The Angry Drunk

Today this story popped up on my radar via Skeptico. The basic story is, the class­room aide of an autis­tic girl in Ontario Canada went to a “psy­chic” who cold-read the aide and came to the deter­mi­na­tion that the autis­tic girl was being sex­u­ally abused. Now, in a ratio­nal world, when pre­sented with this alle­ga­tion the local child ser­vices agency would dis­miss it out­right. In this world how­ever they mind­lessly sent forth a case worker to inves­ti­gate. Of course, the charges were bull-shit, and the mother was exon­er­ated imme­di­ately. But still, this poor woman has had her life turned upside down, her child trau­ma­tized, and an entry made in the child ser­vices records (believe me, child wel­fare ser­vices record all alle­ga­tions, regard­less of the final dis­po­si­tion of the case.).

This is why rea­son mat­ters. I know that what I’m about to write may offend some of my friends, and I sin­cerely apol­o­gize for that, but it must be said. This is the result of a soci­ety that deval­ues rea­son and extolls the virtues of blind faith. Sure this time around it was some woo-slinging con-woman mak­ing the alle­ga­tion. But what hap­pens when the alle­ga­tions come

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