Ignorance in Climate Science
Our modern scientific view of knowledge was defined by a throwaway line in Descartes’ Discourse on Method. Referring to his dissatisfaction with his education at school, he claimed, … Read more
The War on Cancer…Phobia
David Ropeik is an international consultant in risk perception and risk communication, and an Instructor in the Environmental Management Program at the Harvard University Extension School. He is the author of How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts and principal co-author of RISK A Practical Guide for Deciding What’s Really Safe and What’s Really Dangerous in the World Around You. He writes the blog Risk; Reason and Reality at Big Think.com and also writes for Huffington Post, Psychology Today, and Scientific American. Read more
The rise of anomalistic psychology – and the fall of parapsychology?
Professor Chris French is the Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is also a Fellow of theBritish Psychological Society and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of theBritish False Memory Society. His main current area of research is the psychology of paranormal beliefs and anomalous experiences. He frequently appears in the media casting a skeptical eye over paranormal claims. He edited The Skeptic magazine for more than a decade and sometimes writes for the Guardian’s online science pages. … Read more
It’s extraordinary to make discoveries about the universe…
This week’s guest post features an interview with Michael Brooks. As well as holding a PhD in quantum physics, Michael is an author, journalist and broadcaster. He’s a consultant to New Scientist, has a weekly column for the New Statesman, and is the author of the bestseller in non-fiction titled ‘13 Things That Don’t Make Sense’. As part of an ongoing cycle of lectures, the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain, together with the British Council, recently invited Michael Brooks, to explain the simple question of the origins of the universe. Nicolas Jackson, from North by Southwest, a … Read more
Facts and figures – treat with caution
Dr David Barlow is Consultant in Genitourinary Medicine at St Thomas’ and Guy’s Hospitals, London. He has been the lead author for the chapter on gonorrhoea in the last three editions of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine. Between 1986 and 1993, at St Thomas’, he ran the largest linked HIV sero-survey in the United Kingdom. The third edition of his book Sexually Transmitted Infections- The Facts, Oxford University Press, with original cartoons by the late Geoffrey Dickinson, was published in March 2011. There is something slightly uncomfortable about authoring a book whose cover proclaims: “XXX – The Facts”, with a … Read more
Science owes much to both Christianity and the Middle Ages
This week’s guest blogger is James Hannam, he has a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge and is the author of The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution (published in the UK as God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science). Read more
Risk perception
David Ropeik is an international consultant in risk perception and risk communication, and an Instructor in the Environmental Management Program at the Harvard University Extension School. He is the author of How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts, principal co-author of RISK A Practical Guide for Deciding What’s Really Safe and What’s Really Dangerous in the World Around You, and blogs for Huffington Post, Psychology Today, and has written guest blogs for Scientific American, Climate Central, and Big Think. He founded the program “Improving Media Coverage of Risk,” was an award-winning journalist in Boston … Read more
It just doesn’t feel right
This week’s guest blogger is Simon Laham, PhD, a social psychologist and a Research Fellow and Lecturer in Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His work focuses on the psychology of morality. Read more
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