Clik here to view.
QotD: Science, evidence and “cognitive creationism”
I wrote about this problem in one of my Scientific American monthly columns recently, noting that both the Right and the Left distort science in the service of their ideology. On the Right we see the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: How to analyze complex multivariate systems for the popular press
Choose a complex and chaotic system that is characterized by thousands or millions of variables changing simultaneously (e.g. climate, the US economy) Pick one single output variable to summarize the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The replication crisis in all fields is worse than you imagine
It may sound like a trivial issue, but it absolutely is not: scientific studies that can’t be replicated are worthless, yet our lives are often impacted by these failed studies, especially when...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“… participants in men’s sport, on average, out-perform participants in...
Barbara Kay is not in favour of clearly misogynistic sports policies: 2016 high school boys compared to 2016 Olympic Women’s Finalists.Source: http://boysvswomen.com/#/ No hormone treatment is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Puritans let no pandemic go to waste
In Spiked, Annabel Denham illustrates how the ongoing Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic has enabled and encouraged nanny state thinking: Not actually the official symbol of Britain’s National Health Services...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: The statistical “Rule of Silicone Boobs”
If it’s sexy, it’s probably fake. “Sexy” means “likely to get published in the New York Times and/or get the researcher on a TEDx stage”. Actual sexiness research is not “sexy” because it keeps running...
View ArticleClik here to view.
This is why the word “unexpectedly” gets such a workout in media these days
David Warren on “unexpectedly” negative results from policies born of virtue-signalling “good intentions” by self-styled progressives: The expression, “unintended consequences,” is a charitable dodge....
View ArticleClik here to view.
The dangers of depending on “experts”
David Warren considers the vastly expanded role of “experts” in our public discourse: Having no degree in either field, I try not to write what will be contradicted by an expert. On the other hand,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Malthusian cheerleaders
Barry Brownstein looks at some of the claims from Malthus onward about the imminent demise of humanity due to overpopulation and how that same concern keeps popping up again and again: Thomas...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Stanford Prison “Experiment”
In another of the anonymous book reviews at Scott Alexander’s Astral Codex Ten, a look at the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment: The second most famous psychology experiment in history is the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The utter failure of political leadership in most countries during the pandemic
Jay Currie runs through some of the many reasons our political leadership and their “expert class” advisors in most western countries were utter shit almost from the starting gun of the Wuhan...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Feeding “the masses”
Sarah Hoyt looked at the perennial question “Dude, where’s my (flying) car?” and the even more relevant to most women “Where’s my automated house?”: The cry of my generation, for years now, has been:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The initial findings of our months-long dietary natural experiment
As we’ve all been told many, many times by the food nannies, access to fast food restaurants makes us fat. The food is too greasy, too salty, too tasty for our feeble wills to fight so we just engorge...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The early growth of “Dianetics”, later known as Scientology
In Quillette, David S. Wills outlines the early years of L. Ron Hubbard’s quasi-religion that eventually turned into a full-fledged cult: In the 21st century, Scientology has become a synonym for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is the PRC really a paper dragon?
Sarah Hoyt is tired of finding posts on MeWe that fluff up the ChiComs as a way of “conservatives” scoring points against “progressives” in the US political context: “The Chinese People’s Liberation...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sarah Hoyt on “scientific government”
In the latest Libertarian Enterprise (which came out a few days ago, but I’ve been very busy), Sarah Hoyt outlines the genesis of the push for “scientific government” to save us all from ourselves and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The official science advisors themselves are making it much harder to “trust...
In the very last “Weekly Dispatch” from The Line that I’ll be able to read and share (because those posts are going behind the paywall from next week onward), the difficulty in “trusting the science”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: The looming quantum computing apocalypse
We’re reaching peak quantum computing hyperbole. According to a dimwit at the Atlantic, quantum computing will end free will. According to another one at Forbes, “the quantum computing apocalypse is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: Homeopathy
The people who wanted money to pay for homeopathic cancer treatment were also, considered as a group, into every other form of quackery you can imagine. Of the 220 campaigners surveyed, 85 mentioned...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: The stagnant field of theoretical physics
Physicists used to be serious and bloody minded people who understood reality by doing experiments. Somehow this sort of bloody minded seriousness has faded out into a tower of wanking theorists who...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Andrew Doyle on our current age of hoaxes
Last week in UnHerd, Andrew Doyle, the comedian behind the wonderful Twitter troll account “Titania McGrath”, explained why trolling today is so likely to succeed: “Titania McGrath” and Andrew Doyle...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“Misrepresentation, exaggeration, cherry picking or outright lying … in...
