rumors about the CIA’s involvement in Jonestown are so crazy and unbelievable that the CIA must have planted them so you wouldn’t know the actual truth about what they did.
7 • Fluoride In Water Turns You Into Lobotomized Zombie
If you’ve ever watched Dr. Strangelove, you’ve heard the conspiracy theory that fluoride in the water is designed to sap and pollute all of your precious bodily fluids. Many people insist that fluoride is an attempt to poison the water, but the origins of these myths are stranger then you might think. The conspiracy theorists claim that the plot began in Nazi Germany, where Hitler and his top cabinet were looking for a strategy to control minds on a massive scale. They decided that fluoride would be great because, according to the theorists, it erodes your mental function and free-will as it slowly builds up in your body. Over time, you become a pawn for the powers that be.
Of course, as fluoridation spread, conspiracy theories and myths spread along with it. This has culminated in many conspiracy theorists pushing two theories that seem totally incompatible with each other. For instance, one theorist explains his theory of subtle mind control, going on to explain that fluoride quickly poisons your body as well. It seems like zombies aren’t very useful if they’re dead.
Busting Some Rothschild Family Facebook Memes
By Mike Rothschild via Skeptoid
If you want to dispense racist, historically ignorant nonsense about wealthy Jews, you can hardly do better than Facebook. Quite a few memes have been going around about the Rothschild family (which, full disclosure, I have absolutely no link to other than having the same last name) and I wanted to take a look at three that caught my eye.
The first is a picture of prominent family member Jacob Rothschild, a respected British investment banker and a direct descendent of Mayer Amschel Rothschild. While Jacob is renowned for his business acumen and philanthropy, this particular meme isn’t so respectful, contrasting him to a crudely drawn picture of billionaire tyrant character Montgomery Burns from the Simpsons.
There’s also some text, full of the usual Rothschild-related distortions and lies. Part of it reads:
“My family is worth 500 trillion dollars.”
This is a ludicrous accusation that seems to have appeared out of thin air and been accepted as gospel truth by internet conspiracy theorists and anti-Semites. It obviously doesn’t pass the smell test, but just to be sure I looked for the source of the claim. There isn’t one, or at least not one I could find. It appears to be completely made up. It’s also impossible. The entire amount of financial assets held by the population of the earth is a bit less than $200 trillion.
As of 2011, the total worth of the derivatives market was about $600 trillion, and there’s nowhere near enough money in the world to pay that off should the need arise.
The richest living member of the Rothschild family, Benjamin de Rothschild, is estimated to be worth about two billion dollars. Only two Rothschilds, but not Jacob, appear on the Forbes list of richest people in the world – which, of course, has led to a separate conspiracy about Forbes colluding with the family to keep their true wealth quiet. But not so quiet as to keep internet sleuths in the dark, I guess.
As usual, this is a nugget of information that only those “with their eyes open” know.
“We own nearly every central bank in the world.”
There are all kinds of goofy conspiracies about the Rothschilds having central banks in all but 3 or 7 or 9 countries. However, as Brian pointed out in his Skeptoid episode about the Rothschild conspiracy theory, the era of the Rothschilds “controlling the world’s money supply” is long over. There are far more powerful banks around the world, controlling far greater sums of money.
The very fabric of the claim is silly. A “central bank” is by definition . . .
Rumors of an asteroid impact in March 2014 are false.
No, Asteroid 2003 QQ47 Is NOT Going to Hit the Earth Next Week
By Phil Plait via slate.com
Well, it took three months, but we have our first notpocalypse of 2014!
Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are spreading a story that a large asteroid named 2003 QQ47 might impact the Earth next week, specifically on March 21, 2014.
Let me be very clear right away: Nope. It won’t. This story is totally wrong! Well, the asteroid does exist, but it won’t hit us next week, and in fact can’t hit the Earth for at least a century. The truth is the asteroid will safely pass us on March 26 of this year, never getting closer than 19 million kilometers (nearly 12 million miles)—about 50 times farther away than the Moon!
[…]
I’m pretty sure what’s happening here is that a very old story has been recycled and is getting spread around without anyone doing any fact-checking. It’s all over Twitter and got picked up credulously by some bigger venues like the Daily Mail, which posted it with the typically understated title of “Asteroid hurtles toward Earth.” What follows after that is a breathless and almost entirely incorrect article about 2003 QQ47 that seems to simply rehash information from more than a decade ago. Seriously.*
For example, the Mail article says the asteroid is “newly discovered,” but in fact was first detected in 2003, 11 years ago! Hence its name, 2003 QQ47. It was found to be a near-Earth asteroid, or NEA, one that does sometimes get close to us. For a while after it was discovered it was thought to have a small chance of hitting Earth, with an impact probability in August 2014 of about 1 in 250,000. But by September 2003 new observations allowed a better trajectory to be calculated, and an impact in 2014 was ruled out. This happens quite often, where a new asteroid will have only a rough orbit calculated, and an impact has long but non-zero odds of hitting us. As more observations come in the chances of impact can actually increase briefly before dropping to zero.
