Recently, a creationist blog attributed a particular argument against design to David Hume, so I took a copy of his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) from the shelf to check. Surprise, surprise: it wasn’t there. But I’m not going to bother to debunk the misattribution; it’s…
Photo Credit: RobW_ via Compfight cc Last week I told you to take it slow on identifying this fossil. As we all know, slow and steady wins the race, or in our case, comes up with the right answer! So what was it? Well, it wasn’t a prehistoric jack rabbit, that is for sure. It was an…
Next week, I’m going to get back to actual misconceptions for Misconception Monday posts, I promise—but I am a “completer-finisher,” according to some workplace personality test I once took, so I need to round out this trio. Last stop on my mini-tour of you-can’t-show-that-in-textbooks-anymore…
Denial: a big word loaded with emotion. But, like many things in life, denial is a continuum: from full blown outright dismissal to more subtle avoidance, like looking the other way. One reason why there is such a climate of confusion about climate change in the United States is that a…
This week on the Fossil Friday, I’m going to encourage you to take your time on this fossil, because as we all know, slow and steady wins the race, and the person who races to answer on Fossil Friday isn’t always right… Coming to you from Sweetwater County, Wyoming, dating to the…
Eugenie C. Scott Eugenie C. Scott, the former executive director of NCSE and the present chair of NCSE's Advisory Council, received the James Randi Educational Foundation's Award for Skepticism in the Public Interest at The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on July 12, 2014…
I love whales. My undergraduate thesis was on whales, specifically the evolution of their vertebral column. I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in the bowels of the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History (not to mention days and days and days underground in a converted…
In Evolution in the Courtroom: A Reference Guide (2002), Randy Moore lists, among the colorful characters to flock to Dayton, Tennessee, for the Scopes trial, a fellow by the name of Elmer Chubb, who “claimed that he could ‘withstand the bite of any venomous serpent.’” Unfortunately, as…
They say that "no news is good news" and it is easy to come to that conclusion when it comes to climate change. News of the gloom and doom variety does seem the norm as attempts to ratchet down carbon emissions struggle for traction while "business as usual" fossil fuel…