Skeptophilia

Urban legends often have nebulous origins.  As author Jan Harold Brunvand describes in his wonderful book The Choking Doberman and Other Urb...

One thing that really  torques me is when people say "I did my research," when in fact what they did was a five-minute Google sear...

Have you ever heard of Mrs. Tottenham, of 54 Berners Street, Westminster, London, England? I'm guessing probably not.  At least I hadn...

Richard Feynman famously said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool."...

There's a general rule that once a lie gets out into wide circulation, trying to replace it with the truth is damn near impossible.  We...

After Thursday's post about nonexistent islands, a loyal reader of Skeptophilia  asked me if I'd ever heard of the country of Listen...

Mice are kind of ubiquitous, and it's easy to think of them as all being pretty much the same, but the family they comprise -- Muridae ...

I'm often astonished at the lengths people will go to to perpetrate hoaxes. What can possibly motivate them?  Is it just about getting t...

It can often be difficult to sort fact from fiction, especially when multiple people become involved, each with his or her own agenda -- and...