Cutting off their noses to spite their faces
Animal Aid, one of those mindless animal rights organizations, has just called on everyone in the UK to stop donating to specific medical charities, because they sponsor research that uses animals. I...
View ArticleWhy is Silvana Koch-Mehrin being appointed to the Research Commission of the...
This is a German scandal: Sylvana Koch-Mehrin was recently found to be guilty of extensive plagiarism in her doctoral thesis, such a blatant abuse of scholarship that the University of Heidelberg took...
View ArticleThe Decent Human Beings’ Guide to Getting Laid at Atheist Conferences
There are so many clueless comments in this thread that Old Man PZ, grizzled veteran of the sex wars, successful lothario who has managed to reproduce three times, and champion who successfully landed...
View ArticleJesus: not so great after all
It’s a truism in our culture that Jesus, even if he wasn’t a deity, was a wonderful teacher and moral being. Maybe we should consider that he was a Madman or Something Worse, though: it’s not just that...
View ArticleIt’s a dog’s life
That last post was just too saccharine, so I have to bring you down. Balance! Balance in all things! So here’s your official downer for the day: a story about greyhound racing. One thing about...
View ArticleThe kind of people who elect Michele Bachmann
Scum of the earth. Parts of Michele Bachmann’s district contain the most smug, pious, conservative rat-buggering jerks on the planet (like Marcus Bachmann and his anti-gay “clinic”, for instance). And...
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Heroes
This married couple are good brave human beings. Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen have rightly become national heroes in Norway after they rescued 40 fleeing teens from the massacre on Utoya Island. Using...
View ArticleSometimes Francis Collins does something right
He’s a delusional kook, but Collins is also a competent administrator, and I have to give him credit when he does the right thing. The NIH, led by Dr. Collins, has recently accepted a recommendation...
View ArticleOur illness is their profit
Have you ever walked around an 19th century (or earlier) graveyard? It gives you a depressing snapshot of the old reality: so many young women dead in childbirth, so many children reaped by diseases....
View ArticleAcademic freedom isn’t always honored in the breach
This is a rather chilling story of academic freedom getting trampled. A whole pile of documentation is available at that link, I’ll try to simplify it down a lot. UC Davis was sponsoring a public...
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Scientific morality: an example
Every once in a while, I hear these stirrings from scientists that there can be an objective morality, and that by following reason and evidence we can achieve great advances in ethics and reduce human...
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Hamza Tzortzis is playing gotcha with Lawrence Krauss now
After that debate between Tzortzis and Lawrence Krauss that was overshadowed by the disgraceful anti-egalitarian exhibition of Muslim misogyny, iERA is now trying a new tactic: they’re releasing tiny...
View ArticleScience makes you good! (Sometimes.)
You’ve probably heard this explanation for the virtue of religion: that even if god doesn’t exist, belief in god (or some other monitoring authority) makes people behave more morally. There have been...
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No more Dan Markingsons
A few weeks ago I gave a talk in Seattle in which I pointed out that science is not sufficient to define moral behavior. A substantial part of that talk was a catalog of atrocities, such as the...
View ArticleDemonstrate calmly for pro-science
Brianne writes fairly frequently about her experiences as a clinic escort, dealing with shrieking fanatics who stand on sidewalks harassing people going into family planning clinics. They’re hideous...
View ArticleI always like to know who’s been bought
A correspondent asked me an interesting and difficult question about the sponsorship of science. I’ve been talking a bit lately about the allosaur affair at the Creation “Museum”, which can be...
View ArticleA specular conundrum
Every year in my intro biology course, I try to do one discussion of bioethics. One lecture is not much, but this is a course where we try to introduce students to the history and philosophy of...
View ArticleThis is not how you do science
There is a myth about how science progresses: great men have a eureka moment, and rush in to the lab to do the definitive experiment, often bravely and with the opposition of the Science Establishment,...
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