BAH Fest

For the December 13, 2018 SkepTalk, BAS is inviting you to participate in a Bad Ad Hoc Hypothesis program where YOU will be the presenter. Pretty much all Ad Hoc hypotheses are bad, but the Bad Ad Hoc Hypothesis (or BAH) has become something of a term of art among science fans. Examples of BAH Fests can be found on YouTube, and you are encouraged to visit them.

An ad hoc hypothesis can refer to a number of applications. Commonly, it refers to the effort to “save” a theory or hypothesis from rejection by adding on a condition. So if you can’t see the fairies I claim live in the garden, I could hypothesize that they are sometimes invisible. The claims of individuals who fail to perform paranormal feats because of the presence of a skeptic is another example – the “Psi is shy” complaint. BAHs can also involve making up a theory after the data is collected, as in this BAH by Zach Weinersmith. The best BAHs, of course, must utilize actual science, even if it is in pursuit of a ridiculous premise.

For BAS’s BAH program, we will accept lots of BAH variants: making up a theory after the data are collected is fair game, as are special pleadings of various types. We ask you to submit to baskeptics@gmail.com a title for your talk and an abstract (of length between a few sentences to a paragraph), your name, and contact information. Powerpoint is optional; length is not. Keep your talk to 10 minutes. We will notify you if your abstract has been selected.

Deadline for titles and abstracts is ~~Monday, December 3 / Wednesday, December 5~~ Monday, December 10. We look forward to much inspiration for our holiday SkepTalk BAH Fest on December 13!

Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

WHAT: Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

FOCUS: Becoming better consumers of information

This is a casual night of socializing with fellow skeptics who live in various locations around the oblate spherical planet Earth.

Please join us! This is a free event brought to you by Bay Area Skeptics. All are welcome.

WHEN: Wednesday December 25, 7-9pm Pacific (GMT-8)

HOW: Online. Join HERE. Passcode: 1023

SkepTalk

Ann Gibbons

WHAT: Lone Survivors: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Us

In the past decade, new studies of ancient DNA from fossils have shown that, until as recently as 40,000 years ago, our ancestors shared the planet with two close relatives, the Neanderthals and a mysterious group called the Denisovans. Both of those groups became extinct, but traces of their DNA remain in the genomes of modern humans. Meanwhile, researchers are discovering diverse types of human ancestors who were living at the same time in the same fossil sites millions of years ago, suggesting that we were never alone—that there were always other types of hominins alive in Africa and elsewhere on the planet until recently. Join us for a discussion with Ann Gibbons about new research that has changed perceptions of the Neanderthals, shed new light on the mysterious Denisovans, and our place in the human family tree.

WHO: Ann Gibbons is a contributing correspondent for Science magazine and the author of The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors, which was a finalist for the LA Times best science and technology book. She also has taught science writing at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and written about human evolution for National Geographic, SLATE, Smithsonian magazine and other publications. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, she was also a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a science writing fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory.

She was awarded the 2019 American Geophysical Union’s Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism, the 2018 and 2013 National Academy of Sciences Communication Awards for best magazine/newspaper article; the 2014 Society of American Archaeology Gene S. Stuart Award; and the 2012 Anthropology in Media Award from the American Anthropological Association (AAA) for a decade’s worth of stories on human origins and evolution.

WHEN: Thursday January 9 at 6:30PM PT (GMT -8)

HOW: (details coming soon)