Author: Michael Shermer
Michael Shermer is the executive director of the Skeptics Society and the publisher of Skeptic magazine. He writes a monthly column for Scientific American. His most recent book is The Believing Brain (Times Books, 2011).
Follow the Trend Lines, Not the Headlines: Terrorism Is Not an Existential Threat
The evidence is in: Terrorism does not pose an existential threat to our civilization.
‘Just You Wait!’ The Doomsayers’ Answer to Failed Predictions
Probabilistic doomsday predictions shortchange the proven power of humans to keep the worst from happening.
A Guy Thing? Secularism, Feminism, and a Response to Ophelia Benson
When I got involved in the skeptical, atheist, and secular movements in the 1980s, one looked out over the audience and saw mostly old white guys. Today it is a different picture entirely. At the last Skeptics Society lecture at Caltech on December 16, for example, an audience of three hundred was roughly fifty-fifty men …