nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Exotheology

Exotheology is a branch of religious study that concerns itself with the potential impact on earthly religions and theologies of the discovery of life or intelligence elsewhere in the universe.
As with the development of most science, such discoveries would in all likelihood overturn at least some notions or dogmas held by religions, especially fundamentalist ones. This in turn would lead to fierce opposition to the evidence of such life, and political battles over funding of research and the nature of how we would teach about our discoveries.
There are also bound to be religious orders that have no problem encompassing any such scientific breakthroughs, just as we have seen with other advances and their acceptance by some churches or religious people. An example is the Roman Catholic Church, which announced in May 2008 that "Aliens are My Brother". True. The Vatican also speculated that some aliens may have avoided original sin.Vatican & Life on Mars, BBCVatican says aliens could exist, BBC
==Speculation==
Speculative fiction (a euphemism for science fiction, of course) often plays about with the concept of exotheology. Carl Sagan's Contact (both the novel and film) questions what effect alien contact would have on the human population. Particularly the selection process of who should make first contact with an alien species becomes a conflict between science and religion and which view should be primarily put forward. In a more negative sense, it also depicts religious fundamentalists destroying the multi-billion dollar "machine" that the aliens had the human race build in order to make contact — sadly a quite probable scenario.
Another example of science fiction to touch on exotheology are Orson Scott Card's Ender series, specifically in Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. In these books, a race of sapient aliens, having initially rejected the gift of a copy of the Bible, is exposed to Catholic missionaries after partially integrating into human civilization, with mixed results. Parts of the plot explore the implications of human- and Christian-specific concepts like human exceptionalism and original sin as applied to species for which they are clearly unsuited, as well as the short history The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, in which a Catholic priest who forms part of a space mission suffers a strong hit to his faith upon learning the Star of Bethlehem from the Gospel stories was caused by a star going supernova which destroyed an entire alien species on a planet orbiting it. He questions how an all-loving God could do this to show Jesus would be born.
==See also==
*Exopolitics
==External links==
* Dabbling in Exotheology, TIME Magazine, 24 April 1978
* , 13 October 2005
==References==
Category:Philosophy of religion
Category:Theology
Category:Astronomy
Experimental control

An experimental control, often referred to as a "control group", is a population or set of objects that is statistically similar to the set being tested, on which no changes are implemented. In psychology and biology, the control group is very important, since results are often statistical rather than concrete. For instance, in testing a drug for a malady, some percentage of the test subjects will heal with no intervention (or heal at some rate in a third group, people getting an existing remedy). The control group yields this number, and the group getting the treatment under test can be compared to this to determine efficacy. While it is less of an issue in the physical sciences, part of the description of how to set up an appropriate experiment should always address what controls are used to limit the independent variables to the one of concern.
A control group's purpose is to make sure that any observed results are statistically related to the tests being performed, and not simply random occurrences that happen anyway. A good control group has subjects that, in every important way, resemble the experimental group, except for the difference in the experimental condition. In the case of animal studies, a control group may be siblings or twins of the experimental animals. Human medical trials often form a control group using random assignment. In some cases, these trials have multiple control arms, in order to test combinations of several treatments or to compare differing doses. These arms can be control groups for some comparisons and experimental groups for other comparisons. In order to assure that the carrier of a substance being tested is not having an effect, sometimes the control group will receive a saline injection (in the case of injection drugs) or be put in an inhalation chamber (e.g., in the case of rodent toxicology studies on gases); these are known as vehicle controls.
When the possibility of experimenter or subject bias is an issue, the control group is managed through double-blind testing.
==See also==
*Double blind
*Experiment
*Null hypothesis
*Placebo effect
*Randomized controlled trial
*Spontaneous remission
Category:Science
Category:Research terms
Experimenter bias

