superstition
milhayser | August 25, 2016Even as Michael Phelps piled a 23rd gold medal onto his stack, he also drew attention at the Rio Olympics for circular bruises on his shoulder resulting from a pseudoscientific medical treatment called cupping. Several ancient cultures practiced variants of cupping in order to reduce pain or heal injury. On Respectful Insolence, Orac writes "even if it does date back 5,000 years, arguably so does bloodletting." He continues "there is no compelling evidence that cupping is effective for any condition. Certainly, there is no credible evidence that it helps athletic performance." The benefit…
razib | December 10, 2009A friend pointed me to a new Pew survey, Many Americans Not Dogmatic About Religion. It shows the general finding that though Americans are a religious people, they're moderately ecumenical in their practices and beliefs. I was concerned in particular though with the resurgence of supernatural beliefs with the decline of institutional religious orthodoxy.
The back story to this is that many psychologists posit that humans have an innate predisposition toward supernatural beliefs because of the cognitive biases we're hardwired with. For example, it isn't a coincidence that almost all human…
hrynyshyn | October 23, 2009Before criticizing our newest ScienceBlogger, David Sloan Wilson, who has moved here from the Huffington Post, let me add my voice to those who are welcoming the move. It is a good thing to have such an esteemed and accomplished scientist among our ranks. But like fellow blogger Eric Michael Johnson, I found David's first post in these parts is more than a little unsettling.
Under the headline of "Goodbye HuffPost, Hello ScienceBlogs: Science as a Religion that Worships Truth as its God," he provocatively writes:
Science can even be regarded as a religion that worships truth as its god. It…
amillikan | February 16, 2009Today is Friday the 13th, and things are getting a little bit weird here at ScienceBlogs. I mean, birds wearing backpacks? The possibility of a Neandertal genome sequenced? Scicurious talking about co... oh wait, that's actually pretty normal. If we were superstitious though, we might think there was something to all of this.
hrynyshyn | October 27, 2007Mark H at the Denialism blog asks if a story on CNN's website about how to get rid of ghosts in your house is a joke. Turns out the original story is from the online version of This Old House magazine (to which I subscribe, living as I do in an old house in need of renovations.) And considering how down to earth the magazine is, a seemingly serious piece on ghosts must be a joke, right?
Perhaps it was intended that way, But it wasn't taken that wasy by many readers who posted comments. The story, by Keith Pandolfi, begins with an interview with a real, professional ghost-buster, Troy Taylor.…
hrynyshyn | July 9, 2007I don' t know and I don't much care why the number 7 is considered lucky. But I do know that people who hold to such nonsense seem incapable of making sense even of their own superstitions. Consider this pitch from the marketing department of mydomains.com:
7-7-07 is your lucky day at MyDomain.com!
The 7th day, of the 7th month of the 7th year happens only once per millennia. We're celebrating this rare day with a group of incredible weekend specials.
First of all, while it is true that the 7th day, of the 7th month of the 7th year of each of millennium only happens once every millennium, a…
hrynyshyn | April 10, 2007I probably shouldn't get bent out of shape over this, but the intrusion of superstitious nonsense into the culture I have chosen to embrace just makes me so angry sometimes that I just have to exploit my blog pulpit to vent. The offending journalist in this case is Melanie M. Bianchi, the A&E editor for my local alternative weekly. The Mountain Xpress, and the offending item is a preview of a performance scheduled for Wedneday night in Asheville, N.C., by Neko Case, who is one of my favorite musicians these days thanks to her near-perfect 2006 CD, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.
What has…
hrynyshyn | January 23, 2007The lead story in today's Science section of the New York Times isn't really about science at all, but its opposite: superstition. The notion that we're hard-wired to believe in a god has received a lot of attention of late, but now we're told that we also might be genetically programmed to believe in magic, luck and superstition. Great.
The brain seems to have networks that are specialized to produce an explicit, magical explanation in some circumstances, said Pascal Boyer, a professor of psychology and anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. In an e-mail message, he said such…