The Latest SI
The Fine Art of Baloney Detection—Sagan’s Essay Three Decades Later
Volume 50, No. 4July/August 2026
Believe it or not (I certainly have a hard time believing it!), it has been three decades since the publication of Carl Sagan’s famous essay “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,” incorporated as chapter 12 in his The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995). I therefore...
Structured Water: Distilling the Science from the Non-Potable Claims
August 20, 2026The human body is about 60 percent water, the fundamental solvent in the soup of life. While many pseudoscientific wellness practices and products proport to cleanse the toxins or evil sprits that...
California Endorses Dangerous Autism Pseudoscience
August 10, 2026California Endorses Dangerous Autism Pseudoscience Stuart Vyse On July 21, 2026, the California State Council on Developmental Disabilities (SCDD) adopted a policy in support of...
Skeptical Inquirer Presents
Facilitated Communication, Authorship Testing, and The Telepathy Tapes | Janyce Boynton
Watch the recording nowThe Health and Wellness Lie | Nick Tiller
Watch the recording nowA Field Guide to Spotting Misinformation | Melanie Trecek-King
Watch the recording nowWhat Science Says about Astrology | Carlos Orsi
Watch the recording nowThe Rise of Bad Science in the Twenty-First Century | David Robert Grimes
Watch the recording nowDinner with King Tut: The Wild World of Experimental Archaeology | Sam Kean
Watch the recording now
We are all skeptics
Skepticism is a part of everyday common sense we all use; it is also a key component of scientific thinking. It helps lead to fact-based judgments about what is real and what is not. It allows you to see for yourself which claims you’ve heard stand up to tests of evidence and which do not.





