/oss/taxonomy/term/90/all en /oss/article/critical-thinking/about-those-angry-emails <p>“When an immovable fact meets an unstoppable feeling.” This is the title of <a href="https://buttondown.email/liminalcreations/archive/solicited-advice-on-feelings/">a newsletter article</a> from Liz Neeley, a science communicator who studied marine biology. In a mere eight words—which play on a 3<sup>rd</sup>-century text about a merchant selling a spear that can pierce any shield <i>and </i>a shield that blocks any spear—Neeley succinctly summarizes the central problem of debunking.</p> Fri, 09 Feb 2024 18:41:09 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 9828 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-general-science/science-journals-will-publish-anything <p>When Dr. Anna O. Szust emailed all of these academic journals to join their editorial boards, she did not anticipate that so many of them would approve her application within hours. In fact, she did not think anything at all, as she did not exist.</p> Fri, 26 Jan 2024 18:12:18 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 9816 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-pseudoscience/i-watched-weeks-worth-rfk-jrs-fear-inducing-tv-channel <p>As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. throws his hat in the latest American presidential race, it would be easy to confine his bad ideas to the label “anti-vaccine.” He is, after all, the founder and chairman of the board (now on leave) of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD), one of the leading anti-vaccine organizations. This line of work has been very lucrative to him.</p> Fri, 07 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 9564 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-pseudoscience/outfoxed <p>Tucker Carlson, the FOX Network’s brightest star shines no more. He and the network have “agreed to part ways” which is an obfuscating way of saying he was fired. Why should I care? Because Carlson was a five-star general in the army of misinformants that has invaded not only the political but the scientific landscape as well. I was always of the opinion that Carlson was an actor playing a role that was created to appeal to the views of FOX’s conservative viewers, since I couldn’t believe that he actually believed the nonsense he was spewing.</p> Wed, 26 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 9491 at /oss /oss/article/pseudoscience/pseudosciences-constant-appeal-shadow-beautiful-science <p>Fifty years ago, polymath Jacob Bronowski, creator of the TV series <i>The Ascent of Man</i>, and author of the book by the same title wrote:</p> Fri, 10 Mar 2023 20:35:30 +0000 Enrico Uva B.Sc. Dip. Ed. 9431 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-history/one-last-centurys-most-influential-social-science-studies-pretty-bad <p>We love putting names to things, especially if those names are scientific. Just look at <a href="/oss/article/critical-thinking/dunning-kruger-effect-probably-not-real">the variety of phenomena people love to refer to as the Dunning-Kruger effect</a>: the idea that <i>other people </i>(not me!) overestimate what they know, the sighting of someone being aggressively wrong, or simply the belief that dumb people don’t know they are dumb.</p> Fri, 17 Feb 2023 18:27:57 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 9398 at /oss /oss/article/covid-19-health-general-science/lets-hear-it-voices-reason <p>The COVID-19 pandemic has been a golden opportunity for schemers, contrarians and conspiracy theorists to use public distress and thirst for knowledge to widen their reach. It is easy to get lost in those weeds and forget that there are good people whose intellectual rigour and clarity have provided us all with metaphorical flashlights during these dark times. They have looked at an expanding (and sometimes contracting) body of evidence on COVID-19, delineated the border between what we knew and didn’t know, and explained to us the maddening uncertainties of science in real-time.</p> Thu, 08 Apr 2021 16:45:11 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 8692 at /oss /oss/article/history-general-science/heres-jeopardy <p>In many households, 7:00 pm is time for Jeopardy (although these days, with video recording and repeats on Netflix, any time can be Jeopardy time). For thirty-seven years many of us have invited Alex Trebek into our homes and appreciated his elegance and wit. Unfortunately, we lost this Canadian icon this week, so what better way to pay tribute than to play a little Jeopardy. The category? CHEMISTRY of course. Let’s go to the board!</p> <p><em>[Try to answer before looking at the answers below!]</em></p> Tue, 10 Nov 2020 23:06:19 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 8479 at /oss /oss/article/general-science/science-changes-accumulation-evidence <p>I remember once giving a talk on vitamins and having someone come up to me after with a comment along the lines of “I was in your class years ago and you were talking about the benefits of vitamin E for the heart and now you are saying it is pretty well useless. How can we trust science when one day you say this the next day that?”</p> <p>Understandable comment. But we need to point out that science is an ongoing quest for knowledge and is based on coming to conclusions based on observations. As more and more observations accumulate, conclusions may change.</p> Wed, 01 Apr 2020 21:46:02 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 8204 at /oss /oss/article/health-reviews/goop-lab-experiments-viewers-credulity <p>There is a lot of <em>schadenfreude</em> at the sight of Gwyneth Paltrow, high priestess of aspirational brand Goop, sadly eating a reconstituted soup that looks like it was partly digested and regurgitated by a mama bird. After years of Gwyneth encouraging women to torture their bodies in the name of the ever elusive (and delusional) detox, seeing her get a taste of her own pseudomedicine is joyful.