Comments and Articles

The illustration is "Attempting the Impossible" by René Magritte
(click on the picture to see a larger version.)

There are sites in the collection which have comments associated with them.

1-50 | 51-100 | 101-150 | 151-200 | 200-

There are also some commentaries and magazine articles I have written which apply to a category or more than one site. Some of these have appeared in the following publications. (You can see the articles ordered by publication here.)

• 
  The journal of the Australian Skeptics
• 
  Australasian Science
• 
  Australian Doctor
• 
  Issues
• 
  Yahoo! 7 News Blog
• 
  MamaMia

Health Fraud ( articles)

• The 90th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle
• Anti-quackery Committee
• Blackmore's and the Pharmacy Guild - a marriage made in Hell
• Bogus Challenges
• CAM or SCAM?
• Cancer 100 Challenge
• Checking the facts
• Confirmation bias and denialism
• Confirmation bias, denialism and Morton’s Demon.
• CRA vs Iridology
• Damaging autism paper retracted
• Dangerous Practitioners - Supplementary, Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Debating the undebatable
• Devastation in Haiti
• The Dietary Supplement Experiment Begins
• Don't hold your breath waiting for change
• Dr Andrew Wakefield
• Dr Sandra Trademark
• Drug interactions
• Faith healer? Fraud!
• Fighting the Medi-scams
• Getting risk wrong 2
• Homeopathy - all the idiocy that fits
• Homeopathy - How can honest people sell this rubbish?
• Homeopathy: How can it be sold?
• How many people do those doctors kill?
• How not to do science - Everyone retracts except Dr Wakefield
• Ignorance is Strength
• Is that a cart or a barrow that horse is pushing?
• Let's be balanced!
• "Limited only by the laws of physics"
• Magic Wands
• The mass media does its job. Not.
• Misremembering the past
• Mobile phones are frying our brains.
• The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
• Multiple Chemical Stupidity?
• The Myth of "The Myth of Mental Illness"
• Obituary - Stephen Jay Gould
• Of meridians and mice
• The outer limits of woowoo
• Pan Pharmaceuticals - if it ducks like a quack
• Pasteur's Last Words
• Polypharmacy
• Professor Boyd Haley
• Progress? We don’t need no stinking progress.
• Quackery
• Quackery Down Under
• The Ragtag Posse of Snake-oil Vigilantes
• Still Deluded After All These Years
• Targeting the susceptible
• Theatre of the absurd
• Then it came for me
• Three Dead Children
• Tim O'Ranter - Patrick Timothy Bolen
• Transcript of the murder of Candace Newmaker
• Treating the symptoms
• True Believers
• Truth and Fiction
• A very profitable trick
• Watch out, doctors, the quacks are after your patients!
• Who has the backbone to stop this?
• World Homeopathy Awareness Week
• You could just die laughing

Plus ( articles):

• Beware the spinal trap - Simon Singh
• DTP Vaccination or SBS?: The Role of Irresponsible Medical Expert Testimony in Creating a False Causal Connection - David L. Chadwick and Rob Parrish
• The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing - Andy Lewis
• Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions - Oliver Wendell Holmes
• Homo Neanderthalensis - H.L. Mencken
• The Liver Cleansing Diet - Dr Joe Proietto
• Mannatech Using Disputed Study to Boost Sales of Its Products - David Evans
• The Median Isn't the Message - Stephen Jay Gould
• Shaken Baby Syndrome - Pamela Rowse RN
• When Judges Play Doctor - Paul Offit
• The WHO and homeopathy - World Health Organization

Racism

• Subtle Racism

Plus:

• I have a Dream - Martin Luther King Jr
• Redfern Speech - December 10, 1992 - Paul Keating

Religion

• Acts of God?
• An atheist at Christmas
• "Blasphemy" comes before "Science" in the dictionary
• Bogus Challenges
• Can atheism be called a dangerous idea?
• Creation/Evolution Debate
• Creation/Evolution Debate - Part 1
• Creation/Evolution Debate - Part 2
• Creation/Evolution Debate - Part 3
• Creationists coming! Think of the children!
• Devastation in Haiti
• Don’t make any plans for Sunday. Jesus was wrong!
• Earthquakes and God
• The end is nigh! Repent!
• Faith healer? Fraud!
• Ian Plimer was right. They do tell lies for God
• Knowing things that just ain’t so
• Literature v Literalism 1
• Literature v Literalism 2
• My patience is tried
• A night out with the creationists
• Polite request to creationists
• Psychic predictions for 2011
• Someone gets upset
• We have a saint!
• We're off to see the Benny, The wonderful Benny of God
• Why am I a skeptic?

