The Egyptian pyramids, and especially the Pyramids at Giza, have fascinated people probably since their construction between 4700 and 3700 years ago. They are massive structures, and it boggles the mind that an ancient culture, without the benefit of any industrial technology, could have achieved such a feat. This has led to endless speculation, especially in modern times, that perhaps some lost advanced civilization was at work, or maybe aliens. This view has been criticized as being partly driven by racism – whenever some amazing artifact of non-European culture is discovered, it must be ali ..read more

In the awesome show, Black Mirror, one episode features a young woman who lost her husband. In her grief she turns to a company that promises to give her at least a partial experience of her husband. They sift through every picture, video, comment, and other online trace of the person and construct from that a virtual avatar. At first the avatar just texts with the wife, which then progresses to phone calls, and then finally to a full robotic avatar indistinguishable from the lost husband. Except – it is not really indistinguishable. It’s a compliant AI that isn’t quite human. So-called grief ..read more

One of the most difficult situations that a person can face is to have a loved-one in a critical medical condition and have to make life-or-death medical decisions for them. I have been in this situation many times as the consulting neurologist, and I have seen how weighty this burden can be on family members. Advanced directives are helpful, but they cannot predict every possible situation or anticipate every medical nuance, so still, decisions have to be made. One thing is also clear – the better we are able to predict outcomes, the easier decision-making becomes. Uncertainty is the most dif ..read more

There is an interesting disconnect in our culture recently. About 90% of people claim that they verify information they encounter in the news and on social media, and 96% of Americans say that we need to limit the spread of misinformation online. And yet, the spread of misinformation is rampant. Most people, 74%, report that that they have seen information online labeled as false. Only about 60% of people report regularly checking information before sharing it. And a relatively small number of users spread a disproportionate amount of misinformation. Of course, what is considered “misinformati ..read more

Last month I wrote about Havana Syndrome, the claim that a number of American and Canadian diplomats and military personnel were the targets of some sort of directed energy weapon attack causing symptoms of headache, disorientation, nausea, and sometimes associated with an auditory sensation. The point of the article was to do a plausibility analysis, based on what information I could find. I concluded: “So far it seems that the objective evidence favors the “mass delusion” hypothesis. This is similar to “sick building syndrome” and other health incidents where a chance cluster of symptoms le ..read more

Generally speaking the mainstream media does a terrible job of reporting anything in the realm of pseudoscience or the paranormal. The Washington Post’s recent article on children who apparently remember their past lives is no exception. Journalists generally don’t have the background or skill set necessary to deal with these often complex topics. They also don’t seem to care, looking at such stories as “fluff” pieces and see nothing but their click-bait potential. Almost universally missing from such pieces in effective skepticism. At best you may get some token skepticism, buried deep i ..read more

If all goes well, Boeing’s Starliner capsule will launch on Monday May 6th with two crew members aboard, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will be spending a week aboard the ISS. This is the last (hopefully) test of the new capsule, and if successful it will become officially in service. This will give NASA two commercial capsules, including the SpaceX Dragon capsule, on which it can purchase seats for its astronauts. If successful this will fulfill NASAs Commercial Crew Program (CCP) – it decided, rather than building its own next generation space capsule, it would contract with commercial ..read more

Bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, are the most abundant form of life on Earth. And yet we know comparatively little about them. But in recent years phage research has taken off with renewed interest. This is partly driven by the availability of CRISPR-based tools for studying genomes. Interestingly, CRISPR itself is a gene-editing tool that derives from bacteria and archaea, which evolved the system as a defense against viruses that infect them and alter their genome. Now we are using CRISPR to investigate those very viruses, and perhaps use that knowledge as a tool to fight bacter ..read more

Most people have watched large flocks of birds. They are fascinating, and have interested scientists for a long time. How, exactly, do so many birds maintain their cohesion as a flock? It’s obviously a dynamic process, but what are the mechanisms? When I was young I was taught that each flock had a leader, and the other birds were ultimately just following that leader. When two smaller flocks combined into a larger flock, then one of those leaders become dominant and takes over the combined flock. But this explanation is largely untrue. It actually depends a great deal on the species of bird a ..read more

The most recent episode of John Oliver, Last Week Tonight, featured a discussion of the UFO phenomenon. I’m always interested, and often disappointed, in how the mainstream media portrays skeptical topics. One interesting addition here is that Oliver actually referenced an SGU episode, the one in which we interviewed Jimmy Carter about his UFO sighting. Unfortunately the rest of the episode was a bit of a let down. Oliver is the first to acknowledge that he is not a journalist. He’s a comedian. But comedians often give biting satire of our culture and society, and Oliver has developed a specif ..read more