Shadow of a Doubt- February 2022

• February lecture: "Protecting the Public from Misinformation," presented by John Cook, PhD, February 9, 7pm on YouTube
• February Phact lecture: Faye Flam, science journalist and opinion columnist for the Bloomberg News Service, and Dave Cragin, PhD, Director in Quality Assurance at a large pharmaceutical company, will present, "Media coverage of the pandemic," February 20.
• March NCAS Lecture: Eve Siebert will present our March online lecture, on the medieval origins of the Blood Libel.
• Confessions of Coincidence by Scott Snell
• AmazonSmile
• Shadow Light
• Time to Renew

See the full February issue here.

Shadow of a Doubt - February 2022

 

February 2022

NCAS Public Lecture Series

Protecting the Public from Misinformation:
“Inoculating” with a Weakened Form of Misinformation

  YouTube Live Event with Q and A 

Presented by John Cook, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub

Wednesday, February 9, 7pm US/Eastern (UTC-05:00)

NCASVideo YouTube Channel:

https://youtu.be/KBz0s5cMAbA

For more information, call the NCAS Skeptic Line at 240-670-NCAS (6227).
ncas@ncas.org

The public are overwhelmed with misinformation and conspiracy theories, causing confusion about important issues such as climate change, vaccination, and COVID-19. How do we respond to the firehose of falsehoods? One way to effectively neutralize the influence of misinformation and pseudoscience is logic-based inoculation. This applies the idea of vaccination to knowledge—we can build immunity to misinformation by exposing people to a weakened form of misinformation. In other words, explain the misleading techniques used in misinformation. Dr. John Cook will outline his psychological and critical thinking research into inoculation and how he has used gamification and cartoons to overcome some of the psychological hurdles facing scientists and educators.

John Cook is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University. His research focus is on using critical thinking to build resilience against misinformation. In 2007, he founded Skeptical Science, a website that won the 2011 Australia Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge. In 2020, he published the book Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change: How to Understand and Respond to Climate Science Deniers, applying critical thinking, inoculation research, and cartoons to engage and educate readers about climate misinformation. He recently released the Cranky Uncle game, combining critical thinking, cartoons, and gamification to build players' resilience against misinformation. He currently works with organizations like Facebook and NASA to develop evidence-based responses to climate misinformation.

There will be an online question-and-answer segment after the presentation.

https://www.ncas.org/2022/01/february-7-protecting-public-from.html

How to Watch and Participate in this Online Event:

1) Use a supported browser... https://www.youtube.com/supported_browsers

2) Use the link https://youtu.be/KBz0s5cMAbA .  If typing the link, use "0" (zero).

3) The live stream begins shortly before 7pm US/Eastern (UTC-05:00) on Wednesday, February 9, 2022.

4) To post questions, you must be signed in to a Google account.

5) Post your questions in the chat window to the right of the video player when the live stream is active.

6) Click into where it says "Say something..." and begin typing (up to 200 characters). Then click the send icon .

Along with your question, please post what city or town you're in.

February PhACT Lecture

Our skeptical neighbors to the north, the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking (PhACT), will host their next online event on Sunday, February 20 at 2 PM ET.  Faye Flam, science journalist and opinion columnist for the Bloomberg News Service, and Dave Cragin, PhD, Director in Quality Assurance at a large pharmaceutical company, will present, "Media coverage of the pandemic - what did journalists get right, what could be done better?"  Event details at http://www.phact.org/meetings.php.

March NCAS Lecture
The March NCAS lecture will be a YouTube live event; details TBD.

Confessions of Coincidence
By Scott Snell

I've had another entertaining coincidence recently.  On the afternoon of January 22, a Facebook friend suggested that I "friend" a friend of his named Ricky Piel.

That evening, I attended a hockey game at Capital One Arena.  During an intermission, I briefly saw two people dressed as bananas pass by on the concourse.  I was curious about them, but not much.  After the game, I saw them again on the Metro subway platform, and asked why they were dressed that way.  Their answer wasn't interesting (something like, "we just thought it would be fun"), but at that moment my mind finally got the pun of Piel/peel!

Naturally I alerted them immediately about this important sign of...something, and they seemed to love it even more than I did.  (People who dress as bananas are apparently easily entertained.)

My favorite part of the experience was my having to be exposed to the "2nd incident" (seeing banana people) twice, and then engage them in conversation before my brain's pattern detector suddenly found the pun.

For those skeptics among you (and I hope that's every single one), I've provided documentation below.  (Yes, I actually Googled "jan 22 capitals senators banana" and found a photo.)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZDVDMDudQD/

At left is a redacted screen grab of my friend's Facebook message to me about Ricky Piel.

