Number 17 is in the works and will be hosted right here on September 15. Cast your critical eye over the landscape, write about what you see, and send it this way.
Description (shamelessly stolen from the archives:)
The Skeptics' Circle is a biweekly carnival for bloggers who like to apply critical thought to questionable stories. It is meant to be, as much as possible, apolitical. For purposes of the Circle that means not touching social causes mired in political action and for which multiple viewpoints can be reasonably supported by empiric data or for which the heart of the disagreement is primarily political or philosophical. That means no posts about how Bush’s Social Security reform is going to bankrupt our nation or how liberal activists are pushing “institutionalized racism,” malpractice caps, or anything about abortion. This is also not the place for personal causes. If you think personal light rail is a bad idea in your area, take that up with your local politicians and media. The Circle was created to clear up things rendered unnecessarily mysterious and fight frauds (paranormal, urban legends, etc.), pseudoscience (creationism, perpetual motion machines, for example), quackery (homeopathy, for example), and pseudohistory (Holocaust denial, for example), not to push anyone’s political agenda.
Most importantly, the data used to debunk or make a case should be empirical, which is why hotly debated social issues where there really is no clear answer at present are outside the scope of this carnival. Posts discussing or arguing such issues should be submitted to one of the many political blog carnivals out there. On the other hand, a (very) few specific issues that are unavoidably political are within the scope of this carnival. The most prominent examples come from creationism and intelligent design, because they are clearly not scientific concepts but, particularly in the case of intelligent design, are being represented as such for political reasons.
Appropriate Subjects
Here are the ideal topics for a Skeptics’ Circle submission:
Urban legends. Heard a story about a friend-of-a-friend repeated from other friends and want to find out whether or not it’s true? See a hoax you want to warn people about? Have a strange looking picture forwarded to your e-mail? Don’t leave it all to Snopes, do a little digging and see for yourself whether or not it’s true.
The paranormal. Want to prove how silly astrologists, psychics, ghosts, UFOs, or Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) are? You better belive we’ve got a place for you. All I ask is we keep it more scientific-based than snarky, although there’s nothing wrong with some sarcasm to keep it funny.
Quackery. Of all the subjects included in the Circle, this may be the most likely to save someone's life. There is a lot of potentially harmful questionable medical advice out there being pushed faster than researchers can debunk it.
Pseudoscience. You don’t need to be a professor to know something flat-out doesn’t make sense. If you hear a theory that makes everything you learned from your high school laboratory experiments sound wrong, odds are it’s wrong. Intelligent design fits into this category, because it’s less of a political issue than it is an attempt to superimpose beliefs over factsand the political connotations are side-issues at best.
Historical revision. If someone’s promoting a crooked timeline to try to deny or ignore a major event in history or forcing an incorrect view of the past, prove them wrong. Ideological reinterpretations have done too much harm to the world already.
Critical thinking. Posts dealing with the meta-analytical process behind sorting out the reason from the misinformation fit in this catch-all category.
SUBMISSIONS:
Send an e-mail with the URL for your post along with a brief description to the decorabilia AT hotmail DOT com.
The deadline is September 14, 7:00 p.m. PST.
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