New Hindu nationalism erodes science in India

When I was lecturing in India a bit more than a year ago, I heard repeated complaints from scientists (in five cities) about how the Modi government and its Hindu-centric BJP Party was destroying Indian science. As was reported by the BBC in January (and in the article below from Science), some Indian scientists are […]

Templeton gives half a million dollars to demonstrate that science and religion can help each other find truth

Lest you think that the Templeton foundations have changed their mission, have a gander. As you may recall, when Sir John died in 2008, he left much of his fortune—acquired by creating investment funds and moving to the Bahamas to avoid taxes—to his own foundations, with the aim of showing that science and religion are […]

Krista Tippett’s safe space

UPDATE: Note that, in comment #17, reader Michael sussed out that Tippet has had 2.6 million dollars in grants from the Templeton Foundation, with the latest grant, expiring in mid-2020, worth nearly $1.2 million.  The New York Magazine article didn’t mention that, of course, and I should have been aware enough to look this up. […]

Everyday Feminism promotes astrology

Is it mansplaining if I advise feminists to not link their movement to astrology? I don’t think so, as it’s good advice. Of course, the Everyday Feminism site is beyond the pale, and I really should stop looking at it because their extreme form of Authoritarian and Prescriptive Leftism makes me dyspeptic. (Sample articles on […]

VICE defends astrology, selling it by saying it’s hated by “straight men”

It’s odd that any respectable media would defend astrology these days, since there’s no evidence for a correlation of birth sign with personality (a comprehensive double-blind test published in Nature in 1985 showed that pretty definitively). In many ways astrology is like religion: they’re both based on faith, there’s no evidence for their overweening truth claims, […]

Nature Scientific Reports publishes peer-reviewed paper showing efficacy of homeopathy

Reader Ryan (aka “vampyricon”) recently called my attention to this paper in Nature’s Scientific Reports (reference at bottom, click on screenshot below to read it online, and get pdf here). It’s important because it claims to demonstrate that homeopathy works. In this case, a homeopathic dilution of up to 10-30 of a solution of poison oak (Toxicodendron […]

Here we go again: a Templeton-sponsored conference designed to “expand” evolutionary biology

When I was sent this announcement of a conference on evolution at Cambridge University next year (click on screenshots), and when I read the program and saw the speakers (links at third screenshot), I smelled a RAT (abbreviation for “rubbish and Templeton”), but I didn’t know for sure that the John Templeton Foundation was one […]

Teleogical views predict not just creationism, but conspiracy theories

I’ll be brief here because the paper itself, just published in Current Biology (reference below, access free, pdf here) is short: just over a page of text. After finding evidence in a small survey (N = 157) that teleology  (“the tendency to ascribe function and final cause to nonintentional natural facts and events”) was significantly […]

Teen Vogue pushes astrology as “wellness” and “spirituality”

I haven’t yet concluded that Control Leftism goes along with woo, but Teen Vogue, a girl’s fashion magazine that’s been turning into a nubile Huffington Post after replacing its editor with a former editor of Feministing, has shown a certain penchant for woo. For example, its “Wellness” section is actually a “wellness and spirituality” section, […]

NYT op-ed endorses amulets and other woo for disease

As part of the continuing decline of the New York Times, we have this new op-ed by Steve Petrow, a writer from North Carolina who, the paper says, “is a regular contributor to Well” (the paper’s health column). But this is more about woo than about health. Click the link below to read the piece. Petrow’s point […]