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> Google cache never forgets! (webcache.googleusercontent.com)

Google Cache forgot! Motherf--.....

I need some kind of mirrored link for my Facebook feed, stat. This kind of ignorance needs to be mocked worldwide.

Edit: All is saved! All praise be to the Wayback Machine. I'd assumed this was a recent article but it looks like it was published way back in 2011?!

Seems to be real. Originals are from the Danish Ornithological Society website here:

"A photo story of a gull, who came into his life's storms as a peregrine falcon struck. Seagull escaped being eaten, but it ended without a feather on the neck, and when nature photographer Christine Raaschou-Nielsen came by, was it a glimpse of the cruelty of nature" (translation by Google)

Read How To Win Friends and Influence People at least once a year, and remember what it says. Look at this cheat sheet once a week: http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/win-friends.html

My usual strategy is to ask questions of the form "The thing I never understood about that..." Like the Apollo missions; the thing I never understood about "moon landings are fake" is why you would fake them? I know people can get in subs and go underwater for long periods, so the technology to isolate some people and keep them alive for a week exists. I've seen airplanes. I've seen rocket launches. So why fake a moon landing when you could just do a real one? What part of the process makes it impossible? That's what I don't get.

Then let them explain it to you: not defensively, as "You're such an idiot", but trying to address the point you raised. I've never had anybody come back at me with an item of the moon landings that would be impossible.

NOTE: I do not believe I have seriously changed any minds, and certainly not single-handedly. But I think I have gotten people to be less certain of their conspiracy theories, by planting questions in their heads for which they didn't have an answer.

You might find Mick West's book, <em>Escaping the Rabbit Hole,</em> to be helpful. It's all about how and why otherwise smart and reasonable people can fall into conspiracist beliefs, and how to approach the topic with them. It also goes into some of the details of the arguments behind specific conspiracy theories like the 9/11 ones. And it's a surprisingly good read, IMO.

I'm about halfway through Dark Money. The author lays out how the wealthy have spent 60 years and fortunes building the influence operations necessary to warp the public's perception of environmental regulations precisely because it threatened profits.

Good read if you've not picked it up yet.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/B01A7BVFZK/ref=dp_olp_1?_encoding=UTF8&amp;colid=1F90CC0HJ3NC7&amp;coliid=I1ISL9GSS94F31

As of 1984, 88 deaths were documented. Freeman himself makes 89. I am quite confident that the number was over 100, but don't have the documentation that would pass /r/askhistorians muster.

This is another kickstarter that I can't believe was funded. Well, I can certainly see how it was funded but it doesn't mean it's not bullshit. We live in an era where a low cost MP3 player will give you audio indistinguishable by most people from high end players. I'm sure there are people out there that can tell the difference but I can't, no one I know can and in the objective double blind tests I've read about it appears even audiophiles often can't.

So what's the point in any of this? Though I suppose you can't expect an audiophile to act rationally. This is a bargain if you're used to paying $500 for an ethernet cable or ridiculously expensive speaker wire that sounds no better than a bent coat hanger. Audiophile used to be an actual thing as getting the best sound out of your analog equipment could be hard, but now to me it's just a synonym for "delusional."

I bought this book a few years back, but I only read a few chapters. I was in a mental state where I was afraid I'd unglue the irrational beliefs that make me human. An example of day-to-day magical thinking is sentimental property. If someone copied out the signatures from your high school yearbook onto another copy, it wouldn't feel right to you. That's illogical. But who would we be without that?

Edit: OP's article links a summary in two degrees of separation.

Edit2: I don't necessarily agree with the author at any given point.

I found a definition for magical thinking in the context of the book:

> But that definition (magical thinking is the attribution of mental properties to nonmental phenomena or vice versa), while concise, isn't perfect....

OP is the author of the blog post which in itself would make me skepitcal were it not for the fact he basically plagiarized a WebMD article.

Yes. Handling large quantities of the powder in an industrial setting can cause or exacerbate asthma.

Source

She completed her thesis. That's all that is really required. She didn't get some home-study PhD. She got it from UCLA

There is a lot of evidence, mostly based on rat studies, that false sugars [EDIT: only some of them, not aspartame] are treated like real sugars by the mouth. It tastes sweet [EDIT: assuming it also fools your body into thinking it has a high energy density], so you start to salivate and your body starts to prepare for the sugars it thinks it is getting. This means you're getting an insulin dump, whether you're consuming digestible sugars or false ones.

The danger, I assume, is that your insulin production will stop correlating with a sweet taste, which can lead to insulin problems, aka diabetes.

As a creature that evolved to eat and enjoy game, fruits, vegetables, grains, and pseudo-cereals, I'm going to stick to my ancestor's diet and avoid syrups made with strange molecules with a carbon loop in them. If you're a calorie counter, why not just drink teas or other mildly sweetened beverages?

EDIT: New shit has come to light, man. I found a 2002 comprehensive study. I guess Nutrasweet is ok.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;_udi=B6WPT-465F53V-K&amp;_user=10&amp;_coverDate=04%2F30%2F2002&amp;_rdoc=1&amp;_fmt=high&amp;_orig=search&amp;_origin=search&amp;_sort=d&amp;_docanchor=&amp;view=c&amp;_searchStrId=159744168...

There is a specific walking technique that makes it easiest to walk across coals. If you live in apartment building, you know the difference between 'heavy' and 'light' walking. If the person who lives above you 'heavy' walks, it sounds like they're is a rhino living above you. You don't actually make yourself lighter, but you're not slamming your foot into the ground when you walk. Here is a bit of an explanation. I can't find the full episode where they test that technique, but it's out there somewhere if you're interested.

anybody with an internet connection can write a blog. your link points to a blog were the only credentials shown are these, while the Princeton article was published in a peer reviewed journal. could you point to any peer reviewed article that shows those criticisms?

Full disclosure: I’m the author of the book Strange But True, a nonfiction book for teens about the science and history of paranormal mysteries. I loved learning the story of Maria Reiche while researching the book, and thought this community would like it too! (Also, I’ll be doing an AMA about my research for the book on October 1st at 2pm Eastern.)

