Science / Tech - Quillette (Page 8)

Academic Ideologues Are Corrupting STEM. The Silent Liberal Majority Must Fight Back

We need to break the spell of illiberal ideology, and come back to our collective senses—to stop self-censoring in fear of the mob and excusing nonsense in the name of political allyship, and to start defending the values of pluralism, humanism, and democracy.

Anna Krylov and Jay Tanzman

18 Dec 2021 · 10 min read

Fund Science on the Basis of Scientists‘ Work, Not Their Identity

The available numbers don’t tell us if there was any evidence of systemic bias in the underlying grant criteria, or in the evaluation of applications against those criteria.

Lawrence M. Krauss

17 Dec 2021 · 6 min read

Flying Cars: What, How, When, and Why?

Even though electric and self-driving cars have yet to saturate the market, dozens of companies are at various stages of launching flying cars in a variety of models.

Randall Mayes

18 Nov 2021 · 10 min read

The Scout Mindset—A Review

A review of The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by Julia Galef. Portfolio, 288 pages (April, 2021) Julia Galef’s The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't is a brisk introduction to a particular way of

Razib Khan

10 Nov 2021 · 7 min read

Deliberately Divided—A Review

A Review of Deliberately Divided: Inside the Controversial Study of Twins and Triplets Adopted Apart by Nancy L. Segal. Rowman & Littlefield, 520 pages (November, 2021) When I first heard about the Louise Wise Services-Child Development Center (LWS-CDC) twin study, I was shocked but also skeptical. A doctor had separated

Bo Winegard

8 Nov 2021 · 8 min read

Machine Learning, Deep Fakes, and the Threat of an Artificially Intelligent Hate-Bot

Fake news isn’t new. More than a century ago, newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer helped stir up enthusiasm for war against Spain by hyping the dubious claim that Spanish agents had used explosives to sink the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. The cry of “Remember

James D. Miller

4 Nov 2021 · 6 min read

A Perfect Storm: The Chocolate, Coffee, and Climate Crises

The major food staples are essential to human survival. Chocolate and coffee are not essential, but try to imagine a world without them. One of the numerous concerns with climate change is that many species will lose their habitats. Scientists are projecting that, in the coming decades, this could lead

Randall Mayes

4 Nov 2021 · 10 min read

‘It works! It works! It works!’: Jonas Salk and the Vaccine that Conquered Polio

Americans turned on their radios, department stores set up loudspeakers, and judges suspended trials so that everyone in the courtroom could hear what Francis was about to say.

Paul A. Offit

29 Oct 2021 · 8 min read

Vaccine Rejectionism and the Left

The coronavirus pandemic has caused massive backtracking and spin-doctoring among progressive parties over bioengineered vaccines.

Jon Entine / Patrick Whittle

21 Oct 2021 · 17 min read

Autonomous Vehicles: Hype or Reality?

AVs are essentially robots with the same requirements as human-driven vehicles—driving and parking skills, the ability to communicate with other cars and the infrastructure, navigation skills, and access to a source of energy.

Randall Mayes

19 Oct 2021 · 14 min read

The Exhibitionist Economy

Upcoming generations will not thank us for gifting them a world devoid of the concept of personal privacy.

Ari David Blaff

15 Oct 2021 · 7 min read

Technology and the Golden Age of Taxonomy

After decades of experience, the sharpest naturalists in history may have been able to identify a few hundred species in the field.

Malcolm Cochran

14 Oct 2021 · 6 min read

Vaccinology, Immunology, and COVID-19

Vaccine technology has sped ahead, serving the critical function to break the link between infection and poor outcomes.

Jesse Pelletier

6 Oct 2021 · 6 min read

Biology Won’t Solve Your Problems with Abortion

Claiming that biological terms are authoritative and unambiguous is either a misunderstanding of biology or a failure to appreciate the difficulties inherent in applying linguistic categories to natural phenomena.

Frederick R. Prete

5 Oct 2021 · 12 min read

The Culture War is Coming for Your Genes

The truth is we can never hope for a perfect alignment between moral desert and material reward because we each have competing definitions of what constitutes merit.

Damien Morris

30 Sep 2021 · 12 min read