2011 NCAS Board Election Results

NCAS members elected these board members for two-year terms beginning May 2011:

W.T. (Tom) Bridgman

Chip Denman
Grace Denman
Beth Kingsley
J.D. Mack
Eugene Ossa
Garold (Gary) Stone
Marv Zelkowitz

List of all NCAS board members

May 27-30 NCAS Talks at Balticon 45

The Baltimore Science Fiction Society presents Balticon 45, the Maryland Regional Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention, on Memorial Day weekend (May 27-30, 2011) at the Baltimore Marriott Hunt Valley Inn (245 Shawan Rd, Hunt Valley, MD). As always, Balticon will include science programs, at least four of which will feature skeptic-related topics. NCAS president Marv Zelkowitz will discuss the alleged link between vaccines and autism. NCAS board member Bing Garthright will talk about significantly harmful consequences of dowsing. Geologist and "Doubtful" blogger Sharon Hill will present "Being Sciencey," and musician/podcaster George Hrab will also give a talk (topic to be announced). For more information, visit balticon.org.

Shadow of a Doubt - May 2011

The Monthly Calendar of the National Capitol Area Skeptics

• NCAS Public Lecture Series: "Surviving the Age of Bad Information: A Skeptic's Reflections"
• Gazette Feature Story on NCAS
• The Chronicle of Higher Education Aims Low
• Balticon 45
• Shadow Light
• Drinking Skeptically

May 7 Surviving the Age of Bad Information: A Skeptic’s Reflections 2011 NCAS Philip J Klass Awardee Joel Achenbach

Saturday, May 7, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm 

Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
2011 NCAS Philip J. Klass Awardee

National Science Foundation, Room 110 
4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA

A free public talk (Map) (Flyer) (Program Brochure)

Free Refreshments and socializing after the talk

What do you call someone who believes that from the simplest molecules of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen there arose by pure random chance, four billion years ago, a replicating entity that could be plausibly defined as alive? What do you call a person who believes that this creature or creatures like it eventually evolved into the amazing diversity of organisms that we see on our planet today? What do you call a person who marvels that this process of biological change has allowed the emergence of a creature that is sentient, that can study the universe in stunning detail, that can create models of the distant past and distant future, that can inject into the world images and sounds and ideas of surpassing beauty? You call such a person a skeptic. A skeptic, in today’s society, is someone who accepts the scientific theory of our origins and of nature—even though there are innumerable competing ideas involving spirits, demons, UFO aliens, exploded planets, the Face on Mars, untapped psychic powers, shadow governments, time travelers and various kinds of “new physics”. For a journalist who ventures forth into modern society it is a challenge to sort what is real from what is merely reassuring. There is a profusion of what can be called Bad Information. But there are things that can be done to combat Bad Information and make the scientific version of reality more palatable to a society starved for deeper truths.

Joel Achenbach has been a staff writer for The Washington Post since 1990, started the newsroom’s first online column (Rough Draft) in 1999 and the paper’s first blog, Achenblog, in 2005. He was a regular contributor to National Geographic, writing stories on such topics as dinosaurs, particle physics, earthquakes, extraterrestrial life, megafauna extinction and the electrical grid. Now assigned to the Post’s national desk, he writes on science and politics, and helped lead the coverage of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. Achenbach is also the author of seven books, including Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe, three volumes of Why Things Are (compilations of his 1988-1996 syndicated column that appeared in fifty newspapers), and his just-released A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher.

At this event NCAS will be honoring Achenbach with the 2011 Philip J. Klass Award for outstanding contributions in promoting critical thinking and scientific understanding.

NSF is one block south of the Ballston-MU Metro stop. Enter from the corner of 9th N & N Stuart Streets. www.nsf.gov/about/visit

Apr 2 Teaching Critical Thinking Skills - In the Trenches

Saturday, April 2, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm (Flyer)

Alan Peel, Ph.D., lecturer in the Physics and Astronomy Departments, University of Maryland, and a living/learning program Co-Director

A free public talk at Bethesda Library

7400 Arlington Rd., Bethesda, MD
Near Bethesda metro (map) (directions)

Refreshments and socializing after the talk

Dr. Peel will discuss his personal experience in teaching “Science and Pseudoscience”, a course required as part of a living/learning program at the University of Maryland. Each year in this colloquium, about forty freshmen (per semester) confront the daunting tasks of learning how to ask the right questions and of developing a healthy, non-cynical skepticism. Peel will outline how he challenges them (especially about what they think ‘science’ is), how he has them challenge each other, and how he tries to make them challenge some of their own assumptions.

After seven years as an environmental scientist working in the hazardous waste cleanup industry in the 1990’s, Alan Peel decided to head back to the ivory tower. He earned his PhD in physics at the University of California at Davis, focusing on phenomenology in cosmology: the art of keeping theorists honest by requiring them to use data (and then showing them how). A postdoc in Cambridge, UK with Stephen Hawking’s group was followed by a postdoc position at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he is now a lecturer in the Physics and Astronomy Departments and co-directs a living/learning program for undergraduates, “Science, Discovery and the Universe.” In that program, he facilitates a colloquium which uses examples of pseudoscience and religion to focus on interdisciplinary issues regarding science and its role in society.