"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Thursday, September 10, 2009

BS detection resources

I just want to point out that H E Taylor has a remarkable list of resources about the BS detection problem that I discussed recently.

In particular he points us to this book:

The Borderlands of Science:
Where Sense meets nonsense


Michael Shermer
Oxford University Press 2001
ISBN: 019-514326-4

From Shermer's own website:
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and Adjunct Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University.

4 comments:

Marion Delgado said...

Penn Jillette's devotion to Shermer's brand of Randite cultism didn't keep him from becoming a climate denialist - it pushed him in that direction.

Who does more harm in the world? Believers in pyramid power, or believers in Invisible Hands?

Arthur said...

Shermer was a global warming skeptic himself for quite some time - until just a few years ago, if I recall correctly.

Anna Haynes said...

> "Shermer was a global warming skeptic himself...until just a few years ago"

2006.

Shermer publicly recanted right before holding "an international conference on the science and politics of the environment at Caltech June 2 to 4, 2006" - www.environmentalwars.org
- featuring John Stossel and Michael Crichton as special guests.

(I was curious and poked around a bit - and found the Skeptic Society's 2006 tax return is missing from Guidestar, which seemed odd; but the IRS says it _was_ filed.)

Anna Haynes said...

...and Shermer is on the Board of Scientific and Policy Advisors of the American Council on Science and Health.