</p> Fri, 24 Jan 2020 20:33:33 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 8090 at /oss /oss/article/videos-general-science/cracked-science-30-do-we-still-trust-scientific-experts <p><div class="media-youtube-video media-element file-default media-youtube-1"> <iframe class="media-youtube-player" id="media-youtube-xug3qfnvck8" width="640" height="390" title="Do We Still Trust Scientific Experts? (CS30)" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/XUG3qFNvck8?wmode=opaque&controls=&enablejsapi=1&modestbranding=1&playerapiid=media-youtube-xug3qfnvck8&origin=https%3A//www.mcgill.ca&rel=0" name="Do We Still Trust Scientific Experts? (CS30)" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>Video of Do We Still Trust Scientific Experts? (CS30)</iframe> </div> </p> Mon, 01 Apr 2019 18:05:11 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 7680 at /oss /oss/article/videos/right-chemistry-science-fluids <p><div class="media-youtube-video media-element file-default media-youtube-2"> <iframe class="media-youtube-player" id="media-youtube-jkmo2jhnheq" width="640" height="390" title="Dr. Joe Schwarcz on the science of fluids" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/jkMo2JHNhEQ?wmode=opaque&controls=&enablejsapi=1&modestbranding=1&playerapiid=media-youtube-jkmo2jhnheq&origin=https%3A//www.mcgill.ca&rel=0" name="Dr. Joe Schwarcz on the science of fluids" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>Video of Dr. Joe Schwarcz on the science of fluids</iframe> </div> </p> Thu, 02 Aug 2018 20:27:07 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 7205 at /oss /oss/article/videos/right-chemistry-title-speaks-volumes <p><div class="media-youtube-video media-element file-default media-youtube-3"> <iframe class="media-youtube-player" id="media-youtube-6owcdrqjnoo" width="640" height="390" title="Dr. Joe Schwarcz: A title speaks volumes" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/6owcDRQjnOo?wmode=opaque&controls=&enablejsapi=1&modestbranding=1&playerapiid=media-youtube-6owcdrqjnoo&origin=https%3A//www.mcgill.ca&rel=0" name="Dr. Joe Schwarcz: A title speaks volumes" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>Video of Dr. Joe Schwarcz: A title speaks volumes</iframe> </div> </p> Mon, 18 Jun 2018 15:12:20 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 7141 at /oss /oss/article/general-science-history/aristotle-man-who-relied-observed-facts <p>What an amazing man Aristotle was! He lived in the third century BC yet he was so influential that his ideas dominated western scientific thought for almost two thousand years. This is especially remarkable in light of the fact that most of his notions about the workings of the world were completely wrong. But in spite of this, Aristotle is widely regarded as the first real scientist.  Why?</p> <p>Above all, Aristotle was an incredibly curious man. He wanted to find out everything that could be known about the natural world. "Through wonder, philosophy begins," he wrote and thereby dedicated himself to unravelling the mysteries of life. This quest was by no means a new idea. Others before had certainly been mystified by the workings of the world. But they mostly subscribed to the philosophy of thinkers like Socrates who believed that the fundamental nature of the world could be discerned by mental reflection alone.</p> <p>But this was not good enough for Aristotle. For him, the basis of all knowledge was experience. Explanations were only valid if they were induced by observed phenomena. In other words, theories should be formed starting with facts. And this idea is of course at the core of the scientific method.</p> <p>Aristotle's contribution to science is perhaps best demonstrated by his classic description of the growth of a chick inside an egg. How a chick hatches from an egg was not to be determined by philosophy, but rather by a simple experiment. Eggs were to be placed under hens and opened in sequence, one each day. It quickly became apparent that the embryo appears after three days and that the chick grows in the white of the egg, nourished by the yolk. A theory of what happens inside of an egg could now be formulated based on facts!  He even concluded that the earth was round based on his observation that the top of the mast was the first part of a sail boat to be seen from the shore.</p> <p>In many cases, however, Aristotle's theories, though consistent with observed facts, turned out to be quite wrong. He was a strong believer in the theory of the elements as had been put forward by Empedocles, namely that everything in the world was somehow composed of air, water, earth and fire. This certainly seemed to fit Aristotle's observations. When a green twig was burned, it released fire, produced "air" in the form of smoke, water in the form of sap and left an "earth" in the form of ashes behind. A logical theory, based on facts, but very wrong!</p> <p>According to this theory, when arsenic and sulfur, two substances known to the Greeks, combined under the influence of heat, the product was a novel substance in which arsenic or sulfur no longer existed.  This made sense because the physical properties of arsenic sulfide are certainly different from its component elements.</p> <p>Aristotle also studied the lungs and concluded that their purpose was to cool the body by circulating air inside, much like bellows.  He also believed that insects were spontaneously generated by putrefying vegetable matter and that the earth was the center of the universe.  These theories, although wrong, could all be supported by observation.</p> <p>But the great man had some ideas that were truly bizarre.  He maintained that the semen of youths below the age of twenty one could not lead to fertility.  This hypothesis of course could have been easily tested and shown to be incorrect.  Like other Greeks of the times, Aristotle believed that women were mentally and physically inferior to men.</p> <p>So how is it then, that this melange of some correct, some quirky but mostly wrong ideas dominated western thought for so long?  Mainly because Aristotle provided logical and common sense explanations for everyday experiences.  These he expressed so authoritatively and convincingly that generations of followers found it easier to believe Aristotle than to put his notions to an experimental test.  Today, we still see this "Aristotle effect" in the reliance of some people on convincing sounding quackery.</p> <p> Tue, 17 Apr 2018 20:10:51 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 7019 at /oss /oss/article/general-science/science-not-just-kids <p><span>A persistent idea in the minds of the lay public is that science is for kids, and a recent survey does nothing to reassure me that this saddening and restrictive notion is being overturned.</span></p> Wed, 28 Mar 2018 20:00:52 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 6979 at /oss