Fatherhood, Skeptically

With Halloween around the corner, my social media has been inundated with spooky (not that I mind, at all). Everything from kids costume adds, to Halloween memes, to invites to spooky events. It's a great time of year. Strangely, this year I've noticed a lot of posts about the poison candy myth; specifically, how it is completely false. It is totally understandable why parents would be concerned about their kids eating candy handed out by a stranger. But it is also understandable why so many folks get frustrated that this myth continues to get spread about. Because of this, I wanted to dive in on the origins of this myth and whether we should or should not be worried for our kids. As with many skeptical discussions, I think it is important to set forth some operational definitions; i.e. what qualifies as a Halloween poisoning? Well there are some isolated incidents of children's candy being poisoned. For example, in 1974, Ronald O'Bryan gave cyanide laced pixie sti...

This first post I wanted to be an extension of the blog description in the header. Specifically, I want to expand on the things that led to my conclusion that there was a niche in skepticism, parenting, that needed filling. I like to consider myself fairly active in the skeptical community. I am, at the time of this writing, a graduate student studying chemistry, I am an administrator of a local skeptical community's Facebook page where I am partly responsible for setting up meetings, demonstrations, etc. Finally, I work tirelessly to apply skepticism to my everyday life. So why parenting; why not a broader topic; why not focus on academia? There are a couple reasons. First, I have noticed that a fair amount of the fear and uncertainty that leads people into pseudoscience comes form wanting to do right by our children; do give them their best possible start in life. The sad irony is that many delve into pseudoscience and end up putting their children in unnecessary danger...