It seems a silly question to ask, given the self-evident answer: we know that all beliefs and opinions are not equally valid. Obviously, it's important to acknowledge that the person who believe something believes it to be true, but it doesn't mean it is.

The reason I raise this question is that most of us in the skeptical community patently reject the assumption that all "truths" are equally valid. What matters is evidence. Where there is no clear answer, rather than assuming a position of absolutism regarding "truth," we tend to adopt a "wait and see" approach or an honest "I don't know" approach.

This is not the case in most areas. Truthiness is often more important than truth.

This has been hitting the news a lot over here.  I'll probably write more about this as I read/think more about it.  I'm just free-writing my ideas now so don't consider this my definitive position, and of course I welcome any constructive thoughts and criticisms you have.

Here's the story thus far.  GDP is a flawed measure of societal progress; but, it used to be fantastic.  When a country's basic needs are less well met, GDP is a great indication of how well people are doing.  When a country is rich, things beyond survival come into play, which GDP doesn't pick up.  

In a new study, cancer biologists show that restoring the protein p53's function in mice with early lung cancer has no effect in tumor development but restoring p53 function later may prevent more advanced tumors from spreading throughout the body. 

Some of the universe's most massive galaxies may have formed billions of years earlier than current scientific models predict, according to findings in the Astrophysical Journal. 

That conclusion was drawn because newly identified galaxies were five to ten times more massive than our own Milky Way. They were among a sample studied at redshift 3≤z<4, when the universe was between 1.5 and 2 billion years old.

Physicists from the University of Bonn have developed a completely new source of light, a Bose-Einstein condensate consisting of photons, something not known to be possible, which may potentially be suitable for designing light sources resembling lasers that work in the x-ray range. 

By cooling Rubidium atoms deeply and concentrating a sufficient number of them in a compact space, they suddenly become indistinguishable. They behave like a single huge "super particle." Physicists call this a Bose-Einstein condensate.

This holiday season, starting today when you bite into the cranberry sauce and the tartness smacks your tongue as hard as that snide comment from your sister, consider the power of sour.
Neurobiology researchers at the University of Southern California have made a surprising discovery about how some cells respond to sour tastes.

Of the five taste sensations — sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami — sour is arguably the strongest yet the least understood. Sour is the sensation evoked by substances that are acidic, such as lemons and pickles. The more acidic the substance, the more sour the taste.

Some researchers have proposed that, because people can get through money certain things they can get through acceptance, money might act as a substitute for social acceptance. Since social distress and physical pain seem to have similar underlying mechanisms, a few interesting experiments have been done to test this idea. One study reports six experiments, which I'll summarise briefly here.

A recent National Science Foundation Distinguished Lecture series featured Michael Goodchild, a world-renowned geographer and director of the University of California, Santa Barbara's Center for Spatial Studies. On November 17, Prof.

Science told us that vitamins are good. The polluted environment and the stress of modern living result in more free radicals than evolution has prepared us for; supplementing is fine. I swallowed it – literally! Science tells us that supposedly “natural” supplements are also just out of molecules and that I am an esoteric mystic if I look into any childish natural stuff.

In my post about the somewhat wretched dating website HotOrNot.com, I wrote about researchers' determination that all humans value the same standards of beauty.

Really, no matter if you're hot or plain, you recognize a set standard of hotness—your self-image is subject to your creative delusions, but there's an inviolable piece of humanity that knows the truth about others. And so the obvious question is what about poultry? Specifically, are turkeys turned on by hot models?

Today, of all days, I'm sure you can see the importance of this research.