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Tomasz Witkowski
Tomasz Witkowski (; born 1963) is a Polish psychologist, skeptic and science writer. He is known for his unconventional campaigns against pseudoscience. He specializes in debunking pseudoscience, particularly in the fields of psychology, psychotherapy, and diagnostics. Witkowski also engages in debates on pseudoscience-related topics, emphasizing scientific skepticism. Biography Witkowski studied psychology at the University of Wrocław, graduating in 1988. After graduating, he worked for ten years as a senior lecturer at the same university. He received a Ph.D. in Psychology from the university in 1995. In addition to his teaching duties at the University of Wroclaw, Witkowski received a scholarship at the University of Bielefeld in 1993, and worked as a researcher at the University of Hildesheim in 1997. From 2004-2007, after leaving the University of Wroclaw, he lectured at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities. He is also the founder of the Klub Sceptyków Polski ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous member state of the European Union. Warsaw is the nation's capital and largest metropolis. Other major cities include Kraków, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, Gdańsk, and Szczecin. Poland has a temperate transitional climate and its territory traverses the Central European Plain, extending from Baltic Sea in the north to Sudeten and Carpathian Mountains in the south. The longest Polish river is the Vistula, and Poland's highest point is Mount Rysy, situated in the Tatra mountain range of the Carpathians. The country is bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, and Germany to the west. It also shares maritime boundaries with Denmark a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palgrave Macmillan
Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains offices in London, New York, Shanghai, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Delhi, and Johannesburg. Palgrave Macmillan was created in 2000 when St. Martin's Press in the US united with Macmillan Publishers in the UK to combine their worldwide academic publishing operations. The company was known simply as Palgrave until 2002, but has since been known as Palgrave Macmillan. It is a subsidiary of Springer Nature. Until 2015, it was part of the Macmillan Group and therefore wholly owned by the German publishing company Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (which still owns a controlling interest in Springer Nature). As part of Macmillan, it was headquartered at the Macmillan campus in Kings Cross London with other Macmillan companies including Pan Macm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Randi Educational Foundation
James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) is an American grant-making institution founded in 1996 by magician and skeptic James Randi. As a nonprofit organization, the mission of JREF includes educating the public and the media on the dangers of accepting unproven claims, and to support research into paranormal claims in controlled scientific experimental conditions. The organization announced its change to a grant-making foundation in September 2015. The organization previously administered the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, a prize of one million U.S. dollars to anyone who could demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria. JREF also maintains a legal defense fund to assist persons who are attacked as a result of investigating or criticizing those making paranormal claims. The organization has been funded through member contributions, grants, and conferences, though it ceased accepting memberships after 2015. For sev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charaktery
''Charaktery'' (, ''Personalities'') is a monthly magazine published in Poland and covering psychology-related topics, such as relationships, mental health, the functioning of the brain, neuropsychology, emotions, overcoming addictions, depression, and alcoholism. It is written for an audience of non-psychologists. The magazine was established in 1997. Recognition In September 2008 the Polish weekly newspaper ''Media i Marketing Polska'' chose the magazine as its "Magazine of the Year". Criticism In 2007 Tomasz Witkowski submitted a hoax paper in the style of the Sokal affair The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to '' Social Text'', an aca .... References External links * 1997 establishments in Poland Magazines established in 1997 Magazines published in Poland Monthly magazines publish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morphic Resonance
Alfred Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942) is an English author and parapsychology researcher who proposed the concept of morphic resonance, a conjecture which lacks mainstream acceptance and has been criticized as pseudoscience. He has worked as a biochemist at Cambridge University, Harvard scholar, researcher at the Royal Society, and plant physiologist for ICRISAT in India. Sheldrake's morphic resonance posits that "memory is inherent in nature" and that "natural systems ... inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind." Sheldrake proposes that it is also responsible for "telepathy-type interconnections between organisms." His advocacy of the idea offers idiosyncratic explanations of standard subjects in biology such as development, inheritance, and memory. Morphic resonance is not accepted by the scientific community and Sheldrake's proposals relating to it have been widely criticised. Critics cite a lack of evidence for morphic resonance and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sokal Hoax
