This article was suggested by reader JH who saw it discussed at Massimo Pigliucci's site. When he was at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, William Newcomb devised the following puzzle, which…

Everybody says the "gold standard" of experimentation, and especially clinical trials, is the randomized controlled trial. A typical view is that "A Randomized Controlled Trial is an experiment or study…

Be sure to read yesterday's post first. One of the screwy consequences of classical statistics is that my odd sample (mixing babies and the patients from the brain cancer ward)…

A standard epidemiological study goes like this: people who have been "exposed" to some thing, say, cell phone radiation, are examined to discover whether or not they have some malady.…

This article is nothing but an extended link to a must-read piece in City Journal. Internet still once daily. Thanks to reader I. for suggesting this topic. If you haven't…

Just a short one today, all. I'm heading further North. So far from civilization that when I was a boy, it was a cause to celebrate when a cit thirty…