As I've written in other Shadow columns about coincidences, "We're surrounded by an incredible number of occurrences and details, only some of which we even notice, so we should expect some random 'alignments' of two to happen now and then. We never notice the many misalignments, so when an alignment occurs, it seems remarkable, and could be quite affecting."

AmazonSmile: Thanks to our members who are supporting NCAS!
When shopping at smile.amazon.com, you'll find the same low prices, vast selection, and convenient shopping experience as Amazon.com, with the added bonus that a portion of the purchase price (0.5%) goes to NCAS! It's simple and automatic, and it doesn't cost you anything!

AmazonSmile's disbursements to NCAS in the third quarter of 2021 came to $72.36, meaning that over $14000 of purchases were designated in support of NCAS.  (As an example of how NCAS can put that money to good use, it's more than enough to cover three hours of a Montgomery County lecture room rental.)

Thanks again to our members who have chosen to support NCAS!

For more information:

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Some members and contacts of NCAS receive a postal notification of this and every new monthly Shadow of a Doubt.  The Shadow Light postcard announces the monthly lecture and highlights of the electronic Shadow of a Doubt, which is available online at ncas.org/p/shadow.html.  NCAS thereby reduces Shadow production and postage costs.  To further reduce costs, members and contacts can opt out of postal notification altogether, while continuing to receive Shadow of a Doubt via e-mail.  To opt out, send us an e-mail at ncas@ncas.org.


Time to Renew?
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https://www.ncas.org/p/shadow.html

February 9 - Protecting the Public from Misinformation: Inoculating with a Weakened Form of Misinformation

Presented by John Cook,  postdoctoral research fellow with the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University.

Feb 9, 2022, 7:00 PM (Note non-standard day and time). This replaces our Saturday talk for February

Link to live stream:
https://youtu.be/KBz0s5cMAbA

The public are overwhelmed with misinformation and conspiracy theories, causing confusion about important issues such as climate change, vaccination, and COVID-19. How do we respond to the firehose of falsehoods? One way to effectively neutralize the influence of misinformation and pseudoscience is logic-based inoculation. This applies the idea of vaccination to knowledge—we can build immunity to misinformation by exposing people to a weakened form of misinformation. In other words, explain the misleading techniques used in misinformation. Dr. John Cook will outline his psychological and critical thinking research into inoculation and how he has used gamification and cartoons to overcome some of the psychological hurdles facing scientists and educators.

John Cook is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University. His research focus is on using critical thinking to build resilience against misinformation. In 2007, he founded Skeptical Science, a website that won the 2011 Australia Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge. In 2020, he published the book Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change applying critical thinking, inoculation research, and cartoons to engage and educate readers about climate misinformation. He recently released the Cranky Uncle game, combining critical thinking, cartoons, and gamification to build players’ resilience against misinformation. He currently works with organizations like Facebook and NASA to develop evidence-based responses to climate misinformation.

Questions from the audience will be entered into Live Chat and then relayed to the speaker.

Shadow of a Doubt - January 2022

•  January Lecture - Big if True, Presented by Benjamin Radford, Research Fellow, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Saturday, January 8, 2022, 1:30pm, NCASVideo YouTube Channel https://youtu.be/HeiBiod4fJ4
• January PhACT lecture - Paul Halpern will discuss his latest book Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle and the Great Big Bang Debate
• February NCAS lecture - John Cook will present Protecting the Public from Misinformation, February 9, 2022.
• Confessions of Coincidence - Scott Snell
• Amazon Smile - Donate to NCAS for free
• Shadow Lite
• Time to Renew? 

Read Shadow here.

Shadow of a Doubt - January 2022

 NCAS Public Lecture Series

BIG–If True
Adventures in Oddity

  YouTube Live Event with Q and A 

Presented by Benjamin Radford
Research Fellow, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Saturday, January 8, 1:30pm US/Eastern (UTC-05:00)

NCASVideo YouTube Channel:

https://youtu.be/HeiBi0d4fJ4

For more information, call the NCAS Skeptic Line at 240-670-NCAS (6227).
ncas@ncas.org

The world is full of strange stories and marvelous mysteries, from crop circles to monsters, aliens to psychics.

