Society

When skepticism collides with human experience. The societal implications of scientific skepticism.

Placebo Effect

Religion is simply a powerful placebo – offering priests a sense of ritual, but little else

Colin Brewer -
Theatrical but ultimately ineffective, religion may be the ultimate placebo effect - as 17th Century priest Jean Meslier realised 300 years ago
Health

Nobody undergoes egg donation for the money – it is about altruism, not exploitation

Emma McClure -
Egg donors will see a raise in compensation from next month, but campaign groups are wrong when they say this incentivises people to donate
Psychology

Comparing misinformation to a virus is neither accurate nor useful in preventing its spread

Ariana Modirrousta-Galian, Phil Higham, Tina Seabrooke -
Portraying misinformation as a virus assumes we're all equally susceptible, and risks distracting us from solutions to the problem it poses
Moral Panics

The wealthy, conservative American Christian groups pushing anti-abortion protests in the UK

Michael Marshall -
"Woman arrested for praying" is the latest in a string of legal cases used by US conservative Christian organisations to fight against progress in the UK
Society

Are ‘gacha’ games and loot boxes merely gambling in disguise?

Shao Zihang -
Gacha video games - where players pay real money for a chance at winning digital items - are a poorly regulated space that can become as exploitative as gambling
Politics

JD Vance is right – for anti-intellectuals like him, the professors are the enemy

Edzard Ernst -
Professors seek the truth, and the truth is something that politicians like JD Vance fear, because it can reveal their agenda as being fascist.
Philosophy

A search for meming: fighting the mind-virus virus

Blake Smith -
The meme of religion as a "mind virus" oversimplifies how we come to our beliefs, and actively harms our attempts to encourage people to question dogma
Science

Racism is a real phenomenon, but that doesn’t mean that the idea of “biological race” is real

Natália Pasternak -
Just because some people will discriminate against others due to their appearance and racial identity, that doesn't make the notion of 'biological race' true.
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