A collection of 315 posts
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.
Denial of “invisible” suffering is bad science and worse ethics.
It is easy to create a negative image of intelligence research because most people know very little about the topic. But distorting intelligence research does a disservice to the field’s hard-working scientists and the general public.
The politicisation of medicine has had terrible unintended consequences.
Greater male variability, biology, and bell curves.
The caring industry’s wellness and positivity products cannot provide self-esteem to those who do not already have it.