SCIENCE AND PSEUDOSCIENCE

The Internet and World Wide Web are relatively young, operate with glacial slowness over phone lines, and mainly allow access, not to information, but to a terrifying flood of non-sane drivel. However, with patience, you can sift out useful material.

USEFUL URLs AND LINKS:

A good search engine, such as Google, will turn up sites on almost any topic. However, you will find that 99.999% of the pages you turn up are crackpot material, rather than factual reference material, so use caution.

Surveys Astrology Atlantis Bibliography Blavatsky & Theosophy Change Blindness Cognitive Dissonance Conversion Disorder Cranks Creationism
Cults Dowsing Fallacies Fortune Telling Hypnosis Polygraph, fNMR Postmodernism Probabilities Prophecy Psychics
Pyramids Quantum Woo-woo Quackery Science Literacy Science Education Spiritualism UFOs Urban Legends Velikovsky Water myths

Quick Surveys of Pseudoscience:

See the on-line version of the skeptic's dictionary,http://skepdic.com/

The New England Skeptical Society's on-line Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience.

FAQ pages on many pseudosciences from Bill Latura.

Famous article by Willy Ley on pseudoscience in Nazi Germany.

Other links: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~rasmus/skepticism/skeptic.html
Forbes Magazine on how to spot pseudoscience.
http://www.realisticdiplomas.com/The-Skeptics-Resource-Page.aspx
http://www.sniggle.net/science.php
and http://www.chem1.com/acad/sci/pseudosci.html

An inconveniently huge list of links from psychologist J. C. Smith, covering all aspects of pseudoscience, is here. Note the many videos.

An interesting collection of links.

Text and video resources on identification of pseudoscience.

A history of pseudoscience: MacDougall

Another survey of pseudoscience indicators is here.

Another survey of pseudoscience and symptoms: Willis

Transcripts of a weekly podcast devoted to confronting pseudoscience with facts are here. Yet another is here. And yet another, from Australia. And still another is here.

For Skeptical Inquirer articles on-line, see SI On-Line

Latest (June 2005) Gallup Poll results on belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal.
A collection of survey results on a huge variety of topics, including pseudoscience and medical quackery, is here. Many of the results on "current events" are of course woefully outdated. I have extracted out the poll results relevant to our course here. Does science education innoculate students against belief in at least the more preposterous pseudosciences? The evidence of many studies, including the one here, is: NO! More recent surveys summarized here.

Richard Wiseman is a British professor of psychology and magican, who has done much research into the psychology of deception, public misconceptions of luck and probabilities, and pseudoscience. Prof. Wiseman's Paranormal Page.

Jim Loy's page offering a variety of short discussions of a variety of pseudosciences--- Loy Page

Links to a collection of on-line articles on pseudoscience and academic antiscience----- PEST Pages

The psychology of gullibility.

Discussions by Prof. Steve Dutch-- Dutch pages

Andrew Skolnick's website on pseudsocience is here.

Another collection of links to pages debunking various pseudosciences.

A brief article on 1800s and 1900s pseudoscience.

Richard Feynman's famous commencement address, "Cargo-Cult Science."

General discussion of pseudoscience by Prof. Stephen Lower-- Lower pages

A non-scientist's thoughts about pseudoscience and bad science-- Pseudoscience

Institute of Biological Research Pseudoscience pages: http://www.biocab.org/Pseudoscience.html

An on-line magazine with many good articles about pseudoscience, complete with video clips: Skeptic Report!

How to spot a pseudoscience.

A series of articles on pseudoscience by senior journalist Leon Jaroff.

See a pseudoscience fact sheet on line at http://sociologyesoscience.com/pseudoscience.html

See also pseudoscience in psychology-- http://www.astrocyte-design.com/pseudoscience/

A British newspaper weekly column on “bad science” and pseudoscience, as promoted by the British news media. Most of the comments also apply to US news media.

The innocent and inexperienced frequently ask, “What harm does pseudoscience do to anyone? Surely it is harmless entertainment.” Here's a whole website to answer this question!

