Why attend LogiCalLA?

Pseudo-science has a vast hold of modern society with abundant claims of miraculous cures and healing powers. Scientific skeptics are those who want to know the validity of those claims, whether based in naturopathy, ghost-hunters, psychics, or religion.  

Who would attend LogiCalLA?

Those who attend are interested in the discovery of new ideas, examining new views of the natural world, and how to distinguish between what is probably true and those claims that have little or weak evidence.  

A scientific skeptics first doubts a claim but believes the claim if well-established evidence becomes available.

A conspiracy skeptic first doubts the claim, then when viewing validated evidence, doubts the evidence. 

What is scientific skepticism?

Scientific skeptics believe that empirical investigation of reality leads to the truth, and that the scientific method is best suited to this purpose. Scientific skeptics attempt to evaluate claims based on verifiability and falsifiability and discourage accepting claims on faith or anecdotal evidence. Skeptics often focus their criticism on claims they consider to be implausible, dubious or clearly contradictory to generally accepted science. Scientific skeptics do not assert that unusual claims should be automatically rejected out of hand on a priori grounds—rather they argue that claims of paranormal or anomalous phenomena should be critically examined and that extraordinary claims would require extraordinary evidence in their favor before they could be accepted as having validity. From a scientific point of view, theories are judged on many criteria, such as falsifiability, Occam’s Razor, and explanatory power, as well as the degree to which their predictions match experimental results. Skepticism is part of the scientific method; for instance, an experimental result is not regarded as established until it can be shown to be repeatable independently.

Also see this article about scientific skepticism.