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Mark Wilson's profile was updated 4 months, 3 weeks ago
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Mark A. Wilson, Professor of Geology 1 year, 2 months ago
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Sedimentology & Stratigraphy course at The College of Wooster 3 years, 8 months ago
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 4 years, 10 months ago
Our last week! If I don’t get a chance to tell you after the presentations, you’ve been a superb class.
Student speakers on Monday —
Charlie: MK Ultra and CIA Mind Control Experiments
Linah: Is Malala […] -
Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 4 years, 10 months ago
Speakers today are —
Chris M.: The UFO Conspiracy about the 1942 Battle of Los Angeles
Griffin: Big Pharma and What They’re Hiding
Riley: Bigfoot: The Elusive Great Ape of North American Folklore
Enjoy the T […] -
Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 4 years, 10 months ago
The top student choices for our topics this week are Area 51 and the Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Theories. Classics of our genre! I like these because I’ve done geological fieldwork near Area 51, and I […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 4 years, 11 months ago
This week we use our skeptical tool kits to examine the pseudoscience and nonsense afflicting our health and medical systems. First up will be that venerable field of homeopathy, a billions-of-dollars industry […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 4 years, 11 months ago
This week is devoted to advising in preparation for next week’s epic course registration. Make sure you know where you are on our Advising Week schedule. Linked here is a useful Wooster video to give you a […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 4 years, 11 months ago
We intentionally kept this week unscheduled so we could catch up on any topics we need more time for. We also wanted to wait until we see the full range of research and conspiracy topics you chose to study. Watch […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 4 years, 11 months ago
This is going to be a disturbing week. Our topic covers various “denial” movements and their arguments. Our most prominent subject will be Holocaust Denial and its advocates. To understand it, we must have basic […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 5 years ago
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the term “fake news” now has its own Wikipedia page. At first it meant hoaxed news items, but in the Age of Trump it has taken on the role of a pejorative to throw at news you don’t […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 5 years ago
The United States has a long tradition of anti-evolution activism, almost all of it based in fundamentalist Christianity. Welcome to my world. I’ve been teaching and studying evolution all my professional life and […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 5 years ago
This is a building week because I’m gone until Wednesday evening. I will be in Phoenix at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America giving this presentation. Here’s our schedule for the week […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 5 years ago
Our topic this week is a popular one: psychic phenomena. Let’s start with a review of the whole psychic thing with a Wikipedia summary. Note that the concept is very broad, from self-proclaimed prophets to […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 5 years, 1 month ago
We will start our week with the last half of the Behind the Curve documentary, finish our discussions of the framework for distinguishing science from pseudoscience, and then launch into conspiracy […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 5 years, 1 month ago
The delightful month of September is upon us. Fall is coming — you’ll feel it in the cool mornings. We’ll start your first class of the month with a brief discussion of your experiences writing (and submitting) […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 5 years, 1 month ago
Now we start assembling our tools for critical analysis of fringe ideas. I find a chart of logical fallacies to be useful when sorting out the philosophical underpinnings of arguments:
There are plenty of […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Nonsense! (And Why it is so Popular) 5 years, 2 months ago
I call this a course on “nonsense” for a reason: I am a skeptic by personality and my scientific profession. I support explanations of natural and historical events that are the simplest and best fit the available […]
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Mark Wilson wrote a new post on the site Invertebrate Paleontology course at The College of Wooster 6 years, 3 months ago
Welcome! There is such wonderful paleontological material on the Web. Come here often! I’ll assume from the start that you all know the Geologic Time Scale, which will be critical to all that we do in this course. […]
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Jon Breitenbucher and Mark Wilson are now friends 7 years, 1 month ago