29 November 2010 by Steve Thoms
Okay, the title is a bit misleading, as the impetus of this post is to re-direct you to my own blog post on the subject. Our experience at the Whole Life Expo was deeply concerning, and despite the tone of welcoming in the comments section of a previous Skeptic North post, the reality was far [...]
Posted in Canada, Events, Ontario, Reviews, Skepticism0 Comments
05 November 2010 by Aysha Khan
When Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial was first published in 2008 it’s hard to imagine that Simon Singh had any idea what the next two years would have in store for him. The book is written by Singh, a science writer with a PhD in particle physics, and Edzard Ernst, a former clinical [...]
Posted in Alternative Medicine, Reviews0 Comments
29 October 2010 by Mitchell Gerskup
Joseph Heath is a philosophy professor with an interest, but no formal training in economics. I first heard of him while taking a course he was teaching on Jürgen Habermas, a philosopher of the Frankfurt School (a neo-Marxist view of social theory). A self-described skeptic of capitalism, Heath nevertheless believes that there is a big [...]
Posted in Critical Thinking, Economics, Logic and Fallacies, Reviews18 Comments
15 October 2010 by Steve Thoms
I’ve always had a deep appreciation for the way in which music is somehow different. This is not something I’m claiming to be a unique trait that only I have, because I think we all, in our own ways, set our love of music apart from everything else in our lives. We don’t always try [...]
Posted in Cognition, Critical Thinking, Culture, Evolution, Reviews, Science5 Comments
08 October 2010 by Sara E. Mayhew
Ann Druyan gives the 21st century a much needed gift of another book by Carl Sagan. It is based on the talk he gave at the Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow, in 1985. Druyan’s introduction alone is a beautiful piece, and contains one of my favourite quotes: “My variation on James’s title is [...]
Posted in Reviews4 Comments
01 October 2010 by Melany Hamill
Carl Sagan was a champion of science. He made physics and astronomy accessible to everyone, and did it in a way that inspired hope and wonder. He was also a well-known skeptic, but he was not known as a debunker. In the The Demon-Haunted World, however, he pulls no punches while challenging superstitious beliefs. The [...]
Posted in Reviews3 Comments
10 September 2010 by Erik Davis
When Jeff said of On Being Certain that it shook his epistemological world, I knew exactly what he meant. For me that moment came a few chapters into Dan Gardner’s excellent book Risk. While I like to think that my disposition to skepticism is innate, Risk was the book that opened my eyes to the [...]
Posted in Canada, Cognition, Critical Thinking, Reviews, Skepticism5 Comments
03 September 2010 by Michael Kruse
People trust their doctors. This recent Rasmussen poll from the US described 79% of the population trusting their doctor. This trust, for most of us, translates into an unquestioning acceptance, at least for most common interventions, of the treatment suggested by our doctor. We take the prescription, fill it, and expect to feel better afterward. Rarely do we [...]
Posted in Medicine, Reviews0 Comments
27 August 2010 by Scott Gavura
Despite their ubiquity in pharmacies, it may surprise that complementary and alternatives medications (CAM), are, for the most part, not part of the undergraduate pharmacist curriculum. We don’t pay that much attention to them, focusing instead on science-based therapies. After I graduated pharmacy and stated my career, I realized that in order to be truly [...]
Posted in Reviews, Skepticism4 Comments
20 August 2010 by Jeff Orchard
Note from the Skeptic North Team: Beginning today, and continuing for the next several weeks, Skeptic North contributors will be writing about the skeptical books that are important to them. Look for a new book review every Friday. Jeff Orchard kicks off the series: The book: “On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When [...]
