Welcome to the Morning Heresy, CFI’s roundup of news and headlines for the reality-based community.

As a series of devastating wildfires continue to roar through the Los Angeles area, CFI West has teamed with Sunday Assembly LA and Atheists United to aid those impacted by the fires. If you have been displaced by the fires, CFI West is open as a day shelter, as well as a drop-off location for much-needed supplies like coats, socks, underwear, toiletries, pet food, diapers, bottled water, and so on  If you’re in need of—or able to offer others—overnight shelter, you’re encouraged to fill out this form on the SALA website.

Free Inquiry editor Ronald Lindsay devotes his “Unprayful Reflections” column this week to “Charlie Hebdo and the Need for Satire.”

No religion, no ideology, no political group should be able to declare itself off limits to satire. Religions—all religions at one time or another—have tried to insulate themselves from criticism, whether by legal means or intimidation. Likewise, with secular ideologies. They do this for the very practical reason that the myths that sustain them cannot withstand scrutiny. Puncturing the myths surrounding religious figures or “beloved” leaders can sometimes require pointed barbs.

We noted on Wednesday that Senator Bill Cassidy, the Republican chair of the committee that oversees HHS, was scheduled to meet with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. A subsequent Politico report said Cassidy offered a “tepid response” after the meeting, while The Hill headline noted “Cassidy doesn’t seem completely on board with RFK Jr.”

Cassidy did not rule out supporting Kennedy, but his less-than enthusiastic comments were a stark contrast to other conservatives who have met with Trump’s pick.

Cassidy is also a doctor, so hopefully he’ll take seriously the open letter signed by more than 15,000 doctors (so far) urging senators to reject Kennedy’s nomination.

“The health and well-being of 336 million Americans depend on leadership at HHS that prioritizes science, evidence-based medicine, and strengthening the integrity of our public health system,” the letter reads. “RFK Jr. is not only unqualified to lead this essential agency — he is actively dangerous. […]

“This appointment is a slap in the face to every health care professional who has spent their lives working to protect patients from preventable illness and death,” the letter says.

Elsewhere, Snopes threw the B.S. flag on Kennedy’s recent efforts to “write himself out of [the] 2019 Samoan measles epidemic.”

Dr. Peter Hotez—who co-authored a great piece with Michael Mann in the latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer—recently spoke with Texas Public Radio “about anti-science activism, antisemitism, and RFK Jr.”

The prospect of having someone who questions the safety and efficacy of vaccines in charge of the department that oversees agencies that research, develop, and approve vaccines is troubling to Hotez.

“My worry is that we’re going to permanently disrupt our whole vaccine ecosystem,” Hotez explained, saying that while the federal government doesn’t make the rules about childhood vaccines, he does think it could have a chilling effect on state legislatures. “I’m worried they’re going to lift all school-based vaccine requirements, and that won’t be good.”

In case you missed it over the New Year’s holiday (which, this op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman suggests, may have been the point), a federal judge has tossed Texas AG Ken Paxton’s suit “accus[ing] Pfizer of misrepresenting the effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine.”

Paxton decided to pander to a tiny base…while stirring up false doubts about matters of public health. The impact isn’t confined to the pandemic. We’re seeing a rise in vaccine hesitancy and distrust of science that will haunt us for much longer than the coronavirus did.

What a shame the damage can’t be undone as easily as Paxton’s discarded lawsuit.

Religion News Service has a good follow-up piece on the prayer House Speaker Mike Johnson incorrectly attributed to Thomas Jefferson, the immediate pushback (including from Congressional Freethought Caucus co-founder Jared Huffman), and why the question matters so much.

Speaking to RNS, Huffman said the prayer was an example of false quotes “curated by Christian nationalists, one of many intended to rewrite history and support their political agenda of institutionalizing Christianity as the official religion and the dominant political force of the United States.”

The prayer, he said, is part of “a series of relentless attacks on church-state separation and, quite honestly, truth.”

Meanwhile, you can add North Dakota to the list of states looking to require the posting of the Ten Commandments in public classrooms.

House Bill 1145 was introduced to the N.D. House.

If passed, it would require the display of the Ten Commandments ‘in each classroom on the campus of each state educational institution under its control and administration,’ along with ‘each classroom and building on school grounds in the school district.’

The bill is set for its first hearing next Tuesday.

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by the author or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.

Welcome to the Morning Heresy, CFI’s thrice-weekly roundup of news and headlines for the reality-based community.

Richard Dawkins wrote an essay for The Spectator, which has since been republished at Free Inquiry, taking on “The Myth of the God-Shaped Hole.”

How patronising, how insulting to imply that, if deprived of a religion, humanity must ignominiously turn to something equally irrational. If I am to profess a faith here, it is a faith in human intelligence strong enough to doubt the existence of a God-shaped hole.

The BBC reports that Nigerian atheist Mubarak Bala is now a free man. Bala had served more then four years in prison on charges of blasphemy, though he “could have been inside for much longer if it was not for an appeals court judge who reduced the initial 24-year sentence last year, describing it as ‘excessive’.”

