Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Well, the benefits of woo may not be the paper’s editorial stand, but it sure appears a lot in the columns (viz., Tish Harrison Warren) and in the op-ed. This op-ed had the pride of place on the digital NYT front page today—the upper right-hand corner. It’s a long piece, too: over 1800 It’s by … Continue reading NYT touts astrology AGAIN
Lately the New York Times went soft on dowsing, and of course they’ve been perpetually soft on astrology. Nobody seems to bring up the paper’s penchant for woo when they’re praising it for “fact-based journalism.” Even in the op-eds or “personal” stories—stories that, like today’s—give credence to woo, the Times fails to call attention to … Continue reading Unbelievable woo from the NYT: the touting of reincarnation (as well as astrology and oracle cards) by an editor
“It is wrong, everywhere and for every one, to believe anything on insufficient evidence”. —W.K. Clifford, The Ethics of Belief If a newspaper has an astrology column, write it off. Unsubscribe. It may be justified as a form of amusement, but many people accept astrology, and such a justification feeds into the acceptance of woo … Continue reading NYT goes soft on astrology
The other day I wrote about a Māori-themed school on New Zealand’s North Island whose curriculum was run by the phases of the moon—a school that seemed deeply steeped in astrology, and thus unlikely to provide anything more than a parochial and ethnic education to a class that was only 9% Māori, but whose educational … Continue reading The Guardian touts Māori ways of knowing as ways of science
As I started to write this post, my stomach literally became queasy, for it makes me unhappy to not only see woo like astrology purveyed to the public (there’s no evidence that it works, at least as predicting your personality or future), but also see it purveyed in a magazine like The Nation. Now I … Continue reading The Nation touts astrology
Several readers sent me this story from CNN.com about astrology (click on screenshot below). And like me, when they saw it they assumed it was part of the regular CNN news feed, and so were appalled. One reader wrote this: Woke up this morning to see this story on CNN.com. One of the best examples … Continue reading CNN touts astrology to sell stuff: the “Mercury retrograde” effect
In the past couple of days we’ve seen the Guardian tout astrology twice, and now the Globe and Mail. What I’d forgotten is that the New York Times has also been doing it occasionally—certainly more often than the Paper of Record should. For evidence, see Greg Mayer’s survey last year of the NYT’s treatment of … Continue reading Astrology at the New York Times
Well, well, well. . . here we have a big article from the New York Times that touts ghosts, implicitly assumes that they exist and haunt houses, and tells readers how to live with them. Save for one barely noticeable caveat about naturalistic explanations for one “ghostly” phenomenon, you will find no doubt about ghosts, … Continue reading New York Times touts ghosts
