Category: Skepticism

Scientific scepticism (or, skepticism) is an attitude towards scientific enquiry, rather than paranoia, cynicism, or conspiratorial thinking.

Challenges to science communication in a post-truth World

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date November 30, 2021
Categories In Science, Skepticism

This is an original manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Communicatio on November 8, 2021, available online here: Challenges to Science Communication in a Post-Truth World.

Introduction

Communicating scientific research to a lay audience – or, for that matter, communicating any contestable or potentially controversial ideas in areas such as politics or policy – would be a significantly easier task if the audience agreed on what the relevant facts are, and also on the extent to which the facts are even relevant (rather than facts being regarded as of secondary importance to political or pragmatic interests).

The first issue (“what are the facts?”) is an empirical matter, and one which reasonable people can disagree on in situations of uncertainty or incomplete knowledge. The second issue is of more concern when communicating complex or possibly controversial ideas, particularly in light of the increased polarisation of opinion in public discourse, alongside an increasingly widespread mistrust of mainstream media and “authorities” in general.

Noakes and vaccine-assisted herd immunity

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date May 5, 2020
Categories In General, Science, Skepticism

Professor Tim Noakes has published a response to Nathan Geffen’s criticism of a recent radio interview, where Geffen argued that Noakes was running the risk of misleading the public and “demean[ing] the scientific and medical community”.

One reason I haven’t written about Noakes for 18 months or so – despite his recent interest in climate-change scepticism, and his continued misrepresentation of his critics – is that I thought he was doing enough to demonstrate his epistemic irresponsibility without people like me having to point it out.

Sboros on Noakes and academic “mobbing” at UCT

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date September 17, 2019
Categories In Academia and teaching, Skepticism

The text below was submitted as a letter to The Cape Doctor, a South African Medical Association publication for medical professionals in the Western Cape. In the August 2019 edition, Marika Sboros includes my name in some of her fantastical musings, and I felt that a rebuttal was in order.

Given that the publication is typically only seen by its subscribers, I post the text of that letter here also, for the record. The edition in question (pdf link) is available on samedical.org, and a backup is stored here on Synapses too.

Data harvesting, Facebook, and the “10 year challenge”.

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date January 17, 2019
Categories In External World, Skepticism

To be fair, I haven’t seen much concern expressed on the theme of this tweet,

Has anyone considered that Facebook's “How Hard Did Aging Hit You” Challenge is just a way to refine facial recognition technology? What better way to get people to offer up a ton of comparative visual data?
— Greg Britton (@gmbritton) January 13, 2019

but with over 5 000 retweets (at time of writing), it certainly seems like some people are convinced, and possibly concerned. I’m however not inclined to think that the “10 year challenge” is a sinister ploy by Facebook to harvest this freely-volunteered data, in order to improve its facial recognition technology.

Beware Ransomware

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date September 11, 2018
Categories In External World, Skepticism

Over the past week, I’ve been receiving emails from yahoo.jp email addresses offering me the choice between paying money into a Bitcoin address, or having my (alleged!) dirty secrets exposed to colleagues, friends and family.

One guy asked for $4000, another $5000. The highest figure quoted has been $6000, and one fellow asked for a Bitcoin, so who knows how much value he was expecting this hour, given that the coin could be worth just about anything next time you check.

Noakes and vaccination: if it quacks like a duck…

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date December 4, 2017
Categories In Morality, Science, Skepticism

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

On November 29, Professor Tim Noakes was interviewed on the Gareth Cliff Show. Much of the interview focused on his new book, and his reasons for co-writing it (with Marika Sboros). I’ve previously described some of this book’s inaccuracies and falsehoods in respect of its mentions of me, including the assertion that I’m part of some conspiracy against him.

Today, I’d like to briefly focus on a more worrisome theme – vaccine scepticism – that Noakes has tweeted about in the past, and one that he returns to in this interview with Gareth Cliff. The relevant segment’s audio is transcribed below, and embedded at the end of the post. It takes place between 44m07s and 45m37s of the full interview.

Lore of Nutrition – Prof. Tim Noakes and Marika Sboros

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date November 4, 2017
Categories In Science, Skepticism

One good thing about the just-released “Lore of Nutrition“, documenting the campaign (allegedly) orchestrated by myself and others against an A-rated Professor with thousand of citations, hundreds of articles, many books, regular international speaking gigs, and constant (fawning) media coverage is that it leaves you in no doubt as to who the victim is (spoiler alert: it’s the celebrity scientist).

Noakes: eat pandas, not plants

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date October 4, 2017
Categories In Science, Skepticism

I haven’t been inclined to write anything about Professor Noakes for a good long while. In fact, even as he carried on encouraging vaccine scepticism on Twitter, or being dogmatic about sugar ‘addiction’, or citing the likes of Mercola and the Weston A. Price Foundation as if they were credible, I thought I’d said enough, and kept quiet.

Religion in South African (public) schools verdict: a victory for OGOD

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date June 28, 2017
Categories In Religion, Skepticism

The verdict in the OGOD vs. 6 public schools case was handed down on June 28, with Judge van der Linde ruling that schools were not permitted to promote “one or predominantly one religion to the exclusion of others”.

In theory, then, the days of a school promoting themselves as having a “Christian character” should be over, with countless schools across the country now having to edit brochures, websites, and even coats of arms.