The belief culture thrives on the false principle that all opinions are equal, even those without a shred of factual data, documentation, or reasoned methodology. It is a culture in which one in 20 Americans believe NASA faked the Apollo moon landings, and half the population believes the world was made in six days. [...more]
The campaign against climate science has been enormously clever, and enormously effective. It’s worth trying to understand how they’ve done it. The best analogy, I think, is to the O.J. Simpson trial, an event that’s begun to recede into our collective memory. [...more]
While medical diagnoses are based on science, psychiatric “diagnoses” are not at all scientific. They do not reveal what is wrong, what is the preferred treatment, and what is the likely outcome. Nor are they reliable. Different psychiatrists who examine the same patient typically offer different “diagnoses.” Moreover, psychiatric “diagnoses” move in and out of favor, depending on a variety of social factors. [...more]
Is fairness simply a ruse, something we adopt only when we secretly see an advantage in it for ourselves? Many psychologists have in recent years moved away from this purely utilitarian view, dismissing it as too simplistic. Recent advances in both cognitive science and neuroscience now allow psychologists to approach this question in some different ways, and they are getting some intriguing results. [...more]
The way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with a growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse. That is the message from the report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, a major new report by over 400 scientists which is launched today. [...more]
A lot of people come to the climate change issue as environmentalists. Environmentalism is diverse, but I would say that a common denominator for environmentalists is that they are concerned with the negative impact of human activity on the ecosystems that sustain life on the planet and want to make changes that reduce that negative impact — or have no impact or positive impact. But having agreed on this, there are many different views within environmentalism. [...more]
Dr. James Hansen is widely regarded as the leading climate change scientist in the country. It was his testimony to a Senate committee in 1988 that first brought the threat of global warming to the world's attention. For the past quarter of a century he has headed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA's premiere climate research center. Just over a year ago, Dr. Hansen went public with a charge that made headlines around the world, that the Bush administration had been trying to silence his warnings about the urgent need to address climate change. [...more]
Although science is rarely the only factor driving public policy, scientific input should always be weighed from an impartial perspective. Unfortunately, numerous independent investigations have documented the suppression, manipulation, and distortion of federal science before it enters the policy process. Political interference in science has indeed become pervasive. [...more]
A new study of worldwide technological competitiveness suggests China may soon rival the United States as the principal driver of the world’s economy — a position the U.S. has held since the end of World War II. If that happens, it will mark the first time in nearly a century that two nations have competed for leadership as equals. [...more]
People from Western cultures such as the United States are particularly challenged in their ability to understand someone else’s point of view because they are part of a culture that encourages individualism, new research at the University of Chicago shows. [...more]
