Pre-Existing Convictions
In anticipation of the ‘new results’ RFK Jr. has promised about the causes of autism, an overview of what science has already learned.
Geoffrey C. Kabat
· 13 min read
Science / Tech
A collection of 320 posts
ChatGPT-5 and the Limits of Machine Intelligence
The disillusion produced by GPT-5 is not a technical hiccup, it’s a philosophical wake-up call.
Hugh Brosnahan
· 6 min read
A Heterodox Education
The Constance Holden Memorial Address, 2025.
Claire Lehmann
· 22 min read
Science, Funding, and Economic Prosperity
A reply to Lawrence Krauss.
Zachary Robert Caverley
· 6 min read
Deprograming Patriotism
‘The Technological Republic’ is a searching indictment of a culture that has lost sight of its metaphysical horizons and now seeks an escape from history.
Brian Stewart
· 11 min read
Invisible Disability and Hidden Potential
Sir Simon Baron-Cohen: “When you systemise, you try to analyse the rules, the events that happen with some regularity, and causal relationships, so you can identify predictable patterns.”
Hannah Gal
· 16 min read
Ancient DNA and the Return of a Disgraced Theory
This is a story of some of the greatest findings in modern research, and of the dismal narrow-mindedness and motivated reasoning displayed by scholars who ought to know better.
Tristan S. Rapp
· 14 min read
Life’s Ancient Bottleneck
Of the six chemical elements necessary for life, phosphorus is the rarest. It determines what grows and shrinks, who lives and dies. By disrupting the planet’s phosphate cycle, unchecked factory farming could have apocalyptic consequences.
Jack Lohmann
· 8 min read
A New Dark Age?
Political scientists have always extolled the ideal of the informed voter, but information has become a cacophony.
George Case
· 9 min read
Why We Distrust Technology
Why do so many people reflexively favour social solutions to climate change while discounting the promise of technological breakthroughs? The answer lies in our evolutionary past.
Marian L. Tupy
· 5 min read
Saving the Animals
Assuring the long-term future of Earth’s wildlife requires more economic and technological development, not less.
Saul Zimet
· 13 min read
The Green Energy Delusion
The current approach to energy and environmental policy isn’t just unsustainable—it has put us on a collision course with reality.
Paul Brown
· 14 min read
Misreading a Flawed Study
Vaccination against UTIs is a novel idea that holds enormous promise, but clinical trials must be well-designed and carefully analysed.
Geoffrey C. Kabat
· 5 min read
The Great Divergence
Many psychological and behavioural gaps between men and women have widened in more gender-equal countries, dealing a major blow to sociological theories of sex differences.
David C. Geary, Lewis G. Halsey
· 8 min read
The Life and Death of a Medical Study
A 2015 study found that black newborns attended by white doctors die at twice the rate of those in the care of black doctors. The study’s refutation last year has not altered the progressive narrative of systemic racism in medicine.
Stewart Justman
· 9 min read