“You can’t believe what that guy says. He research was funded by Greenpeace!” The person uttering this sentence has committed the economic fallacy, which is the belief that the truth of research […]
Can Telomeres Predict How Long You Will Live?
No, they can’t. Not exactly, and perhaps not with sufficient precision to be useful to you. But there is a new company called Life Length who will sell you, for the low, […]
Earth Has Rights! Guest Post by John Henry Briggs
Since I am away out west, I sent intrepid reporter and number two son John Henry Briggs to the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at CUNY Graduate Center, where he witnessed […]
Why Memes Are Stupid: The Short Version
In 1976, in his The Selfish Gene, a book which revealed that most of us are slaves to our genes, biologist Richard Dawkins “discovered” the meme which, in one definition, is any […]
Will The Religious Out-Breed Us All?
Thanks to long-time reader and contributer Ari Schwartz for bringing this to our attention. “It is widely agreed that religion has biological foundations—that belief in the supernatural, obedience to authority or susceptibility […]
Weekly Mail
I receive regularly a lot of red hot tips from regular readers, but as the week goes on they are often buried by newer mail. Thus I will try out a weekly […]
The Statistics Of Racial And Gender Gaps
Suppose we have collected data on some measure deemed important to society. Examples are fireman entrance exams, standardized test scores in mathematics, income, IQ, and so forth. Higher measures are considered better. […]
Peer Review Fails? Sympathetic Priest? What’s Going On Here?
Duke Scores Another Own Goal According to Science, Duke University oncologist Anil Potti quit after being caught cheating: Anil Potti had published papers in prominent journals identifying gene signatures in tumors that […]
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