Edit: I’m so glad people are asking such great questions! Here’s a link to the book on Amazon in case anyone is interested: Strange but True: 10 of the world's greatest mysteries explained https://www.amazon.com/dp/178603784X

A 1984 study suggested zinc may help prevent or shorten the duration of a cold. However, Mayo Clinic in 2017 says the evidence is not very strong and they do not recommend it.

Incorrect. Sugar is a readily bioavailable carbohydrate. Carbohydrates are a macro-nutrient, and have, from an evolutionary standpoint, been our primary source of energy. They are, by definition, nutritious.

But really, that's just me being pedantic. I take your point concerning the colloquial/common usage of the word.

It is not true, at least not for OTC toothpaste. Although I still wouldn't suggest fucking eating it.

"To meet FDA regulations and to bear the ADA Seal of Acceptance, OTC toothpastes must have less than 276 mg F per tube." (http://www.ada.org/EPUBS/science/2012/may/page.shtml)

Lethal dose in humans is estimated at 5-10g, but there is at least one reported at 4g (http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fluoride#/Ingestion)

4g / 276mg = 14.5 tubes

Note: I am neither a doctor nor a mathematician. Please don't eat a tube of toothpaste to win an internet argument and then blame me for whatever happens to you.

I don’t want to be a negative nelly, but I'm a bit skeptical to claims like this. From what i learned in introductory medicine – sleep needs to be one continuous processes for all the chemistry not to get fucked up. For instance, Growth hormone takes a while to start releasing once you start sleeping, and if you don’t sleep for many hours you are not going to get the hormonal induced regrowth og body.

That's not even touching on the topic of REM sleep, winch we are putty sure is needed for memory, creativity and integration of experience. REM sleep doesn’t really ramp up until very late in a 8 hours sleep cycle. And the claim that lack of long, continuous, sleep cycles are detrimental to mental acuity are confirmed by many studies.

The overall impression I have from reading about sleep is as following: Sleep is a carefully orchestrated sequence of MANY processes that needs to unfold in a particular pattern for everything to be done correctly. There are many studies that find ANY kind of interruption to a normal daily sleep-cycle to be detrimental.

That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if something come along and overturned all of this, that is the nature of science. But given the amount of evidence for the opposite, I'm gonna stand back and wait for more evidence before i change my mind. For instance, one study that says evolution doesn’t exists wont convince me, but a 1000 such studies would.

My claims can be are based on the following books: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/why-zebras-dont-get-ulcers-robert-m-sapolsky/1100623124 http://www.amazon.com/Promise-Sleep-Medicine-Connection-Happiness/dp/0440509017

TL;DR: This studies is contrary to alot of studies that show we need the whole uninterrupted night of sleep, or suffer the consequences of reduced cognitive ability. I'm still open to new finding, but one completely out-of-sync-with-the-rest studies is suspicious. Cool if true tho.

Love the show!

One thing I don't understand: In the previous episode you guys talked about how you want to change the world by spreading critical thinking and information as much as possible. But still you retain full copyright over everything you do.

Why don't you use one of the Free Creative Commons licenses so that we can legally share, spread, and reuse all the awesome stuff you do? I'd donate more to Occ if I knew that you'd give a tiny bit of control over it over to us all in that way.

He has started posting regularly as part of a patreon campaign. If you can afford it, the best way of supporting him is probably to sign up for his patreon page.

Edit: https://www.patreon.com/CaptainDisillusion?ty=a

there is also evidence of unusually high rates of curable disease among amish who do not vaccinate

> Some writers believe that to the extent that knowledge is aligned with reality, it approximates objective truth; anything less represents a social construct. According to this thinking, even morality is a social construct. However, others believe that all knowledge is social construction.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Social_constructionism.aspx

Science done well is knowledge, beliefs that come from science done poorly are a social construct.

Corporate America is no angelic provider of only unbiased information but, then neither are you.

From your link:
>Occasionally, one hears McDonald's shakes contain seaweed. That is very close to being true — they contain carrageenan, a substance which is derived from carrageen, a type of seaweed also known as "Irish moss." Carrageenan is commonly used as a suspending agent in foods, a clarifying agent in beverages, and for controlling crystal growth in frozen products. (That last part is vital — lacking carrageenan or a similar product in ice cream, the frozen treat would be a hard block.)

Emphasis mine. Note: you have to pretend they left out "or a similar product" to come up with your conclusion.

Interestingly, when ehow talks about carageenan they use Haagen Daaz as an example: >Haagen Daaz is one of the only brands that does not use these commercial stabilizers. When you remove a pint of Haagen Daaz from the freezer, it stays incredibly hard for five or more minutes if left at room temperature. An ice cream that contains commercial stabilizers like carageenan or sodium alginate will not be rock hard when removed from the freezer, and will start to melt faster than ice cream with no stablizers.

So, yes, snopes is accurately depicting the role of stabilizers in frozen products and yes, the lack of a stabilizer in Haagen daaz leads to it being hard when it comes out of the fridge. There are plenty of things you can nail corporations on. Try to pick one of them next time. And if you're going to ding snopes, try finding something they got wrong first.

> No, there's big money and has been for almost two decades in climate / environment related businesses and organizations.

If you think the money moving in the alternative energy industry is in any way comparable to the money moving in the fossil fuel sector - boy do I have an investment opportunity for you.

>I didn’t use the term scientists because there are quite a few scientists doing the real science

Correct. 97% of all climate change research (that is - papers published in peer reviewed journals) supports that climate change is happening and is driven by human activity.

>but there's also a lot of people (some with degrees, some without) that are sensationalizing the situation out of fear and/or personal gain motives.

That's as may be - but still - consider how much money someone like Al Gore stands to make off of his climate change movie - then go hop over and look at Exxon's quarterly profit statement.

There are solar systems between those two numbers.

Finally - many of the people disparaging the climate science are recycled actors from the tobacco industry's fight against regulation 60s-80s. Merchants of Doubt is an excellent, well sourced book that lays out the strategy and personalities behind climate change denial. One of the tactics that "experts" on the side of the Tobacco companies used was claiming that anti-smoking groups were personally profiting from legislation aimed at discouraging tobacco use.

