Featuring a short interview with Antonia de Oñate, CEO of the Spanish skeptical organisation Spanish Rational Alternative to Pseudoscience – Society for the Promotion of Critical Thinking (ARP-SAPC)
Segments:
Intro; Greetings & Listener feedback; On this day; What’s on in Europe?; What’s hot in Europe?; Interview with Vassy and Liubo; Logical Fallacies; Really Wrong; Quote
Show notes:
00:00:00
INTRO music
00:00:33
Greetings & Listener feedback
- Contact us!
- Richard Saunders and Krissy Wilson: The Medium on TV
- The 3 Pauls talking about TheESP on Skepticule
00:09:13
On This Day: 23rd March
Daniel Bovet (23 March 1907 – 8 April 1992), Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist who won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
He also led a study team which concluded that smoking of tobacco cigarettes increased users’ intelligence…
- About Daniel Bovet on Wikipedia
- The New York Times: TOBACCO CALLED HELP IN LEARNING; Biochemist Tells of Benefit in Small Doses of Smoke
- Signs of the Times: Brain Researchers: Smoking increases intelligence
- The Daily Mail: Smoking is ‘good for your memory and concentration’
00:16:23
What’s on in Europe?
Please, check out the Skeptic Calendar of Events in Europe!
00:19:21
What’s Hot in Europe?
- Escalating situation for Homeopathy in Spain
- El Mundo: The director of the master of homeopathy accuses the University of Barcelona to act as the “inquisition” (in Spanish)
- El Espanol: Homeopathy gets serious and the audience laughs (in Spanish)
- Luis Alfonso Gamez: Boiron dilutes its own and homeopathy’s credibility (in Spanish)
- El Correo: The French giant of homeopathy says he does not know how to operate their product (in Spanish)
- El País: If homeopathy doesn’t work, why isn’t selling it prohibited?
- Marie Claire: Valerie Lorentz-Poinsot, Deputy General Manager of Boiron Laboratories (in French)
- Reuters about Boiron
- Boiron on Wikipedia
- About Boiron on Yahoo Finance
- Brittany mayors stage ‘Druid healer’ hoax to highlight shortage of doctors
- Italian anti-GMO paper retracted
- Retraction Watch: Another paper by GM researcher pulled over manipulation concerns
- Science Based Medicine blog: Another Anti-GMO Paper Retracted
- UK government to ban academics from lobbying
- Flying Unicorn Award by ComCept
- Candidates and voting on the ComCept webpage (in Portuguese)
- The Flying Unicorn Award Summary (in English)
00:46:57
Interview with Antonia de Oñate
- The ARP-SAPC website (in Spanish)
- ARP-SAPC on Wikipedia
- ARP-SAPC on Twitter: @escepticos
01:14:30
Logical Fallacies – False attribution (also known as argument from false authority). Appealing to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased or fabricated source in support of an argument.
01:18:29
Brian Dunning – Crowdfunding for trip to Rationalist International Conference in Estonia
01:19:31
Really Wrong: Håkan Ericsson, coach for the Swedish national under-21 football team, for using HeartMath products.
- Magic cardio workouts
- Science Based Medicine: Energy Medicine – Noise-Based Pseudoscience
01:25:19
Quote
“I would teach the world that science is the best way to understand the world, and that for any set of observations, there is only one correct explanation. Also, science is value-free, as it explains the world as it is. Ethical issues arise only when science is applied to technology – from medicine to industry.”
/Lewis Wolpert, British developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster/
01:26:34
Outro
01:27:49
Out-takes
It took that long for a number of reasons, primarily that it does not appear to have been a voluntary settlement, that is, ORI after going thru the required processes, administratively sanctioned Deb. If “respondents,” as they are called, fail to settle, ORI must go through an HHS Office of General Counsel attorney to get a charging letter. This office has been described to be as unbelievably slow, unresponsive and ineffective, despite being paid huge sums out of ORI’s budget. It should also be noted that the most ORI ever does is a 7-year exclusion. I am not sure when it has ever done a lifetime, expect in the case of criminal charges.