nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Spider-Man fallacy

The Spider-Man fallacy is sometimes committed by Biblical literalists, and goes roughly like this:
*Literalist: '"Sodom and Gomorrah have been found by archaeologists! This means the Bible is true!"
*Non-literalist: "New York really exists, but that doesn't mean Spider-Man is real."
From this it can be inferred that, since knowledge is power, it comes with great responsibility.Spider-Man. Dir. Sam M. Raimi. Perf. Tobey Maguire, William Dafoe and Kristen Dunst. Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, 2002. Film. Stan Lee. Unless it was FDR. Or Voltaire.
==Origin==
It was bitten by a radioacti... no hang on, um... It seems to have bubbled up through the lower depths of the netosphere in about 2007, being mentioned in a blog on Myspace.Potential Forum Discussion II: the Spiderman Fallacy However, it was on Myspace, so nobody read it. It turns up next in 2010 as an entry in Urban DictionaryUrban Dictionary's Spiderman Fallacy entry (a reliable source if ever there was one) and in 2012 was being discussed in Christian blogs. One article, hosted by the Christian Post,Jesus and the Spiderman Fallacy attacks an atheist for using the argument by using such time-honored apologetic nuggets as Luke was "a top notch historian",Hear that sound? It's every non-apologist scholar of ancient history spontaneously Rolfing ROFL'ing. that the New Testament and Spider-Man "are of two different genres", and it trots out the usual suspects of apologist scholars in support of these views. To no one's surprise, the article ends up with the equally tired claim that rejection of the New Testament is just based on an "anti-supernaturalist" bias.
==References==
Category:Informal fallacies
Spirochaete

A Spirochaete is any member of the phylum Spirochaetes (literally "Spiral hairs"), a group of distinctive, Gram-negative bacteria, which possess long, helically coiled cells. Spirochetes are chemoheterotrophic, and reach lengths between 5 and 250 µm and diameters around 0.1-0.6 µm.
Spirochetes are also different from many bacterial phyla in the way that they have flagella that lie between the cell membrane and outer membrane, running lengthwise. These special flagella are termed axial filaments, and their movement causes the spirochaete to twist, thus allowing it to move forward or backward, much in the same manner a screw moves forward or backward when turned.
One of the most important spirochaete genera (in relation to humans, at least) is the genus Treponema, which contains two important disease-causing species, Treponema pallida, the pathogen of syphilis, and Treponema pertenue, the pathogen of yaws.Yaws. (2021, May 17). World Health Organization.
==References==
Category:EvoWiki ports
Category:Evolution
Category:Microbiology
Sponge

A sponge is an animal of the phylum Porifera that lives in a pineapple under the sea. They feel very spongy. They are sessile filter feeders that can reproduce both sexually and asexually, and lack developed nervous, digestive, or circulatory systems but often have to keep them together and protect them from predators. They may in fact have been the first animals, with an evolutionary history possibly going back 640 million years.First animal was likely sea sponge, EarthSky 25 February 2016 Of course, they haven't stayed stagnant for those 640 million years, as while some sponges still have simple vaselike structures known as ascons, other sponges known as leucons have remarkably complex bodies for filtering water.Porifera, Ralph Page's Animal Encyclopedia
==Types of sponges==
* the most common type of sponge today. They have spicules made of the protein 
* or "glass sponges" have spicules made of silica. They can be remarkably long-lived, with a potential lifespan of 15,000 years. Hexactinellid sponge (Scolymastra joubini) longevity, ageing, and life history, HAGR
* have spicules made of calcium carbonate. 
* which went extinct a long time ago in the Devonian. They are known for their layered skeletons without any spicules and were important reef builders for their time.Stromatoporoids, UC Museum of Paleontology
== Significance to the evolution of multicellular life ==
This experiment showcases a glimpse into the evolution of multicellular organisms from unicellular ones.
First get a sponge, and chop it up into several small pieces. These pieces are then forced through a sieve so fine it separates the individual cells that make up the animal. Then, view it through a microscope to see the individual cells clumping together. After waiting for a while, the cells will clump to form the original multicellular organism.The Life of a Sponge, colugo11, Tree of Life This does not work with goats.
Furthermore, if you were to do the same experiment, but mix up the cells of different species of sponges, the sponges would all assemble into their separate species.
==References==
Category:Animals
Category:Evolution
Category:Paleontology
Spontaneous remission

