Tag: science

A long and tedious blog post about scientific publishing

The world of scientific publishing continues to excite. Long-standing readers will recall that I have addressed this topic before. My remarks have even been quoted by The Guardian, no less (well, by The Guardian’s website at any rate). To recap, the controversies here revolve around the funding model used to […]

Bad things are bad for you. As are good things.

It’s all bad news this week, I’m afraid. Literally. Not only does it look bad and sound bad, but it also has bad effects on you. It’s all-round baaaaaaaaad. First of all — and you’re not going to be hugely surprised by this — the Daily Mail thinks that a leisure […]

flat lay photography of vegetable salad on plate

Correlation? Causation? YOU decide! (It’s as good an approach as any…)

So, I’ve concluded that we might as well give up on trying to spread the word about the correlation-causation fallacy. People just don’t seem to be getting it. I do appreciate that there are complexities (after all, causality causes, and is therefore correlated with, correlation, but correlation does not cause […]

Be careful where you put that paywall

So, lots of people (in the UK at any rate) are pleased at proposals to provide free access to the results of publicly funded research. Here’s George Monbiot’s tweet: This is great news: free access to British scientific research within two years http://t.co/RSZwkDAZ#academicpublishing #academicspring — George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) July 16, […]

Headline-spectrum of the day: Dino-apocalypse by ‘wind’

So apparently, the dinosaurs are extinct. That’s not really news of course (time to let it go, Nessie fans). But what is making the news is some new research about how those terrible lizards ended up shuffling off this mortal coil en masse. There is quite good geological evidence that some kind […]