Skepticism, evidence, science, mythbusting, consumer protection
News headlines from Europe about skeptical activism, mythbusting, science related policy decisions, consumer protection, frauds, health scams, alternative medicine, bad scientific practices, pseudoscience etc.
As skeptics we are constantly on the lookout for Logical Fallacies both within our own reasoning and in wider society. Here you can find a series of cartoons illustrating different fallacies ready for distribution on your social networks. Laugh, learn & share.
Rupert Matthews – described by one Conservative MP as ‘mad as a box of snakes’ – has been automatically made a Member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands this week after the sitting MEP won a seat at for the UK Parliament in the June general election. Mr Matthews is ‘an expert on the paranormal’. As well as his work with the International Metaphysical University, he the author of a range of parapsychology books including titles such as Paranormal Surrey and A History of Alien Activity from Sightings to Abductions to Global Threat. He also has a theory that the Lisbon Treaty gives the European Commission the power to invade Britain. He believes that ‘They could go to the German government and say please send us a Panzer division, and if the German government said yes, then the European Commission could send that Panzer division to London and there is nothing the British government could do about it’.
James Randi will be back to Italy and will attend CICAP-Fest in Cesena from September 29 to October 01.
Randi will also be a special guest at the magic workshop held at CICAP-Fest, giving people the opportunity to learn from him how to create and investigate “paranormal” effects.
James Randi is a retired stage magician and a scientific skeptic, co-founder of Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). He has extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.
This series of short, informative videos go into a wide range of topics such as “What’s the Milky Way like?”, “How did the continents form?” or “What use is cloning?” among many others. Each video is complimented by free teaching material and distributed under a creative commons licence making them available to all.
Chiedi le prove, the Italian initiative established by CICAP and based on Ask for Evidence in the UK will bring four stories on the importance of evidence to the European Parliament in Bruxelles, on June 21.
On June 2, the Danish parliament (“Folketinget”) repealed the 334 year old blasphemy law.
The debates about repeal where among other things shadowed by the Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005, and also came to the rescue for one individual who in December 2015 published a video on-line showing the burning of a copy of the Quran. These charges were now dropped due to the change in legislation.
The UK’s National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) ‘has urged the Charity Commission to improve its registration processes as part of its response to the consultation on charities providing complementary and alternative medicines’. The Charity Commission’s consultation closed earlier this month ‘with the regulator receiving more than 300 responses. It plans to set out a revised approach to registration in the autumn. This could result in the removal of hundreds of charities and was prompted by the Good Thinking Society, which is a charity set up to promote scientific thinking’.
The agenda of the first edition of CICAP-FEST is finally online, and registrations are now open.
The event will take place in Cesena from September 29 to October 01, 2017.
CICAP-FEST is a new national and international event for the promotion of the understanding of science. The event, along with some of the most prominent players in research, public understanding of science, and entertainment, focuses on current issues such as fake-news, pseudosciences, hoaxes and scientific disinformation, while at the same it puts on stage some authentic wonders, research, science and art, to generate genuine amazement.
Three days of events dedicated to adults, students and children will make Cesena the “capital” city of critical thinking and curiosity for a full weekend.
75 speakers will be on stage, including Piero Angela, Silvio Garattini, Antonella Viola, Enrico Mentana, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Marco Malvaldi and many others, as well as artists such as Silvan, Banda Osiris and Raul Cremona. Over 100 events that will include meetings, debates, performances, shows, reading, workshops, exhibitions, surprises and wonders of all kinds.
The CICAP-FEST, which for this first edition has the title “The Value of Facts in the Age of Post-Truth”, is a show dedicated to all curious people and all those who love science and are fascinated by the unusual and wondrous. A new way to stimulate curiosity through science, art, music and performances.
With a general election campaign raging, the British public are having to put up with more than the usual level of dishonesty from their politicians. Following a recent radio interview of UK’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, BBC Radio 4’s programme ‘More or Less’ had a close look at some of his extraordinary statistical claims. Noteworthy was his boasting that that when he was London’s mayor it was ‘the fourth biggest French city in the world’ on account of their being 400,000 French residents there. There were actually 90,000 which wouldn’t put London in the top 40. Questionable also was his claim that ‘Of all the kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers in the world, 1 in 7 were educated at British universities’ and this is of ‘enormous practical economic value to the UK’. In reality the figure is about 1 in 9 and includes only 3 of the 50 most populous countries of the world, the largest being Iran. Other countries include Zimbabwe (Robert Mugabe) and Syria (Bashar al-Assad). The programme can still be heard at the link provided.
On the 4th of May at the University of Granada, the biochemist Juan Antonio Mochón, will be giving the talk “Science facing up to religious beliefs” as part of the monthly series of talks Knowledge, rationality and secularism that is running till June of this year.
The talk will be followed by a discussion among the attendees.