Jay Diamond

Starting the Year with SkeptiCamps

Submitted by Jay Diamond Thu, 09-01-2025 : 04:53

As I’ve done for many years, I attended the Monterey County SkeptiCamp on the first weekend of the year. I find it to be a great opportunity to cleanse your skeptical palette and start a new year with new, rational ideas. Plus it’s a lot of fun.

A SkeptiCamp is a free, informal conference in which anyone, usually amateur skeptics, present on a subject in science and/or scientific skepticism. Speakers may want to explore a new topic, be deeply passionate experts, or just have a need to rant about irrationality in society. This year, subjects included a discussion of the social contagion around drones that is sweeping parts of the USA, medical claims around stem cells curing all disease, and rationally assessing risk with data.

A former teacher discussed creating constructiv

admin's Blog Add new comment Read More

Just One Drop of Pseudoscience

Submitted by Jay Diamond Thu, 10-05-2018 : 03:12

On Thursday, October 11, 2017, Dr. Eugenie Scott and I scoped out the pro-Homeopathy movie "Just One Drop" at the Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF). There was another showing on the following Saturday and one of our goals was to determine whether a public protest was warranted. We’d previously crafted and sent a letter (via both e-mail and snail mail) to the Executive Director of the film festival expressing our concern but did not receive a response.

Just One Drop: Poster for the pro-homeopathy Film "Just One Drop" Just One Drop: Poster for the pro-homeopathy Film "Just One Drop"The movie is what we expected, although better produced (it took 8 years to make). The narrative goes something like this:

Nobody knows how homeopathy works.

There are skeptics.

But it works, and we’ll prove this with some anecdotes.

It’s been around for a long time and many people us

Jay Diamond's Blog Add new comment Read More

22 January – Virtual Skeptics in the Pub
9 February – SkeptiCamp
13 February – SkepTalk
26 February – Skeptics in a Real Pub
13 March – SkepTalk

Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

WHAT: Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

FOCUS: Happiness and Skepticism

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 January 22, 7-9pm Pacific (GMT-8)

HOW: Online. Join HERE. Passcode: 1023

Bay Area SkeptiCamp

WHEN: Sunday February 9

HOW: Details HERE

SkepTalk

Dr. Mohamed Noor

Can Star Trek teach us about evolution? Yup!

While some people choose to learn about evolution through coursework, a large number of people could be interested in the subject if brought to them wrapped in another subject in which they are already engaged. In this talk, Prof. Noor introduces evolutionary concepts, thinking, and approaches framed using depictions from the Star Trek television franchise.

PRESENTER: Dr. Mohamed Noor is a professor of Biology and the executive vice provost at Duke University. He teaches classes and leads a team conducting research in the broad areas of genetics and evolution. Dr. Noor has held many elected scientific society offices and research journal editorships. He has also been active in education and outreach, and teaches a popular free online course via Coursera on genetics and evolution. Dr. Noor published a book via Princeton University Press that uses Star Trek to teach principles in genetics and evolution: “Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us About Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds”. He regularly gives classes and talks at various venues using science fiction to teach scientific principles, and he serves as an occasional scientific consultant for the Star Trek Universe, with on-screen credits for Star Trek: Discovery seasons 3 and 4.

WHEN: Thursday 13 February 6:30 PM PT (GMT-8)

HOW: Click HERE

Skeptics in the Pub

WHAT: Real & Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

This is a casual night of socializing with fellow skeptics in the lower level of Masa Tamales & Taqueria in Pt. Richmond and with others inhabiting our oblate spherical planet.

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

WHEN: Wednesday February 26, 7-9pm Pacific (GMT-8)

HOW: In person and online HERE. Passcode: 1023

SkepTalk

Gordon Pennycook, Ph.D.

Deliberation corrects: The case of conspiracy theories

Motivated reasoning – confirmation bias, disconfirmation bias, and related concepts – can get in the way of making well-reasoned decisions. And people certainly are capable of poor reasoning, especially when it comes to conspiracy theories. Psychologists debate whether mistaken ideas are the result of “information deficit”, and even whether it’s counterproductive to provide corrective information. Does providing corrective information push people to dig in rather than change their views? Our research suggests that we needn’t be pessimistic: that providing accurate information can modify views, and that relatively brief evidence-based dialogues with artificial intelligence can change conspiracy theorists’ minds.

PRESENTER: Gordon Pennycook is a Himan Brown Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. After obtaining his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Waterloo in 2016, he held a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University. His expertise is human reasoning and decision-making and he has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, including in journals such as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Nature Human Behavior, Trends in Cognitive Science, and Psychological Science. He has received several awards, such as the Governor General’s Gold Medal, Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network “Researcher of the Year”, Vincent Di Lollo Early Career Achievement Award from the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science, the Psychonomic Society’s Early Career Award, and the Association for Psychological Sciences “Rising Star” award. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in 2020.

WHEN: Thursday 13 March 6:30 PM PT (GMT-8)

HOW: Click HERE