Join folklorist and researcher Benjamin Radford as he discusses his latest book, Big–If True: Adventures in Oddity, drawing on two decades of first-hand research that separates fact from fiction using forensics, science, psychology, folklore, and more.  Among the many mysteries examined are curses, Bigfoot, reincarnation, chupacabras, Icelandic elves, conspiracy theories, UFOs, miracles, the terrifying Texas Goat-Man, crop circles, subliminal advertising, sea serpents, wandering trees, medical mysteries, and hypnotist thieves—plus a 1990 Elvis Presley sighting.

Benjamin Radford is longtime deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine, and a Research Fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a non-profit educational organization. Over the past twenty years he has investigated dozens of mysterious and unexplained phenomena. He is author of a dozen books and thousands of articles on media and science literacy and co-host of the Squaring the Strange podcast.

There will be an online question-and-answer segment after the presentation.

https://www.ncas.org/2022/01/january-8-big-if-true.html

How to Watch and Participate in this Online Event:

1) Use a supported browser... https://www.youtube.com/supported_browsers

2) Use the link https://youtu.be/HeiBi0d4fJ4 .  If typing the link, use "0" (zero).

3) The live stream begins shortly before 1:30pm US/Eastern (UTC-05:00) on Saturday, January 8, 2022.

4) To post questions, you must be signed in to a Google account.

5) Post your questions in the chat window to the right of the video player when the live stream is active.

6) Click into where it says "Say something..." and begin typing (up to 200 characters). Then click the send icon .

Along with your question, please post what city or town you're in.

Exclusive Opportunity for NCAS Members!

Following the talk and the question-and-answer segment, the YouTube presentation will end, and an online "reception" with our speaker and NCAS members will begin on Zoom.  Check your email inbox during the last few minutes of the Q and A. All NCAS members will receive information for joining the Zoom meeting with our speaker.  The "Zoom Client for Meetings" can be downloaded for free at https://zoom.us/download.  To join, just enter the Zoom Meeting ID number and Passcode provided in the email...no Zoom account is needed.

January PhACT Lecture
Our skeptical neighbors to the north, the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking (PhACT), will host their next online event on Saturday, January 15 at 2 PM ET.  Paul Halpern, professor of physics at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, will discuss his latest book, Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate.  Event details at http://www.phact.org/meetings.php.

February NCAS Lecture (Note Special Day and Time)
John Cook, a research fellow at the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University, will present "Protecting the Public from Misinformation: Using 'weakened misinformation' to inoculate the public against conspiracy theories and other misinformation."  Wednesday, February 9 at 7 PM ET, live on the NCASVideo YouTube channel.

Confessions of Coincidence
By Scott Snell

Over the years, I've become a collector of coincidences...last night (January 6) was my newest addition to the collection.

I was at a Giant supermarket and saw "Count on Me" on the employees' company shirts, so I started singing the Jefferson Starship song of that name to myself.

When I finished ringing up my order, I saw the total was $19.78.

The song "Count on Me" was from 1978.

As I've written in other Shadow columns about coincidences, "We're surrounded by an incredible number of occurrences and details, only some of which we even notice, so we should expect some random 'alignments' of two to happen now and then. We never notice the many misalignments, so when an alignment occurs, it seems remarkable, and could be quite affecting."

https://i5.peapod.com/c/59/59FN8.jpg

(This link to a photo of the receipt will expire in a few weeks)

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/271542626_10224884792894736_2547419621484700158_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=1480c5&_nc_ohc=fFZbLr3UatkAX-9VN99&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-1.xx&oh=00_AT-O5ZD7qOSqtG5MPpibb2xuV0NyokTBueYe6tUXCQSOKA&oe=61DD8EAA

AmazonSmile: Thanks to our members who are supporting NCAS!

When shopping at smile.amazon.com, you'll find the same low prices, vast selection, and convenient shopping experience as Amazon.com, with the added bonus that a portion of the purchase price (0.5%) goes to NCAS! It's simple and automatic, and it doesn't cost you anything!

AmazonSmile's disbursements to NCAS in the third quarter of 2021 came to $72.36, meaning that over $14000 of purchases were designated in support of NCAS.  (As an example of how NCAS can put that money to good use, it's more than enough to cover three hours of a Montgomery County lecture room rental.)

Thanks again to our members who have chosen to support NCAS!

For more information:

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Some members and contacts of NCAS receive a postal notification of this and every new monthly Shadow of a Doubt.  The Shadow Light postcard announces the monthly lecture and highlights of the electronic Shadow of a Doubt, which is available online at ncas.org/shadow.  NCAS thereby reduces Shadow production and postage costs.  To further reduce costs, members and contacts can opt out of postal notification altogether, while continuing to receive Shadow of a Doubt via e-mail.  To opt out, send us an e-mail at ncas@ncas.org.


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