The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to '' Social Text'', an academic journal of cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor, specifically to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies—whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross— ouldpublish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions." The article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was published in the journal's spring/summer 1996 "Science Wars" issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. The journal did not practice academic peer review and it did not sub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kendrick Frazier
Kendrick Crosby Frazier (March 19, 1942 – November 7, 2022) was an American science writer and longtime editor of '' Skeptical Inquirer'' magazine. He was also a former editor of ''Science News'', author or editor of ten books, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He was a fellow and a member of the executive council of Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), an international organization which promotes scientific inquiry. Frazier wrote extensively about a variety of science topics including astronomy, space exploration, the earth and planetary sciences, archaeology, technology, the history and philosophy of science, public issues of science, and the critical examination of pseudoscience and fringe science. Personal life Frazier received a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Colorado and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University. He was a member of the National Association of Science Writers and the American Geophysical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Radford
Benjamin Radford (born October 2, 1970) is an American writer, investigator, and skeptic. He has authored, coauthored or contributed to over twenty books and written over a thousand articles and columns on a wide variety of topics including urban legends, unexplained mysteries, the paranormal, critical thinking, mass hysteria, and media literacy. His book, ''Mysterious New Mexico: Miracles, Magic, and Monsters in the Land of Enchantment'', was published in the summer of 2014 and is a scientific investigation of famous legends and folklore in the state of New Mexico. In 2016 Radford published ''Bad Clowns'', a 2017 IPPY bronze award winner, and he is regarded as an expert on the bad clowns phenomenon. Radford has appeared on ''Good Morning America'', CNN, The History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, the Learning Channel, CBC, BBC, ABC News, ''The New York Times'', and many other outlets. Radford characterizes himself as one of the world's few science-based paranorma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Animal-assisted Therapy
Animal-assisted therapy (AAT) is an alternative or complementary type of therapy that includes the use of animals in a treatment. The goal of this animal-assisted intervention is to improve a patient's social, emotional, or cognitive functioning. Studies have documented some positive effects of the therapy on subjective self-rating scales and on objective physiological measures such as blood pressure and hormone levels. The specific animal-assisted therapy can be classified by the type of animal, the targeted population, and how the animal is incorporated into the therapeutic plan. Various animals have been utilized for animal-assisted therapy, with the most common types being canine-assisted therapy and equine-assisted therapy. Use of these animals in therapies have shown positives results in many cases such as PTSD, depression, anxiety, sexual abuse victims, dementia, autism, and more. It can be used in many different facilities like hospitals, prisons, and nursing homes to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Facilitated Communication
Facilitated communication (FC), or supported typing, is a scientifically discredited technique that attempts to aid communication by people with autism or other communication disabilities who are non-verbal. The facilitator guides the disabled person's arm or hand and attempts to help them type on a keyboard or other device. There is widespread agreement within the scientific community and among disability advocacy organizations that FC is a pseudoscience. Research indicates that the facilitator is the source of the messages obtained through FC, rather than the disabled person. The facilitator may believe they are not the source of the messages due to the ideomotor effect, which is the same effect that guides a Ouija board. Studies have consistently found that FC is unable to provide the correct response to even simple questions when the facilitator does not know the answers to the questions (e.g., showing the patient but not the facilitator an object). In addition, in numero ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Attachment Therapy
Attachment therapy (also called "the Evergreen model", "holding time", "rage-reduction", "compression therapy", "rebirthing", "corrective attachment therapy", and "coercive restraint therapy") is a pseudoscientific child mental health intervention intended to treat attachment disorders. It is found primarily in the United States, and much of it is centered in about a dozen clinics in Evergreen, Colorado, where Foster Cline, one of the founders, established his clinic in the 1970s. The practice has resulted in adverse outcomes for children, including at least six documented child fatalities. Since the 1990s there have been a number of prosecutions for deaths or serious maltreatment of children at the hands of "attachment therapists" or parents following their instructions. Two of the most well-known cases are those of Candace Newmaker in 2000 and the Gravelles in 2003. Following the associated publicity, some advocates of attachment therapy began to alter views and practices to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
