Here is Houdini showing the Scientific American panel how spiritualists and mediums made bells ring. See his foot?
I once subscribed to Scientific American. We had to read it in high school, and I often used articles from the magazine in research projects. I also was a fan of its history, which intersected with my long-time love of magic and magic history. It was Scientific American, back in the 1920s, that created the special cash prize for anyone who could prove they had supernatural powers, or that paranormal phenomena was real. After a while psychics and other miracle workers stopped applying for the prize, because SA’s panel of experts always exposed them as frauds. The star member of that panel was Harry Houdini, in his post-performing second career as the enemy of charlatans and frauds
Thus it pains me to see the once great, dumbed-down vestige of Scientific American publish an article with this unforgivable headline, in front of content that is little better:
Climate Change May Have Helped Spark Iran’s Protests
And space aliens may have built the pyramids.
Actually, the article still has educational value, though no teacher is likely to use it properly. It is a wonderful example of poor critical thinking, bad science, the result of mixing science with politics, and how bias makes you stupid. The author, Scott Waldman, doesn’t even try to hide the article’s weak logic and lame premise, beginning it with this:
The impacts of climate change are among the environmental challenges facing Iran that helped spark protests in dozens of cities across the Islamic republic.At least 20 people have died in the uprising, driven by the sudden collapse of financial institutions, low wages and mistrust of national leaders. Rising temperatures are seen by some experts as an underlying condition for the economic hardships that led to the unrest. A severe drought, mismanaged water resources and dust storms diminished Iran’s economy in recent years, according to experts who study the region. While the protests are largely driven by resistance to the country’s hardline conservative government, such environmental factors might have contributed to the largest protests inside Iran in years.
That tells any objective reader all he needs to know: junk ahead. The old “some experts” ploy, eh? You can find “some experts” who will say anything, especially on TV. We just went through weeks of unethical speculation on whether the President was suffering from dementia based on “some expert,” a Yale professor of psychiatry who breached the American Psychiatric Association (APA) ethics protocols and was revealed as not to be licensed to practice anymore.You know. An expert.
Waldman himself isn’t an expert on climatology or even science: he’s a reporter, and his degree was in journalism. Funny, I’m so old, I remember when the articles in Scientific American were written by scientists. How quaint. Continue reading →
Ethics Alarms 
The comments on this post about the sudden discovery that every computer extant was vulnerable to hacking thanks to two 20-year-old “flaws” were so detailed, informative and excellent that I had the unenviable choice of posting one representative Comment of the Day, or eight. Having just posted eight COTDs on another post last weekend, I opted for one, but anyone interested in the topic—or in need of education about the issues involved— should go to the original post and read all the comments. Forget the post itself—the comments are better.
Here is Extradimensional Cephalopod‘s Comment of the Day on the post, Wait, WHAT? NOW They Tell There Are “Two Big Flaws” in Every Computer?