NCAS 2017 Elections

NCAS will be having its annual election for Board of Director positions. Members will shortly receive information in how to vote. Candidates for the Board are given here.

May 20 - Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia

Presented by Susan Gerbic

Note different location (below) from our usual meeting place.

Susan Gerbic will be speaking to us about the work of the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW) project. You learn much about what happens behind the scenes of the 10th most popular website. The mission of the GSoW is to rewrite all Wikipedia pages concerning scientific skepticism, and to do so in all languages possible. They work to support the people and organizations that do the research, write the books, organize the conferences and take the heat from the anti-science and paranormal world.  GSoW gives them the best possible Wikipedia pages possible, while following all the rules of Wikipedia. The GSoW has had a large impact on education around the world since 2010. The GSoW has written and rewritten hundreds of Wikipedia pages, including Spontaneous Human Combustion, Facilitated Communication, Perry DeAngelis, Genetic Literacy Project, Jerry Andrus, "Grandmother Fish" and many more.

Shadow of a Doubt - April 2017

 The Monthly Calendar of the National Capital Area Skeptics

• April 1 - DDT Wars - Charles F. Wurster, PhD
  
• May 20 lecture - Susan Gerbic - Guerilla Skeptics of Wikipedia
• Happy 30th Birthday NCAS!
• NCAS YouTube Channel's Most Popular Video
• Torn from today's headlines
• NCAS Board Elections
• AmazonSmile: Thanks to our members who are supporting NCAS!
•  Shadow Light
•  Drinking Skeptically on hiatus
• Member renewals

 
April 2017

NCAS Public Lecture Series

DDT Wars:
Misinformation, Disinformation, and Mythology of the DDT Issue

Charles F. Wurster, PhD
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, SUNY Stony Brook

Saturday, April 1, 1:30pm - 4:00pm
Bethesda Regional Library
7400 Arlington Road
Bethesda, MD [map] [directions]
(Bethesda Metro station)
FREE admission – Everyone welcome, members and non-members


DDT Wars is the inside story of the decade-long scientific, legal and strategic campaign that culminated in the national ban of the insecticide DDT in 1972. DDT contamination had become worldwide, concentrating up food chains and causing birds to lay thin-shelled eggs that broke in the nests. Populations of many species of predatory and fish-eating birds collapsed. Their numbers recovered spectacularly in the decades following the ban. This campaign to ban DDT was led by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), founded in 1967 by ten citizens, most of them scientists and volunteers without special political connections or financial resources. Their strategy was to take environmental problems to court. There were many setbacks along the way in this exciting and entertaining story. Author Charles Wurster was one of the leaders of the campaign. The first six years of EDF history will be described as it struggled to survive.

Copies of Dr. Wurster's book will be available.

Charles F. Wurster is a founding member of the Environmental Defense Fund and a Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the Marine Sciences Research Center at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He received his Bachelor of Science degree at Haverford College. He earned a Master of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Stanford University. Subsequently Wurster spent a year in Innsbruck, Austria, as a Fulbright Fellow. From 1959 to 1962, he worked as a research chemist at the Monsanto Research Corporation.

Refreshments and socializing after the talk.

http://www.ncas.org/2017/03/april-1-ddt-wars-misinformation.html