The Pew Research Center broke down the religious composition of the newly-sworn 119th Congress. While the number of Christians in the new Congress is down, Pew notes:

[A]t 87%, Christians still make up the lion’s share of the Congress, far exceeding the Christian share of all U.S. adults, which stands at 62% after several decades of decline. […]

The new Congress is also more religious than the general population by another, related measure: Nearly three-in-ten Americans (28%) are religiously unaffiliated, meaning they are atheist or agnostic or say their religion is “nothing in particular.” But less than 1% of Congress falls into this category[.]

On Monday, we highlighted the latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer, which was assembled with the guidance of guest editor Bill Nye. In addition to all the must-read material from the new issue, you’ll find a number of great new web exclusive articles at Skeptical Inquirer, as well…

Stuart Vyse digs into “The Telepathy Tapes: A Dangerous Cornucopia of Pseudoscience,” writing “the quality of ‘investigation’ presented here is on par with your average cable television ghost hunter show.”

A partial list of the beliefs given credence in the podcast include telepathy among people with and without profound autism, telepathic thought insertion, psychic viewing through blindfolds, a large community of nonspeaking people with autism who communicate regularly in a kind of telepathic chat room called “The Hill,” psychic precognition, perception of other dimensions, perception of auras, communication among sleeping people via dreaming, communication with the spirits of the dead, heaven (no mention of hell), angels, demons, and God.

West Virginia Skeptics Society founder Daniel Reed shares “The Adventure of the Hurled Stone: My Firsthand Brush with Bigfoot Lore.”

This experience reinforced and taught me a few important lessons. First, it underscored the urgency of investigating an incident or claim promptly. […]

Second, this encounter gave me a deeper understanding of how easy it can be for people to have an experience they do not understand and default to conclusions based on their biases.

In his latest Spanish-language ¡Paparruchas! column, Luis Alfonso Gámez explores the history of “mysterious” objects being seen in the sky, from a runaway balloon in 1881 all the way up through the recent New Jersey drone reports. And Alejandro Borgo of CFI Argentina reports on the third Latin American Meeting of Freethought, which took place last November in Mexico City.

Finally, CSI Chief Investigator Kenny Biddle’s latest “Ghosts in the Machine” video details his visit to “a metaphysical craft show in Buffalo, NY,” where he sat for a reading by “Kayla, a self-proclaimed psychic and animal medium, offering pendulum board & tarot readings.”

I’ll be interested to see how this turns out…

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), one of four physicians in the Senate, is set to meet with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday to discuss the health secretary nominee’s stance against vaccines, the Daily Beast has learned. […]

The senator’s main concern, the source told the Beast, centers on the conspiratorial-minded Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views, which have been widely criticized and disputed by the medical community.

“Vaccinations, he’s wrong on, and so I just look forward to having a good dialogue with him on that,” Cassidy said during his Fox News interview.

(Quick…someone send Senator Cassidy the link to Quackwatch’s RFK Jr. Watch page!)

A new opinion piece from Boston’s WBUR warns “Public trust in science is ebbing — and will have real-world consequences.”

Anti-science attitudes have historically encumbered societal progress in the U.S., often with serious ramifications. The teaching of creationism, which contradicts the established understanding of biological evolution, threatens scientific literacy and erodes the nation’s global competitiveness. Disinformation about vaccine safety sows fear and doubt, resulting in unnecessary deaths due to preventable diseases. Widespread denial of climate science hampers the nation’s development of public policies to curtail carbon emissions and prepare for future climate impacts.

New year, new legislative sessions…and, sadly, a lot of the same old nonsense.

A Tennessee lawmaker is pushing for the Ten Commandments, alongside other historical documents, to be allowed to be displayed in schools.

Rep. Michael Hale (R-Smithville) introduced House Bill 0047 which pushes to allow local boards of education and other governing bodies to decide if their schools should display certain historical documents.

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by the author or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.

Happy new year! Welcome back to the Morning Heresy, CFI’s thrice-weekly roundup of news and headlines for the reality-based community.

Let’s kick off our first column of 2025 with big congratulations to 2023 Richard Dawkins Award winner, CSI Fellow, and new Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Bill Nye. He was one of nineteen luminaries presented with the nation’s top civilian honor at a ceremony last Saturday.

Biden wrote that “Bill Nye has inspired and influenced generations of American students as ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy.'” […]

Biden also shouted out Nye’s current work as the CEO of the Planetary Society and his vocal advocacy for environmental stewardship and space exploration.

As it happens, Nye also served as guest editor for the latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer, which made it’s debut over the holiday break. As guest editor, Nye selected climate change as the issue’s cover feature and wrote an introduction for the special section on the topic.

For me, the fundamental idea I believe we all need to embrace is this: Humankind is in charge now of our whole planet. This is not a gig we auditioned for. Our species has become so influential, so powerful, and frankly so dangerous, that we need to accept responsibility for managing our world. We control the fate of every species here, especially our own.

