Saturday, December 20, 2014

Episode 0016: Immunised hypothesis

In this episode Ben and I discuss Immunised Hypotheses: http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2013/01/immunised-hypothesis.html

Clips from:


Also discussed, Kiai Master vs MMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEDaCIDvj6I


Direct download: https://archive.org/download/HH101/HH101e0016.mp3

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Saturday, December 6, 2014

Episode 0015: Gibberish (original episode)

This podcast is an original episode on Gibberish: http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2012/12/gibberish.html

One example we use is from Yes Prime Minister - The Smoke Screen.

The other examples are from Richard Dawkins' Tanner Lectures. (The gibberish comes in the form of questions asked to Richard Dawkins.)
  • Richard Dawkins - The Religion of Science - Part 2 - at about 31 minutes into the audio if you want to hear the original.
  • Richard Dawkins - The Science of Religion - Part 2 - at about 11 minutes.


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Saturday, November 22, 2014

Episode 0014: Bad faith

Bad faith

Dr Oz

Dr Oz was forced to face a senate hearing into dietary supplements. Audio from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and somewhere else on YouTube:

Defending Jo Hockey (sort of, not really)


A careful and better analysis is looking at fuel expense as a proportion of income. 

And in a June 2014 submission to the Senate Economics Committee inquiry into the proposed excise rise, the Australian Automobile Association stated that: "Research indicates that the people who use their cars most frequently are in the outer metropolitan areas and  rural and regional areas where there are lower incomes, less jobs, and little or no access to public transport"

To back this the treasurer produced Treasury figures showing that absolute spending on petrol is higher in high-income households, and showing that high-income households tend to have more cars.

The same figures, expressed as a percentage of income, which is the obvious and accepted way of measuring the relative impact of a household cost, shows that households in the highest quintile spent 1.37% of their income on petrol and those in the lowest quintile spent 4.54%. In other words petrol eats up more than three times as much of an average poor household’s income than a rich household’s, because the rich household has 11 times the income from which to pay its petrol bill. So whatever its other merits, an increase in petrol excise will have a bigger impact on the poor household’s budget than the rich household’s, not the other way around. Which was already pretty obvious, really.

Chiropractors and Simon Singh: 


Other mentions

Oatmeal and Ted Cruz on Net Neutrality
http://theoatmeal.com/blog/net_neutrality

Rumsfeld
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns


Direct download


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Saturday, November 8, 2014

Episode 0013: Non sequitur (original episode)

This is an original episode on non-sequiturs

Direct download: https://archive.org/download/HH101/HH101e0013.mp3

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Saturday, October 25, 2014

Episode 0012: False dichotomy and false dilemma (original episode)

This is a combination of two original episodes. False dichotomy and dilemma, and then some feedback.

These are the three examples we specifically speak about on the podcast:

Direct download of the MP3 here: https://archive.org/download/HH101/HH101e0012.mp3

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Saturday, October 11, 2014

Episode 0011: Feedback

Not a full episode. A response to feedback as a test for recording via google hangouts on air.

Back with a full episode next week.

Direct download: https://archive.org/download/HH101/HH101e0011.mp3
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Saturday, September 27, 2014

Episode 0010: The naturalistic fallacy

In this episode we look a the naturalistic fallacy, both the “is-ought” problem and the appeal to nature. Direct link: https://archive.org/download/HH101/HH101e0010.mp3

Section 1: Reading from the book

Section 2: Appeal to nature

The “Food Babe”
Wikipedia entry:
Vani Hari, also known on her blog as the Food Babe, is an American blogger, known for her criticism of the food industry. She has gathered over 350,000 signatures via petitions pressuring food companies to remove ingredients from their products or change their production processes.[2][3] Companies including Kraft, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, and Subway, have changed or reconsidered ingredients in their products as a result of her campaigns.[4][5] Her work has in turn been criticized as pseudoscience.[2][6][7]
Source of audio clips from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHjm8lbgc3I


All natural Banana.JPG
Some excellent blog posts responding to the Food Babe’s scientific illiteracy:


Hari says she doesn’t need scientific degrees to be intellectually honest and know how to research. As a teenager, she was a nationally-ranked debater, who spent summers in the Dartmouth College library researching topics, she says.

Section 3: The “Is-Ought” problem

From “Creation Today” If evolution is true:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv0UmnWXqQY



Ken Buck: being gay "a choice," birth an "influence" like "alcoholism"
From “Meet the press” 10/17/2010.
Kenneth R. "Ken" Buck is the District Attorney for Weld County, Colorado, and is a candidate for the 4th District U.S. Congressional seat in Colorado.


Feedback, ideas, suggestions or comments: theo.clark@skepticsfieldguide.net or @theojclark on twitter.

___________________________
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Saturday, September 13, 2014

Episode 0009: Moving the goalposts and red herring (original episode)

This is an episode from the original run of the podcast. It looks at Moving the goalposts and Red herrings.