Spontaneous remission (also known as spontaneous improvement or spontaneous regression) is a phenomenon in which an untreated disease or condition suddenly disappears for no apparent reason. It is a regression to the mean as applied to health conditions. Along with misdiagnosis, this is one of the ways in which alternative medicine can seem to cure diseases such as cancer, and why anecdotal evidence is not reliable.Apparently Miraculous Cures: What Do They Tell Us?
==Examples for various diseases==
The spontaneous remission rates for cancer depend on the type: according to studies done, basal cell carcinoma and breast cancer disappear in up to 20% of cases, while the rates for melanoma haven't been studied, but have been estimated to be around 10%-20%.Spontaneous Regression of Melanoma May Offer Insight Into Cancer Immunology, Carrie Printz, J. Natl. Cancer Inst. (2001) 93 (14): 1047-1048.Study reveals surprising cancer remission rate, Dartmouth Medicine Magazine.
Autoimmune hepatitis goes into spontaneous remission in 13%-20% of cases.Hepatitis Chronic — Medical Disability Guidelines
Untreated tuberculosis goes away in approximately 29% of cases.How to optimize tuberculosis case finding: explorations for Indonesia with a health system model, BMC Infectious Diseases 2009, 9:87 doi:10.1186/1471-2334-9-87.Natural History of Tuberculosis: Duration and Fatality of Untreated Pulmonary Tuberculosis in HIV Negative Patients: A Systematic Review, PLoS ONE 6(4): e17601. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017601. About 65%-75% of people with invasive group A streptococcal infections live.HPA — FAQs — Group A streptococcal infections
Diabetes can also undergo spontaneous remission, though the rates are unknown.RECURRENT DIABETES: SPONTANEOUS REMISSIONS AND EXACERBATIONS, B. Y. Glassberg, M.D.Spontaneous Remission of Diabetes, R. B. Haining and R. G. Haining.
==Misdiagnosis==
Misdiagnosis can interfere with recorded remission rates. Malaria misdiagnosis, for instance, is a problem in Asia and Africa.Overdiagnosis and mistreatment of malaria among febrile patients at primary healthcare level in Afghanistan: observational study, Toby Leslie, Amy Mikhail, Ismail Mayan, Mohammed Anwar, Sayed Bakhtash, Mohammed Nader, Clare Chandler, Christopher J M Whitty, Mark Rowland,
BMJ 2012;345:e4389.Symptom overlap for malaria and pneumonia—policy implications for home management strategies, Källander K, Nsungwa-Sabiiti J, Peterson S., Acta Trop. 2004 Apr;90(2):211-4.Malaria misdiagnosis: an interview with Dr Toby Leslie, July 26, 2012. In one study, out of 414 patients going to hospitals using clinical diagnosis, 412 were prescribed anti-malarial drugs, even though 413 tested negative for malaria.
Alternative medicine promoters often claim that misdiagnosis (esp. of ADD/ADHD) is another way Big Pharma pushes its drugs on people.Conspiracy Planet: ADHD Conspiracy-Scam: Million US Kids MisdiagnosedNatural News:One million children misdiagnosed with ADHD
==See also==
*Placebo effect
==References==
Category:Medicine Category:Biology category:Alternative medicine
Category:Arguments against evidence-based medicine
Spot reduction

