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Jan 6, 2025 | 
skepticalinquirer.org | Stuart Vyse
The New Year started badly. I woke on January 1 to discover that The Telepathy Tapes was the most popular podcast in the United States on both the Spotify and Apple iTunes apps. The enormously popular Joe Rogan Experience had dropped to #2, and my first thought was, âMy lifeâs work has been for naught.
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Jun 24, 2024 | 
realityslaststand.com | Stuart Vyse
Reality’s Last Stand is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a paying subscriber or making a one-time or recurring donation to show your support. WARNING: This article contains spoilers. Stuart Vyse is a psychologist and author. He is a consulting editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, where he writes the “Behavior & Belief” column. He is also one of the founders of facilitatedcommunication.org, a website offering accurate information about FC, RPM, and S2C.
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Feb 19, 2024 | 
skepticalinquirer.org | Stuart Vyse
In the past, when people in the United States have been polled about their level of belief in superstition, the results showed that approximately 25 percent were superstitious (e.g., Moore 2000; Orth 2022). At the high end of the scale, there have occasionally been surveys showing somewhere around half of respondents were at least a little superstitious (“60 Minutes/Vanity Fair: Superstition” 2015).
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Jan 18, 2024 | 
skepticalinquirer.org | Stuart Vyse
My wife and I told our children that Santa Claus would bring them presents on Christmas Eve. We had them leave cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer, and we made certain those items disappeared or looked half consumed on Christmas morning.
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Dec 25, 2023 | 
skepticalinquirer.org | Stuart Vyse
Many social programs are implemented with the best of intentions and later discovered to be either ineffective or, in the worst cases, counterproductive. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and ’90s, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program was used in 75 percent of American schools at a taxpayer expense of an estimated $200 million, but subsequent evaluations revealed that it didn’t work.
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Dec 4, 2023 | 
skepticalinquirer.org | Stuart Vyse
In the summer of 2021, not long after the first COVID-19 vaccines became available, I made my first trip to Paris, France; when I returned home, I wrote “French Science & Pseudoscience: A Skeptic’s Tour of Paris” for Skeptical Inquirer. In the fall of 2023, I went back to Paris and continued my tour of scientific and pseudoscientific locations in the City of Light. Grande Galerie de l’ÉvolutionFrance has a museum of evolution. As far as I can tell, the United States does not.
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Sep 21, 2023 | 
skepticalinquirer.org | Stuart Vyse
Every now and again, it’s worth looking back at old unsupported ideas that we thought were dead and buried because, like zombies, they sometimes climb out of their graves and stagger into the future. So, when I came across a recent mention of Mozart in a psychological study, I was not entirely surprised by what I dug up.
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Aug 23, 2023 | 
skepticalinquirer.org | Stuart Vyse
Bullshit has undoubtedly been with us from the beginning of civilization, and it shows no sign of disappearing soon. It goes by many names—humbug, poppycock, bollocks, and hokum—but it was not until the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt published an essay, “On Bullshit,” that anyone made a clear distinction between bullshit and lying. The essay was published as a small book in 2005 following the George W. Bush vs.
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Aug 21, 2023 | 
pensar.org | Stuart Vyse
Para muchos problemas médicos, el tratamiento preferido es la ciencia convencional. Cuando ingresas por un hueso roto, recibirás una atención muy similar sin importar el médico que elijas. En el mundo de los trastornos psiquiátricos, sin embargo, las cosas pueden ser bastante diferentes. Los profesionales a menudo abogan por enfoques muy variados y pueden estar en desacuerdo sobre la cuestión básica de si la terapia está justificada en absoluto.
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Aug 17, 2023 | 
skepticalinquirer.org | Stuart Vyse
For many medical conditions, the preferred treatment is settled science. When you go in for a broken bone, you will get very similar care no matter what doctor you choose. In the world of psychiatric disorders, however, things can be quite different. Professionals often advocate wildly varying approaches and can disagree about the basic question of whether therapy is warranted at all.
