Rationally Speaking

In Pursuit of Positive Skepticism

Massimo Pigliucci is a Professor of Philosophy at CUNY and author of Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science. See full bio

July 18, 2009

Scientific misconduct and the nature of science

I just finished reading an interesting book review by physicist Martin Blume in a recent issue of Nature. Blume was reviewing Eugenie Samuel Reich’s provocative book “Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World,” and the whole thing prompted some further thoughts about scientific misconduct, objectivity, and the peer review system that is crucial to the advancement of science. Read More

July 7, 2009

The problems with transhumanism

I have pondered writing about the transhumanism movement for a while, and the opportunity has finally landed on my desktop when I read a brief article by Kyle Munkittrick of the Institute for Emerging Ethics & Technologies. The article is in the form of a FAQ expressly addressing the question of whether aging is a moral good, and in it Munkittrick briefly explains and (thinks that he) refutes some of the standard arguments against transhumanism. Let’s take a look. Read More

June 30, 2009

Vaccines do not cause autism

“The evidence is in. The scientific community has reached a clear consensus that vaccines don’t cause autism. There is no controversy.” So begins an in-depth discussion of the vaccines-cause-autism nonsense penned by “SkepDoc” Harriet Hall in a recent issue of eSkeptic Read More

June 23, 2009

Three fixations of fundamentalist Christians

I’ve been reading Kevin Roose’s The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University, which makes for both irritating and fascinating reading. It’s the story of a semester the author spent at ultra-conservative Liberty University as a (temporary) transfer student from ultra-liberal Brown, with the aim of getting the insider’s view of what fundamentalist Christianity is all about. Read More

June 16, 2009

Bertrand Russell

Russell was the first philosopher I ever read, beginning when I was in high school, and arguably the guy that got first got me into philosophy. It was one of those long and boring Sunday afternoons in my father’s house in Rome, which we spent listening to a radio broadcast of the soccer games of the day. Read More

June 10, 2009

Deepak Chopra defends Oprah while committing endless logical fallacies

Ok, Deepak, here we go. Chopra complains that Newsweek adopts “the same tiresome blend of gotcha journalism and selective fact-reporting that fills tabloid coffers,” which is a stunning case of the pot calling the kettle black if you go on and read the remainder of Chopra’s own piece in the Post. Read More

June 8, 2009

Blasphemy laws in the 21st century

Blasphemy is a strange concept, according to my dictionary it refers to “the act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously of God or sacred things.” By that definition, every religious believer constantly engages in blasphemy — of all the other gods she doesn’t believe in. Read More

June 2, 2009

On miracles

As I’ve often mentioned in this blog, philosopher David Hume famously said that “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish,” setting the bar for believing in miracles properly high. Read More

May 28, 2009

Men’s biological clock and IQ: much ado about nothing

“The men are getting really angry and the women are a little too gleeful,” wrote New York Times columnist Lisa Belkin commenting on the overwhelming response she got for an article on a new study that found that men, too, may have a “biological clock” ticking when it comes to having what biologists would call “high quality” offspring. Read More

May 22, 2009

On torture

It seems to me astounding that we have to have a debate at all, instead of an open and speedy prosecution of the people responsible for the policy, up to and including former President W. (and let’s not get started on the even more obvious issue of the false pretense under which the Iraq war was started). Still, if we have to have a debate, let’s have a rational one (see how naive I am after all these years?). Read More

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