Beware of all Wikipedia entries on topics in pseudoscience, and most Wikipedia entries on various scientific topics. Also, what might have been an accurate entry on some or any topic 5 minutes ago could by the time you see it have been completely vandalized by a mentally-retarded 11-year-old. However, you might try SkepticWiki, a supposedly fact-based alternative.

An amusing parody that demonstrates just about everything that is wrong with Wikipedia entries on pseudoscience topics.

A Blog devoted to collecting information debunking pseudoscience and quackery is here.

The Straight Dope is a long-running weekly column that often deals with pseudoscience, fraud and misinformation.

An MD and Stanford professor who performs Mentalism; Coker is not alone!

Pseudoscience in Oklahoma... epidemic!

The Skeptic Tank?

A good discussion of hoax photos of all kinds, UFOs, ghosts, monsters, religious figures, etc., etc.

Psychological Pseudoscience? There's a huge amount of it!

Archaeology-Based Pseudoscience.

A radio broadcast discussing pseudoscience.

"Paranormal Investigator" Andrew Neher.

Some musings on the cultural and political forces that encourage and support pseudoscience.

Famous magicians Penn and Teller have a cable TV series debunking pseudoscience and weird beliefs of all kinds. Here's the official website for the series. Beware that the lads at times appear to be uninformed, on some topics, alas.

A view of pseudoscience from New Zealand.

And why is it that the news media no longer report news? Some speculations.

I have no idea what this is; seems to be a one-man (or -woman) operation centered around Austin Community College.

The very wide variety of distorted sensory perceptions that accompany migraine headaches is fortunately unknown to me, as I have never had a headache, migraine or otherwise. But just reading over the list of reported symptoms, it occurs to me that most of the strange or paranormal perceptions various people claim to feel, from auras to ghosts, from out-of-body experiences to near-death experiences, share most if not all of the features of perceptions that routinely accompany migraine headaches!

Mystery Hunters is apparently a Discovery Channel TV series aimed at kids, which seeks to encourage logical and rational thinking about weird claims... how successfully I don't know. Mythbusters is a similar series aimed at "adults," if that's the word we want.

Seen it rain frogs lately?

gellerism

General Surveys of Pseudoscience:

http://www.tinaja.com/pseudo01.html
Articles (usually in PDF format) on a variety of pseudosciences.

James Randi: http://www.randi.org/
Home page of James Randi and his "James Randi Educational Foundation," which battles "misinformation, pseudoscience and fraud." [In early February 2006, Randi suffered a heart attack; in mid-April he returned to work at the JREF.]

The Woo-Woo Credo!!

H. P. Blavatsky and Theosophy:

Theosophy, and the full text of Blavatsky's magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine. Blavatsky's first and completely incomprehensible Theosophical work, Isis Unveiled.

SkepDic on Blavatsky and Theosophy.

A sympathetic appreciation of Blavatsky.

A collection of articles presenting a factual perspective on Theosophy's creators, claims, and foundations.

Blavatsky and the New Age.

Blavatsky's successors and competitors.

Alice A. Bailey claimed to be a follower and successor of Blavatsky, but actually seems to have been a competitor.

The New Age, conceptually associated with Bailey far more closely than with Blavatsky. More on the New Age.

One of Blavatsky's more infamous modern successors.


Atlantis and Cult Archaeology:
Wikipedia Atlantis, Skepdic Atlantis, and a typical internet entry, a mixture of fact, speculation and total crap.

A web course on Pseudoarchaeology. The Bad Archaeology Website.

Irrational Archaeology, an article by Kenneth Feder.

The face on Mars as a “teachable moment.”

The Crystal Skulls Hoax.

As for "lost continents," see animations of continental drift over more than half a billion years, here. For detailed maps of the continents in each geological era, click here.

Pyramids and Tombs of Egypt:

Pyramids1 | Pyramids2 | Pyramids 3 | Pyramids 4 | Pyramids 5 | Pyramids 6 | Theban Mapping Project | Mummies! | The completely imaginary Curse of the Pharaohs! | Pyramidiocy 1 | Pyramidiocy 2. | Pyramidiocy 3 | Pyramidiots 4. | A good summary and analysis of Pyramidiocy. | Urban legends about Pyramids and Egypt!

