Skepticism

Another Way to Fleece the Flock

Stephanie Zvan6 Comments

On the way to a meeting last week, I saw a Christian billboard. I see a lot of billboards, but this one caught my eye as being rather unusual. I didn’t get a picture, but since I followed up on the billboard, the advertising is now following me around on the internet too. Here’s a sample.

Banner ad with text: Making Good Bolder. Actors Models & Talent for Christ. plus contact info
Yes, boys and girls, God needs your talent to…uh…well….

So I got curious and checked out the website to figure out what was going on. Was there another company like Faith Films that was going to produce unintentional, painful hilarity? Were they looking for unknowns to help them keep their budget, oh, so low?

No. As it turns out, they weren’t looking for people they could pay very little. This group is looking for people to pay them, all for a chance at stardom! Continue reading “Another Way to Fleece the Flock” →

Another Way to Fleece the Flock
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Investment, Disclosure, and Skepticism

Stephanie Zvan13 Comments

As you read this, you may want to know that I’ve been accused of falsely accusing someone of rape. In fact, I’ve been accused of falsely claiming a consensual encounter was rape. You can read all about it here.

You may also want to know that I’ve previously reported on the incidence and profile of false reports. When I did, I was careful to differentiate between false reports and other types of cases that don’t end in prosecution. While I did use examples, I grounded them not just in statistics from the scientific literature, but also in the factors that affect how those statistics are produced. You can read all about that here.

A rendered picture of an unbalanced set of scales.
“balance scales” by winnifredxoxo. Some rights reserved.

After reading those, you may decide I have a vested interest in keeping people from being believed when they accuse someone else of making a false report of sexual assault. Or you may decide that I have an interest in making sure the scientific evidence on the topic is examined and understood. Or you may come to a different conclusion. In any case, you’re informed about where I stand as you read.

I asked my social media lists this morning, “Q. for the hive mind: If I were to write a skepticism piece on an issue that affected me personally, would you expect/want me to disclose?” The answers varied considerably for reasons including how specifically or directly I was affected by the issue and whether this would require me to disclose something private. I didn’t ask anyone for permission to quote them by name, so these are all anonymous here. Continue reading “Investment, Disclosure, and Skepticism” →

Investment, Disclosure, and Skepticism

Our Lady of Perpetual Ice

Stephanie Zvan19 Comments

Woman #1: Oh, that looks just like the Virgin Mary. Helen*, do you see that?

Woman #2: Oh! Ya.

Woman #1: Harry, Harry, look! Doesn’t that look like the Virgin Mary?

Man: No, I’m not religious.

I didn’t laugh out loud. I’m more polite than that. I didn’t even look behind me to figure out who was having the conversation. I just made sure Ben took a picture of the “virgin” after they moved on. That’s why we were at the Apostle Island National Lakeshore after all, to take pictures of ice. Continue reading “Our Lady of Perpetual Ice” →

Our Lady of Perpetual Ice

About That Grape Nuts GMO Graphic (Update)

Stephanie Zvan19 Comments

If you have an online social sphere anything like mine, you’ve seen this graphic floating around for several days. People are using it to promote the idea that GMO foods are much more healthful than non-GMO foods. There’s just one little problem with it. It’s missing an important piece of information. Without that information, it supports the arguments people are making with it. With that information in hand, it doesn’t.

Grape Nuts meme showing pictures of old and new packaging. Text provided in the post.

 

What changed when Grape Nuts removed GMOs?

32 oz went down to 29 oz
Vitamin A: 15% went down to 0%
Riboflavin: 25% went down to 4%

You are paying more and getting less. That’s not just NUTS, that’s Grape Nuts.

Vitamins B12 and D are also absent in the new formulation, though the meme doesn’t mention that.

My curiosity about the image was piqued when I saw someone comment that the old nutrition numbers matched the numbers for Grape Nuts Vintage. Yes, you can now buy “vintage” cereal, if your world isn’t hipster enough. (Okay, if I wanted my mouth to be lacerated, Grape Nuts Vintage is probably how I’d go. The new version contains soy, and I try to limit the amount of soy in my diet for hormonal reasons.)

Sure enough, when I went to the Post website, I found that the Vintage cereal contains all the same percentages of your daily allowance of everything but protein (that’s the soy) as the pre-GMO-removal Grape Nuts in the meme. The merely “classic” Grape Nuts also matched the post-GMO-removal image. However, that didn’t necessarily mean the meme is wrong. Vintage might simply still contain GMO products.

So I went to the Wayback Machine. (This post is getting more retro by the second. Someone break out the bobby socks.) There I managed to confirm that the graphic does accurately represent the pre-GMO-removal Grape Nuts nutritional information.