Experimenter bias is the introduction of any bias into the conclusions of an experiment due to the preconceptions or goals of the experimenter being made clear to participants in the study. The bias can be introduced at any stage of the experiment, from the construction of the experiment, the selection of subjects, the administration of the experiment, the analysis of the data, or the conclusions drawn. 
This issue arises often in social and biological sciences, but only very rarely has it been noted in the history of the physical sciences.
==Prevention==
Experimenter bias stems from the deep-seated beliefs of an experimenter and is therefore difficult to prevent. Modern psychology generally supports the belief that it is not possible to prevent experimenters from being biased, so it is necessary to design experiments in ways that bias cannot influence the results.
A great number of experimental methodologies are attempts to limit the unintentional introduction of experimenter bias. These include randomized controlled trials and double blind. Double-blind experiments are advisable whenever possible. In cases where measurements are recorded by human observers rather than by mechanical instruments, it is advisable to train people as observers who have little or no stake in the outcome of the experiment until their recorded observations correlate well on trials.
Minimizing interaction between the theorist(s) and experimental subjects to the barest minimum will limit the effects of bias, although this is not possible for all types of investigation.
==Involvement in woo==
Most experiments that purport to show evidence for psychic powers, alternative and quack medicine, or other woo fail to use proper methods and controls to limit experimenter bias. (For example, the doctor telling patients that homeopathy will work while failing to do so for the placebo.) When replication attempts are made that do control for experimenter bias, the results are shown to be no better than chance.
==See also==
*Cherry picking
==External links==
*
==References==
Category:Cognitive biases
Expert witness

An expert witness is someone paid to appear in court to attempt to blind them with brilliance, or at least baffle them with bullshit, in the cause of the side that hired them.
==The argument from authority==
Sometimes, they do good work… sometimes, they don't. In general, an "expert" witness may be brought in ostensibly to present at least one argument from authority. This is independent of which side of the prosecution the expert witness is testifying. For example, in the murder trial of Sally Clarke, who was accused of killing both of her children, an expert witness was brought in to state that the odds against the children's deaths was 1 in 73 million.The Prosecutor’s Phallusy by Ben Goldacre (October 28, 2006) Bad Science. This seemed to imply that the odds of her being guilty of murder were 72,999,999 out of 73 million. For whatever reason, the jury issued a guilty verdict. It seemed beyond question that the probability argument weighed heavily in the minds of the jurors. The problem is, even experts are prone to cognitive biases, and likely to emphasize incriminating evidence, while ignoring the exculpatory evidence. In the Sally Clarke case, the 1 in 73 million figure was irrelevant in the case, as the two children were already dead, therefore it is only certain that the post hoc probability was equal to one.
==See also==
*Expert for hire
==References==
Expert à louer

Experts à louer est un terme utilisé pour désigner de supposés experts qui gagnent leur vie à faire des rondes et témoigner lors de procès afin donner une crédibilité à de toutes sortes d'âneries pseudo-scientifiques, avec peu ou pas d'expérience crédibles dans les domaines au sujet desquels ils interviennent. Souvent, ils sont payés par un avocat pour rendre un avis professionnel sur la recherche qui n'est pas dans la culture principale scientifique, biaisé en vue d'aider le cas des avocats.
Il s'agit d'une tentative d'intimidation par accréditation, en ce que beaucoup de gens ont tendance à donner plus de crédibilité à quelqu'un qui aurait supposément passé de nombreuses années de sa vie dans l'éducation et le travail dans les domaines sur lesquels ils sont appelés à témoigner. Malheureusement, puisque les usines à diplômes et les établissements d'enseignement théologique non-accrédités créent de nouveaux experts à la chaîne, souvent sans nul autre pré-requis que la signature d'un chèque, beaucoup peuvent accoler les lettres "Dr." devant leur nom sans effort ni mérite particulier.
A ne pas confondre avec les «experts judiciaires» et autres termes similaires – là où l'expertise de la personne ainsi désignée est facilement vérifiable. 
==Caractéristique d'un expert à louer==
* Son diplôme n'est pas lié au domaine requis (Exemple : un physicien nucléaire donnant son avis sur le traitement des cancers ou le changement climatique)
* Son diplôme vient d'une université non accréditée ou d'une usine à diplômes.
* Son expérience professionnelle est pratiquement inexistante dans leur domaine.
* La personne n'a été employée que dans des procès au lieu de travailler dans leur domaine. 
* La personne a été licenciée d'une organisation liée à leur domaine pour une faute grave ou falsification des documents dans le but de promouvoir leurs idées.
* Il ne peut présenter aucun travail de recherche, en cours ou achevé, qui établit les données soutenant son avis.
*S'il a des publications relevant du sujet et revues par les pairs, leurs données sont soit très datées, controversées, prouvées fausses ou concernent des problèmes mineurs; mais elles seront typiquement brandies comme des preuves irréfutables.
*Il a un long historique d'appartions comme "expert" dans un large éventail de domaines, bien au-delà de ce qu'une personne normale pourrait prétendre (il est improbable que quelqu'un soit à la fois un expert du changement climatique, du tabagisme et des pluies acides, étant donné que chacun de ces sujets implique une variété de discipline scientifiques. Même un prodigieux polymathe serait incapable de maîtriser toutes les disciplines nécessaires pour parler avec autorité de ces trois différents sujets.)
*Il passe beaucoup plus de temps à pontifier dans les médias qu'à faire réellement de la recherche (du moins s'il fait de la recherche)
*Ils sont payés par des think tanks bien connus, ou des organismes de propagande/lobbying du même acabit.
==Voir aussi==
===Versions en autres langues===
Category:Français
Category:Shysters
category:Assessing pseudoscience
Category:Culture wars
Explore Evolution

