Skeptophilia

Yesterday's post, about the strange resurgence of a fifty-year-old claim that the Dogon tribe of west Africa found out about Sirius'...

The eminent physicist Stephen Hawking said, "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge." S...

I suspect that many of my readers will resonate with my desire to fritter away less time on social media. I don't mean the actual "...

I've long been fascinated with communication network theory -- the model that maps out the rules behind the spread of information (and i...

Hi all, Just as a head's up: I received several comments & emails (all polite, which I appreciate) setting me straight on the to...

I'm of two minds about Wikipedia. I think it's a great resource for quick lookups, and use it myself for that sort of thing.   A s...

One of the most frustrating things about social media is the tendency of a lot of people to post something (or respond to it) without readin...

A couple of years ago, I had a student who had what seemed to me a weird approach to figuring things out.  When presented with a question he...

This week we are seeing the final installment of the wonderful Washington Post  weekly column "What Was Fake On the Internet This Week?...

I've commented before how the advent of the internet has changed information transfer -- both in good ways (such as the availability of ...