This is what happened with QQ47 back in 2003. Got that? An impact in 2014, this year, was shown to be out of the question more than a decade ago and was even taken off JPL’s Sentry Risk page at that time, when it was found to have no potential Earth impacts for at least 100 years. We’re quite safe from this particular asteroid.
Natural News is a Facebook hit: Never click on its stories about cancer, vaccines, conspiracies.
Why are so many Facebook friends sharing preposterous stories from Natural News?
By Brian Palmer via slate.com
Have you heard that eating whole lemons prevents cancer? Or that bathing in Himalayan salt rids the body of harmful toxins? That eating hijiki seaweed can delay hair graying? If you have a few Facebook friends, you’ve probably encountered some of these claims. The website Natural News —which seems like a parody but is unfortunately quite serious—published these preposterous stories, and many others just as silly, last week alone.
Hokum like this is best ignored, but hundreds of thousands of Americans fail to do so. Natural News has achieved astonishing traction on social media, garnering Facebook shares in the high five and low six figures. These numbers should trouble you—Natural News has an uncanny ability to move unsophisticated readers from harmless dietary balderdash to medical quackery to anti-government zealotry.
Let’s start by deconstructing the claim that eating whole lemons staves off cancer. The author cites two medical journal articles. She badly mischaracterizes the first, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in 1999. The study described the isolation of three compounds, known as coumarins, from lemon peel. Coumarins exhibit tumor-suppressing properties in a laboratory dish, but that does not mean that eating lemon peel prevents cancer. Even if the oral ingestion of coumarins were convincingly shown to fight cancer in a laboratory animal, we still wouldn’t know how much lemon peel would be required for a human to experience the same effects or whether you could tolerate the dose.
The second study the author cites is an enormous overreach. No one enjoys biostatistics, but bear with me and you’ll be better prepared to identify weak studies in the future. The study, published in the journal Nutrition and Cancer in 2000, purported to show a correlation between consumption of lemon peel and diminished cancer risk. The authors surveyed 242 skin cancer survivors and 228 controls about their citrus consumption habits, but the questionnaire wasn’t externally validated and has some screwy definitions. (Eating citrus peel “often,” for example, is defined as “50-75 percent of the time.” What does that mean?) The authors did not adequately control for race or skin tone, which is an important variable in skin cancer studies. The sample size was much too small. Only 163 of the 470 study participants reported eating citrus peel, and just 28 of them admitted to eating citrus peel often. That’s not enough to prove that eating lemon peel prevents skin cancer. In addition, the statistical correlation is very weak, close to undetectable. Had one more person with cancer reported eating citrus peel, the relationship would likely have disappeared. In fairness, the study authors acknowledged the small sample size and the need for more substantial follow-ups, but everyone knows how these correlational studies are reported in the media. This is why you should look for patterns in scientific literature rather than relying on individual studies.
Anytime someone tells you that eating something prevents cancer, your BS detector should start a-clanging. Natural News is full of these beauties.
Anti-Vaccination Critics shutdown: How Facebook should prevent and punish Anti-Vaccination supporters (or anyone) who wrongfully get their critics banned from Facebook?
by The Locke via The Soap Box
Over the past couple of weeks it’s been revealed that Anti-Vaccination groups and their supporters on Facebook have been launching false flag attacks (and I don’t mean types that Alex Jones thinks happens every time a shooting or a bombing or a natural disaster occurs in this country) against groups that are pro-vaccination and/or critical of anti-vaccination groups and their supporters and propaganda. These false flaggings have unfortunately resulted in the temporary (yet still wrongful) banning of multiple people and groups from Facebook who are critics of the Anti-Vaccination movement. This needs to stop. In fact, not only does this need to stop, but the people who are making these false flag reports need to be punished.
While many of you have some ideas on what should be done in order to curb false flag reporting (which I would love to hear from you in the comments section) I have a few suggestions of my own:
The first thing that needs to happen is that Facebook needs to make it easier to challenge a complaint and a ban. While you can do this even now, it’s not an easy process. Plus a person should be given a chance to defend themselves before a ban is about to occur. No more automatic bans unless a certain amount of time has gone by after a complaint was sent (I say a minimum of six hours).
Now the second thing that should happen to help curb false flagging abuse on Facebook is that those that do abuse the reporting system need to have their ability to report posts and groups and individuals that they don’t believe should be on Facebook more difficult. Granted I’m not saying they should be left unable to report someone or some group that really does contain offensive or illegal content (unless they continue to abuse the system even after restrictions have been placed on them, then their ability to report groups and people should be taken away, and they should be banned temporarily) but the process should be made more difficult for those that abuse the system, and probably should include a screen shot of any content that is being reported upon, as well as include more details about why something is being reported.
