William M. Briggs

Physicist and microchip inventor Federico Faggin is an open unabashed enthusiastic pantheist, or rather panpsychist. Any number of such people are found in the sandal-shod organic trail-mix crowd, the sort…

I flatter myself that this is the best general thing I have written to explain why you must never, not ever, use a p-value, hypothesis test, "significance", Bayes value, or…

WARNING! If you're attempting to read this via email and not on the site, you might encounter problems: the text might look like gibberish. The LaTeX interpreter, which I need…

The new Administration struck the Educational Empire hard and fast. They blazed "Take out the DIE or lose federal funds." Then the Administration slashed the Empire's overhead, the ridiculous tax…

Every claim of cause deserves to be examined on its merits, and in the context in which it is offered. Dismissing claims out-of-hand is dogmatic. Not all claims can be…

One lesson I've worked hard at imparting is that scientists, being generally of slightly above average intelligence, and sometimes more, excel at finding evidence which supports their beliefs. But that…

Every scientist loves to say that of theories and models that are falsifiable are "scientific". Alas, this excludes by nature and in practice all models and theories used by scientists.…

Can flu vaccine give you flu? New paper seems to say yes. Their conclusion: "the risk of influenza was significantly higher for the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated state...yielding a…