The Skeptic's Field Guide

It's been a while since I last wrote a blog post, but with all the recent media attention (and my own interest), I thought it would be interesting to share some of my results in using ChatGPT. Sp...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2023/01/can-chatgpt-be-used-for-teaching.html

This is the second of two posts that go hand-in-hand. The first post  is a brief overview of some important concepts and well established results of psychology that help me think about my thinki...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2020/08/valuing-scientific-expertise.html

This is the first of a planned two posts that I've been mulling over and sporadically writing notes to myself about over the last year or so. This first post is a very brief overview of some impo...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2020/08/thinking-about-thinking.html

The ABC recently published an article Teachers, schools in firing line as conservatives rail against 'leftist agenda' ,  based on their Australia Talks National Survey. The crux of the piece i...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2019/11/conservative-bias-about-leftist-bias.html

Education guru (not self-proclaimed) John Hattie, along with co-author Arran Hamilton, list a number of fatal cognitive biases in the blog post How to stop cognitive biases from undermining you...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2018/09/education-cargo-cults.html

Australia is about to undertake a pointless non-binding postal survey about our views on same sex marriage (SSM), which if a majority say ‘Yes’, will see a bill before parliament that politi...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2017/09/the-slippery-slope-of-same-sex-marriage.html

Over-sized brain leads to over-sized hubris   Recently the skeptical part of the internet went into yet another meltdown about women. In short, the Northeast Conference on Science and Skept...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2016/02/thoughts-about-mras-on-internet-and.html

A recent study in Nature has found that 92% of 26 medicines tested were found to have some form of contamination and/or substitution, because they included toxic metals, non-listed substituted...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2015/12/big-pharma-shill-defends-more-than-90.html

The Second (eBook) Edition of Humbug! is now US$2 from: Amazon (Kindle) Google Play   Apple iBooks LULU (DRM free ePub) Essentially it's as cheap as I can make it through Amazon without en...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2015/10/second-edition-of-humbug-price-drop.html

One of the main problems with arguments from analogy is that it's often quite easy to reverse them. From The Guardian : > The Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee on Sunday s...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2015/02/mike-huckabees-arse-backwards-analogy.html

Hunting Humbug 101: Episode 0006: Brain gym and the argument from imag... : As with the previous episode, this is partially based on my presentation at  Brisbane SkeptiCamp 2014 Clips and inform...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/08/hunting-humbug-101-episode-0006-brain.html

Hunting Humbug 101: Episode 0005: Factoid propagation - brain claims: : This episode is partially based on my presentation at Brisbane SkeptiCamp 2014 Clips and information from this episode can...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/07/hunting-humbug-101-episode-0005-factoid.html

Hunting Humbug 101: Episode 0004: False Analogy (Original Episode with... : This episode looks false analogy . This is an episode from the original run of the podcast. It also includes a newly r...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/07/hunting-humbug-101-episode-0004-false.html

Hunting Humbug 101: Episode 0003: False balance : Show notes In this episode we look at false balance . We discussed the Dunning-Kruger effect with some Dunning-Kruger like accuracy Direct lin...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/06/hunting-humbug-101-episode-0003-false.html

The above clip is Carl Sagan's brilliant "Pale Blue Dot" speech, remastered and produced in the final episode of the new Cosmos series - highly recommended. Immediately following this the new ho...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/06/cosmos-pale-blue-dot-and-neil-degrasse.html

Hunting Humbug 101: Episode 0002: What is Humbug! (Original Episode) : This was the first episode in the original run of Hunting Humbug 101. In it we (my Father Jef and I) discuss the general id...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/06/hunting-humbug-101-episode-0002-what-is.html

I was lucky enough to be interviewed in this week's Skeptic Zone podcast by Australian Skeptics ' President Richard Saunders .  We chat about the second edition of Humbug! and some of the most...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/06/interview-on-skeptic-zone-podcast.html

Thanks to Tim Farley of Skeptools and What's the Harm for plugging Humbug! in this week's episode of Virtual Skeptics.

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/06/virtual-skeptics-91-642014.html

Brisbane SkeptiCamp is coming up on Saturday the 19th of July, at Hamilton Town Hall in Brisbane. It's a free community event to discuss critical thinking in a friendly and social forum. Th...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/06/brisbane-skepticamp-july-2014.html

Hunting Humbug 101: Episode 0001: Homeopathy - appealing to tradition : This episode looks at the fallacy of appealing to tradition .  Reading from the book: www.skepticsfieldguide.net/p/ebook ...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/05/hunting-humbug-101-episode-0001.html

False balance in the unthinking or deceptive media trope of assuming there are “two sides to every story” and portraying those sides as equal. The debate over vaccine safety is often one o...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/05/climate-change-and-false-balance-last.html

OTHER TERMS AND/OR RELATED CONCEPTS Appeal to ignorance; hidden premise; unfounded assumptions; Hume's razor; Ockham's razor; wishful thinking; conspiracy thinking; magical thinking; intuition...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/05/argument-from-imagination.html

Ever since the announcement that the Australian Federal Government is going to buy 58 more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters at a cost of $12.4 billion , the anti-Government social media memes have bee...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2014/04/the-f-35-false-dilemma.html

Kevin Donnelly is the "go to" pundit for newspapers and television commentary about the supposed dumbed down and politically correct school curriculum in Australia (curricula really; doesn't mat...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2013/12/dumbing-it-down-with-donnelly.html

The recent election win of the Liberal-National coalition means Australia will have a bunch of new Ministers. It was assumed that the Member for Indi, Sophie Mirabella was going to get this por...

http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2013/09/a-scientist-as-minister-for-science.html