Plus:

• An Agnostic's Apology - Sir Leslie Stephen
• Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? - Bertrand Russell
• Among the Believers - a night out with Benny Hinn - John Sweatman
• The Antichrist - Friedrich Nietzsche [translation by H.L. Mencken]
• Bible Teaching and Religious Practice - Mark Twain
• A Free Man's Worship - Bertrand Russell
• Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? - Bertrand Russell
• Is There a God? - Bertrand Russell
• A Letter Concerning Toleration - John Locke
• Memorial Service - Where is the grave-yard of dead gods? - H.L. Mencken
• The Necessity Of Atheism - Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Of Miracles - David Hume
• Of Miracles and Their Uses - Thomas Hobbes
• Of Religion - Thomas Hobbes
• On the Value of Scepticism - Bertrand Russell
• An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish - Bertrand Russell
• The Skepticism of Believers - Sir Leslie Stephen
• The Ten Commandments - Mark Twain
• Theology and Falsification - Antony Flew
• Thoughts of God - Mark Twain
• Vatican Statement on Vaccines Derived From Aborted Human Foetuses - Pontifical Academy for Life
• The War Prayer - Mark Twain
• What is an Agnostic? - Bertrand Russell
• What Is the Soul? - Bertrand Russell
• What Would You Substitute for the Bible as a Moral Guide? - Robert Ingersoll
• Which Way? - Robert Ingersoll
• Why I Am A Rationalist - Bertrand Russell
• Why I Am An Agnostic - Robert Ingersoll
• Why I Am an Unbeliever - Carl Van Doren
• Why I Am Not A Christian - Bertrand Russell

Creationism ( articles)

• 150 years since the death of creationism
• "Blasphemy" comes before "Science" in the dictionary
• Bogus Challenges
• Creation/Evolution Debate
• Creation/Evolution Debate - Part 1
• Creation/Evolution Debate - Part 2
• Creation/Evolution Debate - Part 3
• Creationists coming! Think of the children!
• Ian Plimer was right. They do tell lies for God
• Knowing things that just ain’t so
• Literal interpretation of the Bible
• Literature v Literalism 1
• Literature v Literalism 2
• The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
• A night out with the creationists
• Obituary - Stephen Jay Gould
• Polite request to creationists
• Science books? We don't need no stinkin' science books

Plus ( articles):

• 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense - John Rennie
• Creationist Deception Exposed - Barry Williams
• The Dissertation Kent Hovind Doesn't Want You to Read - Karen Bartelt
• Homo Neanderthalensis - H.L. Mencken
• The Information Challenge - Richard Dawkins
• A Refutation of Deism - Percy Bysshe Shelley
• A scientist and Christian talks about Intelligent Design - David Goldney
• Theology and Falsification - Antony Flew

Anti-vaccination liars ( articles)

• The 90th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle
• Answer me this, anti-vaccinators
• The Anti-vaccination Lobby
• Anti-vaccination propaganda at the Folk Festival
• Anti-vaccinators demand the impossible
• Anti-vaccinators want to deceive
• Asses and the law
• Banned from the Australian Vaccination Network's mailing list
• Bogus Challenges
• Checking the facts
• Child Abuse
• Damaging autism paper retracted
• Dante and Virgil descend to Hurstville
• Death By Lethal Vaccine Injection
• Debating the undebatable
• Devastation in Haiti
• Dr Andrew Wakefield
• Final jab for the anti-vaccination lobby
• Getting risk wrong 2
• The good news keeps on coming
• How not to do science - Everyone retracts except Dr Wakefield
• If it's good enough for doctors, it's good enough for liars
• Liars just can't help themselves
• Lies about abortions and vaccines
• Lies about vaccines and foetuses
• Lying with the truth
• Pictures of children suffering from "harmless" diseases
• Professor Boyd Haley
• The real truth about vaccinations
• See how "harmless" measles is.
• Tim O'Ranter - Patrick Timothy Bolen
• Vaccines

Plus ( articles):

• Anti-immunisation scare: The inconvenient facts - Dr Stephen Basser
• DTP Vaccination or SBS?: The Role of Irresponsible Medical Expert Testimony in Creating a False Causal Connection - David L. Chadwick and Rob Parrish
• Fatal Exemption - Paul Offit
• Measles: A dangerous illness - Roald Dahl
• Olmsted Lied, People Laughed: The “Amish Anomaly” hoax - David Brown
• Shaken Baby Syndrome - Pamela Rowse RN
• Vatican Statement on Vaccines Derived From Aborted Human Foetuses - Pontifical Academy for Life
• When Judges Play Doctor - Paul Offit

