Science is the sacred cow of our age (if indeed there are any left), so any attack on the output of the scientific enterprise may be taken as an affront by practitioners of the art. Our concern, however, is not with the occasional forgivable accident or error, the inevitable consequence of research being conducted by […]
Jonathan Chait, a senior editor at the New Republic, reports that when the National Journal asked Republican senators and members of the House last year “…whether it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the earth is warming because of man-made problems,” only some 23% said yes. Since that time there has been a further […]
This week we were treated to the news that in addition to his other exotic and high-living habits, the esteemed leader of North Korea likes his sashimi cut from living fish. And this week also the topic of whether fish feel pain graced our newspaper. Elizabeth Braithwaite, a behavioral biologist at Edinburgh University, wondered why […]
The entire research agenda for stem cells is at this moment still based on a promise and an expectation for a big payoff downstream, on some uncertain timescale. There is nothing wrong with that. No one is putting conceptual barriers in the way with the argument that there is insufficient experimental support to go forward. […]
An article in the current issue of “The New York Review of Books” by John Gray carries the above title as it surveys the intellectual legacy left by Isaiah Berlin, who died in 1997. Berlin was shaped by the major totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, and he was also shaped by a Russian liberalism that […]
Sense and Nonsense on Autism: Beyond Genetics
Sense and Nonsense about Autism: Beyond Genetics “Autism is currently, in our view, the most important and the fastest-evolving disorder in all of medical science and promises to remain so for the foreseeable future.” —-Dr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman, chairman of the department of psychiatry at Columbia University’s school of medicine. A few months back David […]