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Alex Cockburn joins Sen. Inhofe.
Archive for the ‘Science and its methods’ Category
August 28th, 2009
Category: Health Care, Science and its methods
Why we should still hope for cures no just better treatments.
July 13th, 2009
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is one of the real jewels in the Bay Area’s cultural/educational crown. My wife and daughter-the-middle-school-math-and-science-teacher and I spent the day there, revisiting a place we knew well when the kids were younger. It seemed that Cannery Row has become at least thirty percent more schlocky and touristy over the last [...]
May 23rd, 2009
Category: Health Care, Science and its methods
Mark has expanded this discussion into a larger sphere than I had in mind in my post.
(1) Meta-analysis
The record of amazing effects for which science cannot conjecture, never mind observe, a mechanism is extremely poor, from fusion in a beaker to Uri Geller’s spoon-bending. In case after case, an experiment or two is described but [...]
May 23rd, 2009
Some positive thought therapy is harmless and maybe builds social capital of affection and community. Surely it’s good for me to concentrate on the welfare of someone else even if the magic mystery ray doesn’t actually transmit; if the patient is present, I can’t imagine that the zillion subconscious signals we are so good at [...]
May 17th, 2009
Category: Science and its methods
An anecdote illustrates the scariest aspect of the human subjects protection process.
May 5th, 2009
Category: Science and its methods
A mathematician and poet reflects on the strange powers conferred by a discipline where, as Bertrand Russell once said, you don’t know what you’re talking about or whether what you say is true.
May 5th, 2009
Category: Science and its methods, Spirituality and Religion
Stanley Fish, post-modernist, recycles Berkeley’s sneer at Newton and his followers. The Dawkins-Hitchens recycling of Voltaire’s sneers at Christianity may have occasioned the outburst, but they hardly justify it.
