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.
A collection of 320 posts
In anticipation of the ‘new results’ RFK Jr. has promised about the causes of autism, an overview of what science has already learned.
The disillusion produced by GPT-5 is not a technical hiccup, it’s a philosophical wake-up call.
The Constance Holden Memorial Address, 2025.
A reply to Lawrence Krauss.
‘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.
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.”
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.
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.
Political scientists have always extolled the ideal of the informed voter, but information has become a cacophony.
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.
Assuring the long-term future of Earth’s wildlife requires more economic and technological development, not less.
The current approach to energy and environmental policy isn’t just unsustainable—it has put us on a collision course with reality.
Vaccination against UTIs is a novel idea that holds enormous promise, but clinical trials must be well-designed and carefully analysed.
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.
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.