{"id":13315,"date":"2016-05-18T23:02:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T13:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=13315"},"modified":"2016-05-18T23:02:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T13:02:43","slug":"dear-skeptics-bash-homeopathy-and-bigfoot-less-mammograms-and-war-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=13315","title":{"rendered":"Dear &quot;Skeptics,&quot; Bash Homeopathy and Bigfoot Less, Mammograms and War More"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I spoke at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, NECSS, a \u201ccelebration of science and critical thinking\u201d held May 12-15 in New York City. Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, whom I met recently, got me invited, and he might regret that, because I decided to treat the skeptics skeptically. I originally titled my talk \u201cSkepticism: Hard Versus Soft Targets.\u201d The references to \u201cBigfoot\u201d in the headline above and text below were inspired by a conversation I had with conference Emcee Jamy Ian Swiss before I went on stage. He asked what I planned to say, and I told him, and he furiously defended his opposition to belief in Bigfoot. He wasn\u2019t kidding. I hadn\u2019t brought up Bigfoot, but I decided to mention him in my talk. Swiss didn\u2019t let me take questions, so I promised the audience that I would post the talk here (slightly edited) and would welcome skeptical comments or emails. \u2013-John Horgan<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scientificamerican.com\/cross-check\/dear-skeptics-bash-homeopathy-and-bigfoot-less-mammograms-and-war-more\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/blogs.scientificamerican.com\/cross-check\/dear-skeptics-bash-homeopathy-and-bigfoot-less-mammograms-and-war-more\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I spoke at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, NECSS, a \u201ccelebration of science and critical thinking\u201d held May 12-15 in New York City. Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, whom I met recently, got me invited, and he might regret that, because I decided to treat the skeptics skeptically. I originally titled my talk \u201cSkepticism: &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=13315\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Dear &quot;Skeptics,&quot; Bash Homeopathy and Bigfoot Less, Mammograms and War More&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-inspiration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}