Go to www.skeptic.com to check out the latest issue of Skeptic, Vol. 8, #3, and you can download for free Frank Miele's brilliant skeptical analysis of chaos and complexity theory. Here is what else is in this special issue:
*Interview with Jared Diamond
*James Randi on John Edward and talking to the dead
*Sheila Gibson on the Darwin Fish v. Christian Fish bumper sticker wars
*William Langston and John Chris Anderson test reverse speech ("are listeners able to detect the emotional content of backward speech?")
*Robert Bartholomew on "Deviance, Psychiatry and Cultural Relativism"
*Ronald Ebert on "Cosmology at the Beginning of a New Millennium"
Chaos Theory Special Section featuring:
*Frank Miele: "A Quick and Dirty Guide to Chaos Theory"
*Massimo Pigliucci: "Chaos and Complexity: Should we be Skeptical?"
*Lui Lam: "How Nature Self-Organizes: Active Walks in Complex Systems"
*Michael Shermer: "Contingencies and Counterfactuals: What Might Have Been and What Had to Be."
Book Reviews:
The Living Energy Universe, A Darwinian Left, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, The Truth never Stands in the Way of a Good Story.
Special Review: Norman Levitt on The Sokal Hoax: "Confessions of a Disagreeable Man." This is the most agreeable disagreeable analysis of the science wars one can read!
Challenge 2001 - Year of the European Subscriber to Skeptic Magazine or If we can get 2,500 European subscribers by the end of the year, Lee Traynor will donate $2,500 to the Skeptics Society
Sales of Skeptic Magazine to Europe have never been particularly high so my representative there, Lee Traynor, and I have decided to make special efforts in 2001 to increase distribution. There are about 10,000 organised skeptics in various European countries, so our goal of achieving 2,500 subscribers in total by the end of the year seems within grasp.
For his part, Lee will be mailing hundreds (if not thousands) of libraries, attending skeptics' conferences and advertising in their magazines. But you, too, can help.
How? First, get your European colleagues, friends, relatives and whatever to subscribe to e-Skeptic - after all, it's free. (Just send an e-mail to join-skeptics@lyris.net) Second, pass on the word: subscribing to Skeptic in Europe couldn't be simpler. Just click on the "European subs" link at skeptic.com and you arrive directly at Lee's subscription form. Members of European skeptics groups are entitled to a discount, as are students.
As a special thank you to all those who contribute to this subscription drive, Lee has undertaken to donate $2,500 to the Skeptics Society for the benefit of Jr. Skeptics. Let's see to it that he has to pay!
Further details also at www.skeptic.de or from Lee directly (traynor@skeptic.de).
When we published Dr. Steve Harris' article in Skeptic Vol. 3, #2, 1995, entitled "Does HIV Really Cause AIDS?=97A Case Study in Skepticism Taken Too Far," I never imagined that this issue would still be current six years later. But alas it is, with a rapidly growing movement claiming that the medical "establishment" is conspiring to hoodwink us all into believing in the HIV-AIDS connection in order to fund their megalithic medical monstrosity that requires heavy financial feeding daily. Two weeks ago 60 Minutes aired a piece on the HIV-AIDS skeptics, who are hard at work in San Francisco, of all places, convincing gay men that it's perfectly okay to have unprotected sex. As further evidence, I present below an article from the front page of the January 24, 2001 issue of the Mail and Guardian from South Africa, from a member of Thabo Mbeki's AIDS Advisory Panel. It's hard to believe, but here it is. If you want to read Harris' monograph (it has been called the single best refutation of the HIV-AIDS skeptics ever written) go to www.skeptic.com and order Vol. 3, #2. (Steve Harris is a personal friend of mine and I can assure you that if there is anyone who would be appropriately skeptical of the HIV-AIDS connection, it is Harris. He's a heretical thinker himself, but the evidence for the HIV-AIDS connection is simply overwhelming.)
I hereby challenge Dr. Rasnick, the author of this article, to inject himself with HIV. THAT will put his skepticism to the ultimate test.
Mail & Guardian (South Africa)
Jan. 24, 2001, On front page
The AIDS Blunder by David Rasnick, PhD
Member of Thabo Mbeki's AIDS Advisory Panel (South Africa)
The contagious, HIV hypothesis of AIDS is the biggest scientific, medical blunder of the 20th Century. The evidence is overwhelming that AIDS is not contagious, sexually transmitted, or caused by HIV. I have come to realize that embarrassment is the main obstacle to exposing this simple fact.
So why are we barraged, almost daily, by an endless litany of AIDS horrors and HIV statistics? Why do virtually all doctors and public health officials profess their unswerving allegiance to the unproven hypothesis that AIDS is contagious and sexually transmitted when the evidence is greatly against it?