This movie has already played once.

>Depleted uranium is obviously toxic

Other than that, the rest of your post seems to be putting words in to people's mouths.

"Fear campaign" "The people behind it" "Dramatic sounding statements" "the campaign does not focus on ... legitimate arguments."

So you define the "fear campaign," associate them with the "anti-nuclear and anti-war" movements (anti-science and anti-patriotic guilt by association), define their arguments, and then declare that their logic isn't sound.

Oh yeah, the thing they're afraid of is obviously toxic, but the fact that some people make bad arguments has absolutely no bearing on the question at hand: Does this "obviously toxic" substance have something to do with the birth defects, or not?

What's the extreme opposite of scare-mongering? Pollyannaism?

Edit:

Ok, the more I look at the issue, the more I think this rationalwiki response is a perfect example of skepticism gone wrong due to the political motivations of political actors.

Yes, there are "good sources" on the RationalWiki article, but if you give an honest review of the studies about depleted uranium available on Google Scholar, the conclusion would not be so one-sided in dismissing the risks of DU munitions.

Basically, I'm calling bullshit on this attempt to call bullshit. The science is not nearly as ambiguous as those with political and military motivations would like us to believe.

>Why don't you post the link the actual article so we can judge for ourselves.

Drudge links to this page which is not really Drudge. It's probably the reason why the OP didn't link directly to the article. He could have liked to Drudge frontpage though. Btw, it was extremely hard to google Drudge. Be grateful I did it for you.

I can only speak from personal experience rather than the science behind it, but as a sciencey skeptic type that's done a bit of yoga for relaxation over the years, it's not some mystical stuff, it's just exercise and breathing techniques that kind of induce a relaxed frame of mind and a mini-high, mainly from endorphin release and hypoxia I suspect.

plenty of literature on real effects, it's just tied up with a lot of psuedo science and mystical gibberish, unfortunately.

>Most webcams have some kind of LED that indicates when it’s on, but depending on the hardware this can be bypassed – so you wouldn’t even know.

I like his response to people's answers:

"NO one can tell me about the grass growth - just a bunch of "go see here" stuff on Wiki. Sorry, must be fake, placebo, bogus science." https://twitter.com/#!/ericbakker/status/98010089415380992

> This is like saying the entire science of genetics is based on Mendel's ideas.

Mendel's ideas still form the basis of our understanding for how inheritance works. He just didn't know the mechanism. Now we do. Do you understand the proposed mechanism for chiropractic?

> you can't say on the one hand that it's as good as massage and then on the other hand that the relevant studies aren't reliable.

Maybe you're misunderstanding what I mean by "as good as massage". It might temporarily relieve pain by stimulating endorphin release, or by simply giving the patient a placebo sense of well-being, but it has no real therapeutic benefit.

The studies I know of that show positive results are poorly designed in that they do not provide a proper control. Because of this, the studies are unable to show if the positive effect is actually coming from chiropractic treatment as opposed to a placebo effect from the patients simply getting personal attention and touch. Better controlled studies show no significant difference between chiropractic treatment and placebo manipulations.

I haven't even touched on the fact that occasionally people who are treated by chiropractors wind up with injuries as a result. So what we have is a lack of good evidence for positive results along with a potential for injury. In my opinion this is a service that people should not be allowed to charge for.

Did a bit of quick research, the wiki article references this article (cached in google because of downtime): How many child deaths can we prevent this year?.

This, in turn references "Exclusive breastfeeding reduces acute respiratory infection and diarrhea deaths among infants in Dhaka slums&quot;. Basically, breastfeeding is better in developing countries because it reduces exposure to contaminated food.

Online Etymology Dictionary says:

> raspberry (n.) 1620s, earlier raspis berry (1540s), possibly from raspise "a sweet rose-colored wine" (mid-15c.), from Anglo-Latin vinum raspeys, origin uncertain, as is the connection between this and Old French raspe, Medieval Latin raspecia, raspeium, also meaning "raspberry." One suggestion is via Old Walloon raspoie "thicket," of Germanic origin.

It should be noted when looking at this report, that there is a difference between here say and undisputed fact. In this case, the judge completely denies any such judgement and condemns it as a preposterous joke. He's also preparing/considering a lawsuit. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but it is disputed, it wasn't an official judgement and there's no court record, so if you're going to call yourself skeptical, it's worth pointing these things out so people can make their own judgement.

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;layout=2&amp;eotf=1&amp;sl=iw&amp;tl=en&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kikarhashabat.co.il%2F%25D7%25A4%25D7%25A8%25D7%25A9%25D7%25AA-%25D7%2594%25D7%259B%25D7%259C%25D7%259...

No it's not... It's an anecdotal answer.

Try google scholar for some actual studies on the matter.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;q=sleep+learning&amp;btnG=&amp;as_sdt=1%2C5&amp;as_sdtp=

> It just seems to me that we say "mainstream" as to imply that it's accepted by some majority.

It is. That majority is 90%+, even according to contrarians. Stop playing dumb. No one is buying it.

I'm automatically skeptical of any information that I am instructed to share with everyone I know.

But there are several red flags in this one:

• "Cancer" killer! - Cancer is not a single disease, it is a whole classification of diseases, and there are hundreds of different varieties, all of which react differently to different treatments. There is no "cure for cancer" because there is no such thing as a silver bullet cure that treats every type of cancer. If this were a valid treatment, they would specify what types of cancer it was effective at treating and...
• N times stronger than chemo! - What chemo are they comparing it to? And again, what type of cancer are they claiming it treats? There are dozens of different chemotherapy agents used in treating the different types of cancer. It's also worth pointing out that chemo treatments generally work by killing the cancer cells slightly faster than the rest of your body. Anything that is "10,000 more powerful" than a legit chemo treatment would likely kill you outright. Ironically, I suppose that's one way to cure cancer.
• Conspiracy! - You haven't heard of this because the "Big Corporations" don't want you to know about it. Never mind that the only published information regarding cancer treatment using graviola fruit involves in-vitro studies, meaning they've never even tried it on mice. So any claims that it actually treats cancer would be purely anecdotal.

