Best Debunkers?

[Qin Shi Huangdi]

Who are the best debunkers of rumours, superstitions, and fallacies in your opinion? A lot of these books and sites often cover the same old things (like say nobody in Columbus' day thought the Earth was flat for example).

First of all there is our incomparable Cecil Adams and his Straight Dope.

Then there is Snopes. com.

Among books I'd say the best I've seen are Brunvand's work on urban legends, Ackerman's [i][i]Popular Fallacies, and John Stossel's Get Out the Shovel (which is more explicity political than the other ones.

Maybe Dictionary of Misinformation too.

[zombywoof]

James Randi / JREF

[JackieLikesVariety]

I don't have a debunker to add, just want to say I despise John Stossel with the white hot intensity of ten thousand suns.

[friedo]

Houdini, James Randi, Penn & Teller (outside of political stuff).

[Little Nemo]

Add Mythbusters to the list.

[goonhead]

<URL>www.politifact.com</URL> is pretty good for debunking stuff from politicians and commentators.

[Fenris]

Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies In The Name Of Science is the single best debunking book ever written. Granted, some of the stuff he's debunking is now out of date or totally forgotten, but his ability to write with flair, to not get shrill* and to seem to actually enjoy the hell out of the weird crap he's debunking makes it a must-have.


*One of the unfortunate flaws in Randi's writings is that his written voice is shrill. Even when I'm nodding in agreement with him, I'm also wishing he'd just chill out a little.

[friedo]

Originally Posted by Fenris

*One of the unfortunate flaws in Randi's writings is that his written voice is shrill. Even when I'm nodding in agreement with him, I'm also wishing he'd just chill out a little.

No shit. If the dude cut out all of his bitching, moaning, and insulting, he'd have room for twice as much debunking.

[Jamicat]

Phil

[StarsApart]

I like Brian Dunning of Skeptoid, a podcast (with transcripts for those who can't listen).

[Qin Shi Huangdi]

The Mistakes We Make by Nathan Dole is an oldie but a goodie: http://books.google.com/books?id=LNt...20Make&f=false. There's a sequel too called More Mistakes We Make

[Victor Charlie]

Skepdic.com is a good site as well as Skeptic magazine. I'll second Penn & Teller. When it ran on Showtime, their show "Bullshit" was a great. Then there's Christopher Hitchens, R.I.P. Not a typical debunker, but one of the world's great skeptics.

[Thudlow Boink]

Though I have not read it, I have heard good things about the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, so this thread prompted me to look it up, and on its Wikipedia page I found this quote:

Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope calls the Skeptical Inquirer "one of the nation's leading antifruitcake journals".

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by JackieLikesVariety

I don't have a debunker to add, just want to say I despise John Stossel with the white hot intensity of ten thousand suns.

Indeed, I was nodding at the good list from the OP and then suddenly it was like Sesame Street's "One of this things is not like the others!"

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/John_Stossel

If you can believe it, Stossel was actually once an upstanding advocacy journalist in his early career on 20/20, exposing corruption and fraud in both the public and private sectors. In 1998, Stossel also hosted a primetime special, The Power of Belief, challenging quack, New Age, and supernatural claims. That special also featured interviews with magician-turned-skeptic James Randi.[4] Since his conversion to libertarianism, he mostly deals in Reaganism, global warming denialism, and general fact distortion.[5] Unfortunately, due to his frequent criticism of all forms of woo, he has suckered other skeptics into appearing with him to promote his free market fundamentalism and denialism.[6]

BTW one should add these to the list of best debunking sites:

skepticalscience.com to deal with fake skeptics on climate science, talkorigins.org and pandasthumb.org to deal with Creationists and IDer's, biofortified.org for GMO contrarians and Skeptic's Dictionary at skepdic.com and rationalwiki.org for most topics.

[Meatros]

Originally Posted by StarsApart

I like Brian Dunning of Skeptoid, a podcast (with transcripts for those who can't listen).

I second Skeptiod. It's short and sweet and filled with good info.