Local Organizations:

Since the early 1980s there have appeared in many large cities in the US, and overseas, local organizations which investigate pseudoscientific claims in a factual, objective way. These organizations have, by and large, done an excellent and valuable job over these past two decades. Most of them used to publish a short monthly newsletter. Over the past decade, most have gone on-line. Here is a convenient set of links to the newsletters of many of these local organizations active in countering pseudoscience.

Astrology:

Astrology and Science | Astrology and Astronomy | A succinct analysis of Astrology.

A recent and very direct test of astrology, with excellent statistical signficance.

A short but effective analysis of astrology.

A Russian view of astrology.

UFOs:

I can't think of any other topic that better illustrates the essentially hopeless state of public scientific literacy than the theme of flying saucers and UFOs. Google searches on any other topic will turn up a few factual pages among at least the first hundred crazy sites. But in the case of UFOs and saucers, there are almost no factual sites whatsoever. Even Skepdic is somewhat of a letdown. There is precisely one site otherwise, out of the many millions of completely crazy sites. British science writer Ian Ridpath has a page. And here is an amateur astronomer's page on the growth of UFO mythology. Here are also a few posted articles by aerospace writer Philip Klass. A brief history of the evolution of the UFO myth. Another summary of the evolution of UFO mythology. An astronomer's personal collection of UFOs that were actually easy to identify. Here is an older article on UFO-based religious cults. A good site covering so-called UFOs in Renaissance European art is here. HRvD didn't notice these! A good discussion of the famous Fermi Question, "Where is everybody?" and possible answers to that question.

Dowsing:

Dowsing in Connecticut | Dowsing and archeology | Testing dowsers and psychic canines


Medical Quackery:
http://www.ncahf.org/
Home page of the National Council Against Health Fraud, an up-to-date and very reliable source concerning questionable health practices, scams and cons.

See also http://www.quackwatch.com/
which contains a huge amount of information about quack "healing arts," and see also http://acsh.org/healthissues/

A summary of a large number of studies of homeopathy; surprise, surprise, it's utterly worthless.

Quacks as deniers of science-based health-care.

A good site on diet scams and fad diets can be found here.

Recent evaluation of "fad" diets.

For more medical and veterinary quackery, see
http://www.vet-task-force.com/

See also: Quack Links; Canadian quackery; Introduction to Quackery; More on Quackery.

A funny writeup on faith-healer, evangelist and spirit communicator Peter Popoff

One of the most shameless promoters of medical quackery in the US has recently introduced his own line of cosmetics!

Pseudonymous teenage quack "Adam Dreamhealer," shamelessly promoted by the media, especially in Canada. A discussion of Dreamhealer's antics within the general context of claims of "medical miracles" will be found here.

A gallery of infamous quacks.

Articles on the many dangers posed by “dietary supplements,” which since 1994 have been exempt from all regulation and certification and testing: Supplements; Findlaw on supplements; Heart and circulatory system dangers of supplements. Supplements dangerous for heart patients. Unwanted effects of supplements.

One of the most disturbing epidemics in the US currently is the epidemic of obesity. Here's a long, detailed on-line article.

Quantum Flapdoodle:

Quantum Nonsense 1, Quantum Nonsense 2, Quantum Nonsense 3, Quantum Nonsense 4, Quantum Nonsense 5, Quantum Nonsense 6. The in-context-meaningless buzzword “quantum” is a strong competitor in the early 21st Century, threatening to replace the earlier, still-popular meaningless-in-context buzzword “energy.”

Change Blindness:

The majority of these links are on-line demonstrations of change blindness. Beckman; Rensink (discussion), and (demonstrations); Bristol; Hoff; Paris; BBC demonstration; SkepDic entry; Newspaper writeup with links.

The Myth of Hypnosis:

One of very, very few good articles on the subject | "Theories" of Hypnosis | Court status of the myth of repressed memories | A more concise article on theories of hypnosis. | Recently "researchers" have used so-called "functional magnetic resonance imaging" (fMRI) to try to explore the "realities" of hypnosis, but such imaging itself has been denounced as pseudoscientific, almost equivalent to phrenology. See a discussion here. Evidence that fMRI is at least being grossly oversold is the recent appearance on the market of a fMRI lie detector!! | British mentalist Derren Brown in this interview gives the reality behind "hypnosis," as it is indeed understood by every stage hypnotist known to me.