In the end, you should be highly skeptical of any claims that a simple change of diet can help treat cancer, and ask for citations to the published articles. Google Scholar is a great way to find those articles on your own, if you want to spend the time looking.

Science isn't about opinions or feelings, being subjected to science is accepting that some of your ideas about life the universe and everything are wrong and others may be more right; but in the end, our moment will be with that common experience that we all share a piece of. People can embrace whatever alternative lifestyles they like but they need to understand that the world doesn't care. If her kid develops whooping cough or gets an infection by Haemophilus influenzae Type B, which causes bacterial meningitis. Then that's the reality she's going to have to live with. And she might have to watch her child die from a disease they could have been immunized against. That's bad. What's worse is when they catch the strain but don't get sick, then they become a vector. They've penetrated the herd and undermined the property they call herd immunity. This makes people who had been immunized but perhaps weren't perfectly immune and were susceptible and exposed to your son who was infected but not symptomatic could transmit the infection causing a person who had been immunized to fall sick. Immunization isn't a perfect science, some kids get sick. I did. I got better. And now I can travel to 3rd world countries without being overly concerned with catching a communicable disease that could sicken, debilitate, or kill me. It's all about choices. We like being a civilization. That's why we make sacrifices and trust the evidence. I know some people are immune to data but it's still worth pointing out. There's a tremendous amount of published research on child immunization that supports the underlying thesis that 'tis better to immunize that not. Here's more science. Yay! Science!

Snopes is alright, but try voicing a dissenting opinion on their forums and see how quickly you get banned. Read up on the Eight Spiders mystery if you want an example of something fishy going on (making up sources that don't exist).

>'golden' rice is a p.r. ploy by syngenta et al to pretend like they are doing it for humanitarian reasons

Considering that golden rice isn't even managed by syngenta, I have a hard time believing that.

>apparently 5 grams of dietary fat is what's needed for a healthy person to get the benefit so at 0.7% fat you need to eat 700grams (dry) of rice per meal. good luck

Where did you pull that 0.7% figure out of, your ass? Considering that the rice itself supplies you with about .5 grams from one cup, I'm gonna say yes. For that matter, where are you getting your requirement of 5 grams from?

Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is a fantastic new book to start with.

https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Universe-Really-Increasingly/dp/1538760525/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1575002564&amp;sr=8-1

And guess what? Trump, the Trump whose arse Alex's tongue is thoroughly cleaning out, employs the lobbyist for the gay-frog chemical. Completely unconnected, he loosened regulations on it so that it's easier to turn the frogs gay.

But oh yeh, Trump is really taking down those globalists!

Not just the bitrates, encoders got much better as well. A 128 kbit MP3 from a new MP3 encoder will sound much better than the same 128 kbit MP3 created by a 15 year old encoder.

Lame for example has a big sample of test files to tune their encoders to create even better output: http://lame.sourceforge.net/quality.php

> The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

http://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html

From New Scientist (21 June 2009):

>Grey hair may be unwelcome, but the processes that produce it are now better understood and could be protecting us from cancer.

>Cells called melanocytes produce the pigments that colour hair and their numbers are kept topped up by stem cells. Hair goes grey when the number of stem cells in hair follicles declines. Now Emi Nishimura of Tokyo Medical and Dental University in Japan and colleagues have found what causes this decline in mice.

>When the researchers exposed mice to radiation and chemicals that harm DNA, damaged stem cells transformed permanently into melanocytes. This ultimately led to fewer melanocytes, as it meant there were fewer stem cells capable of topping up the melanocyte pool. The mice also went grey (Cell, vol 137, p 1088). Nishimura's team proposes that the same process leads to the reduction in stem cells in the follicles of older people

Yes. This much is clear: Lots of interesting experiments with split brained patients especially show this.

Does that mean consciousness always follows decision? That's an open question, but I doubt it. At minimum, to be evolutionarily useful, consciousness must be able to modify unconscious processes for later decisions, and I would be much more useful if it could influence the present decision.

I like how J.D. Trout put it in one of my favorite books:

> Free will is a bit like a sheep: there really is an animal there, but it's amazingly skinny once you've shaved all the wool off.

If you want some reading on this, here's a good start:

Does Consciousness Cause Behavior

If you are refering to the second video: he was not even trying to make an "argument for libertarianism". If you want some economic arguments, there you have them: Economics in One Lesson, available online in pdf. Anyway, for Pen Jillette it comes more to moral arguments (freedom of an individual) than economic ones.

I looked, but only found warnings about trespassing and dangers from climbing the tower (the risk of falling and dying).

Here's something that turned up, though. --> Locals Complain of Radio Tower Illness...Then Discover Tower Was Actually Turned Off

There's a secondary related issue. Let's say it does work. Then what method will be most effective for understanding how it works and making optimal use of the magical power? Science. The scientific method still works even if people can cast spells by shouting mangled Latin while pointing wooden sticks. And the scientists would then find out exactly why that works.

There's a really well done fanfic which starts on the premise that Harry Potter grows up with loving step-parents and a father who is a professor of chemistry at Oxford. So he grows up learning all about the scientific method and critical thinking. He then goes to Hogwarts and tries to apply it there and much hilarity ensues. The piece is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality although I should warn you that it is quite long. (And the author is still writing more although he hasn't updated in a few months... grrr.)

> The best hugs are probably from hagfish, which can extrude microscopic filaments that convert a huge volume of water around them to slime in seconds. Instant cozy blanket!

Have a look at the Vaccine Safety Datalink which links to lots of studies about vaccine safety. Also check out Google Scholar which allows you to search through a plethora of studies conducted throughout the world. Not all studies are open to the general public, but you can at least see the abstract and conclusions. Don't stand in the fog of your inability to google.

Given that with a whois we can see it was registered at namecheap.com (clearly the sort of domain a government entity would use), it looks like it could be even less?

I tried to explain to an internet idiot that you can do a redirect to whatever you want from whatever site you want and that it doesn't mean that the end site endorses the first site, but they weren't getting it. You can do a 301 redirect and the destination site can't do anything short of legal action to the domain host.

> charcoal where it might actually cure something in a therapeutic dose?

