Bob Siederer
24 March 2025

Hello again Science fans!

June 5, 2024 was the day Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams left Earth on their way to a planned, 8 day visit to the International Space Station. Due to

¿Have you seen our latest BAS Skeptalk? It covers the most impactful research happening today in scientific skepticism and is a MUST WATCH for anyone interested in changing minds. I’ve been waiting for this talk for months and it did not disappoint. The talk is available here: https://bit.ly/BASpenn

A common skeptical goal to change minds to broaden a belief in science, evidence, and critical thinking. Sadly, we haven’t had much success in this (as proven by the current state of conspiratorial belief in society), we have much work to do here.

Right now, social media algorithms are pushing people to consume progressively mor

Herb Masters
17 March 2025

Greetings Supporters of Science, Reason, and Critical Thinking,

Well here we are again. I don't know about you but I haven't found much to cheer about how things have changed for our institutions of science. I have to admit to doing way too much doomscrolling. Here’s an example of science, war, and poli

Josh Rosenau
12 March 2025

Texas is currently experiencing an historic measles outbreak, including the first measles death in the US in a decade. The virus is remarkably effective at surviving in the air and on surfaces, and at infecting unprotected people.

For years, skeptics and public health experts have warned about the risks of declining vaccination rates, worrying about the likelihood of outbreaks just like this. Measles vaccination in particular depends on the presence of extremely high rates of vaccination in the public. The virus spreads so easily between unvaccinated people that suppressing an outbreak requires populations to have vaccination rates of at least 95%. Tha

SciSchmooze it too!

Greetings Fans of Science, Reason, and

Hello again, fans of science,
“nuqneH, QeD parmaq,” (I found no data on how many Klingons are in the Bay Area.)

A “

Bob Siederer
24 February 2025

Hello again Science Fans!

In the two weeks since I last wrote the SciSchmooze, so much has happened in the world related to science that I’m not sure where to begin. I usually start collecting articles in the two weeks prior to the issue and have 10 - 15 to write about. Today, I have 28! Things have happened so fast, however, that some of them are sure to be outdated. So let’s see if I can make heads or tails of what I’ve saved for this issue.

Starting with … Space

Have you forgotten about Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the two astronauts who were sent to t

Herb Masters
17 February 2025

Steven Newton
12 February 2025

Superbowl number … I’m going to say, XYXX? No. NXIVM? No, that’s something different. Does anyone still know Roman numerals? Let’s just call it Superb Owl 2025. In any event, it’s a big deal, with about 120 million people watching. Depending on your Roman numeral mathematical skills, that may or may not compare to the 1.5 billion people who watched the World Cup Final in 2022.

Carl Sagan posited that sports could be a great way to connect scientific ideas to everyone. Critical sports analysis could also help foster skeptical thinking by demolishing myths, such as the idea that a baseball player who hasn’t scored a hit in a long time is “due” a run.

So when Superb Owl 2025 commences wit

Bob Siederer
10 February 2025

Hello again Science Fans!

Have you ever suddenly wondered about a perfectly normal English word that you probably use now and then? I woke up the other day with the word “bushel” stuck in my thoughts. The more I wondered about why it was there, the stranger the word seemed.

I know how the word came into my head. The night before, I was in the YouTube rabbit hole again, watching a post from a young farmer in Nebraska who was talking about how many bushels of corn from her farm she was taking to the storage facility. My subconscous must have been working on this for me to wake up wit