A brief entry on Muscle Reading, aka Hellstromism, aka Contact Mind Reading, aka Cumberlandism.

Spiritualism:

A typical manifestation of modern-day Spiritualism!

The earliest Spiritualism-themed stage act was the Davenport Brothers. Here's a good on-line article about their feats and act.

Bibliography:

http://www.csicop.org/bibliography/home.cgi
A computerized, searchable bibliography of books and articles on pseudoscience and related topics.

Astronomical Pseudoscience: Astronomical Pseudoscience Bibliography

"Skeptic's Dictionary" link again: http://skepdic.com/
A dictionary of terms common in occult, paranormal, supernatural and pseudoscientific literature.

Cognitive Dissonance:

Article on this crucial topic. And another. And yet another.

"Psychic" Phenomena:

Article by Susan Blackmore.

A simple ESP code as a teaching tool!

Magicians are quite willing to help construct valid ESP experiments, but almost never get asked by so-called "parapsychologists" for any expert help. Wonder why?  Here is Jamy Ian Swiss's offer.

Psychic Supermen (and women):

James Hydrick was Uri Geller's strong American competitor in the early 1980s. His downfall came quickly because he basically knew only one trick.

An inside look at various famous Russian psychics of the 1970s and 1980s.

A great writeup on long-forgotten 1960s "Thoughtographer" Ted Serios.

Sai Baba, Indian superman and cult leader, is famous for doing very simple magic tricks for his followers.

Pseudoscience involving Water!

Water Pseudoscience. Myths about ice crystals.

Velikovsky's Colliding Planets and Other Crackpot Geology and Astronomy:

A university astronomy professor's page on Velikovsky and his bizarre astrophysical notions.

A famous biologist's summary of the Velikovskian mythos.

A typical scholarly examination of some of Velikovsky's claims, and use of ancient sources.

Another such page.

Cyrus Teed's Inside-Out Earth!

Other crazy ideas in geology.

The Flat Earth Society, of Dowie and Voliva.

The more recent Flat Earth Society active in the 1980s died out with the death of its founder in 2001. This site reproduces the original flyer used in publicizing the society during its heyday. However, over the past 10 years some genuine flat earth believers have emerged again, as reported here, but don't seem to have any formal organization, and no head count is currently available.

Well, the earth isn't flat, but surely it is at the center of the universe, right?

Hollow Earth scenarios.

Creationism, Intelligent Design, and "Godly Science" in general:

http://www.natcenscied.org/
Home page of the National Center for Science Education, a watchdog organization that keeps track of the continued attack against high school biology by various extremist, science-hating individuals, cults and sects. See also: http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/gish.html

The Creationist/Intelligent Design movement is actually fractured into a huge number of competing cults and sects, whose beliefs split virtually every Fundamentalist hair! Here's a web page that offers a brief discussion and summary of the various anti-science cults and their beliefs, as well as links to the websites of each crackpot organization. See also Creationism and Cult Archaeology

Creationism versus Science!

Things Creationists Hate!

Fundamentalism versus Science!

Science and Fundamentalism.

Can science survive Fundamentalism?

The historical origins of the Bible Science movement which spun off Creationism and Intelligent Design.

More background on the origins of the pseudosciences of Creationism and Intelligent Design.

A website devoted to religious tolerance has an interesting page on Creationism.

An article by Paul R. Gross on the Intelligent Design movement. (PDF format)

See also Frequently Asked Questions about Creationism. And here is the latest battleground, far from the last.

A UFO religious cult, the Raëllians, has borrowed almost all the rhetoric and arguments of the Intelligent Design movement.

“Intelligent Falling” is an amusing Onion parody of “Intelligent Design.”

A good article in which advocates of Intelligent Design state their case and then biologists reply with the actual facts.

A geologist on Intelligent Design pseudoscience.

An example of a critique of Intelligent Design and Creationism by a religious organization, the ADL.

