It’s early January. That time when other people’s New Year’s resolutions mean that you get lots of emails. About really important stuff that you simply must deal with, like, immediately. These folks need a reply because they only have stamina for a few days’ frantic emailing. After the New Year energy […]
Surveys
Results being “due to” causes somehow doesn’t imply causality
So, last week I had the pleasure of enjoying this delicious meal while exploring some backstreet neighbourhoods in Muscat, Oman. See can you guess what the green stuff is… Here’s a closer look… And here it is listed on the menu:
Ukraine, where *are* you?
One of the prerequisites for launching a military intervention in someplace like Ukraine is to figure out exactly where Ukraine actually is. So you can see what the problem is going to be here… Some folks think it’s somewhere around Missouri: Other folks think it’s in
Telling parents how vaccines are safe makes them *less* likely to vaccinate their kids
Here’s a classic science communication fiasco. Many of us believe empiricism enables the resolution of uncertainty with data, and that more information is better than less. That’s why we do science. One of the moral imperatives that drive us is that carefully scrutinized, systematically replicable, and objectively verifiable information trumps […]
Half-full glass latest: Americans beginning to accept heliocentrism
Three quarters of Americans believe that the Earth orbits the Sun. Three quarters. That’s almost all of the quarters. It’s practically everyone who is awake at any one time. Good news, huh? I mean, the opposing view — that the Earth is the centre of the universe, that the stars are […]
So I got this email from Noam Chomsky today, looking for my opinion…
…as did 20,000 other recipients (making their target sample an interesting n = 20,001): Dear Colleague: You have received this survey along with 20,000 other academics globally. This survey is meant to assess the attitude of the scientific community on the issue of university military research. Kindly take a moment […]