The Undermining of Science

From Bookforum's Omnivore blog, a collection of links on how popular culture is filled with nonsense masquerading as science. Two of the most entertaining stories detail a bunch of "big foot" fanatics starting a new journal to publish claims to have identified the big foot genome, and then there is bit about creationist claims that Thomas Nagel supports their cause because he believes there are flaws with the current evolutionary models.


The undermining of science

FEB 28 2013 

12:00PM

• Paul R. Brewer (Delaware): “Science: What’s It Up To?” The Daily Show and the Social Construction of Science. 
• From C2C Journal, a special issue on Quacks and Conspiracies: The undermining of science and your health. 
• Michael J.I. Brown on Big Bang denial and the search for truth. 
• Thomas Nagel is praised by creationists. 
• George Dvorsky on how 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists. 
• Sharon Hill on the trouble with pseudoscience — it can be a catastrophe. 
• Bigfoot genome paper “conclusively proves” that Sasquatch is real — and it only took founding a new journal to get the results published. 
• “Awash in false findings”: Is most scientific research factually distorted? 
• Magnetic Myths: Donald R. Prothero on why magnets and magnetic fields attract New Age flimflam and flapdoodle. 
• Mike Jay reviews Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks and Spiritualism, Mesmerism and the Occult, 1800-1920.