There are more than 100 thousand doctors and scientists who have built their careers and reputations by simply accepting the articles of faith about AIDS. At this late date, it is simple human embarrassment that is the biggest obstacle to bringing the AIDS insanity to an end. It is the fear of being so obviously and hopelessly wrong about AIDS that keeps lips sealed, the money flowing and AIDS rhetoric spiraling to stratospheric heights of absurdity.
The physicians who know or suspect the truth are embarrassed or afraid to admit that the HIV tests are absurd and should be outlawed, and that the anti-HIV drugs are injuring and killing people. We are taught to fear antibodies, and to believe that antibodies to HIV are a harbinger of disease and death ten years in the future. When you protest this absurdity and point out to health care workers that antibodies are the very essence of anti-viral immunity your objections are met with either contempt or embarrassed silence.
The National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Medical Research Council of South Africa, and the World Health Organization are terrorizing hundreds of millions of people around the world by their reckless and absurd policy of equating sex with death. Self preservation compels these institutions to not only maintain but to actually compound their errors, which adds to the fear, suffering, and misery of the world-the antithesis of their reason for being.
The only way we can free ourselves from the AIDS blunder and bring an end to the tyranny of fear is to have an open international discourse and debate on all things AIDS. Anger will be a natural response to facing the enormity of the scandal of AIDS. Anger has its place but it should be put aside quickly. It is a mistake to focus on villains and on whom to punish. The AIDS blunder is a sociological phenomenon in which we all share a measure of responsibility.
Ultimately, the AIDS blunder is not really about AIDS, nor even about health and disease, nor even about science and medicine. The AIDS blunder is about the health of our democracies. A healthy democracy demands that its citizens keep a skeptical, even suspicious, eye on its institutions in order to prevent them from becoming the autonomous, authoritarian regimes they are now.
The AIDS blunder shows that we need to rethink and restructure our institutions of government, science, health, academe, journalism and media. We must replace the National Institutes of Health as the primary gatekeeper of research funding with numerous competing sources of funding. We must restructure the peer review processes of scientific publishing and funding so that they do not promote and protect any particular dogma or fashion of thought or exclude competing ideas. A robust and mean investigative journalism must be revived, rewarded and cherished.
Finally, as citizens we must take back the authority and responsibility for our own health and well being and that of our democracies.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Twelve of the most popular science textbooks used at middle schools nationwide are riddled with errors, a new study has found.
Researchers compiled 500 pages of errors, ranging from maps depicting the equator passing through the southern United States to a photo of singer Linda Ronstadt labeled as a silicon crystal. None of the 12 textbooks has an acceptable level of accuracy, said John Hubisz, a North Carolina State University physics professor who led the two-year survey, released earlier this month. "These are terrible books, and they're probably a strong component of why we do so poorly in science," he said. Hubisz estimated about 85 percent of children in the United States use the textbooks examined. "The books have a very large number of errors, many irrelevant photographs, complicated illustrations, experiments that could not possibly work, and drawings that represented impossible situations," he told The Charlotte Observer.
The study was financed with a $64,000 grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. A team of researchers, including middle school teachers and college professors, reviewed the 12 textbooks for factual errors. "These are basic errors," Hubisz said. "It's stuff that anyone who had taken a science class would be able to catch." One textbook even misstates Newton's first law of physics, a staple of physical science for centuries. Errors in the multi-volume Prentice Hall "Science" series included an incorrect depiction of what happens to light when it passes through a prism and the Ronstadt photo. Hubisz said the Prentice Hall series was probably the most error-filled.
Prentice Hall acknowledged some errors, partly because states alter standards at the last minute and publishers have to rush to make changes. "We may have to change a photograph because of a new content objection, and the caption isn't changed with the photograph," Wendy Spiegel, a spokeswoman for Prentice Hall's parent company, Pearson Education, told the Observer. "But we believe we have the best practices to ensure accuracy." Last year, the company launched a thorough audit of its textbooks for accuracy and posted corrections on a Web site, she said.
Textbooks are generally reviewed by teachers, administrators, parents and curriculum specialists before the books are used in a classroom. But Hubisz, president of the American Association of Physics Teachers, said many middle-school science teachers have little physical science training and may not recognize errors.
The study's reviewers tried to contact textbook authors with questions, Hubisz said, but in many cases the people listed said they didn't write the book, and some didn't even know their names had been listed. Some of the authors of a physical science book, for example, were biologists. Hubisz said educators need to pressure publishers to get "real authors" for textbooks."They get people to check for political correctness ... they try to get in as much cultural diversity as possible," he said. "They just don't seem to understand what science is about." Hubisz said the researchers contacted publishers, who for the most part either dismissed the panel's findings or promised corrections in subsequent editions. Reviews of later editions turned up more errors than corrections, the report said.
On the Net: American Association of Physics Teachers:
http://www.psrc-online.org/