The issue’s “Clear Thinking About Climate Change” package includes Michael E. Mann and Peter J. Hotez on “A Triple Threat to Humanity: Climate Change, Pandemics, and Anti-Science,” CFI Education Director Bertha Vazquez’s “Misconceptions about Climate Change: An Educator’s Guide,” Armadeo Sarma on “Unmasking the Claims of the Antinuclear Movement,” and John Cook’s “The Cranky Uncle Game: A Way to Logic-Check Misinformation about Climate Change.” There are also a number of subscriber-exclusive features worth checking out, as well!

We’ll dive deeper into the new issue throughout the week, but you can read it all for yourself now…

CFI President and CEO Robyn Blumner was interviewed by Scott Douglas Jacobsen of The Good Men Project and spoke about her history as a lawyer and a journalist, her personal journey into atheism and humanism, and the many ways in which CFI works to promote Enlightenment values around the world.

The entire package of Enlightenment values is the secret sauce to humanity’s progress and happiness. There’s no better way to structure society—based on the evidence of world history—than to promote reason, science, and secularism in a society. I love the Center for Inquiry, the work we do, and the values it represents.

Blumner will also be one of the featured speakers for the Thomas Paine Birthday Celebration on Wednesday, January 29. The free online event is hosted by The Thomas Paine Memorial Association, with the Center for Inquiry and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science proud to be among the co-sponsors. For full details on the event and how to register, click here.

If you missed it last week, Free Inquiry editor Ronald Lindsay provides a recap—and his reply to—the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s decision to remove an article by Jerry Coyne from its website regarding the biological basis for maintaining sex is binary.

How did this ill-advised act of censorship come to pass? My most charitable explanation is that the hyper-partisanship of the past decade or so has resulted in some secular groups automatically adopting positions opposed to anything the religious Right may advocate. So, if those on the religious Right argue that sex is binary, then damn it, we need to oppose that position. But a rational, freethinking person does not decide which claims have sufficient supporting evidence based on who else accepts the claim.

Free Inquiry has also republished the original Coyne essay that kicked-off the controversy in the first place, so readers “can make their own judgment of its merits.”

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, which the magazine is commemorating with a new cartoon contest.  

French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo unveiled a special edition featuring a God-themed cartoon contest on Monday to mark 10 years since a deadly attack on its offices by Islamist gunmen.

The front-page shows a cartoon celebrating the atheist paper’s existence with the caption “Indestructible!” while four inside pages contain the results of the caricature competition to mock God and religious leaders.

CFI’s response at the time of the attack remains as true today as ever:

As publishers of Free Inquiry, the first (and for some time, the only) U.S. publication willing to publish the cartoons of Muhammad that sparked riots in 2005 after they appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, we stand in resolute solidarity with the people of Charlie Hebdo, and all those writers, thinkers, and satirists who know that no idea or individual ought to be immune from criticism, and have the courage to point out the flaws and fallacies of even the most deeply-held beliefs.

One non-CFI-related item before we go today, just so it doesn’t get lost in the high-speed churn of the news cycle.

Shortly after being reelected as House Speaker, Mike Johnson read a prayer that he claimed was from Thomas Jefferson, despite there being no evidence the third president ever said it.

In fact, the quotation has been falsely attributed to Jefferson so often over the years that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has debunked it.

Worth noting, as this sort of willful indifference to facts and ahistorical revisionism about the intent of our Founding Fathers is only likely to get worse as the legislative cycle ramps up.

Like Abraham Lincoln cautioned in his D-Day radio address, “Trust but verify. Unless it’s Mike Johnson—he’s just making things up.”

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by the author or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.

Welcome to the Morning Heresy, CFI’s thrice-weekly roundup of news and headlines for the reality-based community. This will be our last column in 2024, so let me wish all of you a safe and happy new year!

Skeptical Inquirer columnist Nick Tiller unveils his picks for “The Mount Rushmore of Wellness Bullsh*t.”

Who are the four individuals most responsible for shaping the values and perverse incentives of today’s Wild West of wellness? Who deserves a place on the Mount Rushmore of wellness bullsh*t? To borrow from A Christmas Carol, “Rise! And walk with me!” on a journey to visit the ghosts and hosts of wellness past, present, and future.

I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but I’m sure you can guess at least a couple of them without my help…

Horrifyingly, one of the obvious guesses also happens to be the pending nominee to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As such, RFK Jr. is the topic of two more new Skeptical Inquirer pieces. Up first is Jonathan Jarry’s “Kennedy’s Anti-Science Crusade Does Not Belong in the White House.”

If a flat-earther were put in charge of The Planetary Society, there would be agreement between the two parties that the Earth exists but not much else. The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services…is on par with the above lunacy.

Natalia Pasternak describes Kennedy as “the Ecumenical Denier,” promoting anti-science nonsense from all sides of the political spectrum.