First, charcoal does not 'cure' anything, it is sometimes used to bind poisons while they are still in the digestive tract. Second, the amount of activated charcoal in homeopathic medicines does not even come close to being a therapeutic dose, even pure activated charcoal 'supplements' do not even come close. The top hit on an amazon search have capsules with a paltry 560 milligrams, in a bottle of 100. In emergent poisonings the adult dose is 50 to 100 grams of activated charcoal, followed by 2 to 3 more doses of 25 to 50 grams each, you may use as much as 300 grams. The amount in homeopathic "medicines" is several orders of magnitude less than the therapeutic dose. A double of well aged bourbon probably has more charcoal than what you get from a homeopath.

>CRT is as scientific as anything else in the "social sciences".

Most traditional social sciences use empirical data: surveys based on random samples, verifiable measures, polling data, blinded and unblinded experiments, etc.  From what I understand CRT relies heavily on interviews, stories, anecdotes, and non-random samples.

"A popular idea here is that different groups have different “ways of knowing,” different modes of sense-making, and even different epistemic paradigms. To insist on the exclusionary standard of “Western rationality” would therefore amount to suppressing black, Indigenous, or even female knowledges. And, since knowledge and power are said to form an indissociable nexus, the insistence on universal scientific standards is, by this logic, connected to the perpetuation of (male) white supremacy. This emerges from critical theory, a body of thought that casts truth as relative, and asserts that some ideas are accepted over others only because those in power perpetuate them."

Science is becoming increasingly politicized and this line of thinking seems dangerous.

> It seems strange that terrorists would go after the white house because it doesn't stand out at all. I don't think you can see it from the air.

Really?. I think you can see it just fine. It should be about the center of that link. You can see the 1000' wide ellipse just south of the white house lawn (and just north of the Washington monument).

And why would it be strange for terrorists to go after the center of one of the branches of government and one of the most famous landmarks in the world?

> My problem comes with the dismissiveness of most people when the theory doesn't sound insane like a lot of people will say.

Actually, the conspiracy hypothesis (it really doesn't deserve the term 'theory') fails all kinds of basic tests of plausibility, and has to create its own problem to solve. The official explanation has more explanatory power, and is more plausible, in every way.

Just yesterday in the NYT experts on Zika said that the conspiracy theories from the likes of Adams and the anti-GMO team harmed people in Brazil. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/health/zika-virus-response.html

>The North American media, several experts said, did a good job debunking various myths that arose early in the epidemic, such as rumors blaming microcephaly on genetically modified mosquitoes, larvicide in drinking water or vaccines. >In Brazil, those rumors diverted attention for precious weeks, even prompting some cities to stop fighting mosquitoes temporarily.

There are real consequences to nonsense by nutters.

Charging 1000s of dollars? They're laughing about it - they aren't sincere. Didn't you catch how he immediately jumped on "Did I do something illegal?" and then she jumped on the "grandma" thing?

I'll link you to a good documentary from the 70s. It's not about psychics, but equally superstitious, evangelical christians being robbed of their money by a child preacher.

https://archive.org/details/Marjoe.1972.Legendado

Marjoe lets a crew film him exploit people as he does a final round in 72 before coming clean. Very interesting behind the scenes look into charlatans and how they really do intentionally manipulate.

It's hard to believe that there are people out there that intentionally do this sort of thing - but there are.

Bret Weinstein has a grand total of 3 publications to his name (which interesting are all mentioned on his Wiki page) as does his wife. The reason he's not publishing pseudoscience is because he is not publishing.

Neither of them have any real relevance in the academic world, their entire influence is built from appealing to people who do not understand or care for the scientific process.

The reason why people can't handle Weinstein is because he doesn't give a flying fuck whether his claims are accurate, he's just a professional contrarian who has realized that it's much easier making a career out of spouting nonsense than trying to be an actual scientist.

I think you need to calm down boyo. you seem quite angry in your replies... no need to get angry or rise to baiters.

anyways, I've met "real" homoeopaths over the past decade and most if not all (I have my suspicions about some) are honestly delusional and trying to help. They honestly believe they're doing good.

That's the hard thing about new age pseudo sciences. a lot of practitioners are genuinely caring people out looking for a way to help people and to bring peace and harmony to the world.

Though saying that, I find their "business" offensive and they're literally robbing people of their lives in some cases... i've heard sad stories about cancer patients turning to alternative medicines/treatments which have been proven not to work. to these people, these cancer patients were helped by their "medicine" despite their initial claims of being able to cure them completely... I was very familiar with one of these victims.... watching helplessly as breast cancer devoured a sweet old woman because she was convinced homoeopathy and other holistic medicines will cure her.... hell she even got blessed by the Dalai Lama... sigh. i was too young to know what it was she was doing to cure herself.... hell i didn't even know she had cancer until it invaded her brain and she had to be taken into care.....

Yeah... I'm a little biased.

Also they tend to have other stances on modern medicine, usually negative. For example a large percentage of the people I have met were anti vaccinations and believes it causes autism in children or worse. They apply such practices to their own children as well as anyone who they can sway to their way of thinking. Sad stuff.

I understand it's hard to find real studies done on holistic practices, but they are out there. I suggest going through google scholar or one of the many scientific and medical journals! Good luck! I hope you can find an answer that will satisfy you.

About TEDx

TED's luster in general has kind of worn off on me. Every so often there is an inspiring speaker or interesting information, but a lot of it sounds like "millionaire show and tell" where people can go and shill in the context of "big ideas". Jamie Oliver basically teased his "Food Revolution" show in the context of a TED talk. It would stand to reason that other people who are trying to sell you something would try to jump on the "TED" bandwagon.

No. I'll quote from the very same paper that this article is citing:

> The discrepancies found suggest that both phenomena are phenomenologically and behaviourally dissimilar.

Medical Xpress has somehow stated the exact opposite of what the study found. How in the world they could get it quite this wrong is completely beyond me. See for yourself by clicking the link at the bottom of the article you cited, which takes you to the abstract on Science Direct.

I do not get why they have all these quotes from the scientists. Why are the scientists giving quotes that make it seem like they found evidence for this relationship when their own abstract clearly states that they didn't?

