A few prominent skeptics have been arguing that science and medicine should rely upon Bayesian epistemology. Massimo Pigliucci, in his book Nonsense on Stilts, on the Rationally Speaking podcast, and in his column in the Skeptical Inquirer, has suggested that scientists should best proceed with a Bayesian approach to updating their beliefs. Steven Novella and Kimball Atwood at the Science-Based Medicine blog (and at the Science-Based Medicine workshops at The Amazing Meeting) have similarly argued that what distinguishes Science-Based Medicine from Evidence-Based Medicine is the use of a Bayesian approach in accounting for the prior plausibility of theories is superior to simply relying upon the outcomes of randomized controlled trials to determine what’s a reasonable medical treatment. And, in the atheist community, Richard Carrier has argued for a Bayesian approach to history, and in particular for assessing claims of Christianity (though in the linked-to case, this turned out to be problematic and error-ridden). It’s worth observing that Bayesian epistemology has some serious unresolved problems, including among them the problem of prior probabilities and the problem of considering new evidence to have a probability of 1 [in simple conditionalization]. The former problem is that the prior assessment of the probability of a hypothesis plays a huge factor in the outcome of whether a hypothesis is accepted, and whether that prior probability is based on subjective probability, “gut feel,” old evidence, or arbitrarily selected to be 0.5 can produce different outcomes and doesn’t necessarily lead to concurrence even over a large amount of agreement on evidence. So, for example, Stephen Unwin has argued using Bayes’ theorem for the existence of God (starting with a prior probability of 0.5), and there was a lengthy debate between William Jefferys and York Dobyns in the Journal of Scientific Exploration about what the Bayesian approach yields regarding the reality of psi which didn’t yield agreement. The latter problem, of new evidence, is that a Bayesian approach considers new evidence to have a probability of 1, but evidence can itself be uncertain. And there are other problems as well–a Bayesian approach to epistemology seems to give special privilege to classical logic, not properly account for old evidence [(or its reduction in probability due to new evidence)] or the introduction of new theories, and not be a proper standard for judgment of rational belief change of human beings for the same reason on-the-spot act utilitarian calculations aren’t a proper standard for human moral decision making–it’s not a method that is practically psychologically realizable. The Bayesian approach has certainly been historically useful, as Desiree Schell’s interview with Sharon Bertsch McGrane, author of The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy, demonstrates. But before concluding that Bayesianism is the objective rational way for individuals or groups to determine what’s true, it’s worth taking a look at the problems philosophers have pointed out for making it the central thesis of epistemology. (Also see John L. Pollock and Joseph Cruz, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 2nd edition, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, which includes a critique of Bayesian epistemology.) UPDATE (August 6, 2013): Just came across this paper by Brandon Fitelson (PDF) defending Bayesian epistemology against some of Pollock’s critiques (in Pollock’s Nomic Probability book, which I’ve read, and in his later Thinking About Acting, which I’ve not read). A critique of how Bayesianism (and not really Bayesian epistemology in the sense defended by Fitelson) is being used by skeptics is here. ...

My favorite part of the Token Skeptic podcast #76’s interview with Sara Mayhew and Jack Scanlan is 28:30-28:42, where Scanlan says “everyone hates pop songs.” That’s a self-annihilating sentence along the lines of “No one goes there anymore; it’s too crowded." That reminds me of Saul Gorn’s compendium, “Self-Annihilating Sentences: Saul Gorn’s Compendium of Rarely Used Cliches," which I have in the original hardcopy but is now available online for everyone’s enjoyment. ...

Here’s a famous photograph of pulp fiction author and Scientology creator L. Ron Hubbard holding a tomato plant connected to an E-Meter. Hubbard claimed in 1968 that tomatoes would “scream when sliced," as detected by the E-Meter. [UPDATE: The photo appeared in “30 Dumb Inventions” on Life magazine’s website, attributed to the Evening Standard of January 1, 1968, but the claims and the photo appear to be from 1959, see below.] ...

Chris Mooney has a very interesting interview with anthropologist Scott Atran on the Point of Inquiry podcast, in which Atran argues that terrorism is not the product of top-down, radical religious extremist organizations recruiting the poor and ignorant, but of groups of educated (and often educated in secular institutions) individuals who become disaffected, isolated, and radicalized. Much U.S. counterterrorism and “homeland security” activity assumes the former and thus is attacking the wrong problem. He also argues that reason and rationalism are the wrong tools for attacking religion, defends a view of religion as a natural by-product of the sorts of minds we’ve evolved to have (very similar to Pascal Boyer’s account, which I think is largely correct), and throws in a few digs at the new atheists for making claims about religion that are contrary to empirical evidence. Some of the commenters at the Point of Inquiry/Center for Inquiry forums site seem to be under the misapprehension that Atran is a post-modernist. I don’t see it–he’s not making the argument that reason doesn’t work to find out things about the world, he’s making the argument that the tools of science and reason are human constructions that work well at finding things out about the world, but not so much for persuading people of things, or as the basis for long-term institutions for the sort of creatures we are. Atran shows up in the comments to elaborate on his positions and respond to criticism. My compliments to Chris Mooney for having consistently high-quality, interesting guests who are not the same voices we always hear at skeptical conferences.

