PhACT - Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking

An ex*****on would lead to a second murder.

Penn & Teller call out 'flim-flam' in Supreme Court death penalty case Magicians Penn & Teller told Supreme Court they've tricked audiences with cognitive techniques similar to those used on a witness in a Texas murder trial.

Did you miss Robert Baldassano's interesting talk on the microbiome (and how it may affect almost every aspect of our health???) Never fear -- we recorded it and it is now available on our YouTube channel. Check it out!

Robert Baldassano - Trust Your Gut - Microbiome Have you ever thought about the tiny world living inside your body?...

Your body has its own genetic code unique to you (unless you have an identical twin) but you have 100 trillion microbes living inside you with their genetic codes. While maybe not as sinister as it sounds, what are they up to?

Time to sort out fiction from reality in the Microbiome with this excellent presentation from Dr. Robert Baldassano, pediatric gastroenterologist and co-director of the Center for Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Robert Baldassano - Trust Your Gut - Microbiome Have you ever thought about the tiny world living inside your body?...

Hm. Alien bodies. And multiple races of them.... NOT!

There's a lot of UFO talk out there - but not a lot of evidence.
Science Journalist Mick West reports David Grusch repeated the claim of recovered technology but added that there were also recovered alien bodies. Not only that, but the aliens had, on occasion, killed humans. Grusch spoke carefully but also hinted that there were multiple races of aliens involved and that the U.S. government may have an “agreement” with one of them. Oh—and by the way they might also be from another dimension.
Did they all have alien bodies? Did they have agreements with murderous malevolent interdimensional beings? It was all a bit vague.

The claims were extraordinary, and many UFO enthusiasts lapped it up as confirmation of what they already suspected (or “knew”). But others recognized that the claims went a bit too far. NY Times reporters who covered these UFO stories ignored the claims, admitting that they tone down UFO stories to make them more acceptable.
Alien craft and bodies didn’t make it to the front page anywhere else. It was just too weird—and, crucially, lacking in evidence. Grusch presented no documents (in public) and relied mostly on what he claimed to have been told by unnamed sources, things he could not share in detail.
As we said growing up---money talks and B.S. walks. Show me the money! WGN Morning News

A 4-minute funny and insightful take on cold reading! By Orson Welles.

Mind Control - Orson Welles on Psychic Cold Reading I found this gem somewhere and am so glad.Do you want to learn more about Psychic Cold Reading? Go to http://www.PsychicColdReading.com

Science never showed that smoking was safe “Science used to say that smoking was safe, so why should we ‘trust the science’ when it says that vaccines are safe and effective, climate change is real, or GMOs are safe?” This is one of the mos…

Freshpet Chews on Astrology | Skeptical Inquirer A new commercial from gourmet pet food company Freshpet features astrology in its theme. Titled “Kitchen Conversations,” the thirty-second piece begins with ...