Pseudoscience

• The 90th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle
• The Bear's Progress - SkeptoBear's 2004 World Tour
• The Bermuda Triangle
• Beware! Are invisible rays frying your brain?
• Blackmore's and the Pharmacy Guild - a marriage made in Hell
• CAM or SCAM?
• Checking the facts
• A close run thing at the chemist
• Coincidences
• Confirmation bias and denialism
• Confirmation bias, denialism and Morton’s Demon.
• Debating the undebatable
• Denialists Ignore the Science
• The end is nigh! Repent!
• Faith, Fact and Fiction : The demarcation of science and non-science
• Getting risk wrong 1
• Getting risk wrong 2
• Give me my word back.
• Have you heard the one about ... ?
• I try not to know what just ain’t so
• Knowing things that just ain’t so
• Lying with the truth
• Magic Wands
• The Magical Mystery Museum
• Misremembering the past
• Mobile phones are frying our brains.
• The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
• Multiple Chemical Stupidity?
• My patience is tried
• Obituary - Stephen Jay Gould
• Pasteur's Last Words
• The Power of Coincidence
• Professor Boyd Haley
• Progress? We don’t need no stinking progress.
• Psychic parasites
• Psychic predictions for 2011
• "Psychic" Predictions for 2010
• Psychics predict the future. Do they?
• Psychological testing
• Publication in the peer-reviewed literature
• Science as she is spoke
• The science goes round and round, and it comes out here
• Someone gets upset
• Still Deluded After All These Years
• That dreadful carbon tax
• True Believers
• Understand the numbers? Don’t count on it.
• A very profitable trick
• What's that up in the sky? Is it a …?
• Where were you 40 years ago?
• Why am I a skeptic?
• The WooWoo Credo

Plus:

• Dumb and dumber at the ABC - Ken McLeod
• Dumb, dumber and really dumb at the ABC - Ken McLeod
• The Grand Academy of Lagado - Jonathon Swift
• Homo Neanderthalensis - H.L. Mencken
• I can smell onions! - Ken McLeod
• The Liver Cleansing Diet - Dr Joe Proietto
• Of Reason and Science - Thomas Hobbes
• On Astrologers - Bertrand Russell
• On the Value of Scepticism - Bertrand Russell
• An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish - Bertrand Russell
• Path to the truth is littered with useful failures - Umberto Eco
• Stupid Skeptic Tricks - D. Owens
• What is a kook? - Michael Davis
• What Is the Soul? - Bertrand Russell

Multi-Level Marketing, Pyramid Schemes, Scams and Frauds

• Advertisements
• Creating Distrust with Multi-level Marketing
• Doing the sums with MLM
• MLM adventures
• Multi-level Marketing Doesn't Add Up
• Multi-Level Marketing spam collection
• The Multi-Level Mirage
• The Ratbags Dream
• Thoughts about multi-level marketing

Plus:

• Mannatech Using Disputed Study to Boost Sales of Its Products - David Evans
• Merchants of Deception - Eric Scheibeler
• Report of G Robert Blakey - Amway - G Robert Blakey

Other topics

• The 9/11 conspiracies
• Censorship and intolerance at iVillage
• Free speech
• Full Canvas Jacket
• Introduction to skepticism
• Jack Shitman gives me an award
• Mary Daly and Feminist Nonsense (a tautology)
• MindBodySpirit Festival, November 1999
• Penis enlargement spam collection
• Y2K - Is there still time to panic?
• Y2K - What went wrong?

Plus:

• MindBodySpirit Festival, May 2004 - Belinda Bowditch
• The Paranoid Style in American Politics - Richard Hofstadter
• Remembrance Day Speech - Paul Keating

Book reviews

• The Australian Book Of Atheism by Warren Bonnett (Ed)
• The Cancer Cure That Worked! by Barry Lynes
• The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel
• The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
• The End of Faith : Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
• Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science by Martin Gardner
• Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore (Film)
• Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe by Victor Stenger
• How to Poison Your Spouse the Natural Way by Jay Mann
• Masters of Deception by Eric Scheibeler
• Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction by Charles Wynn and Arthur Wiggins
• The Root of All Evil? by Richard Dawkins (TV program)
• Science and Religion : Are They Compatible? by Paul Kurtz, Barry Karr and Ranjit Sandhu (Editors)
• The Sins of Scripture by John Shelby Spong

• "The Danger of Knowing for Sure" - An essay I wrote about skepticism, following the events of September 11, 2001 (This also appeared as a guest editorial in the Skeptic in Vol 21:4, Summer 2001)
• The Ragtag Posse of Snake-oil Vigilantes - The remnants of a superseded RatbagsDotCom project.