[grude]

Originally Posted by Victor Charlie

I'll second Penn & Teller. When it ran on Showtime, their show "Bullshit" was a great. .

Bullshit had some excellent episodes where they completely blow apart cultural bias, the circumcision and immigration and prison episodes come to mind.

They had some episodes that picked much less focused targets and just felt boring and like shooting fish in a barrel, oh look they got a woman selling healing crystals to say a bunch of nonsense on camera like contacting past lives etc. They then proceed to freeze frame and insult her, good thing they pointed out to me that reincarnation isn't real

Some episodes just seemed about mocking non-mainstream beliefs which never needed the debunking as no testable claims were made.

[AaronX]

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki writes some books on these, and I think Popular Science and New Scientist as well.

[Typo Knig]

Bob Park (Wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Park). He's been fighting the "EM fields cause cancer" BS for decades. It's taking longer than we thought.

[JeffB]

For health related issues, Quackwatch run by Stephen Barrett is good.

[Sister Vigilante]

http://rbutr.com/

Brand new, not a lot there yet. Looks promising.

[Victor Charlie]

Originally Posted by grude

Bullshit had some excellent episodes where they completely blow apart cultural bias, the circumcision and immigration and prison episodes come to mind.

They had some episodes that picked much less focused targets and just felt boring and like shooting fish in a barrel, oh look they got a woman selling healing crystals to say a bunch of nonsense on camera like contacting past lives etc. They then proceed to freeze frame and insult her, good thing they pointed out to me that reincarnation isn't real

Some episodes just seemed about mocking non-mainstream beliefs which never needed the debunking as no testable claims were made.

The one on recycling was great. And I believe they did one on hygiene and germaphobia that was one of the first to put those risks into proper perspective. If I ever meet Penn I will, at his suggestion, rub asses instead of shaking hands. If you've seen that episode you'll know why that's not weird.

[CalMeacham]

There are plenty of great debunkers out there who I'm surprised haven't been listed


Donald H. Menzel -- the original UFO debunker, not to mention Harvard-Smithsonian professor and editor of Mathematical Formulas and other books

Philip J. Klass -- who took over after Menzel

Robert Schaeffer -- who stepped in while Klass was still alive on UFOs

Lawrence David Kusche -- Bermuda Triangle debunker extraordinaire


L. Sprague de Camp -- although lots of folks dislike him (especially about things Robert E. Howard), I love his SF and fantasy, and his writings on science and the ancient world are great. He wrote a book about Atlantis and other lost contrinents that puts him squaely in this category, one of the most readable books on the Scopes trial, and several articles on random topics, some of which were collected in The Ragged Edge of Science.

Willy Ley -- Rocket pioneer and unjustly forgotten science popularizer, who wrote debunking stuff on Pyramid insanity, man-eating trees, and other esoterica

Harry Houdini -- Yes! The great magician and escape artist also wrote books debunking not only Spirit Mediums, but also Miracle Men of various sorts

William Poundstone -- his Big Secrets series has a lot of fascinating reading about the truth behind random facts, recipes, and details, with debunking mixed in

Bergen Evans -- The proto-Cecil. Would there even be a Straight Dope without his shining example? Read A Natural History of Nonsense and On the Spoor of Spooks for a wonderful mix of investigative digging and snark

Richard Shenkman -- His Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History is still selling (as is, inexplivcably to me, his One Night Stands with American History). His next book, the unfortunately-named I Love Paul Revere, Whether he cRode or Not is also excellent, although his last book KLegends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of World History feels like a Contractual Obligation Book. Worth reading, all, though.




There are plenty of others, but that's enough for now.

[Typo Knig]

deCamp's The Ancient Engineers is a great book, with much debunking baked in.

[Typo Knig]

deCamp's The Ancient Engineers is a great book, with much debunking baked in.

[MarcusF]

A couple of journalists from across the pond who have done their bit:

Simon Singh who wrote Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial and an article in the Guardian that had the British Chiropractic Association suing him for libel (he fought them off )

and

David Aaronovich whose book Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History is a brilliant gallop through the whole range of CTs