Spot reduction is the idea that body fat can be reduced in particular problem areas, such as the glutes or lovehandles, by repeatedly performing exercises that specifically target those areas. Like all broscience, the concept is lacking in anything that resembles non-trivial evidence.
==Why it doesn't work==
The human body, like the bodies of most other mammals, stores unused energy from sugars and complex carbohydrates as fat. This is an evolved quality of mammals—fat serves as an insulator in times of cold temperature and as reserve energy in times of famine. That fat is stored throughout the body, below the skin and above the muscles (a positioning which also helps to lubricate muscle movement). Fat may bulk up in certain areas where there is more room (such as the outer thighs, the neck and breasts), but it is more-or-less uniform. If fat were to go "straight to my thighs!" as many people might complain about, there would be many people out there who are svelte and trim in some parts of their bodies and horribly distended around their "problem areas". Every individual is different; your experience may differ slightly, but generally the storage is uniform.
When an individual starts a weight loss routine, ideally through changing to more healthful eating habits and a regular exercise regimen as prescribed by a qualified dietitian, fat loss occurs the same way it was put on— uniformly about the body. Those certain areas that have more fat storage by nature of their location may not reduce as quickly as the other areas, which might suggest spot reduction is occurring, when in fact the fat is simply being reconverted into energy at the points most accessible to blood vessels. Exercise simply increases the fat "burning".
Let's put it another way. Assume spot reduction works and it's the way fat is removed from the body. That means someone who is looking to lose fat would have to work out every "spot" of their body in order to experience results. Otherwise, a person whose only form of exercise is daily walks in the park would only lose fat around their legs and hips but never in their torso or neck area. Since it is known that an exercise routine will eventually reduce body fat to healthy levels throughout the body if an exercise regimen is followed, one can conclude through reductio ad absurdum that fat loss doesn't work that way.
==What actually does happen==
While limiting exercise to "targeted" areas of the body will reduce fat all over, it will only increase muscle mass in the areas which are exercised (in weight-lifting/body-building circles this is referred to as isolation). Muscles that get larger leave less room for fat, which will cause fat to be compressed in those areas but won't actually increase the fat reduction above and beyond the normal loss attributed to the exercise. Focusing the exercises to the detriment of other muscles groups can cause abnormal body shapes or unbalanced muscle coordination, leading to problems such as being funny looking (e.g., "never skip leg day") or injury (e.g., just because someone has massive biceps doesn't mean their triceps can handle a strenuous exercise).
St. George Jackson Mivart

St. George Jackson Mivart was an English biologist. He is most well known for his criticism of natural selection in his book of On the Genesis of Species published in 1871.
==Biography==
He devoted himself to medical and biological studies. He was Vice-President of the Zoological Society twice (1869 and 1882); Fellow of the Linnean Society from 1862, Secretary from 1874–80, and Vice-President in 1892. In 1867 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his work "On the Appendicular skeleton of the Primates".
==Evolution==
As a biologist Mivart accepted evolution, but was a non-Darwinian. He became a critic of Darwin's views on natural selection and instead advocated saltationism and Lamarckian evolution. He published his book On the Genesis of Species in 1871, which was a criticism of natural selection. 
In the sixth edition of Origin of Species, Charles Darwin responded to the criticism of Mivart. In response Mivart wrote a negative review of Darwin's book Descent of Man in the Quarterly Review, and after this both Darwin and Mivart broke communication with each other.
Though admitting evolution in general, Mivart denied its applicability to the human intellect (a view also shared by Alfred Russel Wallace). His views as to the relationship between human nature and intellect and animal nature in general were given in Nature and Thought (1882) and in the Origin of Human Reason (1889).
Mivart was a Roman Catholic and is sometimes described as a theistic evolutionist.
==Selected publications==
*On the Genesis of Species (1871)
*Man and apes: an exposition of structural resemblances and differences bearing upon questions of affinity and origin (1873)
*Nature and Thought (1882)
*Origin of Human Reason (1889)
==See also==
*Edward Drinker Cope
==References==
*Bowler, Peter J. (2003). Evolution: The History of an Idea. University of California Press.
*Bowler, Peter J. (1983). The Eclipse of Darwinism: anti-Darwinian evolutionary theories in the decades around 1900. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Category:Evolution
Category:Biologists
Category:British people
Stanford rape case letter

This is the 12-page letter written by the victim of a 2015 Stanford rape. This is her letter, reprinted. 
==The letter==
==Works cited==
*https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.qsDwJaOwK#.dsYkQqzkW
==References==
Category:Rape
Stanislav Grof

