The Poetry of Reality

The Poetry of Reality is the fifth installment in the Symphony of Science music video series. It features 12 scientists and science enthusiasts, including Michael Shermer, Jacob Bronowski, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Jill Tarter, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Feynman, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Carolyn Porco, and PZ Myers, promoting science through words of wisdom.

Study linking autism to vaccine retracted

This week, the medical journal The Lancet retracted a 1998 study linking autism to vaccines after it was found to be rife with bias and error. Britain's General Medical Council concluded that the author of the study, Andrew Wakefield, had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in conducting the study, including accepting payment from lawyers of parents who thought their children had been harmed by the MMR vaccine. Wakefield was also found to have subjected children to painful and unnecessary tests, including paying children at his son's birthday party to have blood drawn for research purposes.

Hopefully, some of the resources spent combating the antivaccine movement inspired by Wakefield's flawed report will be reallocated to developing effective treatments for childhood disorders like autism. In a New York Times editorial by a parent who spent thousands of dollars on untested treatments for her son, Liane Kupferberg Carter decries the touted anecdotal evidence of antivax crusaders like Jenny McCarthy, writing, "Warm and fuzzy anecdotes don’t do it for me. Give me hard science any day, with its double blind studies and rigorous peer review."

Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial

Public distrust of science is higher than at any time since the Enlightenment. New Yorker writer Michael Specter argues how our anti-science bias and our irrationalism about everything from genetically modified foods to climate change to childhood vaccines endangers our future.

And remember when… a look back at scientists who at first pooh-poohed plate tectonics… meteorites, and quantum physics. How the evidence turned them around.

It’s Skeptic Check… but don’t take our word for it.

Listen to individual segments here:
Part 1 - Michael Specter
Part 2 - Read Montague
Part 3 - Michael Specter (continued)
Part 4 - Crop circles
Part 5 - Spencer Weart
Part 6 - Checkout Line Press

Swimming in Denial - Michael Specter

Part 1 of Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial, featuring Michael Specter, writer for The New Yorker and author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.

Swimming in Denial - Read Montague

Part 2 of Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial, featuring Read Montague, Director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine and author of Why Choose This Book?: How We Make Decisions.

Swimming in Denial - Michael Specter (continued)

Part 3 of Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial, featuring Michael Specter, writer for The New Yorker and author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.

Swimming in Denial - Crop Circles

Part 4 of Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial, featuring a discussion on crop circles and how, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, some believe them to be of extra-terrestrial origin.

Swimming in Denial - Spencer Weart

Part 5 of Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial, featuring Spencer Weart, historian of science, discussing how even scientists at first pooh-poohed plate tectonics, meteorites, and quantum physics, and how the evidence turned them around.