Why do well-educated smart people reject scientific ideas?

There is a rather interesting article in Edge that has been written by Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, and also Deena Skolnick Weisberg, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Yale University. The paper is entitled “WHY DO SOME PEOPLE RESIST SCIENCE?”, and is in fact a modified version of a paper published in Science entitled … Read more

Yet another good reason that the UK public smoking ban was a really good move

The BBC reports today that there has been a sharp fall in the number of children admitted to hospital with severe asthma since the introduction of smoke-free legislation in England. The actual study that reports this add to the rising evidence that the legislation was a really good health move. If I recall correctly, one of the … Read more

Mathematicians aim to take publishers out of publishing

The archaic Victorian concept of publishing papers in peer-review journals that are locked behind paywalls is rapidly changing, and rightly so. Many balk at the concept of having to pay for access to the results of publicly funded research. Nature News reports on the latest community that is attempting to embark down the path of open-access … Mathematicians plan to launch a … Read more

Climate Change: Being consistently wrong about everything

James Delingpole is a Telegraph columnist who is constantly banging on about climate change being a complete myth. Today, for example, he writes … Now even Pravda admits the ‘global warming’ jig is up It’s Death of Little Nell time again in the field of climate “science.” The New York Times – aka Pravda – has … Read more

If not Mars then perhaps into Orbit?

Yesterday I blogged about the MARS One folks offering one-way tickets for a trip to Mars, and yes I still think it is a hyped up Reality TV show that does not involve anybody actually leaving the planet. Well, I’ve tripped over a similar offer that looks  real. AXE is offering a suborbital space flight … Read more