So what’s the problem? Continue reading “About That Grape Nuts GMO Graphic (Update)” →

About That Grape Nuts GMO Graphic (Update)

Um, About Those "Male"- and "Female"-Wired Brains

Stephanie Zvan20 Comments

A few days ago, an article came out that excited some people who identify as skeptics. Brain scans had finally revealed what these people had always known: Men’s brains and women’s brains were fundamentally different! As one tweeter put it, “Damned science and facts, always getting in the way of SOCIAL JUSTICE!”

Were gender-essentialist skeptical types the only people to jump on this reporting? No, of course not. However, they are the people who should know that situations like these are exactly the ones in which to exercise a bit of skeptical caution. After all, there are two stances here in which they have a serious emotional investment–that gender roles are dictated by fundamental differences between the (two, discrete, dichotomous) sexes and that we social-justicey, feminist types are completely divorced from science and skepticism. That’s a rather large source of potential bias to be confirmed, so care should be taken.

What kind of care? Continue reading “Um, About Those "Male"- and "Female"-Wired Brains” →

Um, About Those "Male"- and "Female"-Wired Brains

Or, Male Atheists Have Small Penises

Stephanie Zvan23 Comments

Oh, look. The same old, old, old, bad data is being passed around again. We’re going to be a little slower to jump up and claim it this time, right? Consider this repost an incentive.

Ah, what one misses by having lots of social commitments over the holidays. A prime example would be this chart that Hemant posted on Friendly Atheist.

IQ Increases as Religiosity Decreases

Cute, huh? Go, us smart atheists! Yay!

Except for one little thing. Continue reading “Or, Male Atheists Have Small Penises” →

Or, Male Atheists Have Small Penises

A TED Fellow

Stephanie Zvan, 53 Comments

Over at Dubito Ergo Sum, Tom Foss has a lovely post about a bizarre notion:

This would make for a great game of spot the fallacy, wouldn’t it? Farley lists all these qualifications, but none of them are “noted anti-spam crusader” or “longtime anti-bigotry activist,” not that those would be excuses either. See, none of these qualifications are inconsistent with “abusive […] anti-feminists, MRAs, or all-round assholes” or “annoying and irritating”3. It’s possible to be an Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning comedian and also be an annoying asshole who delights in baiting feminists with disingenuous arguments, just as it’s possible to be a Ph.D. biochemist who believes in intelligent design. This is a pro hominem argument, an argument from false authority, that these people’s lofty credentials make them somehow incapable of being bigots, jerks, trolls, abusers, or just antagonistic assholes to specific groups of people.

You see, Tim Farley wrote a post suggesting that a group of people shouldn’t be listed on The Block Bot, even at Level 3 (Annoying), because they have done certain things:

  • A Research Fellow for a U.S. think-tank who is also deputy editor of a national magazine, and author of numerous books
  • A Consultant for Educational Programs for a U.S. national non-profit
  • A long-time volunteer for the same national non-profit
  • An organizer for a state-level skeptic group in the US
  • A past president of a state-level humanist group in the US
  • A former director of a state-level atheist group in the US
  • An Emmy and Golden Globe award winning comedian
  • A TED Fellow
  • Co-founder of a well known magazine of philosophy and author of several books
  • A philosopher, writer and critic who has authored several books

Now, as someone who has some of those people blocked myself, and who was already shaking my head at a few people who claimed to want to sue the BBC over the NewsNight segment on The Block Bot, some of those jumped out at me. And while Tom’s post does a very good job of talking about why Farley’s reasoning on this list is fallacious (seriously, go read it), I’m firmly in the camp of providing positive evidence as well. I tend to agree with Amanda Marcotte that making people look at this stuff is one of the more important things we can do. So, without further ado, let’s tackle one of these. Continue reading “A TED Fellow” →

A TED Fellow

So You Want to Argue About Evo Psych

Stephanie Zvan7 Comments

Or at least about what a bunch of us had to say on the topic at SkepchickCon/CONvergence. Then maybe you should watch the video to find out what we actually said:

Or even read the transcript. Though, if you only read the transcript, and you get hung up on one tiny piece of language, you might want to watch that bit of the video anyway to make sure it was captured correctly.

Then, and only then, might it make sense to argue with what we had to say.

So You Want to Argue About Evo Psych

But It Changed the World Anyway

Stephanie Zvan

What do On the Origin of Species, Broca’s aphasia, the origins of anthropology, the Society of Mutual Autopsy, and early sexist brain science have in common? I’ll let Jennifer Michael Hecht tell you.

There’s plenty more in her speech about how knowing our cultural and scientific history as atheists, women, and people of color can help make our current situations appear less inevitable and prevent us from repeating hard work that has already been done well.

You can read more about Clémence Royer here and about her translation of Origin here.

But It Changed the World Anyway