Stanislav Grof (1931-) is Czech psychiatrist. He promotes a therapeutic practice that consists of getting a patient high, (initially with LSD then with hyperventilation / holotropic breathwork when LSD became illegal), and attributing mystical significance to the experience.http://citizeninitiative.com/grof_therapy_and_maps.htm The process, combined with the forking over of large sums of money, allegedly heals the patient from trauma. For a Grofian, the emphasis is on prenatal or birth trauma if there is no obvious reason for the patient's psychological problems. Which is clutching at straws, really. The hyperventilation is intended to produce an altered state of consciousness which activates the mind's natural "holotropic" healing process, holotropic meaning "moving towards wholeness". This is pretty much the thinking behind high-dose psychedelic therapy, as opposed to low-dose talk therapy. Other breathwork practitioners may assume it's all about past lives. 
Holotropic breathwork was practiced in a medical setting until it became illegal in the UK; it is now practiced under the guise of self-help workshops.http://www.stanislavgrof.com/pdf/akashic%20field%20evidence.pdf
Grof talks about shamans a lot and humbly regards his own work as a paradigm shift in science akin to those of Newton and Galileo.
Ervin Laszlo is his BFF.
Carl Sagan is on record as having been interested in his work at one point.http://www.skepticink.com/incredulous/2012/11/09/carl-sagans-stumbles/
==Publications==
*Healing Our Deepest Wounds: The Holotropic Paradigm Shift (Stream of Experience Productions, 2012)
*"Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy" (State University of New York,1985)
==External links==
*Official website
*Book Review
*Neglected Papers Against Grof Therapy
*A Critique of Stanislav Grof and Holotropic Breathwork
==References==
Category:Drugs
Category:Pseudoscience promoters
Category:Living people
Stanley Coren

Stanley Coren (1942-) is a professor of psychology and a researcher of neuropsychology. As far as is known, he is fine in these areas and made genuine contributions to studying sensory processing, the effects and causes of left-handedness, and consequences of sleep deprivation. However, his actual claim to fame came in the 1990s when he fancied himself an animal behaviorist and wrote The Intelligence of Dogs, which attempted to analyze dog intelligence and rank the intelligence of different breeds of dogs."Biography," Stanley Coren's homepage, as saved Feb. 17, 2017. 
Despite his popularity, his "research methods" and method of determining dog "intelligence" were deeply flawed and a great example of junk science.http://www.kateconnick.com/library/corenintell.html For one, he equates dog obedience with "intelligence", which is in-and-of-itself a very controversial proposal. Even worse is that much of his research consisted of interviewing just 200 obedience judges and asking them their opinion on which breeds were the most trainable. That's it. Furthermore, he doesn't even really try to quantify dog intelligence when it comes to instinctive intelligence, despite that supposedly being one of the three parts of dog intelligence. 
Unfortunately, his ranking list of breeds remains popular for its simplicity and probably the fact that it's the first result on Google when looking up dog intelligence by breed.
==References==
Category:Authors
Category:Living people
Category:Pseudoscience
Category:Pseudoscience promoters
Stansberry and Associates