Most of the positions advocated by RFK Jr. are not supported by scientific evidence. But many have ideological support on the left or on the right. This might favor or complicate his confirmation by the U.S. Senate. But if he is confirmed, United States is in for very difficult times. As a Brazilian scientist and a microbiologist who was very active during the COVID-19 pandemic, I know firsthand what it means to fight health disinformation that comes from the government.

Elsewhere, Paul Offit is quoted in this NBC News story about the “enormous influence” RFK Jr. could have over childhood vaccination programs as health secretary.

“He could make vaccines more difficult to get paid for,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “He could make them less available.”

Offit and other experts also said they’re concerned about Kennedy’s influence over new vaccine approvals and whether he could slow the approval process down.

Make sure to bookmark Quackwatch’s new “RFK Jr. Watch” resource page to keep up on the torrent of Kennedy-related news and opinion that’s sure to keep coming—and share it far and wide!

Congratulations to CSI Fellow Joe Schwarcz of the McGill Office for Science and Society; on Wednesday, Schwarz was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. And thanks to The Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT) for their public commendation of Stuart Vyse and his recent Skeptical Inquirer feature, “A Life Shattered by Pseudoscience.”

We’ve written at length about the underrepresentation of “Nones” in American politics. In a recent New York Times opinion piece Jessica Grose argues that, rather than fighting for—and usually losing, handily—the “white Christian” voting bloc, Democrats should focus on a cohort that makes up roughly a third of the U.S. population.

I often hear people talk about how Democrats can win back some white Christian support, as if that should be the party’s priority in the coming years.

But with Democrats searching for their future, they’d be foolish to ignore a large and growing religious group that is already in their corner: the Nones.

Religion News Service summarizes some of the key takeaways from the Pew Research Center’s latest report on government restrictions on religion around the world.

[The report] named Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Iraq as the countries where both government restrictions and social hostility most limit the ability of religious minorities to practice their faith.

Governmental attacks and social hostility toward various religions usually “go hand in hand,” said the report, the 15th annual edition of a report that tracks the evolution of governments restrictions on religion. […]

Close behind the four countries that scored very high on both scales were India, Israel and Nigeria.

We don’t hear conspiracy theorists do the full Jerry-Orbach-at-the-end-of-Dirty Dancing admission nearly often enough, so take a moment to enjoy this video of Flat Earther Jaren Campanella, live in Antarctica, finally acknowledging some basic facts about the universe. But what brought him to Antarctica in the first place? News Radio KFBK explains:

The audacious adventure, dubbed ‘The Final Experiment’…saw a select group of Flat Earthers and skeptics travel to Antarctica to observe the sun. If it remained in the sky for 24 hours, this would confirm that the planet is a globe, which would contradict the conspiracy theory as it posits that the sun must set behind ice walls surrounding the Flat Earth.

As 2025 approaches (and the above stories all demonstrate), the stakes for science, reason, and secular values have never been higher. The Center for Inquiry is on the front lines of the fight to defend evidence-based reasoning and humanist principles, and we cannot do it without your support. Right now, you can double the impact of your donation: every gift made to CFI this December will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $250,000, doubling our ability to combat misinformation and defend rational thought as we step into the new year.

Thank you for standing with us to champion a more rational and compassionate world!

Programming Note: The Morning Heresy will be on hiatus from December 23 – January 3. We’ll resume our thrice-weekly schedule on Monday, January 6. Have a safe and happy new year!

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by the author or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.

Welcome to the Morning Heresy, CFI’s thrice-weekly roundup of news and headlines for the reality-based community.

Benjamin Radford took to the CFI blog on Monday for a look at the “Return of the ‘Mysterious’ Drones and the Twilight of Ambiguity,” reminding readers that the current breathless hype cycle is very much like ones we’ve seen before.

It’s easy to forget in an era of attenuating attention spans and a continual churn of news, but these drone scares are nothing new. Almost exactly five years ago, as 2019 came to a close, news reports spread about nearly two dozen “mysterious” drones sighted in the night skies over rural Colorado and Nebraska.

Radford includes reference to a video by frequent Skeptical Inquirer contributor and CSI Fellow Mick West called “My Take on the Drone Situation,” which is worth taking a few minutes to watch in full. West has also been featured in a lot of the recent coverage from outlets including the New York Times and Forbes.

“People’s brains aren’t very good at judging how big things are in the night sky,” said Mick West, a science writer who has focused on debunking conspiracy theories. “You see something in the sky, you have heard stories about it being drones, so you think maybe that is a drone.”

Bright landing lights, seen at a distance, can make a plane appear to transform into something more interesting, and potentially threatening, Mr. West said. “A majority of the videos are just big planes,” he added.

Still, with reports of “sightings” spreading to other states and the conspiracy-mongers working overtime, the FAA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Defense issued a joint statement on Tuesday saying:

Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones. We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast.  

You’ll find three new web-exclusive pieces right now at Skeptical Inquirer: Dr. Timur Sevincer of The Forecasting Collaborative reports “Annual psychic forecasts fail to prove the existence of psychic powers once again;” with demand for exorcisms on the rise (no, really), Autumn Sword and Kenny Biddle take on “Demonic Dilletantes, the Dangers of Detectives-Turned-Demonologists;” and Quackwatch’s William London explains why “Dr. David Weldon Is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Choice for CDC Director.”