Going along side with the second suggestion that I believe Facebook needs to do inorder to curb false flagging abuse, after a person has already had restrictions put against for false flag abuse, if they do report someone or some group for their content and Facebook determines that it doesn’t violate their policies, the person or group should be informed that someone sent a complaint against them that was struct down, and the person or group should be told whom that person is, and given the option of whether or not they want to block that individual.
Time travellers do not use Twitter, scientists find
By Sarah Knapton via Telegraph
An experiment to find out whether time travellers might give themselves away on social networks by referring to events which had not happened yet, has failed to find anyone from the future
Quick Marty! Update your facebook status!
Time travellers probably do not exist or, at least, they do not use social networks, a team of scientists has declared.
Researchers predicted that if humans in the future had discovered a way to visit the past they might leave clues on websites like Twitter and Facebook by inadvertently mentioning events which had not yet happened.
Astrophysicist Robert Nemiroff of Michigan Technological University and his team decided to trawl the internet in the hope of ‘teasing out’ time travellers.
They selected search terms relating to two recent phenomena, Pope Francis and Comet ISON, and began looking for references to them before they were known to exist on Google, Bing, Facebook and Twitter.
In the case of Comet ISON, there were no mentions before it burst on the scene in September 2012.
They discovered only one blog post referencing a Pope Francis before Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected head of the Catholic Church on March 16, but it seemed more accidental that prescient.
“In our limited search we turned up nothing,” Nemiroff said. “I didn’t really think we would.
“But I’m still not aware of anyone undertaking a search like this.
“The Internet is essentially a vast database, and I thought that if time travellers were here, their existence would have already come out in some other way, maybe by posting winning lottery numbers before they were selected. “
Also See: Scientists Use Twitter To Find Time Travelers – Business Insider , Would Time Travelers Leave Online Traces? | LiveScience
2013 Year of Hoaxes in Review
Some have called 2013 the “Year of the Hoax” – and for good reason. Social media has been a breeding ground for unchecked information, fake photos, and unfounded rumors which often circulate without question. Today we take a look back at the ten most popular hoaxes to cross our desks here at Wafflesatnoon.com in 2013.
10. Celebrity Death Hoaxes
Jackie Chan, responded to the latest rumor of his death by posting this image on his facebook page and writing, “I took a photo with today’s date, just in case you don’t believe me!.”
Whether it’s due to boredom, satire, or just someone completely botching the details of a real news report, celebrity death hoaxes are a mainstay of internet culture. While popular death hoaxes included perennial victims Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, and Jackie Chan, our most popular death hoax in 2013 was that of Celine Dion in October, which was fueled by a malicious Facebook app.
9. Black Friday Deaths
With heavy media coverage of Black Friday, it wasn’t a surprise that false information surrounding the event surfaced. Indeed, two particular articles in wide circulation prompted our readers to ask if they were true or not. One of these claimed that a woman stabbed three shoppers while trying to secure the last Xbox One at a Walmart, while the other stated that 42 million shoppers had died during Black Friday. Both originated from articles written as satire, but many readers who only
8. The Time Traveling Hipster
Over the summer, an image circulated which appeared to show a modern “hipster” standing in a 1940′s crowd. More than a few readers speculated if this mysterious man was actually a time traveler captured in the photo. Upon further investigation, the man’s clothing, camera, and glasses were all found to be consistent with those available during that era. Conclusion: The man probably just showed up to the event in casual clothes, unlike the rest of the crowd around him.
The time traveling hippie.
7. Fake Facebook Giveaways
Unscrupulous Facebook page admins will go to any lengths to gain more likes for their pages. A trend in 2013 was the creation of Facebook pages claiming to give away products if their status was liked or shared. Many of these claimed to be “unsealed” products that were being given away because they could not be sold. In the end, these pages were “like farms” which never gave away anything. Once these phony giveaway pages reached a certain goal, the admin would hide the page, sell it, and the buyer would then rename it – resulting in a quick built-in fan base for their new page.
6. Mermaids
Discovery Channel and Animal Planet aired a fictional presentation entitled Mermaids: The New Evidence in May. Although it depicted fictional encounters, clips of this special were heavily shared as “real” events. Also in May, a photo allegedly showing a “mermaid skeleton” was also heavily circulated. That photo was fake.