Explore Evolution is a propaganda piece put out by the Discovery Institute in 2007. It is part of their attempt to push the concept of teaching the "strengths and weaknesses" of teaching evolution in public schools. Of course, all the weaknesses it pushes comes from other previous works by Discovery Institute fellows like Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells, both of whom merely recycle old creationist claims and declare them to be new arguments. None of the weaknesses in the book are actually weaknesses, and it mostly presents warmed over creationism - which has been refuted countless times. 
==External links==
*Explore Evolution Official Site
*A review of Explore Evolution.
Category:Discovery Institute
Category:Intelligent design creationism
Exposing PseudoAstronomy

Exposing PseudoAstronomy is a podcast (and blog) written, hosted, and produced by astronomer/geophysicist Dr. Stuart Robbins. The podcast tends to focus on issues related to pseudoscience in astronomy, geology, and physics, though it has, at times, ventured away from those topics to explain more general science-related concepts such as peer-reviewExposing PseudoAstronomy Episode 93. Within that broad framework, Dr. Robbins has addressed topics such as astrology, Planet X, creationism claims, and the Face on MarsExposing PseudoAstronomy Podcast Tree. He has stated that he would rather have named the podcast "Bad Astronomy," but Phil Plait took that name.
The format of the podcast always has a very brief introduction to the topic and then the main segment discussing the topic. Length of each episode varies from about 20 minutes to over an hour, though the typical episode length is about 30 minutes. Other occasional segments include: "New News" (items in the news related to a previously discussed topic), Q&A, Feedback, Puzzler, and Announcements. Robbins re-records the outro to every episode and often puts in something extra for the listener, or phrases things differently, such as one episode's outro was done with a bad version of a Texan accent.
The podcast began in August 2011, coming out twice a month, then four times a month, then twice a month, and since mid-2013 has settled on three episodes a month, typically coming out on the 1st, 11th, and 21st of each month. Robbins has often stated that the podcast can be thought of as a cross between Skeptoid and AstronomyCast, merging the singular astronomy topic per episode of the latter with the focused skeptical approach of the former.
The blog dates to August 2008, but since the podcast started, it has primarily served as announcements for new episodes, though it occasionally has new, stand-alone articles.
In May 2014, despite having released sporadic movies throughout its past 2.5 years, Robbins launched his first "official" video called "The Cydonia Region of Mars," both to the podcast feed (720p) and to YouTube (1080p). Within the first week, it accumulated over 13,000 views. The movie addresses the geometric arguments by Mars anomalists that there are features in the Cydonia region of Mars that display special geometry matching mathematical constants that prove it was created by an intelligence, likely aliens. After the success of this movie, Robbins has stated that he plans to release more in the future.
==See also==
*RationalWiki:Rational podcasts
==External links==
*Exposing PseudoAstronomy podcast
*Exposing PseudoAstronomy blog
==References==
Category:Podcasts
Category:Skeptics
Extended analogy