Weldon has much to explain to be worthy of confirmation by a conscientious U.S. Senate that appreciates how CDC protects population health. I’m not sure there are enough senators who are up to the task of evaluating Weldon’s qualifications rationally.

The Morning Heresy will be on-hiatus over the next two weeks, but Quackwatch never sleeps. Click here to subscribe and have the Consumer Health Digest newsletter delivered FREE to your email each week.  

If you’re doing any end-of-year gift shopping, a reminder to check out the CFI Store. You can shop from an extensive collection of great books, apparel, and CFI-branded accessories. In addition, now through December 31 you’ll save 10% off your entire purchase (before shipping) when you use the coupon code Goodbye2024.

UPenn professor Anthea Butler has an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer warning “Trump’s religious supporters not only see him as a leader, but as God’s man. That should give us all pause.”

Trump now has a divine mandate after this election, in the minds of his supporters, and that will bring havoc to the separation of church and state. There will be no separation. Trump supporters like it that way. […]

It is because they believe in Dominionism, the extra-biblical teaching that Christians should be in every level of authority and power, in government, education, entertainment, and other public endeavors. It privileges Christianity over — and against — other religious groups.

From the “better late than never (I guess)” files, Science reports the “Infamous paper that popularized unproven COVID-19 treatment [was] finally retracted.”

A 2020 paper that sparked widespread enthusiasm for hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment was retracted today, following years of campaigning by scientists who alleged the research contained major scientific flaws and may have breached ethics regulations. The paper was pulled because of ethical concerns and methodological problems, according to a retraction notice.

USA Today opinion writer Rex Huppke satirically offers “A letter from polio in support of RFK Jr., co-signed by natural selection.”

If you confirm Mr. Kennedy and he does away with vaccines and vaccine requirements, we in the polio community and others in the broader communicable disease cluster pledge we will never enter your bodies and begin replicating in your cells with the intent to cause harm. […]

We promise.

As 2025 approaches (and the above stories all demonstrate), the stakes for science, reason, and secular values have never been higher. The Center for Inquiry is on the front lines of the fight to defend evidence-based reasoning and humanist principles, and we cannot do it without your support. Right now, you can double the impact of your donation: every gift made to CFI this December will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $250,000, doubling our ability to combat misinformation and defend rational thought as we step into the new year.

Thank you for standing with us to champion a more rational and compassionate world!

Programming Note: The Morning Heresy will be on hiatus from December 23 – January 3. We’ll resume our thrice-weekly schedule on Monday, January 6. Have a safe and happy new year!

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by the author or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.

Welcome to the Morning Heresy, CFI’s thrice-weekly roundup of news and headlines for the reality-based community.

A reminder for Michigan residents, CFI’s Office of Public Policy (OPP) is urging you to contact your state representatives and tell them to support SB 1044, a Secular Celebrants bill currently pending before the House.

SB 1044 passed in the Michigan Senate on December 5, and it is currently before the House of Representatives. CFI’s Office of Public Policy will be submitting written testimony in support of this legislation to the House shortly. In the meantime, we call on our supporters in Michigan to lend their voices to this cause.

Stuart Vyse’s “Fear of Flying and the Search for Gate 13” looks at the many airports across the U.S. that, in a nod to the superstitions of some travelers, don’t have a numbered Gate 13.

The symptoms of triskaidekaphobia—a phony diagnosis probably invented by a journalist—while not as common as in tall buildings, are often detected in airports. The highest gate number of the single terminal of my home airport, T. F. Green (PVD) in Providence, Rhode Island, is 22, but because there is no Gate 13, the number is something of a lie. Many other airports show similar evidence of innumeracy.

Don’t miss the recap of one of CFI Investigations Group’s latest Paranormal Challenge tests, the “South Carolina Telepathic Transmitter.”

Leon’s application stated that his ability is “Mind reading and ESP abilities”. […]

Because of the numerous variations that are possible in telepathy claims, the CFIIG needed to arrive at a direction of attempted telepathic communication and agree on exactly what information is to be communicated. After some back-and-forth with Leon, Charles was able to reach an agreement that Leon would act as a “transmitter”, with cards drawn from a standard 52-card deck that he (Leon) would attempt to transmit to a receiver.

Jim Underdown and the CFIIG also get a shout-out in this article from the McGill Office for Science and Society about The Telepathy Tapes, a new podcast series that sounds like quite an excruciating ride.

The Telepathy Tapes follows a reporter’s voyage from paper-thin skepticism to absolute credulity, and it becomes a cautionary tale for journalists who choose to investigate extraordinary claims. They may see themselves as skeptics but the urge to believe is hard to resist.

We mentioned previously that a group of more than 75 Nobel laureates had written an open letter opposing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s nomination to be head of HHS. The New York Times has published the full text of that letter.