Direct download: https://archive.org/download/HH101/HH101e0009.mp3
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Saturday, August 30, 2014

Episode 0008: Misuse of statistics, and misunderstanding of randomness and probability

Misuse of statistics

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Clip from original episode

A bit from the classic British show, Yes Prime Minister.
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Apple WWDC keynote 


Apple CEO Tim Cook at this year’s World Wide Developers Conference Keynote. He points out that Apple has an install base of 80 Million Macs.

Based on NetMarketShare data, as of May 2014, Windows 8 can be found on about 14 percent of all PCs currently running Windows. But with an overall market share of about 1.5 billion, Windows PCs represent nearly 91 percent of all computers in use worldwide. In simple terms, that means that Windows 8, widely considered a “failure” by critics and competitors, is in use on about 210 million PCs worldwide. That’s more than 5 times the install base of Mavericks, and more than 2.5 times the install base of every Mac currently in use. (Source: http://www.tekrevue.com/windows-8-outpaces-os-x-mavericks/)

This also ignores other points of difference. Windows 8 is a major update that pretty much people only get with new machines and have to pay for. Maveriicks is a minor free upgrade by comparison.

Full keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w87fOAG8fjk

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Andrew Bolt and climate contrarians 

Analysis of this factoid:


Original Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NDfwkr8hig
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Misunderstanding of probability

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Sally Clark wrongful conviction 

Background - Wikipedia on Sally Clark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark
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Evolution and spontaneous beginning of life

From URCall.org, a community of Christians sharing their ideas about the relationship between faith and science.

Original Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-0AksTzfx0

Fred Hoyle's junkyard tornado: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkyard_tornado
_________________


Book I’m part of the way through reading: How to not be wrong: http://www.jordanellenberg.com/how-not-to-be-wrong/

Direct download of the episode: https://archive.org/download/HH101/HH101e0008.mp3
_________________


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Saturday, August 16, 2014

Episode 0007: Misuse of Information (Original Episode)

This is an original episode, however I have cut some of it out to add to the next episode.

This episode is going to focus on the misuse of science information.

The next episode will be on the misuse and misunderstanding of statistics. It will be a new one with Ben, but include some of the original episode on misuse of information - about statistics.

Direct download of the episode: https://archive.org/download/HH101/HH101e0007.mp3

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Saturday, August 2, 2014

Episode 0006: Brain gym and the argument from imagination

As with the previous episode, this is partially based on my presentation at Brisbane SkeptiCamp 2014

Clips and information from this episode can be found here: http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2011/11/three-ways-of-examining-brain-or-any_26.html

A focus of this podcast was on the argument from imagination.

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Saturday, July 19, 2014

Episode 0005: Factoid propagation - brain claims

This episode is partially based on my presentation at Brisbane SkeptiCamp 2014

Clips and information from this episode can be found here:


Direct download of the episode: https://archive.org/download/HH101/HH101e0005.mp3

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Saturday, July 5, 2014

Episode 0004: False Analogy (Original Episode with a new bit)

This episode looks false analogy.

This is an episode from the original run of the podcast. It also includes a newly recorded part looking at the Australian Prime Minister's recent trouble when trying to explain the tough new federal budget cuts using an analogy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMbfdW3HVRE

Direct download of the episode: https://archive.org/download/HH101/HH101e0004.mp3

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Friday, June 20, 2014

Episode 0003: False balance

Show notes

In this episode we look at false balance.

We discussed the Dunning-Kruger effect with some Dunning-Kruger like accuracy (we got the vibe of it right). Check out the original paper here: https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~suh/metacognition.pdf

Clips looked at:


I was interviewed on The Skeptic Zone: http://skepticzone.libsyn.com/the-skeptic-zone-294-8june2014

Penn & Teller’s Bullshit episode on vaccines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLcOz4EKrxg

Some other good commentary about false balance



____________________________________________
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Monday, June 9, 2014

Episode 0002: What is Humbug! (Original Episode)

This was the first episode in the original run of Hunting Humbug 101. In it we (my Father Jef and I) discuss the general idea of fallacies and critical thinking and why we were moved to write a book on fallacies.

Here's the link to the post most of this discussion is based around - Fallacy.

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Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Episode 0001: Homeopathy - appealing to tradition

This episode looks at the fallacy of appealing to tradition. 
  1. Reading from the book: www.skepticsfieldguide.net/p/ebook
  2. NHMRC draft Information Paper: Evidence on the effectiveness of homeopathy for treating health conditions: http://consultations.nhmrc.gov.au/public_consultations/homeopathy_health
  3. Australian Homeopath Anna Lamaro on The Project. Audio courtesy of the Skeptic Zone podcast: http://skepticzone.libsyn.com/webpage/2014/04 
  4. Anna on ABC Breakfast: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-09/ana-lamaro-australian-homeopathic-association-on-news-breakfast/5378632
  5. Greg Hope - President of the Australian Homeopathic Association - on ABC radio: http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2014/s3981552.htm
  6. More of Anna on The Project
  7. The BBC Horizon documentary "BBC Horizon - Homeopathy The Test": http://youtu.be/vcBHKMJDHaU 
  8. Clip to analyse for Episode 3: http://youtu.be/LW7Id4GUzhU
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