Legal aspects of the latest attempts to put religion into public school biology.

A useful review of legal aspects and precedents in the saga of ignorant Fundamentalism versus high school biology.

A four-part article on the threat the Intelligent Design movement poses to science itself, science education, and public support of scientific research.

News summaries concerning new ID battlefronts are found here.

An apparently randomly assembled clump of creationism links: The Christian Pseudoscience Monitor.

Bible Codes, Holy Codes, General Prophecy:

There are a number of good sites developed by computer scientists and mathematicians which demonstrate the non-existence of "secret codes" in various Holy Books... and find them in WAR AND PEACE, and MOBY DICK! Here is one such site, and here is another; all have links to other similar sites.

Prophecy for Dummies? Learn this useful and profitable skill, here.

A direct reading of the Bible doesn't present a history of great success in prognostications.

This very useful site randomly generates Nostradamus-style prophecies, in verse.

Reading and Fortune Telling:

A very good, two-part on-line article on cold reading, using a transcript of James Van Praag sessions to illustrate the various techniques. This is a three-part article. The much longer second part is linked from the pages containing the first part. A third part, on Sylvia Browne has recently been added.

A short article on cold reading. And another.

An essay on "hot" and "cold" reading.

More examples of reading methods used by modern TV personalities.

A discussion of reading methods used in a college class, with links to video examples.

A brief survey of fortune-telling and fortune tellers.

A good example of a made-up look up table for "list reading" in fortune telling with ordinary playing cards. Another such table is here.

Many fortune tellers use a variety of scams to steal large sums of money from exceptionally gullible customers. More information on typical scams. Still more on scams. $500,000 take in a single scam, incredible!

Guard this secret closely: the Oracle of Batboy!

Cranks:

The Internet has become the medium of choice for all sorts of cranks. Here is a website that specializes in the appreciation of the creme de la hyperweird among CRANK SITES on the WWW.


Cults:

Sad story of the week.

Anticult websites:
 http://www.csj.org and http://www.rickross.com/

Scientology: Fishman
A guide to Internet documents on this largest and most frightening of pseudoscience cults. Look particularly for "The Road to Xenu," some of the ultimate secret revelations of the cult, as well as the TIME cover story on Scientology (May 6, 1991), and "Social Control in Scientology," etc.

See also Ultimate Secrets of Scientology

Because of the secretive, paranoid nature of the cult of Scientology, the most damning information about it comes from very high-level followers who later left the cult. Here's a recent article on one such former follower and his inside information: “The Apostate,” by Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker, Feb. 14 and 21, 2011.

SOUTH PARK on Scientology, aka the Super Adventurer's Club.

A good discussion of destructive cults in general. Another general discussion.

Specific Destructive Cults: http://www.religioustolerance.org/destruct.htm

The Unification Church, one of the most notorious of all destructive cults.

Some general characteristics of cults and cult leaders, listed by a former cult follower.

Study Cults Web Site.

Useful summaries of the various religious cults that are based on the cult leader's contact with UFOs and Space Aliens and Alien Civilizations will be found here, and here.

Indian cult leader Sai Baba!

End of the World Predictions, mainly from cult leaders.

Postmodernism:

This website generates completely meaningless postmodern essays at random. They're a bit short and not under the viewer's control, otherwise they would pass as essays students could turn in as completed assignments in courses in various humanities departments at almost any university. To generate a new essay, just hit "return" on your browser.

Allan Sokal's home page. Physicist Allan Sokal's Social Text hoax. The skepdic.com entry on the Sokal hoax.

Science historian Gerald Holton on antiscience, and postmodernist attacks on science.

An article on postmodernism pollution of universities.

A profile of Richard Rorty, the de-facto current leader (until his death in 2007) of  postmodern anti-science philosophers. A nearly-incomprehensible summary of Rorty's nearly-incomprehensible ideas about science is here.

A geologist on postmodern anti-science.

Postmodernism grew in part out of the rabidly antiscience stance exhibited by all Hippies in good standing, in the 1960s, as remembered, summarized and examined here.

Some new euphemisms for Postmodern thought.

A parodistic look at the impact of postmodernism on science education.