After it was reported last week that Kennedy’s lawyer had petitioned the FDA in 2022 to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, Senator Mitch McConnell—a polio survivor himself—warned Kennedy (indirectly, of course) “efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed – they’re dangerous.”

“Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” he added, without naming Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic who is President-elect Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. […]

The GOP leader was joined by his Democratic counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who demanded that RFK Jr. make his position on the polio vaccine clear.

A reminder to check out (and bookmark) Quackwatch’s new “RFK, Jr. Watch” resource page for a comprehensive look at Kennedy’s long anti-science history and the latest stories relating to his nomination.

The Supreme Court announced Friday it would take up a Wisconsin case that could potentially extend religious privilege even further under state and federal law. The Court will decide “whether religious affiliated entities like Catholic Charities should be exempt from state unemployment taxes.”

Wisconsin’s highest court sided with the state in March, ruling that because Catholic Charities didn’t proselytize or participate in traditional religious activities, it didn’t qualify for the religious exemption from the taxes.

In an interview with ABC News, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas addressed the recent reports of mysterious drones in the skies over New Jersey.

“Some of those drone sightings are, in fact, drones. Some are manned aircraft that are commonly mistaken for drones,” Mayorkas added. “But there’s no question that drones are being sighted.” […]

Mayorkas cited the 2023 change of a Federal Aviation Administration rule that allows drones to fly at night as to why there might be an uptick in sightings.

Of course, the conspiracy theorists have their own ideas about what’s happening…but, really, when do they not?

As 2025 approaches (and the above stories all demonstrate), the stakes for science, reason, and secular values have never been higher. The Center for Inquiry is on the front lines of the fight to defend evidence-based reasoning and humanist principles, and we cannot do it without your support. Right now, you can double the impact of your donation: every gift made to CFI this December will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $250,000, doubling our ability to combat misinformation and defend rational thought as we step into the new year.

Thank you for standing with us to champion a more rational and compassionate world!

Programming Note: The Morning Heresy will be on hiatus from December 23 – January 3. We’ll resume our thrice-weekly schedule on Monday, January 6. Have a safe and happy new year!

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by the author or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.

Ahoy-hoy! Welcome to your Friday Morning Heresy, CFI’s roundup of news and headlines for the reality-based community.

CFI’s Office of Public Policy (OPP) is calling on Michigan residents to take action and urge their state representatives to support a Secular Celebrants bill currently pending before the state House.

The Michigan bill, SB 1044, would amend state law to allow a “civil celebrant” to solemnize a marriage. A civil celebrant is defined under the bill as anyone who is at least eighteen years old and who “works in accordance with the wishes of the client couple.” The bill is thus simple and open-ended in allowing marrying couples to choose the person who will most meaningfully perform their wedding ceremony.

Free Inquiry editor Ronald Lindsay’s new “Unprayerful Reflections” column takes on the tiresome late-December embrace of “misguided efforts to offer ‘scientific’ explanations of  the Christmas star.”

Stop. Just stop this nonsense, this prostitution of science. The story of the wise men and the Christmas star is transparently an attempt by the gospel writer to enhance the prestige and significance of Jesus. […]

There is no more point to providing a scientific explanation for the stories of the Bible than there is to providing a scientific explanation of Greek myths.

You’ll find several other new items at Free Inquiry, including a trio of politically-minded pieces and Ed Buckner’s review of Dan Barker’s new book, Contraduction.

As those of us who knew and loved Paul Kurtz know well, inventing a new word, one that will stick and survive, that will endure, is tricky. But I think Barker has pulled it off. His word, contraduction, joins induction, deduction, and abduction as terms about reasoning and logic—terms defining the way a logical sequence gets to a conclusion (or fails to).

The political observations include Mark Kolsen’s “How a Third (Fourth or Fifth) Party Can Be Fostered in the United States,” Gary Whittenberger on “Secession,” and Maxim Nikiforov’s “Is Secular Humanism Today a Conservatism?”

It is a sign of the times that today Thomas Paine can in many regards be identified more with William Buckley than the American Civil Liberties Union, and that Richard Dawkins has been excommunicated from the church of progressive so-called “humanism.” What is it that ultimately today is so in danger of causing one to dare adopt (dear god!), the name “conservative” to conserve?

Our team remains hard at work populating Quackwatch’s new “RFK, Jr. Watch” resource page, which collects news and opinion pieces highlighting why Robert F. Kennedy is “the worst possible choice”  to run America’s public health infrastructure. At the same time, new pieces keep emerging, including this Medpage Today feature on “How Measles, Whooping Cough, and Worse Could Roar Back on RFK Jr.’s Watch” (which quotes CSI Fellow Paul Offit).

“The notion that he’d even be considered for that position makes people think he knows what he’s talking about,” Offit said. “He appeals to lessened trust, the idea that ‘There are things you don’t see, data they don’t present, that I’m going to find out so you can really make an informed decision.'”

The New York Times profiles attorney Aaron Siri, a close ally of Kennedy’s (and active anti-vaccine litigator).

