netwatch | Shared With: Everyone - Aug 26 2007 | science, pseudoscience, news
The Weekly World News, the supermarket tabloid that once claimed 12 U.S. senators were space aliens, is ending publication this month. But there are enough purveyors of pseudoscience, anti-science, and quackery to keep the following three Web sites in business.
Crank Dot Net* furnishes a taxonomy of crackpot Web sites. Erik Max Francis, a computer programmer in San Jose, California, rates the entries on how far they've strayed from reality. For instance, a page on the possibility that the sun has an unobserved twin merits only a "fringe" classification, whereas a site that dispenses advice on conducting diplomacy with aliens earns the highest ranking.
Volume 317, Number 5839, Issue of 10 August 2007
- netwatch | Shared With: Everyone - Aug 26 2007 | probability, statistics, news, math, science
Whether the subject is trends in housing sales or trials of a new cancer drug, news reports often have to grapple with applications of statistics and probability. ChanceWiki from Dartmouth College turns such items into lessons on statistical thinking.
Originally a newsletter penned by math professors, the site now lets readers post discussions and exercises based on media stories, papers, books, and other sources. Recent contributions have investigated possible explanations for why Europeans are now taller than Americans (a reversal of the situation 60 years ago) and slammed a 2001 report that claimed Oscar winners live nearly 4 years longer than mere nominees. The longevity boost is illusory, the entry's author concludes, the result of a statistical gaffe called selection bias.
Volume 317, Number 5838, Issue of 03 August 2007
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