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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe - Podcast 360 - 6/9/2012
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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, LLC - dedicated to promoting critical thinking, reason, and the public understanding of science through online and other media. The first episode of the SGU podcast went online on May 4th, 2005. It soon became a popular science/skeptical podcast, and remains one of the most popular science podcasts on iTunes.
SGU Podcasting Awards: SGU on XM: You can listen to the SGU on America's Talk XM 166 every Saturday night from 8-9pm Eastern.
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Podcast
360
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June 09, 2012
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This Day in Skepticism - Ray Bradbury Dies
News Items: Episode #360, Transit of Venus, Legislating Science, Science Education in California and South Korea, Vapor Storage
Magnetic Skeptical Phrases
Who's That Noisy
Your Questions and E-mails: Peer Review
Science or Fiction
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Segment: This Day in Skepticism
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June 5, 2012
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Ray Bradbury Dies
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Segment: News Items
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Segment: Who's That Noisy
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Who's That Noisy
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Answer to last week: holosystolic murmur
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Segment: Questions and Emails
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Question #1 - Peer Review
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Steve, I know that you know what peer review is, but I think you sometimes mislead your audience when you mention that some new idea has not yet gone through "peer review" as a way to validate the claims of the idea.
Peer review is just the initial step in the validation process. It is a series of experts who review a paper to make sure that there is no blatant error or mistake in what has been written. Once a paper has gone through peer review and then is published, the real validation then begins as other scientists try to duplicate the results. Only after repeated cases of duplicating the results or of failed attempts to invalidate it, does the claim start to have validity.
Peer review does not help against collecting faulty data or downright fraud. And it is sometimes possible that the claim is not true even though it seems to have been validated. This last case is what pseudoscientists count on - that their claim is the one out of thousands that will overturn established scientific principles, something that rarely happens.
A discussion of this might make an interesting segment on the SGU.
Marv Zelkowitz
Columbia, MD
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Segment: Science or Fiction [ Click Here to Show the Answers ]
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Segment: Skeptical Quote of the Week
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Skeptical Quote of the Week
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"The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible."
- Ray Bradbury
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