The Gadfly

SKEPTICS SOCIETY & SKEPTIC MAGAZINE

Promoting Science and Critical Thinking

The SkepDoc

Premature Ejaculation in the News: How Headlines Influence Our Thinking

CONTRIBUTORS

Ástor Alexander is a figurative illustrator and painter.

Is the Earth Flat?

Flat Earthers Are Back—You Know the Earth Is Round, But How do You Best Make the Argument?

Conspiracy Theorists, and the Harm They Do

THE MORE ONE EXPLORES HISTORY, THE MORE YOU can see

The Last One Forgotten

Bruce Perkins and Another Terrible Tragedy of the Recovered Memory Movement

The Rooney Rule

The Value of Diversity in Birds, Bees, and People

Humbling Humanity

Reality Need Not Diminish Our Concept of Our Place In the Cosmos

Deterrence and Its Discontents

Now That Nuclear War Seems to Be Getting More Likely Again, It’s Time to Turn a Skeptical Eye on Deterrence

Skeptical of the Multiverse

SPECULATIONS AND THEORIES ABOUT THE EXISTENCE of other

Persistence of Belief in a Purposeful Universe

OVER THE LAST FEW CENTURIES RELIGION HAS BEEN slowly

Imagining No Heaven

The Rise of the Nones and the Decline of Religion

Never Doubting God

What Surveys on Belief in God’s Existence Reveal

Honor, Dignity, Victim

A review of The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars by Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning.

Reason (and Science) for Hope

A review of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker.

Realizing Rawls’ Just Society

A Review of It’s Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear by Gregg Easterbrook.

Unsubstantiated

A new Netflix documentary purporting to provide proof of alien visitation fails to deliver: A review of the film Unacknowledged

THE PERPETUAL QUEST FOR PERPETUAL MOTION

Imagine two impossible, magical machines: the first runs forever, and the second, through some fantastic process, generates more energy than it consumes…