Related articles
- Fake Paul Walker Photo Circulates Amid Hoax Confusion (wafflesatnoon.com)
- Mandela “Corpse Photo” is a Hoax (wafflesatnoon.com)
- Lou Reed “Death Hoax” Hoax (wafflesatnoon.com)
- ‘9-Year-Old Suspended For Saying Merry Christmas To Teacher’ Article is a Hoax (theepochtimes.com)
- RECYCLED HOAX: Adam Sandler Dead in Snowboard Accident (urbanlegends.about.com)
- Woody Harrelson Dies? Nope, Actor Victim of Death Hoax Car Crash (theepochtimes.com)
- Facebook Scam Alert: Warning About Christmas Tree App Trojan Virus is a Hoax (scambook.com)
Empty Force (EFO) FAIL
From Wikipedia:
Empty force is a term used in martial arts to denote the expression of force without making physical contact.
People who believe in the empty force claim … the ‘Empty Force,’ is the highest martial arts skill in China. This technique claims to harness the power of qi, the “body’s vital energy“, enabling masters of the art to defend themselves against opponents without making physical contact.”
Via Skepticool on YouTube or Facebook
Related articles
- What is the EFO Empty Force? EFO Empty Force Fail Video Proves Self Defense Method is a Scam (americanlivewire.com)
- Ladies And Gentlemen, The Dumbest Shit In The World: The ‘Empty Force’ Effect (sportsgrid.com)
- Surprise! Magic Is Not A Real Self-Defense Method (EFO Fail) (socialnewsdaily.com)
- After Showing Up to His Live Event, Skeptics Debunk Promoter of ‘Touchless’ Karate (patheos.com)
- Watch this “Master” get exposed as a fraud on video (vigilantemma.com)
Is that a FEMA Truck?
By The Locke via Is that a FEMA Camp?
Recently on a Facebook skeptics group that I belong to someone posted a very “curious” looking photo, along with the commentary by the person whom posted the photo somewhere else on Facebook:
Now the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that photo was, “Wow… that trailer needs a good wash.”
All joking aside of course what really came to my mind was that the words on the truck looked like it was put on there via digital photo manipulation (i.e. photoshopped) and even if it wasn’t, then so what?
Now my first argument for why it is photoshopped is because of another photo that looks almost exactly like the first one provided to me via Illuminutti.com:
Now clearly the second picture is photoshopped, and to be all honest it’s not even that good of a photoshop job either.
Of course just because the second photo has clearly been digitally manipulated, I have to admit that it does not mean that the first photo has been digitally manipulated as well. If you look closely at the bottom words “FEMA DISASTER RELIEF” that while the font style used for the letters are similar to the ones on the top, they are infact different.
If the first photo was photoshopped, the second photoshopped photo was probably done by someone else whom used the closest font style that they could find to the original words… unless the person whom created the original photo forgot the original font style that they used.
Now another reason why I think the photo has been digitally manipulated is because of the trailer itself.
Besides just being in need of a good wash, it is clearly a used trailer due to the fact that there is a company logo right next to “FEMA DISASTER RELIEF”, as well as a logo on the truck that is pulling the trailer.
So if this photo was real, what it would tell me isn’t that FEMA is planning on “something” evil, it’s that they’re moving a trailer from one location to another to another, probably for some bureaucratic reasons, or it’s being driven around just to make sure that everything is okay with it and the truck that’s pulling it (and before you point out that the person claims that it’s coming from a FBI building in Virginia I should like to point out that I don’t take such claims seriously unless I have more proof that it really did come from a FBI building in Virginia).
Also, if the photo is real then it tells me is that FEMA is pretty underfunded if the only big rigs they can afford to buy are used and can’t be washed every so often due to funding…
Related articles
- FEMA going door to door for registration (cinewsnow.com)
- DHS Prepares Your Children for FEMA Camps – Indoctrination in School (humansarefree.com)
- Cities Vote to Make Homelessness a Crime, other Cities Follow – – Jail or FEMA Camp (chasvoice.blogspot.com)
- Obama FEMA Socialist Camps Exposed. (nationalreport.net)
- FEMA Announced the release of the Hurricane Sandy Mitigation Assessment Team Report (disasterlaw.wordpress.com)
- FEMA center established for tornado victims (cinewsnow.com)
What was “Operation Snow White”?
via Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know – YouTube
Did agents of the Church of Scientology really infiltrate the US government? If so, then how widespread was the infiltration? What was its alleged purpose? What does the Church have to say about the accusations? Tune in to learn more about the fact, fiction and controversy surrounding the Snow White program.
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Be skeptical of what you see on the Internet
by The Locke at The Soap Box
Recently on my Facebook page a couple of people posted a very disturbing photo showing a heavily tattooed white male in what appears to be in his 20’s apparently forcing a cute little puppy to drink a bottle of vodka. I was even asked by one of the people whom posted the image on their page to post the photo on this blog in hopes of actually finding the person and getting the person arrested, because allegedly that person had not been arrested yet.
