Home : Skeptical Inquirer magazine

Volume 28, Number 6
November/December 2004

• Buy this back issue
• Bacteria, Ulcers, and Ostracism?
• Is Science Making Us More Ignorant?
• Stupid Dino Tricks: A Visit to Kent Hovind’s Dinosaur Adventure Land
• Investigative Files: Rorschach Icons
• The Secrets of Rennes-le-Château

Articles

Bacteria, Ulcers, and Ostracism?

H. Pylori and the Making of a Myth

Medicine’s purported ostracism of the discovery of H. pylori has achieved a mythological quality. But it isn’t true. After appropriate initial scientific skepticism, the hypothesis was accepted right on schedule.

Kimball C. Atwood IV

Science and the Public

Is Science Making Us More Ignorant?

The attempt to integrate basic cultural beliefs with the scientific outlook calls for a new interdisciplinary academic field. Such a field could contribute to the debate over public literacy in science and help motivate public support for science.

Austin Dacey

Why SETI Is Science and UFOlogy Is Not

A Space Science Perspective on Boundaries

Understanding the differences between science and pseudoscience is a fundamental critical thinking skill but often isn’t as easy as it sounds. Using SETI and UFOlogy as case studies, a space scientist examines what is meant by science and why some highly speculative ideas are part of the scientific mainstream while others are not.

Mark Moldwin

Blind Spots, Brain Maps, and Backaches

A New Chiropractic Delusion

A new test that measures the size of the blind spot to detect altered brain function and correct it with chiropractic adjustments is a house of cards built on flawed logic and one unbelievable experiment.

Harriet A. Hall

Stupid Dino Tricks

A Visit to Kent Hovind’s Dinosaur Adventure Land

Young-earth creationist Kent Hovind has built a dinosaur-filled theme park in the Florida panhandle and claims to prove that evolution is bunk. A visit there shows that it is definitely a fantasy land.

Greg Martinez

Explaining the Plagues of Egypt

The Ten Plagues of Egypt, as told in the Book of Exodus, can be easily explained. Or maybe not. . . .

Jeffrey A. Lee

Special Report

Senate Intelligence Committee Highlights Need for Skeptical Inquiry

Benjamin Radford

Columns

Editor's Note

The Path to Discovery and the Impact on Culture

News and Comment

• Russian Reports Add New Twist to Old Tunguska UFO Myth
• French Group Tests Man’s Claims to Sense a Person’s Presence
• Nobelist Francis Crick Mourned
• New Details Emerge About Psychic’s Airline Bomb Threat Tip
• Prayers, Psychics Fail to Find Missing Women
• Fortuneteller Allowed at Fair Despite Law
• Well, Larry—You’ve Done It Again
• APS’s Bob Park Elected a CSICOP Fellow
• Psychic Sylvia Browne Once Failed to Foresee Her Own Criminal Conviction
• David Morrison Named 2004 Sagan Medalist

Investigative Files

Rorschach Icons

Joe Nickell

Thinking About Science

And the Mechanism Is . . .

Massimo Pigliucci

Psychic Vibrations

Tunguska 1, Roswell 0

Robert Sheaffer

Notes on a Strange World

The Secrets of Rennes-le-Château

Massimo Polidoro

Doubt and About

A Call for Attention to Climate Change

Chris Mooney

New Books

Forum

My Wife—and the Dialectics of External Historicity

Ralph Estling

Science Best Sellers

Letters to the Editor

Reviews

Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes

By Steve Olson

Mark W. Durm

The Exodus Case: A Scientific Examination of the Exodus Story—And a Deep Look into the Red Sea

By Lennart Möller

Martin Rundkvist