Skepticon

The Role of Experiments in Science

Darcy Cowan • Mar 20, 2012

• experiment,
• Observation,
• philosophy,
• Philosophy of Science,
• Sciblogs,
• scientific method,
• Skepticism

In an attempt to widen my horizons I have been listening to the Philosophy Now podcast out of the UK. A recent episode concerned philosophy of science (ep 29) and the host asked an interesting question: “Why do we have to have experiments when sometimes we can get away with observations?”. The point he was [&hellip … Read More

Chiropractic for the 21st Century

Darcy Cowan • Jan 24, 2012

• Alternative medicine,
• Chiropractic,
• medicine,
• Sciblogs,
• Skepticism

Every week I get a number of email alerts about various online medical journals. Each email represents the opportunity for blogging material though many are deathly dull. Several of the journals I receive alerts from are in the AltMed domain and I sometimes wonder why I bother looking through them at all. The mix is … Read More

NZ (Nearly) Tops Skeptics Chart

Darcy Cowan • Jan 20, 2012

• New Zealand,
• Sciblogs,
• SkepticBlog,
• Skepticism,
• skeptics

Just in my RSS feed is this post on the SkepticBlog site talking about the number of page views of the blog ranked by country. The stats are adjusted and represent page views per million of the country’s population. New Zealand follows Canada in the #1 spot relegating the US to #3. HA. What’s the … Read More

Thai Yoga Massage: Herald, Wherefore Art Thou Sense?

Darcy Cowan • Jan 13, 2012

• Alternative medicine,
• altmed,
• Ayurveda,
• Health,
• Massage,
• medicine,
• Questionable Techniques,
• Sciblogs,
• Skepticism,
• Thai Massage,
• Vitalism

So here I am, again latching onto the brilliance of others and writing my own counterpoint to the nonsense that is currently being run in the NZ Herald under the “Alternative Therapies” summer fluff. Previously Alison kicked us off by looking at the use of medicinal leeches, as did  Siouxsie, and Michael took on Ayurvedic [...] … Read More

The Webwhisperer: A Medical Resource

Darcy Cowan • Jan 12, 2012

• medicine,
• Sciblogs

I generally look with interest to see how people are getting to my blog. Often the referrer is Mr Google, the next culprit is usually Facebook, then there are pages where someone has posted a link to an article I written for others to check out. These are the most satisfying. Sometimes it’s someone pointing … Read More

God, UFOs, Life After Death: What do New Zealanders Believe?

Darcy Cowan • Dec 07, 2011

• belief,
• New Zealand,
• nz,
• Psychic Phenomena,
• Psychological,
• religion,
• Religion and Spirituality,
• sceptic,
• Sciblogs,
• skeptic

Reading the paper today I learned that 1/3 of New Zealanders believe that we have been visited by extra terrestrials. I thought this was an interesting juxtaposition of stories given that a page or two later there was a report about a possibly habitable planet. Maybe aliens are visiting us from Kepler-22b. Keplerites aside, I … Read More

Breaking News!: Have Constipation? Moxibustion Won’t Help!

Darcy Cowan • Dec 06, 2011

• Alternative medicine,
• altmed,
• CAM,
• Chinese,
• medicine,
• OMD,
• Oriental,
• Sciblogs,
• skeptic,
• Skepticism,
• TCM

What’s Moxibustion, And why would you want to use it for constipation? The first I can answer, the second…not so much. Moxibustion is the practice of burning ground up mugwort and applying the smouldering plant indirectly or directly to the skin to alleviate illness. In the indirect method acupuncture needles are inserted and the burning … Read More

Confounding Variables

Darcy Cowan • Nov 01, 2011

• Causality,
• Confounding,
• Correlation and dependence,
• Psychological,
• Sciblogs,
• skeptic,
• Skepticism

Over at Psychology in Action there’s a decent post on confounding variables. The focus is on conducting and reading research and determining good research study practice but I think there is value in everyone knowing what confounding variables are.  So what are they? Well, read that post…… Ok, good. Another example that I got in [...] … Read More

Get Your Up-To-Date Vaccine News

Darcy Cowan • Oct 19, 2011

• anti-vaccine,
• antivax,
• Interviews,
• medicine,
• Sciblogs,
• Skepticism,
• vaccination,
• Vaccine

Thanks to my recent single-minded posting I’ve stumbled across this resource that pulls together news and blog posts on vaccines and anti-vaccine topics. It uses a cool functionality of Scoop.it to collect posts which are then “curated” by a real person (hate those obviously fully automated ones that often ping my posts). Vaxfax monitor is [...] … Read More

The Legitimate Risks of Vaccines

Darcy Cowan • Oct 18, 2011

• IAS complaint,
• Sciblogs

This post is about those risks that vaccines do carry and that we can discuss in a rational way, as opposed to the fairytale risks that the anti-vaccine camp comes up with to vilify vaccinations. Those who advocate vaccine use are often portrayed as denying any harm from vaccines and arguing that vaccines are completely [...] … Read More