Y’know, the folks at The Daily Sceptic really need to tell us what they think instead of cloaking their opinions in euphemisms: Two top-level American atmospheric scientists have dismissed the peer...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Declarations of faith in the Church of Scientism
Chris Bray points out the hard-to-miss similarities between traditional religious beliefs and the modern beliefs of the congregations of the Church of Scientism: Christian churches tend the bust out...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Science by press release
Christopher Snowden on a media-genic “study” from a few years ago that supported the priors of the anti-alcohol campaigners and thus was given full uncritical media coverage, despite obvious flaws in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Testing the old saying about those who believe in nothing will believe anything
At Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander considers the old saying — often mis-attributed to G.K. Chesterton or C.S. Lewis: There’s a popular saying among religious apologists: Once people stop believing in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: “Cliodynamics”, aka “megahistory”
For this week’s musing, I want to discuss in a fairly brief way, my views of “megahistory” or “cliodynamics” – questions about which tend to come up a fair bit in the comments – and also Isaac Asimov,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Christopher Snowden on our latest “Clown World” alcohol guidelines
At Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, Christopher Snowden pokes gigantic holes in the stated justification for the latest Canadian drink consumption recommendations (also mentioned in this post yesterday):...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: The heyday of Victorian newspapers
A few years ago, I did some research on three early Victorian murders that caused me to read several provincial newspapers of the time. I discovered incidentally to my research that the owners or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
JunkScientific American
The editors of Scientific American have been steadily injecting more political and progressive content into their traditional coverage of hard scientific topics: Scientific American magazine has been...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The clear drawbacks of depending too much on oral history
In The Line, Jen Gerson explains why you need to exercise caution when dealing with oral traditions: Lac La Croix Indian Pony stallion – Mooke (Ojibway for – he comes forth), October 2008.Photo by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ukrainian, Yugoslav and Baltic Nazis? –ϟϟ Foreign Fighters Part 2
World War Two Published 16 Mar 2023 Across Europe, non-Germans are filling the ranks of Heinrich Himmler’s forces. These foreign fighters certainly don’t meet the racial standards of the SS but times...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: Experts outside their field of expertise
… just because someone is really smart and successful at A does not necessarily mean their opinion on B is worth squat. As always, as a consumer of opinions, caveat emptor should always be the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
JunkScientific American
Stephen Knight calls out the woke editors of once-proud publication Scientific American for their anti-scientific support of the gender warriors: A dangerous strain of utopian thinking has taken hold...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The crusade against (insert scare quotes here) Ultra-Processed Food
In The Critic, Christopher Snowden traces the orthorexist journey from warning about the dangers of saturated fat, to protesting against sugar content in foods, through an anti-carbohydrate phase to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The high-water mark of the Vegan cult?
In Spiked, Patrick West celebrates the passing of peak food puritanism: “Welcome to Las Vegans and Vegetarian, Whole Foods fake meat section, Las Vegas, NV, USA” by gruntzooki is licensed under CC...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“… every time I see some fine new supercluster-aspirational buzzword-laden...
Jen Gerson is irked by the federal government’s latest petty diktat to “save the planet” from single-use plastic bags that bans the use of bags that are not made of plastic: Those who follow my work...
View ArticleClik here to view.
UN Secretary General updates Dante’s Inferno
Sean Walsh on the differences between the lowest level of Hell as described by Dante and the UN Secretary General’s modern characterization: Source: Jerome, Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell, Daily...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Legacy media puzzled at falling levels of public trust in the scientific...
Given the way “the science” has been politicized over recent years and especially through the pandemic, it’s almost a surprise that there’s any residual public trust left for the scientific community:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Holding the BBC to account for their climate change alarmism
Paul Homewood‘s updated accounting of the BBC’s coverage — and blatant falsehoods — of climate change news over the last twelve months: The BBC’s coverage of climate change and related policy issues,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“Ultra-Processed Food” is so bad that we need extra scare-quotes!!
Christopher Snowden seems, for some inexplicable reason, to be skeptical about the hysterical warnings of people like Chris van Tulleken in his recent book Ultra-Processed People: Who Do We All Eat...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: Scientific management and the work-to-rule reaction
Scientific management, a.k.a. “Taylorism”, was all the rage around the turn of the 20th century. At its crudest (and I’m only exaggerating a little), you’ve got some dork with a stopwatch and a camera...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“[W]hy does the press focus so intently on climate change as the root cause?...
Patrick T. Brown in The Free Press on how he had to leave out the full truth on climate change to get his paper published: If you’ve been reading any news about wildfires this summer — from Canada to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: It’s the #BelieveScience fans who are most likely to fall for...
But what this whole developing scandal really reminded us of was, ironically, another scientific paper that was published in the midst of the pandemic. This one in the Journal of Experimental Social...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“An error of this magnitude makes one wonder how robust such calculations are”
Christopher Snowden notes the proliferation of media and public advocacy groups warning us about “junk food”: On Monday, the front page of The Times led with a speech from Henry Dimbleby and a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“… normal people no longer trust experts to any great degree”
Theophilus Chilton explains why the imprimatur of “the experts” is a rapidly diminishing value: One explanation for the rise of midwittery and academic mediocrity in America directly connects to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: The misleading wisdom of the ancient world
It is difficult for us, today, to take some of the teachings of the ancients seriously. The ancient Greeks believed, for example, that peacock flesh did not rot, and that various small creatures —...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QotD: Scientific fraud
In sorting out these feelings, I start from the datum that scientific fraud feels to me like sacrilege. Plausible reports of it make me feel deeply angry and disgusted, with a stronger sense of moral...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A disturbing proportion of scientific publishing is … bullshit
Tim Worstall on a few of the more upsetting details of how much we’ve been able depend on truth and testability in the scientific community and how badly that’s been undermined in recent years: The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The WPATH to danger … for children and teens
Andrew Doyle outlines the exposure of internal communications from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) showing some extremely concerning things about the organization and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“The dark world of pediatric gender ‘medicine’ in Canada”
The release of internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) revealed just how little science went into many or most juvenile gender transitions and how much...
View Article