The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death. […]

Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.

In the UK, the government has announced an indefinite ban on puberty blockers for people under the age of 18.

Britain’s health secretary, Wes Streeting, announced the decision Wednesday. He cited guidance from an independent panel that suggested prescribing puberty blockers to young people carries an “unacceptable risk” and recommended indefinite restrictions “while work is done to ensure the safety” of those treatments.

“Children’s healthcare must always be evidence-led,” Streeting said in a statement.

The decision extends a temporary halt put in place in March, following the release of the Cass Review, “a landmark review of the country’s approach to gender identity in health care.”  

The New York Times Magazine has a…”fawning” is too strong a word, but I feel like “unsettlingly sympathetic” is an accurate description…new profile of Oklahoma public schools boss Ryan Walters and his ongoing efforts to demolish the separation of church and state (schools).

Now that he has control over Oklahoma’s schools, Walters has made it a goal to shrink the state’s management of education. An atrophied Department of Education makes it much easier to support religious, especially church-run, schooling as a way to supply needed services.

Next week the Kern County (California) Board of Education will hear a proposal to post the Ten Commandments in school classrooms, much like the statewide measure passed earlier this year in Louisiana.

As 2025 approaches (and the above stories all demonstrate), the stakes for science, reason, and secular values have never been higher. The Center for Inquiry is on the front lines of the fight to defend evidence-based reasoning and humanist principles, and we cannot do it without your support. Right now, you can double the impact of your donation: every gift made to CFI this December will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $250,000, doubling our ability to combat misinformation and defend rational thought as we step into the new year.

Thank you for standing with us to champion a more rational and compassionate world!

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by the author or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.

Welcome to the midweek edition of the Morning Heresy, CFI’s roundup of news and headlines for the reality-based community.

With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. set to visit Washington next week in an effort to shore up support for his (objectively terrible) nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services, it seems like a good time to remind everyone to contact their Senators and tell them you oppose that nomination.

If your Senator’s office (or anyone else) asks you why Kennedy is “wholly unqualified and manifestly unfit to lead America’s top public health agency,” you can point them to this new Quackwatch page dedicated to covering the many, many reasons science advocates and health professionals oppose his nomination. Make sure to bookmark that “RFK Jr. Watch” page, as I’m sure it will be updated frequently in the coming weeks.

Related:

• More than 75 Nobel laureates urge Senate to reject RFK Jr. (The Hill)

Speaking of Quackwatch, this week’s edition of the Consumer Health Digest newsletter includes:

• “Slapping therapy” promoter gets 15-year sentence for manslaughter by gross negligence.
• Seller of raw milk contaminated with bird flu virus says RFK, Jr., recruited him for FDA position.
• TINA blasts BlueChew marketing.
• Physiologist scrutinizes the health-benefits evidence of saunas.
• FDA warns consumers about herbal products adulterated with poisonous yellow oleander.

As 2025 approaches, the stakes for science, reason, and secular values have never been higher. The Center for Inquiry is on the front lines of the fight to defend evidence-based reasoning and humanist principles, and we cannot do it without your support. Right now, you can double the impact of your donation: every gift made to CFI this December will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $250,000, doubling our ability to combat misinformation and defend rational thought as we step into the new year.

Thank you for standing with us to champion a more rational and compassionate world!

The Washington Free Beacon reports that the Biden administration (which, you’ll recall, came in to office promising to “follow the science” when making policy) ordered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “to expand its use of ‘Indigenous Knowledge’ on Monday, as part of a last-minute push in the federal government to embrace what scientists call pseudoscience.”

“Indigenous Knowledge” is a discredited belief system posting that native-born peoples possess an innate understanding of how the universe works. While scientists have referred to its ideas as “dangerous” and a rejection of the scientific method, those criticisms have not stopped the Biden administration from ordering the federal government to consider “Indigenous Knowledge” when implementing rules and regulations.

The Indiana Supreme Court has decided to not get involved—yet—in a case regarding religious exemptions to the state’s abortion ban. The judges say they want to wait for a determination from the trial court before agreeing to hear this case.

Molter said he expects the Indiana Supreme Court may “eventually need to decide important questions.” In this case, he believes it is more prudent for the court to review the case after a final judgment rather than in response to a preliminary injunction. This allows a trial court to decide what final relief, if any, is granted to the parties before the Supreme Court weighs in.

Related:

• 9th Circuit Hears Oral Arguments on Whether EMTALA Pre-empts State Abortion Ban (Religion Clause)

Data from the James Webb Space Telescope confirms that the universe is expanding faster than expected—and scientists aren’t sure why.

“This is the largest sample of Webb Telescope data – its first two years in space – and it confirms the puzzling finding from the Hubble Space Telescope that we have been wrestling with for a decade – the universe is now expanding faster than our best theories can explain,” said astrophysicist Adam Riess[.]