I decided not to post the photo for two main reasons:
First, I considered the photo to be just too disturbing and graphic and might not just turn people away, but could result in people sending complaints to Blogger.com over the contents of the post, which could result in this blog having restrictions placed against it, or have the post pulled and removed.
And second, I don’t know story behind that photo.
For one thing the person might have been making a very distasteful joke and only made it look like he was pouring vodka down the puppy’s throat when in reality the bottle was already empty or sealed (it didn’t look like there was any liquid in the bottle, or at least that any liquid was leaving the bottle), or, he could have been taking the bottle away from the puppy after it got a hold of it (and if you’ve ever puppy, you know they will get a hold of anything they can).
As it turns out, that’s exactly what happened [read here]. The person in the photo wasn’t trying to hurt the puppy, he was trying to prevent the puppy from accidentally hurting itself.
Researchers Prove Photo ‘Orbs’ Are Ghost Farts
Fecalogical Foundations Fractured From Flatulence Findings
By Chris McKerracher via The Sage News
(SNN) – Scientists from Harvard University’s Faculty of Fringe Research have published a paper in the esteemed scientific journal, “Esteemed Scientific Journal” that appears to provide concrete evidence that orbs that appear in photographs are actually ghostly gas. Lead Researcher, Dr. Pedro M’Kumba-Nordstrom claims in the report that the results of their studies are not only reproducible, but unassailable.
“Our team has managed to account for every variable that may have unintentionally affected the test results, as well as conducted simultaneous blind experiments alongside the monitored ones so none of the research team members could know which were controls and which were the actual samples,” outlined M’Kumba-Nordstrom. “The data is there for any competent scientist to review and critique but so far, no individual or group has challenged our findings or our methodology.”
One experiment conducted by the Harvard group was to shrink-wrap an abandoned pre-civil war building located just outside of Boston; the First Church of the Holy Rastafarian. Locals have long claimed the dusty stone structure was haunted. The plastic film was applied to contain any gasses that might be present but unaccounted for.
After using an electro-mass-spectrometry analyzer to catalogue every molecule of gas in the room, M’Kumba-Nordstrom’s group was astounded to find methane-based gaseous emissions not ever before observed. Using the other eight elements of the experimental programs that were involved, which can be found in the group’s final report, the data was clear that these new methane compounds could only be spirit fluffs. It has also given scientists in related fields what may be the basis for finding the constituents of ‘ectoplasm’, the material ghosts are made of that up until now remained largely regarded as imaginary.
“Our findings open the doors for more amazing discoveries ahead in many different disciplines,” said the professor who is already being considered as a Nobel Prize recipient. “It is wonderful to be on the ground floor of this exciting field and want to thank our private corporate sponsor, the Beano Company, for their long-standing financial support and encouragement.”
[END] The Sage News
Related articles
- Shutter Speed and Orbs (shawnamcgeephotography.wordpress.com)
- UFO over San Antonio? Skygazer captures video of mysterious orb (khou.com)
- UFO over San Antonio? Skygazer captures video of mysterious orb (kens5.com)
What is a Sheeple?
by The Locke via The Soap Box
Recently on Facebook came across a picture on my feed that, considering the group it was posted in (it was a comedy page) I thought was very… unusual, to say the least.
This is the picture that was posted in said group:
I found this picture a tad bit disturbing, not only because it was posted in a group meant for comedy, but because it clearly showed what at least some conspiracy theorists thinks about people who disagree with them or out right do not believe (and most of the time, for good reason).
In fact this description would be far more accurate if the word “Sheeple” was replaced with “Conspiracy Theorist”, as many skeptics would agree that this would more accurately describe many conspiracy theorists (or at least the far more psychotic ones).
Now, a far more accurate definition for the word “Sheeple” would probably be this:
Sheeple – A derogatory word that combines the words “sheep” and “people“, and is typically used by conspiracy theorists to try to describe a person whom does not believe in their conspiracy theories (see Skeptic).
Typically the word “Sheeple” is used in arguments over the internet as a blatant insult directed at a skeptic, and is also used as an attempt to intimidate a skeptic into backing down or backing away from an argument concerning a conspiracy theory, and/or even bully them into agreeing with the conspiracy theorist.
This is not to be confused with the word “Shill” which is typically directed towards people who not only do not believe in a conspiracy theory that a conspiracy theorist is presenting, but also presents evidence and/or logical reasoning to show why they don’t believe in a conspiracy theory.
Both “Shill” and “Sheeple” are also used by conspiracy theorists as an attempt to end an argument over the internet while trying to save face when it becomes obvious to them that they can not win and are just making themselves appear as someone of either low intelligence and/or questionable sanity.
That would be a far more accurate description for the word “Sheeple”. Basically speaking, it is just a typical insult that conspiracy theorists use to try to scare away a skeptic.
