In this week’s eSkeptic:
SCIENCE SALON # 17
Caltech Theoretical Physicist and Nobel Laureate, Dr. Kip Thorne, in conversation with Dr. Michael Shermer
-2x.jpg)
Kip S. Thorne (photo by Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden (Kip S. Thorne EM1B8790) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Join us for what promises to be one of the deepest and most profound conversations we’ve had in our Science Salon series as Dr. Thorne reflects on his life and career in theoretical physics, his pursuit of the detection of the long-elusive gravitational waves through the LIGO detector, his relationship and bet with Stephen Hawking, how he came to consult on Carl Sagan’s Contact and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, his curious work on black holes, wormholes, and time travel, and what it’s like to go to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize.
_main_lecture_hall_1972.jpg)
Discussion in the main lecture hall at the École de Physique des Houches (Les Houches Physics School), 1972. From left, Yuval Ne’eman, Bryce DeWitt, Kip Thorne. (Photo by A. T. Service (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.)
Check Us Out On YouTube.
Science Salons • Michael Shermer
Skeptic Presents • All Videos
Show Your Support
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel and get notified instantly when we post new content! Do you like what you see? Show your support for our work. Your ongoing patronage is vital to our organization’s mission.
NEW REVIEWS & MEDIA INTERVIEWS
Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia
In his most ambitious work yet—a scientific exploration into humanity’s obsession with the afterlife and quest for immortality—bestselling author and skeptic, Michael Shermer, sets out to discover what drives humans’ belief in life after death, focusing on recent scientific attempts to achieve immortality along with utopian attempts to create heaven on earth. Check out what people are saying about the book…
SCIENCE
Faulty religious reasoning and sloppy secular arguments about the afterlife earn a skeptic’s side-eye
by Paula Quinon
Read the review
THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Quest for Immortality, Rebooted
by Maria Konnikova
Read the review
THE NEW YORK POST
Scientists could one day make humans immortal
by Larry Getlen
Read the review
KIRKUS
Read the review
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
The pull of ‘heaven’: Even some atheists believe in afterlife
by Repps Hudson Special to the Post-Dispatch
Read the review
INTERVIEW
Jordan B Peterson Interviews Michael
Watch the interview
HOW DO WE FIX IT? PODCAST
The Dangers of Utopia
by Richard Davies & Jim Meigs
Listen to the podcast
NPR AirTalk
The big sleep and beyond: What’s behind our fascination with the afterlife
Listen to the podcast
Get an Autographed 1st Edition from Shop Skeptic
Order Heavens on Earth from Shop Skeptic, and we will send you an autographed copy, signed by Michael Shermer himself! The autographed version is only available from Shop Skeptic.
In this week’s eSkeptic, Mario E. Herrera and Lawrence Patihis review Mark Pendergrast’s new book: Memory Warp: How the Myth of Repressed Memory Arose and Refuses to Die.
Psychology’s Unhealed Wound
by Mario E. Herrera & Lawrence Patihis
Imagine 20 years ago that you bandaged up a deep wound, and now you peel back the bandages to find that only part of the wound had healed and that, in fact, a raging infection persists. That is analogous to the situation that Mark Pendergrast describes in Memory Warp.
In the early 1990s one of psychology’s most important debates arose between some psychologists who argued that the recovery of repressed memories was valid, and skeptical researchers who thought they were confabulations. The theory of repressed memory, first proposed by Sigmund Freud in 1895, states that traumatic events are often so threatening to the psyche that the mind encapsulates them, rendering them inaccessible for years, only to be recalled later in a safer environment (for example, a therapist’s office).
Many experimental memory researchers, such as David Holmes and Elizabeth Loftus, argued that there is no credible scientific evidence for repressed memory. A growing band of psychology researchers became suspicious that some practitioners were actually creating false abuse memories in clients.
It was a bitter and personal argument at times, but thankfully all seemed to calm down to a degree around the turn of the century—the ameliorative bandages seemed to be working. An American Psychology Association committee came to an uneasy compromise on the issue. Related high profile court cases seemed to decrease in number—those where psychotherapy clients would sue parents, clients would retract their memories and sue therapists, or parents of clients would sue therapists. Multimillion-dollar verdicts against psychotherapists made most counselors far more cautious about seeking to unearth purportedly repressed abuse memories. […]
.jpg){kind=link}
_main_lecture_hall_1972.jpg){kind=link}