Way to take things completely out of context.

So here's the situation. You're under 15 blankets, you've just now fallen asleep, and your sister-in-law starts moaning like a cow directly above your head. You're in Baltimore, it's 18 degrees F, you have no gloves, you have no boots and your heaviest jacket is a single layer leather.

Should you really feel like wandering around in a foot of snow in Baltimore at 1am in January, you get to step right through the living room, where your sister-in-law is sitting spread-eagled and naked, your nephew's head due to pop out of her vagina at any minute. And in the course of doing this, of course, you get to leave your wife alone because if you think you aren't in any mood to go wandering around in the freezing snow you should see her. Who, by the way, is hella more traumatized by the events going on above than you are, you see, because although the tickets were bought six months previously, because although she's delivered about 140 babies, because although that's her sister, she's been told in no uncertain terms that her expertise is unwanted because everything she's learned, studied and dedicated her career to are a pack of lies forced upon her by the medical establishment.

Yet this is about me and my spine.

Start here: Evidence Supporting the Biologic Nature of Gender Identity, <u>Aruna Saraswat, MD; Jamie D. Weinand, BA, BS; Joshua D. Safer, MD</u> Disclosures Endocr Pract. 2015;21(2):199-204.

Full paper also here if you can't read it there: https://www.scribd.com/doc/298807292/EVIDENCE-SUPPORTING-BIO-NATURE-OF-GENDER-IDENTITY-Saraswat-Safer

There are five pages of references from the the review if you wish to go deeper.

tl;dr: The brain is also a sexually differentiated organ. And this differentiation happens at a different point in pregnancy than the sexual differentiation of other parts of the body. It is possible to have a brain that is incongruently differentiated to the rest of the body if the sequence of hormones during pregnancy is disrupted.

An analogy I've been using lately is handedness. Most people are right handed. Some are left handed. And a very small number are neither. How do you 'know' you are right handed or left handed or not? How do you even know which hand is which?

You almost certainly do know, but are very unlikely to be able articulate the source of that that knowledge in any meaningful fashion. You simply...are.

I don't know that howcanistop is obligated to go fetch readily available information for you, unless you mean to assert that his claim is false and such a mountain of previous studies doesn't exist. It does.

The point you're drawing from that study is not at all the conclusion those authors put their names to. Yes, they observed that one dose of MMR vaccine still resulted in 19-25% measles or mumps occurrence, which still isn't that bad considering measles has something like a 90% contagion rate in unvaccinated populations. But they also found that two doses dropped that rate to 4%. The problem is one of proper application (something medical science is constantly trying to perfect), not one of the "theory" of vaccination. Try to maintain a little intellectual honesty here, especially if you're going to act so smug about what you're saying. I'd also recommend you start accessing the official source of the information you're citing, as it doesn't highlight misleading sentences from study abstracts to push an agenda.

> I thought I'd share it with r/skeptic because one of my main concerns is that my independent research method is in some way flawed. I have a real problem acquiring knowledge through Google as I can never be 100% sure what I'm reading is non-biased or correct.

You may find Google Scholar more helpful for this kind of research than the main Google search. For instance, the third hit for a Google Scholar search for aspartame is a paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which is a peer-reviewed journal on nutrition.

"Fibromyalgia is the diagnosis given to individuals with chronic widespread musculoskeletal pain for which no alternative cause, such as tissue inflammation or damage, can be identified. Fibromyalgia is now believed to be, at least in part, a disorder of central pain processing that produces heightened responses to painful stimuli (hyperalgesia) and painful responses to nonpainful stimuli (allodynia). Aberrations in central pain processing may also be partly responsible for symptoms experienced in several chronic pain disorders that coaggregate with fibromyalgia, which is itself a product of genetic and environmental factors. Thus, aberrational central pain processing is implicated in irritable bowel syndrome, temporomandibular disorder, chronic low back pain, and certain other chronic pain disorders. Fibromyalgia and related disorders appear to reflect deficiencies in serotonergic and noradrenergic, but not opioidergic, transmission in the central nervous system. The heightened state of pain transmission may also be owing to increases in pronociceptive neurotransmitters such as glutamate and substance P. In some cases, psychological and behavioral factors are also in play. Although the overlapping symptomatology between fibromyalgia and related disorders may present diagnostic challenges, proper examination and observation can help clinicians make an accurate diagnosis. In recent years, the vastly improved understanding of the mechanism underlying fibromyalgia and the related spectrum of diseases has fostered rapid advances in the therapy of these chronic pain disorders by both pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic interventions."

This is the abstract of a paper entitled &quot;Fibromyalgia: An Overview&quot; published in the American Journal of Medicine in 2009.

"Endocrine" refers to &quot;the glands in your body that secrete hormones into your blood.&quot; You can't produce more endocrines. Are you talking about the secretions?

Where are you getting this information? After a quick Google I found lots of alternative medicine sites touting how great acupuncture is, but I couldn't find any reliable studies specifically about the endocrine system.

You can use WOT and just add reviews and mark them red with the reason why. No need to add more stuff when something else already has functionality.

You can also use Rbutr which is very handy for finding rebuttals for ceritan sites.

Btw, you linked the wrong version of the paper. This one is more fleshed out.

He explains is reasoning a little better in the discussion section. He found that stations were considerably more likely to not include data from winter months, so yearly averages of data that included "invalid stations" were biased upward simply due to seasonal variation.

He's basically arguing for monthly means instead of yearly.

This paper makes a lot more sense now.

I'm also looking to read Totalitarianism and Political Religion.

> The totalitarian systems that arose in the twentieth century presented themselves as secular. Yet, as A. James Gregor argues in this book, they themselves functioned as religions. He presents an intellectual history of the rise of these political religions, tracing a set of ideas that include the belief that a certain text contains impeccable truths; notions of infallible, charismatic leadership; and the promise of human redemption through strict obedience, selfless sacrifice, total dedication, and unremitting labor. Gregor provides unique insight into the variants of Marxism, Fascism, and National Socialism that dominated our immediate past. He explores the seeds of totalitarianism as secular faith in the nineteenth-century ideologies of Ludwig Feuerbach, Moses Hess, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Richard Wagner. He follows the growth of those seeds as the twentieth century became host to Leninism and Stalinism, Italian Fascism, and German National Socialism—each a totalitarian institution and a political religion.