The best thing to do if someone calls you a sheeple is to ask them why they think you are a sheeple, and then explain to them why you are not one (this also works if they call you a shill). If this does not work either ignore the accusations, ignore the person completely, or (if you feel like just making them mad) tell them that they are actually conceding defeat in that they actually have nothing left to counter argue, and that they are actually trying to end the argument while at the same time attempting to make it appear as if they have actually won the argument.
Regardless of how you decide to actually handle someone who calls you a a sheeple or a shill, you just have to remember that this is typical conspiracy theorist speak, and that they’re only saying it because they’re mad that you don’t believe them.
[END] The Soap Box
Related articles
- 7 Reasons why Conspiracy Theorists get their videos and pages removed from Youtube (illuminutti.com)
- HAARPing mad – an assessment of the HAARP conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. (illuminutti.com)
- How to tell a Conspiracy Theorist from a Conspiracy Believer (illuminutti.com)
- The Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theorist (illuminutti.com)
- 5 Things I’ve noticed about… Conspiracy Theorists on the Internet (illuminutti.com)
- Revenge of the Conspiracy Theorists (illuminutti.com)
- Conspiracy theorists’ sane: government dupes crazy, hostile. (illuminutti.com)
- A letter to the conspiracy theorists (joeopus.wordpress.com)
- Why calling someone a shill betrays the weakness of your position, and your inability to defend it. (illuminutti.com)
5 Things I’ve noticed about… False Flag Conspiracy Theorists
Via The Soap Box
False flag conspiracy theorists are conspiracy theorist who believe that almost anytime there is some type of large attack in this country then it is most likely done by the government.
While there are a lot of things that these types of conspiracy theorists tend to do, I narrowed it down to five things.
So here are five things I’ve noticed about false flag conspiracy theorists:
5. They have no idea what a false flag attack really is.
Most conspiracy theorists believe that false flag attack is when a government agent disguises themselves as an enemy, and commits an attack against the public. Technically speaking this is not a false flag attack.
A false flag attack is actually a navel term for when you put up your enemy’s flag on your ship in order to sneak behind them and attack them. That is what a false flag attack really is. You’re not posing as your enemy in order to attack your own people, but to attack your enemy.
4. They think everything is a false flag attack.
It doesn’t matter how obvious it is that an attack was done by some whack job, it doesn’t matter how many people died in the attack, or even if it was someone whom killed their self and their self only, according to a conspiracy theorist, it was a false flag attack.
In fact it doesn’t even matter if it was a random act of nature, or an industrial accident, or a plane crash, as long as people got killed (or even if people didn’t die) according to many conspiracy theorists, they were most likely false flag attacks.
3. They think that other alleged false flag attacks prove their claims.
If you ever ask a conspiracy theorist what proof do they have that what they are claiming to be a false flag really is a false flag attack, they will usually give you a long list of other attacks that they believe to be false flag attacks.
There are two problems with this: the first one is that these other alleged false flag attacks have themselves almost always have never been proven to be false flag attack, and two, even if they could prove that any of those attacks really were false flag attacks, it’s still not evidence that what they are claiming to be a false flag attack is a false flag attack.
Related articles
- Not all Conspiracy Theorists are Conspiracy Theorists (illuminutti.com)
- 5 Things I’ve noticed about… Conspiracy Theorists on the Internet (illuminutti.com)
- How to tell a Conspiracy Theorist from a Conspiracy Believer (illuminutti.com)
- Down The Rabbit Hole w/ Popeye (04-04-2013) False Flag Hack Attacks, Arkansas Oil Spill & More (federaljack.com)
- False Flag Biological Attack Expected This Summer? (pakalertpress.com)
- West Virginia Dismisses False Flag Allegations (dprogram.net)
- Lt. Col. Potter False Flag Alert: June 26th To June 29th (cglanz.wordpress.com)
5 Things I’ve noticed about… Conspiracy Theorists on the Internet
Via The Soap Box
Ever encounter a conspiracy theorist on the internet? Most of us have, especially if you’re a skeptic like myself who has their own blog about debunking. At that point they tend to come to you.
While there are a lot of things about conspiracy theorist on the internet that I’ve noticed they tend to do, I’ve narrowed it down to five main things.
So here are five things I’ve noticed about conspiracy theorist on the internet:
5. They love using quotes.
Be it in their signature line on an internet forum, or in their timeline on their Facebook page, conspiracy theorists love posting quotes on the internet. Usually these quotes are allegedly from some musician, or politician, or philosopher, or just some famous person whom they think would share their beliefs. Sometimes these quotes are accompanied with a picture of the person who allegedly said it.
The problem with this is that (and this is true anytime someone quotes someone) is that the quotes can be taken out of context, the quote can be mis-quoted, or it could be something that person never said at all.