An April, 2005 "postmodern" hoax.

A classic of postmodern attacks on science is Paul Feyerabend's lecture (1975) in which he reveals that science is "nothing but a religion in disguise."

Science is NOT "faith-based."   Righto!

Lists of Logical Fallacies, with many examples drawn from pseudoscience and politics:
List of Fallacies
Fallacy Files
Logical Fallacies
More Fallacies
Still more
A really good list of fallacies.

“Conversion Disorder” aka Mass Sociogenic Illness:

Mass Hysteria!
from e-Medicine,
from Psychnet,
from Merck,
from hd.com.
Mass Hysteria!?!   Guess so...    Definitely! A recent case, the extreme repressive environment is typical. Reverse audio in ``Stairway to Heaven," here. More here. The Toxic Meteorite of September 2007. Some other cases and a review article, School case, Review Article, School case, Typical school case, Another.
Here's a good-quality video of the part of the Pokemon episode that supposedly triggered fits in Japanese children.
Somebody's top ten list of Conversion Disorder Incidents throughout history.

Thinking about Probabilities!

Probability Stumpers 1 | Probability Stumpers 2 | Probability Stumpers 3 | An interactive version of one of the most famous probability questions is here. An online version of the traditional Rhine Zener-card ESP tests. Another version of some standard probability riddles. One reason we all have trouble with probabilties is the almost irresistable confusion between specific outcomes, and specific categories of outcomes. A good discussion is here.
An online textbook on simple concepts of probability.  The famous Monty Hall problem is discussed at length by S. Lucas, J. Rosenhouse and A. Schepler in Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 82, No. 5, December 2009, pp. 332 - 342.

NSF Surveys of Public Science Literacy and Attitudes:

Indicators 2000
for updates, see:
Indicators 2002
Indicators 2004
Indicators 2006
How did we get into this fix? Read Richard Feynman on public school science textbooks. Because many (up to 50%) of K-12 science teachers are scientifically illiterate, their lectures are riddled with errors and misconceptions, and the texts they use generally are too. Here is a page devoted to tabulating some of the more common errors.

Science illiteracy is part of a larger and much more frightening problem: adult illiteracy. Federal reports have tended to minimize the severity of this situation, but the best guess is that currently about  50% of the adult US population is functionally illiterate, meaning for example that they cannot pick the correct bus from a simple bus route schedule, or determine the percent of some ingredient from a simple "nutritional facts" table on a food item label. As a college teacher since about 1964, I personally have seen a sharp and steady deterioration in the literacy of upper-division college students. The expected and easily documented resulting decline in the number of adults who read books and newspapers is tied in directly with a decline in the fraction of the population who attend concerts, lectures and similar public events, who do community service, and who actively seek information about world, national, state and local conditions and situations. In short, the decline in adult readership corresponds to a decline in the current level of human civilization.

The larger view, The War on Science in America.

Cultural and scientific illiteracy is epidemic in the USA. Read here.

Why can't Americans learn science? Here's one proposed explanation.

Trends in International Math and Science Study:

The U.S. educational system has been in a perpetual state of crisis since 1957, and each year sees further deterioration. U.S. schools have placed dead last or tied for dead last among many dozens of randomly selected countries, in a number of separate studies, up to 2003. Here is an overview, for 12th graders. [These studies were originally called the First, Second and Third International Math and Science Surveys.] Also included is an independent international study covering the same questions.

http://timss.bc.edu/
Summary of current results 2003 Study, results announced in 2005.
An independent international study from 2003

And some news items:  Slipping? Who cares? What, us worry?
Grades keep going up, knowledge keeps dwindling down.

Who'd have believed that one of the major foes of effective K-12 education in math and science would be the National Science Foundation itself? The problem seems to have been the takeover of the funding for math and science educational initiatives by education-college quacks, a decade or more ago. The result has been a flood of NSF-approved K-12 textbooks and "teaching packages" that teach basic math either incorrectly or not at all. Here are some links to organizations that have grown up in response to what amounts to a total destruction of math (and science) K-12 instruction in many states and municipalities: Mathematically Correct dot com, HOLD National, Where's the Math dot com. Science education has suffered even more, but few if any seem to care. A Presidential Commission agrees that math education is in crisis, and offers some excellent suggestions.