Yesterday I received an email that contained yet another argument that Obama’s birth certificate (the PDF’d scan of the “long form” certificate) was a fake, based on erroneous claims about the name of Kenya in 1961 and the name of the hospital which were already debunked at Snopes.com four months ago. But this prompted me to see if there were any more advocates of wild claims about the birth certificate, and I came across Douglas Vogt’s alleged analysis of the birth certificate and, more importantly, a very well-done, detailed debunking of that analysis by Kevin Davidson (known on his blog as “Dr. Conspiracy”), who has done a great job of responding to numerous Obama conspiracy claims. Check out his “The Debunker’s Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories." Vogt, the author of the analysis which Dr. Conspiracy debunks, is also an example of “crank magnetism”–he is the author of Reality Revealed: The Theory of Multidimensional Reality, a 1978 book which looks like a classic work of crackpottery. Vogt bills himself as a “geologist and science philosopher” who: ...

Jeff Hawkins was a Scientologist and member of the Sea Org from 1967 to 2005. He was responsible for 1980s marketing campaigns that brought L. Ron Hubbard’s book Dianetics back to the New York Times bestseller lists. Beginning in 2008, he wrote a book-length series of blog posts about his experiences which has led to many further defections from the Church of Scientology. The blog posts have been edited into a hardback book, one of several by long-time high-ranking recent defectors (others include Nancy Many’s My Billion-Year Contract, Marc Headley’s Blown For Good, and Amy Scobee’s Abuse at the Top). I’ve read the first few chapters at his blog–it’s quite well-written and the comments from others who have shared some of his experiences are fascinating.

I have just a few more weeks (until July 31st) to reach my fundraising goal. Please donate any amount you can - just as RESCUE saves one life at a time, we reach our goal one dollar at a time. If you are unable to make a donation, please reach out to another animal loving friend, family member or co-worker and ask them to support our efforts. Just this morning Maricopa County Animal Care & Control announced that: ...

A group of Tucson atheists and skeptics have started the Desert Air podcast, available via iTunes. Three episodes available so far. Anonymous (2011-07-12): I know it's unrelated, but I just wanted to compliment you as a great source of atheist resources. It's not easy finding any- the internet is dominated by apologists and theologians. It's easy to accidently run into sites. like, say, this one: http://akma.disseminary.org/?s=theology ...

Below these two videos is a post I made (perhaps to the Kate Bush fans’ “love-hounds” mailing list, I don’t recall) back in 1986 regarding a 1985 Christian “rock music seminar” about alleged Satanic backwards messages in rock music. I was familiar with the claims of supposed “backwards masking” where the sounds of ordinary lyrics were interpreted to have different messages when reversed, as well as actual examples of recordings that were put into songs in reverse. The former seemed to me to be examples of subjective validation, and I tested it myself by closing my eyes and covering my ears when the presenter gave their claims about what we were supposed to hear prior to playing the samples. Subsequently, this became one of the first tests the Phoenix Skeptics conducted as a student group at Arizona State University in October 1985. We invited the speaker to give his demonstrations before our group, but required him to play the samples first without explanation and have everyone write down what they heard. The result was that on the first pass, those unfamiliar with the samples had a wide variety of responses; on a second pass, once the expectation was set, everybody heard what they were supposed to hear. It’s interesting that this demonstration, the key example of which was a sample from Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” made a comeback two decades later–being used by skeptics to show the power of suggestion and expectation, as these two videos from Simon Singh and Michael Shermer demonstrate. Simon Singh, 2006: ...

As this blog has reported on multiple prior occasions (in 2006, 2008, and 2009, at the very least), the fact that U.S. airport security separates the checking of the boarding pass by TSA from the use of a boarding pass to check in to board makes it easy to get through security with a boarding pass that matches your ID while flying under a boarding pass on a ticket purchased in a different name. Now, as The Economist (July 2, 2011) reports, Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, a 24-year-old Nigerian American, has been arrested after successfully doing something along these lines to fly around the country, apparently on multiple occasions. Only Noibi wasn’t even using boarding passes valid for the flights he was on–he was caught with a boarding pass in another person’s name for a flight from a day prior. And he wasn’t caught because the boarding pass was detected at check-in–he had already successfully boarded the flight and was seated. He was only caught because of his extreme body odor and a fellow passenger complained, which led to his boarding pass being checked and found to be invalid. ...