“Yes, it appears there is something missing in our understanding of the universe,” added Riess, a 2011 Nobel laureate in physics for the co-discovery of the universe’s accelerating expansion. “Our understanding of the universe contains a lot of ignorance about two elements – dark matter and dark energy – and these make up 96% of the universe, so this is no small matter.”

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by the author or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.

Welcome to the Morning Heresy, CFI’s thrice-weekly roundup of news and headlines for the reality-based community.

The New York Times reported over the weekend: “Trump Suggests Kennedy Will Examine Debunked Link Between Vaccines and Autism.” This, of course, despite the fact (like it says right there in the headline), the question has been thoroughly and repeatedly examined and no such link exists.

“I mean, something is going on,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s vaccines. Maybe it’s chlorine in the water, right? You know, people are looking at a lot of different things.” […]

Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that there is no link, including a 2012 vaccine safety review by the Institute of Medicine, now known as the National Academy of Medicine, that stated, “the M.M.R. vaccine is not associated with autism.” A national study in Denmark in 2019 came to the same conclusion. Yet as recently as August, in an interview with the libertarian commentator John Stossel, Mr. Kennedy asserted, “autism is caused by vaccines.”

Slate’s Luke Winkie took the test that Kennedy is reportedly using to screen potential employees at HHS. “Among other things,” he writes, “Kennedy would like to know if you’ve ever experienced clairvoyance.”

The whole assessment, which was first reported by Puck and was confirmed to be real by the Trump transition team, is available for anyone to take. Unlike more concrete examinations of one’s fitness to serve in a public health regime—like, for instance, any tangible background in medicine or health policy—the test reveals itself to be a free-associative chimera of IQ-ish logic puzzles and the sort of discredited Meyers-Briggs queries you used to take in Computer Lab. It would be a hilarious prank if its intentions weren’t seemingly dead serious.

Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture “announced that it would begin a nationwide testing program for the presence of the H5N1 flu virus, also known as the bird flu.”

So far, the human H5N1 cases have generally been mild. But the worry is that prolonged circulation in other mammals may allow the virus to evolve in ways that will put humans at greater risk of infections or enable the infection to cause more severe symptoms. So, the ultimate goal of the USDA is to eliminate cattle as a reservoir.

Tomorrow is World Human Rights Day, and CFI Canada will be hosting its annual Protecting Blesphemers panel discussion at 4pm EST. One of the panelists is  Gul Ahmad Zargar, “an Afghan atheist activist who bravely fought for his freedom and found safety through the Secular Rescue program by the Center for Inquiry (CFI) USA.”

Benjamin Radford’s new “Misleading Meme Monday” feature looks at Mercator Myths.

As a critical thinking and media literacy educator, I have a particular interest in visual misrepresentations; charts, graphs, and maps that are presented as self-evidently authoritative but are inaccurate—or, more insidiously, technically accurate but misleading.

In her latest “Letter to America” column for Skeptical Inquirer, Wendy Grossman writes the “outward spread of American divisions over science and fact” has now reached Britain’s Royal Society.

On November 25, the neuropsychologist Dorothy V M Bishop published a blog post announcing she had resigned from the Royal Society in protest against the continued membership of Elon Musk, who was made a Foreign Fellow in 2018. The story has since been picked up by The Guardian and is rapidly spreading through the scientific press.

If you’re doing some gift shopping (or just looking to treat yourself to something), make sure to check out the extensive collection of great books, apparel, and CFI-branded accessories in the CFI Online Store. You can save 10% off your entire purchase (before shipping) from now through December 31; just make sure to use the coupon code Goodbye2024 at checkout.

The Satanic Temple is getting in on the action now that Ohio law allows “release time” for students to receive off-campus religious instruction during the school day.

Now, a new program called HAIL will join the group of religious instruction. It’s starting at Edgewood Elementary School this month.

Betty Elswick, an organizer of the program and a parent, said the program is not about Satan, despite the program being from the Satanic Temple. She says it’s about empathy and teaching kids to be a part of the community. […]

“We will be focused on community action. So volunteering, art, conversations about what it means to be a member of the community.”

The Satanic Temple has also installed its State House holiday display in New Hampshire, with an assist from State Representative Ellen Read.

“Everything has the potential to offend, even the nearby nativity scene. Not only is over a third of the state not religious, never mind Christian, but I can imagine those who have been judged, harmed, or abused by the Christian church feeling offended by the nativity scene displayed on public grounds. And yet the nativity scene has stood perennially, unmolested, for years,” Read said in a statement provided to NH Journal.

23-year-old Yongxian Huang is due in court today, charged with an elaborate scam that prosecutors say yielded at least $6.6 million in gold. The targets were elderly folks including one couple who were convinced they needed to “pull $263,000 from their bank account, convert it to gold bars and hand the bars over for safekeeping, or the funds would go to hackers supplying missiles to Russia.”

Custer said that scams appear to be increasing nationwide. Based on reported losses to the bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, victims lost about $11.5 million a month this year, about double the rate over the previous six months. And that’s probably only a fraction of the losses because they don’t account for gold-bar scams reported to other agencies or local police departments.

Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by the author or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.