Stansberry and Associates is something like what you'd get if Zero Hedge was an investment firm. Owned by Frank Porter Stansberry, their websiteshttp://stansberryresearch.comhttp://ronpaulupdate.com are a mix of economic doom and gloom combined with oodles of painfully obvious pump-and-dump-type schemes. They appear on US television in the usual time slots frequented by the broke and gullible, with none other than Ron Paul pitching for themhttp://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/ron-paul-radio-and-internet-ads-watch-out-for-the-coming-eco#.qwokomw6mM to hit exactly the market you expect. Stansberry himself is an occasional writer for WorldNetDaily and promoter of various conspiracy theories surrounding President Obama. 
==Forecast: Mad Max==
As is rather common with right-wing financial doomsayers, Stansberry's particular ooga-booga is hyperinflation, pointing (as you do) to Weimar Germany and the like as what will happen if the US continues with its eeeevil neo-Keynesian economic policies. Their predictions have been sufficiently histrionic and widely distributed to gain the attention of Snopes.com,http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/hr2847.asp and the "super secret strategies" rhetoric in their marketing materialshttp://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2013/10/24/another-stansberry-con-job/ is right in line with other "don't trust the banksters" forms of economic fraud as high yield investment programs, implying that Stansberry can provide access to these behind-the-scenes banking instruments that only the rich have access to.
==Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain==
Stansberry himself is exactly the sort of unrepentant bigothttp://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/13/right-wing-financial-huckster-uses-racist-and-a/195375 that you'd expect someone who's made a living off of affinity fraud to be. He was fined US$1.5 million in 2007 by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a case that was upheld by the US Supreme Court; perhaps surprisingly, some of his biggest defenders were newspapers who were afraid that the case could be used to set a precedent where brokers could be prosecuted for passing on bad information in good faith. SCOTUS did not particularly care for this argument and refused to hear the appeal. Journalist Brian Deer (the same one who took down Andrew Wakefield) has written extensively about Stansberry's, um, business model,http://briandeer.com/stansberry/stansberry-associates-investment.htm including one particularly cruel 2003 incident where Stansberry promoted a fictitious AIDS vaccine. After all this, it should come as no surprise that Stansberry's pitches (with their clichéd "let me let you in on a secret" writing style) are in regular rotation on right-wing junk mail lists, even long after being repeatedly debunked. 
If you're into whatever the opposite of tubthumping is, Stansberry has a podcast. It's probably more of the same, but we can't be bothered to listen.
==References==
Category:Conspiracy theorists
Category:Financial fraud
Starseed

Starseeds are reincarnated space beings in human form that are destined to lead humanity into a shining tomorrow. Some have reincarnated hundreds of times before on Earth, but they're still really from space, endowed with souls filled with alien experience and superior knowledge. They usually don't remember who they are, and they may be more dysfunctional in life than normal people, but they have a little special something – maybe it's in the genes – that activates at some point in their life to help them recover their lost memories.
As expected, they have psychic powers and a connection to every mystical and religious tradition in Earth history because they reincarnate as shamans, holy men, and sages all the time. Younger starseeds are often crystal children. Some of the more hippie-flavored teachings refer to them as wanderers.
Starseeds are totally real, and not at all just yet another variety of predatory New Age borderline sociopath, or some kind of "you are special" cult recruitment strategy.
==Sirius==
One prominent group of so-called Starseeds claim to be the reincarnation of aliens from Sirius. This is quite remarkable, for two reasons:
* Sirius is less than 300 million years old. Any life-bearing planets orbiting Sirius would not have had enough time to evolve anything more complex than bacteria.
* Sirius is a binary star system, consisting of the big blue-white main-sequence star you can see at night (Sirius A), and a tiny but super-dense white dwarf called Sirius B. At closest approach, Sirius A and Sirius B are closer to each other than the Sun is to Saturn. Any planet more than 2.5 AU from either star would be thrown out of the system by the other star's gravity. Yet Sirius A's habitable zone is over 4 AU away from it, meaning any planet in a stable orbit around Sirius A would have to be so close to it that its oceans would boil away into space. And no one knows whether life is possible within the goldilocks zone of a white dwarf such as Sirius B.
==Am I a Starseed?==
It's more likely than you think. Many starseeds haven't activated yet. There are a number of common characteristics in all starseeds but, as you may guess, they're all subjective, emotion-based, and non-falsifiable. RationalWiki has developed an easy test to determine if you're a starseed from the comfort of your own home. 
:1. Are you a "very spiritual" person, into science fiction, or a new age hippie?
:2. Do you really want to be a starseed?
:3. Reeeeally really?
If you answered yes to all or any of these questions, sure, why the hell not.
==See also==
* Indigo children
* Stan Romanek
* Ra Material or Law of One
==External links==
*All About Starseeds
*Siruis Temple of Ascension
category:ancient aliens
category:new Age
category:ufology