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The Skeptic's Dictionary
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skepticism, critical thinking, science, rational thinking, alternative medicine, cryptozoology, ETs and UFOs, frauds, hoaxes, junk science, paranormal, supernatural, pseudoscience, logic, science, philosophy, perception, New Age
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Over 700 definitions and hundreds of articles on the paranormal, the occult, the supernatural, and the pseudoscientific written from a skeptic
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<h2 align="center"><b>From Abracadabra to Zombies</b><span class="small"> - <b>
724 entries</b> | <a href="http://www.skepdic.com/contents.html">View All</a></span></h2>
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<li><a href="http://www.skepdic.com/contents.html#A">a</a></li>
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<h2 align="center"><a href="http://www.skepdic.com/recent.html">See the most recent entries, updates, and reader comments.</a></h2>
<p class="more"> </p>
<p class="more">Sample the Skeptic's Dictionary</p>
<h1>Scientific Skepticism</h1>
<p>The term 'scientific skepticism' may have originated with <a href="http://www.csicop.org/si/show/carl_sagans_life_and_legacy_as_scientist_teacher_and_skeptic"> Carl Sagan</a> (1934-1996), an astronomer who spent many years promoting science and skepticism. Science since Hume's day has proven by its results that the assumptions it makes about the existence of an external world, the reality of causality, and the stability of natural laws are justified and are grounded in more than just our psychological disposition to believe them. The success of science, in part due to advancements in technology over the past century, has cast doubt on the validity of the pessimism of empiricists like John Locke, who despaired that we would ever know <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-neutrino-20100601,0,1778648.story">the intimate details about the constituents of the physical universe</a>.>><a href="http://www.skepdic.com/skepticism.html#9">more</a> </p>
<h3 align="left"><em>sample the Skeptic's Dictionary for Kids</em> </h3>
<h1>control groups</h1>
<p>Many scientists use control groups when testing new medicines. Let's say you want to find out if your creation, the Greatest Ever Medicine or GEM for short, really gets rid of poison oak rash and itch. You might give GEM to six of your friends who have had a bad camping experience and now have severe rashes because of cuddling a little dog who had been playing in some poison oak. How will you know whether GEM works? You might think that if your friends' rashes go away, then GEM did the job. But you might be wrong. Maybe the rashes would have gone away on their own if your friends had done nothing special to treat them.>>
<a href="http://sd4kids.skepdic.com/controlgroups.html">more</a></p>
<h3><em>a blast from the past</em></h3>
<h2>Contrary-to-fact Conditionals & Media Vultures in my Crosshairs</h2>
<p><strong>9 Jan 2011</strong>. (A conditional statement asserts that if an antecedent condition is true, then a consequent condition will also be true. A contrary-to-fact conditional is a conditional statement whose antecedent condition didn't or couldn't happen.<em> If Jared Lee Loughner had taken my philosophy class, he wouldn't have shot all those people</em> is a contrary-to-fact conditional. He didn't take my philosophy class, so we'll never know what he would or wouldn't have done had he taken the class.)>><a href="http://www.skepdic.com/skeptimedia/skeptimedia121.html">more</a></p>
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