Rumors of impending artificial intelligence (AI) doom got you down? Take heart, there may be light at the end of this tunnel—and not all of it from the headlight of a self-driving locomotive. No, sorry, you can’t be sure that a precocious bundle of algorithms won’t take your job (Cao 2023; Georgieva 2024). There is ..read more

Digital disinformation is becoming a widely recognized threat—especially to public health—with unprecedented amounts of misinformation available online. In his first advisory, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy (2021) issued a stark warning that “Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health … we can and must confront it together.” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus (2020) concurred ..read more

Editor’s note: This article is a slightly revised excerpt from Dr. Jen Gunter’s new book, Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation. While this excerpt focuses on alternative therapies, the rest of the book highlights evidence-based information. Thank you to Dr. Gunter and Citadel Press for granting permission. Pain, as defined by the International ..read more

In 1971, years before both the bestselling novel and film The Amityville Horror thrilled the public with one of the most well-known “true stories” of a haunted house, NBC News aired a short, six-minute clip documenting the exorcism of the allegedly haunted Chicago couple Edwin and Marsha Becker. Decades later, Edwin Becker self-published an account ..read more

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) has named Amardeo Sarma as the CSI Representative in Europe. Sarma is already a member of CSI’s Executive Council and a CSI fellow. “Amardeo has been active for many years within the skeptical community,” said Barry Karr, CSI’s executive director. “He attended a CSI(COP) conference way back in 1987, and I ..read more

I founded Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) to defend the rights and dignity of alleged witches and end all forms of human rights abuses linked to witchcraft allegations in Africa. Our small but effective organization works on local, regional, and national levels to not only raise awareness of the problem of witchcraft persecution and magical ..read more

Editors note: The Congressional Freethought Caucus shared this White Paper with others in Congress in December 2023 and Skeptical Inquirer in January 2024. The paper involves threats to the separation of church and state in America. Before reading, you are encouraged to first read Wonderful Mkhutche’s article in this issue on witchcraft persecution in Malawi ..read more

On January 1, 2024, at 4:10 p.m. local time, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the Noto region of Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture. On January 11, the Emergency Disaster Control Headquarters reported that 222 people had been killed and 238 were seriously injured by the resulting tsunami, landslides, and collapsed houses. Social media was effectively utilized in ..read more

In a significant victory for science, climate scientist Michael Mann was successful in his defamation lawsuit against bloggers Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn. A six-person District of Columbia jury unanimously awarded $1 million in punitive damages to Mann for defamatory blog posts published in 2012 by Simberg on the Competitive Enterprise Institute website and by ..read more

In a news category breezily labeled “Weird but True,” the venerable New York Post was among many media outlets that in November 2023 shared sensational headlines about a miraculous weeping Virgin Mary statue. The Post reported that “Churchgoers in Mexico claimed to have witnessed a miracle after spotting a statue of the Virgin Mary that ..read more