This weekend I found myself talking to a small group of teenagers in London, most of them from deprived backgrounds; all were from ethnic minorities. I asked: “How many of you think the US government had a hand in planning 9/11?” They all put up …
The CIA created Facebook and is using it to spy on students. This claim is made by a Facebook group with 776 members worldwide. There are 84 others with similar claims – a combined membership of 7,656. But, says the group’s founder, a US student: …
Does the University of Teesside monitor the rulings of the Advertising Standards Authority? If so, it might be interested in a recent ruling against Health Products for Life (HPFL), a company founded and endorsed by its visiting professor of nutrition, Patrick Holford. HPFL was taken …
Craig Brown reviews Damian Thompson’s Counterknowledge in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday: Was Princess Diana murdered by MI5? Were the Twin Towers brought down by President Bush? Were the Apollo Moon landings actually fabricated in a studio on earth? Did Jesus marry Mary Magdalen and sire …
Here are a few paragraphs from Counterknowledge on Iran, Holocaust denial and a postmodern university professor: History as well as science is under assault from Muslim counterknowledge. In December 2006, the Islamic Republic of Iran organised a conference entitled “A Review of the Holocaust” in …
There used to be a home front poster during World War Two that showed some idiot on the bus jabbering away about their cousin in the navy, and an arrow pointing to the consequences: a sunken ship full of drowning sailors. And they didn’t even …
Today’s Daily Telegraph carries two extracts from Counterknowledge. Here is the link, and here is how the first piece starts… George Bush planned the September 11 attacks. The MMR injection triggers autism in children. The ancient Greeks stole their ideas from Africa. “Creation science” disproves …
Click here to listen to Damian talk about Counterknowledge on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week with Andrew Marr. You can listen to the full programme by visiting the BBC’s website. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Click here to …
Fresh off the heels of promoting counterknowledge themselves, the Daily Telegraph today lambasted celebrities for “promoting fads” (i.e., counterknowledge). Their condemnation followed a report by the charity Sense About Science, who are concerned that “public figures may confuse people with endorsements for products or theories based on poor understanding of …
Steve Fuller, a professor of the sociology of science at Warwick University, has written a postmodern defence of Intelligent Design, entitled Science v. Religion? Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evolution. And here is a thrillingly savage review of it in eSkeptic magazine by Norman …