Pecier Decierdo

Now and again I am gripped by this nagging suspicion that maybe Carl Sagan was overrated as a science communicator, and...

If a person wants to take openness to new ideas to its logical conclusion, she will not end up being gullible or credulous. Rather, she will be a skeptic. True open-mindedness is not the same as accepting assertions without critical consideration. In fact, believing claims without being critical of them results in having a closed mind.

Words are powerful. By a careful choice of words I can gain a certain degree of control over your mind, and consequently your behavior. Because of their power, words must be used with care. To abuse words is to endanger people. This fact, though true in general, is most acutely felt in the case of scientific terms.

It is often said that we see the world through a glass darkly. What this means is our perception of the world is not perfect but rather goes through a flawed filter, the proverbial darkened glass. In reality, our perception of the world is not merely distorted by physical obstructions like dark glasses; our very minds are riddled with cognitive biases that are at the very core of how we perceive the universe. The dark glass we see the world through is part of who we are. It is us.

In the coming days, stargazer the world over are swooning like fanboys and fangirls over the arrival and surprising intensification of Comet ISON. In this article, we will give some of the reasons why astronomers all around the world are geeking out over the comet. We will also give some tips that will be helpful in hunting for this celebrity comet.

While conspiracy theories claiming that Typhoon Yolanda was man made should be easy to dismiss and do not deserve a lengthy rebuttal, what with the need for lending a helping hand to the survivors and all, it is unfortunate that such speculations were recently given media airtime as if they were somehow in the same league as sound scientific hypotheses. As such, a quick debunking is in order... here are some reasons why Super Typhoon Yolanda could not have been caused by microwave beams emitted by human machines.

The devastation Typhoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan) left in its wake leaves us no choice but to help in some capacity or another. But when the rubble is cleared and everything is put to working order again, here are some of the things that we need to change in society and in ourselves as a response to the wakeup call that is Typhoon Yolanda.

To the writers, researchers, producers, and hosts of TV programs that promote superstition among Filipinos, I ask you to rethink your values.

The world of quantum mechanics is strange, that much is true... Unfortunately, the strangeness of the quantum world has been grossly abused either by those who do not understand quantum mechanics, or those who wish to benefit from this lack of understanding.