A big part of the problem:
And another aspect:
And still another:
They just don't get it?
Physics would be the most unpopular subject, except nobody has to take it.
More bad news.
“Slipping” since the 1960s and who cares?
Of course politicians possess perfect understanding of our problems.

The Polygraph & fNMR:

Summary of National Academy of Sciences Report
More on the Polygraph.

So-called “functional magnetic resonance imaging” seems to be becoming a bogus validator of all kinds of nonsensical claims, roughly one new one per month. A survey of the claims and problems of this highly non-quantitative and equally highly questionable techology can be found in an article by Laura Sanders, Science News, “Trawling the Brain,” December 15, 2009, pp. 16 – 20. A pdf version here.

Physics itself:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics
Short and generally correct answers to frequently asked questions about physics. See also http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/ and also http://whyfiles.news.wisc.edu and also http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/
which is the home page of a physics professor interested in the history of science, and in distinguishing science from pseudoscience.

Conspiracies and Paranoia:

A collection of articles on the widespread “denial of fact” seen all over the world today: “State of Denial,” The New Scientist, 15 May 2010, pp. 35-45.

Free Formula Reading:

http://www.Facade.com/occult/tarot/
Save yer money, get yer fortune told here.

Famous Hoaxes:

The On-Line Museum of Hoaxes.

Modern Urban Legends, Modern Myths and Internet Hoaxes:

http://urbanlegends.about.com
http://www.snopes.com
http://www.cdc.gov/hoax_rumors.htm
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/
Clifford Pickover's hoax pages.
There is what might almost be considered a religion, based on nonsensical mythology about Nikola Tesla. Another Tesla discussion.
How many of these "Science Myths" did you think were true? Few actually are factual.
Internet Scams.

How about “Spontaneous Human Combustion?”
Fun Things to Do and to Make!!
Make Nifty and Unique UFO photos, kids! Just follow these simple instructions.
It's also neato-keen to modify existing photos, especially from NASA, like this!
But the simplest approach is usually the best, as seen here. Billy-Meier-style photos are particularly easy to imitate precisely, using the exact methods adopted by Billy and Kalliope, as discussed here, and here.

You can also make make your own Mystery Spot, but this is harder... you'll have to get Dad and your friendly neigborhood construction company to help you.

You can also make really nifty crop circles! The folks who know how are rightly called circlemakers.org And here is how to do the simplest circles.

You can also make ghost photos, and no ghost is needed. The folks at the link here have not even begun to scratch the surface of making ghost photos to order.

Now how about some space alien photos? The aliens are right in our neighborhood, walking around in our back yard! Find inspiration here.

You too can create your own mysterious Nazca Markings! Evidence for Space Aliens?

And what about making your own Mummy?? Just a mummy of an orange slice, but the principle is the same! As for real mummies, find some accurate information here.

A tongue-in-cheek "official" website devoted to the Loch Ness Monster can be found here. Using their "live webcam" you can take a photo of the monster yourself, sitting at home at your computer! [Hint: the word "pseudoscience" is "hidden" prominently on this site.] If you get tired of looking for a Loch Ness monster, see if you can spot a Giant Panda. No luck? Try here. And, never get discouraged, even if you search for Bigfoot for 40 years without one sniff. Keep the faith, baby! Waiting for Bigfoot, prepare for a long wait!

Jib-Jab's legendary Oddities Page!

Miscellaneous---

How about a quiz testing your knowledge of the Old Testament? Believe it or not, the instructor scored 100% on this, and has made 100% on many previous quizzes, due to his familiarity with Leviticus.

How low can a human sink? Find out here.

Religion:

Mr. Cranky on religion in general.

Top Ten Signs you're a fundamentalist Christian!

The Washed-out Blue Dot...


It has not been possible to test all these links recently. A search engine can usually find a "lost" site if it has simply been moved. I recommend google, about the only search engine around that actually works. You can reach me by e-mail with questions, etc., at coker2@physics.utexas.edu Or at: RoryCoker@gmail.com

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Last updated October 2013!