Author Archives: Mark Wilson

Our topic this week is a popular one: psychic phenomena. Let’s start with a review of the whole psychic thing with a Wikipedia summary. Note that the concept is very broad, from self-proclaimed prophets to spurious spoon-benders. When examining psychic … Continue reading →

We will start our week with the last half of the Behind the Curve documentary, finish our discussions of the framework for distinguishing science from pseudoscience, and then launch into conspiracy theories. For a grim reminder of the social, civic … Continue reading →

The delightful month of September is upon us. Fall is coming — you’ll feel it in the cool mornings. We’ll start your first class of the month with a brief discussion of your experiences writing (and submitting) Short Paper #1, … Continue reading →

Now we start assembling our tools for critical analysis of fringe ideas. I find a chart of logical fallacies to be useful when sorting out the philosophical underpinnings of arguments: There are plenty of websites that discuss logical fallacies in … Continue reading →