I'm astonished nobody mentioned psychoanalysis yet. Still going strong in France and Argentina for some reason. It has also metastasized into literary criticism.

You'll find easily criticism online but if you want to get the gist of how it's meant to work I can recommend two books:

• Georg Groddeck, <em>The Book of the It</em>

• Sigmund Freud, <em>The Psychopathology of Everyday Life</em>

Both are well written, easy reads and extremely funny.

Young people have always been notable for seeing the world in black and white.

I don't think that's going to change much, but I do think that learning the tools you can later use for discerning your own wrong ideas from those less wrong is what really matters for the younger generation. The ability to successfully use those comes with experience rather than education I'd say.

The scientific method of thinking needs to be taught; self-scrutiny needs to be learned through practice and experience (and it is a very difficult thing to do).

Personally, I've always felt Russell's view on the issue has been valuable to me (from "A History of Western Philosophy"):

>In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second. Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind.

This is TEDx which means its independently organized.

http://www.ted.com/tedx

Not that this disproves what the guy is saying, but it sort of doesn't have that same kind of "vetted" status to it. Does he make available all of his sources in his research? I didn't notice them in the video.

There's a Stanford open course on calling bullshit. I haven't watched but it might be what you're looking for.

http://www.openculture.com/2017/05/calling-bullshit-watch-the-lectures-for-the-college-course.html

Good or bad, here is a google list of scholarly articles about the effects of cannabanoids on cancer: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=cannabinoids+effects+on+cancer&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=0&amp;as_vis=1&amp;oi=scholart&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=zieVUZzlE6GA0AGmnIDQDw&amp;ved=0CC8QgQMwAA

The TLDR seems to be that there might be some good news in there, and it's worth studying.

Actually what is totally missing from the article (which maybe because the club's founder -and as far as I can determine single member- is a bit obsessed), is of course that this should be done to counter positive publicastion bias.

Not that there is anything wrong with this specific subject, however I feel that those single person crusades tend to go off the rails in the end.

As opposed to the 33.9 billion dollar (in the US alone!) fake medicine racket?

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2009/08/americans-spend-33-9-billion-a-year-on-alternative-medicine/index.htm

But sure, chemotherapy is a scam/conspiracy. LOL.

As Oort said, there is a demonstrated link beyond his or her anecdote.

Here is one publication and it's citations:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=4825647339760925068&amp;as_sdt=5,44&amp;sciodt=0,44&amp;hl=en

Yeah they certainly are real. They used to be only identifiable through manual palpation but recently it has been possible to actually "see" them using a type of MRI modality.

Trigger points are often overlooked as a cause of a variety of conditions. They can even simulate things like angina pectoris or a lumber disc herniation.

As a side note, to be a true "trigger point" it should refer pain, otherwise it's technically a "tender point".

Edit: P.S. it is also very interesting to note that 70% of the meridian acupuncture points correspond to common trigger points.

Well, I tried. But it's in moderation. I doubt it will appear.

https://www.screencast.com/t/8n5Oc1BDpn9

There was also a section that doesn't show about recommending PetMeds to others. So I wrote that I would be concerned about a company that sells potentialy harmful misleading products.

2002 review on its safety. This should shut up your friends.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;_udi=B6WPT-465F53V-K&amp;_user=10&amp;_coverDate=04%2F30%2F2002&amp;_rdoc=1&amp;_fmt=high&amp;_orig=search&amp;_origin=search&amp;_sort=d&amp;_docanchor=&amp;view=c&amp;_searchStrId=159744168...

>Both sugar and evaporated cane juice are derived from sugar cane; the difference between the two is found primarily in the refinement process that each undergoes. White sugar goes through a series of refinement steps that remove color and many nutrients. Evaporated cane juice, on the other hand, retains important vitamins, such as riboflavin and vitamin B, as well as amino acids and fiber that its refined counterpart lacks, thereby providing more nutrients per calorie consumed than sugar.

Source.

See also.

It's not completely ridiculous.

The women mentioned are real and have been the subject of much study. The use of animals for testing the vaccine is standard. The use of a person to test the efficacy of the vaccine to block infection is non-standard, even unethical, but I suppose the test subject it might be the researcher himself.

Google scholar turns up a lot of hits for &quot;tat oyi&quot;, and although I have not read the articles that suggests it's a real avenue of research.

What is odd is asking the public for donations. That is highly unusual in serious medicine, offhand I can't remember ever seeing it before. If their product is as promising as they claim I can't see that there'd be any problem getting backing from funding agencies or, say, WHO.

I don't know.

Here you go.

(That was hard... I don't have a great way to anonymously send someone a pdf... would be great if anyone has a better idea!)

That submission title reminds me of a line from the film The Man Who Knew Infinity.

"We [mathematicians] are merely explorers of infinity."

In a sense mathematicians explore an infinite domain in search of patterns, being infinite it's easy to find a lot of tantalizing patterns which when subjected to the rigors of mathematics end up being flawed.

A similar thing happens in science, a theory seems to offer promising results. The difference between a scientist and a pseudoscientist is that when the theory breaks down, the scientist will abandon it, while the pseudoscientist will ignore contradictory evidence or more reasonable explanations.

Kahneman's work referenced in this article is in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow and is an enlightening read, especially if you're interested in cognition and behavioral sciences.

Personally I've found an easy way to open people up to the idea of skepticism is through an indirect route, in particular Eastern philosophy such as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. While it doesn't focus primarily on skepticism, for those peers that are dead-set in their anti-skeptic ways it provides a fundamental grounding of ways of thinking that leads to healthy levels of skepticism without seeming too "science-y" or too preachy.

But, didn't.

This was well after it was clear to all involved that Bernie had no, actual, path to victory. Other than, perhaps, eking out a win in California and convincing Superdelegates to switch their support to him.

Many of those superdelegates are DNC members.

