6 June 2023
Today I'd like to bring something slightly different to this august newsletter, by discussing crank economics - something that exists in abundance, but can be a little difficult to discuss in venues like this. For one thing, it falls outside the standard set of sceptical skills, and for another it is essentially impossible to discuss crank economic ideas without implicating political beliefs, and that's a fraught exercise at the best of times.
12 September 2022
The condition Irlen Syndrome is a popular diagnosis for children with learning issues, and is described as a perceptual processing disorder rather than an optical problem. It has failed in rigorous evaluation time after time and is basically a medical zombie. It was first described by an Auckland teacher, Olive Meares, in 1980.
24 May 2021
I have a super-secret email account that I use to sign up to various mailing lists, including the Voices for Freedom mailing list. Boy do they put out some propaganda!
1 November 1998
The Skeptical Intelligencer is a quarterly magazine published by the Association for Skeptical Enquiry (ASKE), the UK's skeptical organisation. Each 70+ page edition contains articles for the intelligent lay reader on paranormal, pseudo-scientific and anti-scientific claims.
1 August 1995
When author Arthur Koestler and his wife died, they left money to found a university Chair in Parapsychology. Edinburgh University accepted this gift after some hesitation, and Robert L. Morris has occupied the Chair since 1985. In a university hundreds of kilometres to the south, and some hundreds of years younger, Dr Richard Wiseman has also turned a scholarly eye on the subject. This book is a result of their collaboration.