There is of course one truth about these quotes: they do absolutely nothing to back up what ever conspiracy theory they are claiming to believe in.
4. They love collages.
Go to any conspiracy theorist group on Facebook or conspiracy theorist forum and you’ll usually find some collages of photo-shopped pictures along with conspiracy theory claims within the collage.
These collages are often times confusing at the least, and more times than not, disturbing looking.
Many conspiracy theorists might think these collages helps get whatever point they have across, but the reality is that they are really a turn off for normal minded people and makes them all look like a bunch of wackos.
3. They don’t have a sense of humor.
Conspiracy theorists (at least on the internet) take things way to seriously, and when someone makes a joke or a sarcastic remake, they tend to go ballistic, either because they don’t think you should be joking about the subject at hand, or they think you’re being serious.
They also can’t tell when someone (or some website) is being sarcastic either. An example of this would be Skeptic Project. On the front page of the website it says “Your #1 COINTELPRO cognitive infiltration source.” To most people they are clearly being sarcastic. But apparently some people in the Infowars forums thought they were actually admitting to being a COINTELPRO website.
Related articles
- Not all Conspiracy Theorists are Conspiracy Theorists (illuminutti.com)
- How to tell a Conspiracy Theorist from a Conspiracy Believer (illuminutti.com)
- Info-Spats: Even Conspiracy Theorists Are Sick of Alex Jones (illuminutti.com)
- 8 clues your friend is becoming a crazy conspiracy theorist (illuminutti.com)
- The 9/11 conspiracy theorist who changed his mind (illuminutti.com)
- 5 things I’ve noticed about… FEMA camps (illuminutti.com)
- Conspiracy Theorists Worst Nightmares Confirmed: The US Government Is Poisoning Us! (conservativeread.com)
- My First Conspiracy Theorist (mariatestarosa.wordpress.com)
8 clues your friend is becoming a crazy conspiracy theorist
By Robyn Pennacchia via Death and Taxes
It’s happened to all of us. Some friend we had in elementary school or from an old job is all of a sudden making super weird comments on Facebook, or you’re in a bar and some random [person] is trying to talk to you about fluoride for some reason. It’s not always immediately clear. Like, I realized one day that people saying crazy things were always following it up with “Do your own research!” and then finally discovered that it was sort of a “buzzphrase” for conspiracy theorists.
So, I thought I’d compile a list of the ways to know that someone in your life is starting to head down to tin foil hat alley.
1. Says insane things (probably about chemtrails), and if you dispute, insists that you “Do your own research!”
“I’m a University of YouTube graduate!”
This is one of the earliest signs of this type of crazy- and it’s also a major Glenn Beck-ism. I don’t know about you, but when I state a fact, I’m usually able to explain that fact. Especially if it’s something that may be controversial.
For instance, I do not so much believe that Joan Crawford beat her children. This is a thing that most people believe, because of the movie “Mommie Dearest”– however, when asked to explain, I don’t yell “Do your own research!” at people, I explain that all of the other children (save for Christopher) have refuted Christina’s book, as well as Crawford’s actual personal assistant, and Myrna Loy, and pretty much anyone else who was around during that time. I’m not saying I’m 100% definitely correct on this, but I err on the side of “probably not.”
Still, I don’t throw out something weird, get mad at people for not immediately taking me at my word, and then yell at them to do their own research. I mean, if they want to, that’s fine, but I’m usually quite able to support my arguments.
2. Freaking Flouride
UGH. These people and their fluoride. They love to make up crap about how the government puts fluoride in the water to keep us dumb and rebellion-resistant, like no one has ever seen “Dr. Strangelove” before or something. This is usually what they start with, probably because it sounds slightly more realistic than like, Lizard People.
It is not, however, true. At all. And yes, I’ve “done my research.” But don’t tell that to these people, especially if they are drunk at a bar, because they will, in fact, start screaming at you about it. Fluoride and the “vaccinations cause autism” thing are like the gateway drugs into tin-foil hat land.
3. Rejecting the tyranny of paragraph breaks
I swear to god, this is a thing. Whenever I see a comment that’s just a giant block of text with no breaks in it, I immediately just go “Welp, this one’s gonna be crazy” and I am pretty much always right. I don’t know why this is a thing, it just is.
4. When a person who you already kinda know isn’t too swift starts trying to pretend that they are some kind of intellectual who is totally going to school you on “how things are in the world.”
I hate to say this, but it’s true. It’s always the dumb ones. I feel bad, because like, they’re usually just coming across this stuff for the first time and it is totally blowing their minds. Like, I already know that some people think that the Rothschilds control the world and that there are Mason things on the dollar bill and also THE MOON LANDING WAS FAKED or whatever. I’ve known for years, and I’ve already figured out that it’s all bullshit.
