Word: skeptics
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Rethinking History Iran calls Holocaust conference Holocaust skeptic and Iranian Prez Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has invited scholars from 30 nations to a conference this week in Tehran to debate issues like whether the Nazis used gas chambers...
...Turkey, meanwhile, a different kind of skepticism is taking root. When Turkey began membership talks, 64% of Turks in one poll said they were in favor of joining the E.U. By this month that number had dropped to 32%. Nationalist parties critical of the government's pro-E.U. policies are gaining strength. Support for the country's two right-wing Euro-skeptic opposition parties has grown to 26% from about 17% four years ago. If they capture that much of the vote in next year's election, they could force a coalition with Erdogan's AK Party...
...thing we know about our risky world, it's that seat belts save lives, right? And they do, of course. But reality, as usual, is messier and more complicated than that. John Adams, risk expert and emeritus professor of geography at University College London, was an early skeptic of the seat belt safety mantra. Adams first began to look at the numbers more than 25 years ago. What he found was that contrary to conventional wisdom, mandating the use of seat belts in 18 countries resulted in either no change or actually a net increase in road accident deaths...
...Indeed, criticizing the states and testing firms charged with carrying out the federal law ignores a far more crucial issue: whether standardized tests can ever really drive high-quality education. Says author and well-known standardized test skeptic Alfie Kohn: "These recent problems with implementation pale beside the appalling effects of NCLB itself. It's when this law is working 'properly' - with all the tests given, the numbers obediently reported, and the attendant punitive consequences enforced - that we really need to worry." Montana may not be sweating out its scores; last year, 92% of its schools made adequate yearly progress...
Informed conciliators have recently become more vocal. Stanford University biologist Joan Roughgarden has just come out with Evolution and Christian Faith, which provides what she calls a "strong Christian defense" of evolutionary biology, illustrating the discipline's major concepts with biblical passages. Entomologist Edward O. Wilson, a famous skeptic of standard faith, has written The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, urging believers and non-believers to unite over conservation. But foremost of those arguing for common ground is Francis Collins...