As soon as it became clear to the Bernie campaign that they could not actually win a majority of delegates, and could not get the nomination through the popular vote, they decided that their best path was to attack the DNC. And sow fear, uncertainty and doubt about the results. This, if it's actually about Bernie, is a reflection of their frustration about his campaign, which they saw as a clusterfuck, always blaming the DNC for their own ineptitude.

What I don't see in any of these leaks is any action on the part of the DNC to do anything to, or about, the Bernie campaign.

You're getting downvoted, but that's a good point.

Relevant TED Talk. Summary: for the cost of fixing global warming, we could solve all other major issues.

I don't know how legitimate Richard Charnin really is. He's apparently a 9/11 truther. If his math was so solid why isn't anyone else interested? He alleges to have uncovered massive voter fraud on the Republican side in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Wouldn't the DNC be extremely interested and pursued this? Wouldn't someone be very interested in this if he had the unequivocal proof that he claims?

This just leaves me with a lot of questions and ultimately makes me feel very uneasy of using him as a primary source.

In other news, leaks made by leakers get denied.

There are a lot of details in this leak:

> Police have identified two suspects in the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN Thursday.

> The pair left the UK in the wake of the attack on what is believed to have been a commercial flight, the source added.

> Their departure was revealed in a coded Russian message to Moscow sent after the attack, which was intercepted by a British base in Cyprus, the source said. The British government blames the Skripals' poisoning on Russia.

> The suspects were identified by UK police, who have been combing through months of surveillance camera footage from UK airports and from Salisbury, the town where the Skripals were poisoned on March 4.

> Using facial recognition technology, authorities discovered two "fresh identities" -- individuals not known to have been spies or used in other attacks -- the source added. Investigators crosschecked that information with the manifest of the flight on which the suspects were believed to have left Britain. They traveled on aliases, the source said. It is not clear whether the pair are Russian.

> An Aeroflot flight at Heathrow airport in London was searched on March 30, an action the British government described at the time as "routine."

Usually when somebody is lying they keep things as vague as possible.

Don't expect this to be confirmed until the UK makes an official statement. This is more than likely going to end up being true IMO but stay tuned I guess.

> I'm trying to find an actual quote of them being holocaust deniers

"Probably the most far-out materials on World War II revisionism have been the seemingly scholarly studies of the supposed execution of 6 million Jews by Hitler. The anonymous author of The Myth of the Six Million (whose writing style and use of footnotes internal to the text resembles Hoggan's The Myth of the "New History" to a remarkable extent) has presented a solid case against the Establishment's favorite horror story - the supposed moral justification for our entry into the War."

Wikipedia article on David Hoggan.

The actual, blatantly holocaust-denying text of The Myth of the Six Million, which the Reason article approvingly cited.

> all facts most historians agree with today

/u/adminbeast addressed this, but I feel obliged to reiterate: no, they don't.

I completely agree that people get the two definitions of "theory" mixed up - but it's not because one definition is wrong and the other is right.

In fact, according to the etymology the "layman" usage of the word predates the scientific version (though not by much). So, it's not a matter of "hypothesis" not catching on - there was already a word for that, and that word was theory.

So, I guess my point is instead of getting upset at people misunderstanding the subtleties of a word (and using said word in a not-incorrect manner) - we should be upset with the lack of basic scientific education among so many people. If scientific theory and process were taught better, more people would understand this vocab-level difference, and there really shouldn't be any excuse for that in the developed world.

Google Scholar search for articles regarding Aloe Vera

Quoting the abstract of one of the top articles (from 1999):

>Ten studies were located. They suggest that oral administration of aloe vera might be a useful adjunct for lowering blood glucose in diabetic patients as well as for reducing blood lipid levels in patients with hyperlipidaemia. Topical application of aloe vera is not an effective preventative for radiation-induced injuries. It might be effective for genital herpes and psoriasis. Whether it promotes wound healing is unclear. There are major caveats associated with all of these statements.

So what mainstream press got taken in by this? Wired initially reported it as fact, then later added "Claims" to the title. TechCrunch was completely taken in. Who else?

At TAM7 Penn & Teller were part of a discussion panel revolving around magic and critical thinking. The entire video is well worth the watch. But at the very end (about the 1:10:30 mark) Penn gets a question about this. He answers in a fantastic way and I have the utmost respect for his stance.

Edit: Advanced warning the linked video is great if you watch it straight through and allow time to buffer. But picking individual spots in the video can be a pain with Vimeo's player.

That doesn't make his criticism of Consumer Reports any less valid.

CR is way out of their depth on anything food and nutrition related.

This article is why I canceled my subscription after being a customer for 12 years. Maybe I'll pick up an issue when I'm in the market for a new car or TV, but outside of something like that forget it.

Bluetooth operates in the same 2.4 GHz ISM band as microwave ovens, most Wi-Fi (although that's moving to 5 GHz these days), and some wireless (not cellular) phones, although cell phones are pretty close by in the spectrum. Maximum power output is, per spec, 100 mW, which is seriously tiny compared to cell phones, which can go up to 2 W for some GSM phones, although something closer to 500 mW is more typical.

Of course, this "leakage in the brain blood barrier" stuff is nonsense unless proved otherwise[1], which to my knowledge it hasn't been. EM radiation at this frequency isn't dangerous unless you get enough of it to start heating up your innards (you don't want to be standing next to a microwave oven rigged to work with the door open--primary danger is your eyes, which don't have a good way of getting rid of excess heat). Bluetooth and cell phones just don't output enough power to do this.

[1] See e.g. Fritze et al., which studies GSM phones, not Bluetooth, but they're comparable. Money quote in the abstract: "Microwave exposure in the frequency and intensity range of mobile telephony is unlikely to produce pathologically significant changes of the blood-brain barrier permeability."

Ethereum looks pretty interesting.

It also has actual projects on it.

For most people in the tech field, blockchains are just an interesting system. Investors get all fired up because its new thing that might make them richer, but techies get fired up because maybe in the next 10 years they might have a new way of doing some thing that they want to do.

I kind of agree though, I've seen some very cult-like behavior by some "enthusiasts", and a lot of the people who rave about it don't know shit about how it actually works.