The more you read about history, the more you realize that people are so not getting it together to form a whole “New World Order” anytime soon. While there have been “conspiracy” type things throughout history (MKUltra, Tuskeegee, Project Paperclip, the COINTELPRO that actually existed and not the one people pretend still exists), they have been discovered fairly quickly. Because someone always has a big mouth.
Related articles
- Not all Conspiracy Theorists are Conspiracy Theorists (illuminutti.com)
- How to tell a Conspiracy Theorist from a Conspiracy Believer (illuminutti.com)
- Info-Spats: Even Conspiracy Theorists Are Sick of Alex Jones (illuminutti.com)
- 5 Conspiracy Theories That Are Shockingly Easy to Debunk (illuminutti.com)
- Weirdly, None of the Conspiracy Theorists at Bilderberg 2013 Made Any Sense (illuminutti.com)
- My First Conspiracy Theorist (mariatestarosa.wordpress.com)
- Conspiracy Theorists Worst Nightmares Confirmed: The US Government Is Poisoning Us! (fromthetrenchesworldreport.com)
Facebook, Privacy and the US Government
Via Facebook, Privacy and the US Government – CLASSIC – YouTube.
By any measure Mark Zuckerberg’s social media site is an enormous success. But who actually owns Facebook, and why do some people believe it’s owned by the U.S. government? Listen in to learn more about Facebook conspiracy theories.
Open Up Your Mind and Let Your Brain Shut Off
By Sharon Hill via The Huffington Post
People tell me I should be more open-minded.
There is a clichéd saying regarding open-mindedness: “Keep an open mind — but not so open that your brain falls out”.
This piece of advice is most often said to come from physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988), but also a slew of other more or less famous people, most of them from the field of science: Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, James Oberg, Bertrand Russell, J. Robert Oppenheimer. It’s plausible that they all certainly said it at one time or another because it applies every time one is presented with a fringe or alternative explanation for something. It’s well worth remembering as a rule of thumb.
Because I peruse paranormal-themed sites and various “water-cooler” forums on the web, I frequently see ideas thrown out there that would qualify as amazing and paradigm-shifting. So, what do I think about this latest crazy thing, people ask?
The Starchild skull.
Here’s a recent example. With all the recent speculation about “alien” remains, someone on Facebook mentioned Lloyd Pye who contends (for almost 15 years now) that a curiously-shaped skull he has is that of an alien-human hybrid. Called the “star child” skull, Pye promotes the story that this is proof that humans descended from extraterrestrial beings.
The plausibility of this idea is practically nil. There is no decent evidence in support of it except a nifty story. To accept it, we’d have to throw out all of what we know about human history, evolution, and a good bit of well-established physics. Just because of one odd-looking skull? No, thank you. That would be stupid. Thus, to consider such an idea takes me about a minute before I realize that would be unreasonable. It’s an imaginative idea, just like mermaids and remote viewing and time travelers. But in order to accept it, I’d have to discard too much (e.g., my brain and society’s accumulated knowledge). The evidence clearly suggests another more down-to-earth explanation. Since the skull DNA tested as human, and we know that certain genetic conditions can cause the enlargement of the skull in just this way, I’m going to accept the obvious and not some far-fetched story just for kicks.
Calling skeptics closed-minded because we discard wacky ideas is a common ploy. It’s often used as a personal insult because the skeptic has rejected a baseless idea that the promoters fancy. When you don’t have evidence to support your idea, observe that the proponent resorts to derogatory tactics.
“But all ideas are not equal. Not all ideas are worthy of consideration.”
It’s not about actually being open-minded towards new ideas. Instead, the proponent is accusing the skeptic of being stubborn, undemocratic and unfair. They see it as the skeptical person, being overly rational, ignoring a possibly worthwhile option to be considered. But all ideas are not equal. Not all ideas are worthy of consideration.
Let’s take another example: energy healing. I should be open-minded, reiki practitioners say, and try these forms of energy medicine where healing energy gets channeled or manipulated for better health. If someone offers these treatments to me and I just say “OK! Sounds good!” (and hand over my money) is that actually being open-minded? No. It’s swallowing what I’m being fed without a thought. The same would apply to . . .
Related articles
- Weird Word Salad: The Terminology of the Unexplained (illuminutti.com)
- The Internet: A Superhighway of Paranormal Hoaxes and Fakelore (illuminutti.com)
- Foiled Again: Lake Monster, Bigfoot Body and Alien Humanoid All in One Week (illuminutti.com)
- Yet Another Sylvia Browne Fiasco (randi.org)
- Sharon A. Hill (en.wikipedia.org)
- Join Us for Sharon Hill’s Workshop: “I Doubt That: The Media Guide to Skepticism” (randi.org)