Extended analogy is a logical fallacy where the use of an analogy (a rhetorical device used to compare the same phenomenon in different contexts for emphasis or clarification) in a discussion of a general rule is taken to be a statement that the scenario in the analogy and the scenario in the original argument are alike in additional ways. It is a fallacy of distraction.
==Form==
The fallacy occurs by processing an analogy in the following way:
The fallacy will focus on unacceptable aspects of the final line in order to ignore the purpose of the comparison. For example:
:Person N: "Software pirates should campaign to change the law and not break it. I don't think it's ever valid to oppose the law by breaking it."
:Person M: "Such a position is odious: it implies you would not have supported the women's suffrage movement."
:Person N: "Are you suggesting piracy is as important as giving women the vote? How dare you!"
M's analogy is a valid reductio ad absurdum response to the original argument (that it is never acceptable to break the law while opposing it), but N's reply instead assumes M's analogy is a claim both acts are equally significant.
This fallacy occurs particularly often with comparisons to dictators, such as Hitler. A tobacco company may, for example, point out that Hitler was adamant that tobacco was unhealthy, implying that thinking tobacco to be unhealthy is the same as hating Jews. However, this tendency allows us to further demonstrate the fallacy by inverting the situation for a moment: imagine if someone in the Soviet Union compared Stalin to Hitler because they were both horrible mass-murdering leaders, and Stalin took it as a comparison of their mustaches. Stupid, right?
Honestly, this is probably one of the dumbest fallacies you can commit; Even kids watching Sesame Street understand that just because the puppet says that the yellow square and yellow circle are the same color, it doesn't make them the same shape too.
==Counterexamples==
While this may fall victim to Poe's Law, an extended analogy may be deliberately absurdist for the purpose of creating a joke. (For example, Josef Stalin would be quite justifiably offended at having his mustache compared to Hitler's.)
Additionally, any scatological analogy ("full of shit", etc.) can easily be tied back to a corresponding Freudian diagnosis ("anal-retentive", etc.). Whether these cases are evidence of overextended analogies on the part of Dr. Freud is left to the reader's judgment.
Category:Informal fallacies
Extinction

Extinction refers to the complete elimination of a given species. Extinctions may have various causes, including over-hunting, loss of habitat, climate change, competition from other species, obliteration due to local or global catastrophes, plague, gradual evolution, many other factors or combinations of factors. The opposite word of extinct is extant, meaning any species that still survives and exists.
==Extinction events==
:Main article: Extinction event
Species become extinct all the time (an estimated 99% of all identified species are extinct). However, there have been times in geologic history called "mass extinction events" when large numbers of species vanish forever over a relatively short (geologically speaking) time. The most famous of these is the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, often known as the "wiping out (most) dinosaurs". The largest extinction was the Permian Mass Extinction event, which eliminated 96% of marine species and 70% of land species. 
Extinction events, in the past, could have any number of causes, from giant meteor impacts to oxygenation of the atmosphere. However, it is very likely that the rise of modern Homo sapiens has precipitated a mass extinction that we are still in the middle of. It is impossible to accurately estimate the rate of disappearing species, with some estimates ranging up to over 100,000 a year. This is roughly 100 times the "normal" background level of extinction.
==See also==
*Dodo
*Evolution
*Noah's Ark — an attempt to prevent extinction?
*Privatization of wildlife — a way to encourage extinction.
*Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
*White extinction scenario
Category:Biology
Category:Paleontology
Category:Zoology
Extrasensory perception

Extrasensory perception (ESP) is a video game exploit the alleged ability to obtain information independently of the senses known to science, using "the power of the mind."
==Evidence==
ESP is classed as a pseudoscience by the scientific community. Evidence to support the existence of ESP is more often than not purely anecdotal ("Well, my friend swears that she knew I was going to call when I did!") or at least subject to extreme bias and selective reporting. ESP can be tested very easily with blind trials: simply asking someone to guess (ahem, "sense") what is in an envelope shows a success rate no greater than simply guessing.
Claims of ESP have been made for centuries but have never been scientifically confirmed.
The scientific examination of ESP is called parapsychology. In practice, this tends to the pseudoscientific.
==Non-magical ways to read brain waves==
ESP is not to be confused with contemporary research/experimentation in "reading" brain activity electronically. This is quite legitimate science and often involves established techniques such as MRI. ESP is entirely based on "the mind" reading other things, rather than equipment that has been proven to be able to do so - although this equipment doesn't "read minds" in the sense that people would think. Some research does seem to indicate that people's behaviour can be predicted based on brain activity, but this is at best 30 seconds in advance and can only be done when someone is stuck inside a MRI scanner or covered in EEG electrodes.
==ESP examples==
ESP is used to describe a large variety of individual phenomena and claims. It includes such things as:
*Precognition: Seeing or predicting events in the future.
*Clairvoyance and/or Remote viewing: The ability to see something that cannot be seen with the eyes. Such as a painting sealed in an envelope in another room.
*Telepathy: Specifically the ability to communicate with another person using the power of the mind.
*Telekinesis: The ability to move objects without touching them.
*Psychic staring effect (scopaesthesia): the ability to detect if one is being watched.
==See also==
*Psychokinesis 
*Teleportation 
*Zener cards
 
==External links==
*Online Scientific Investigation of Paranormal and Fringe Science
*Cultural Indicators of the Paranormal, article by Matt Nisbet
category:Psychic powers