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Archimedes Plutonium
Via PsyGremlin via PZ Myers, this is Archimedes Plutonium, my new favourite crank hat. I was really fucking surprised to have taken this long to come across his own breed of Wrongness, having been a...
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Nanotechnology ate my hamster
Nanotechnology is great. New materials for advanced displays, molecular recognition for more selective catalysis, or new drug delivery pathways through dendrimers and nanoparticles. And there is the...
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Things that were once impossible…
This is something posted on the RationalWiki Facebook group. I figured I ploughed enough effort into the response to immortalise it here with some minor modifications to blogify it. Sounds ridiculous?...
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Why?
I don’t normally go for the simple image-meme thing, but I figure this is the most succinct way of putting it. More thorough explanation available upon request. What is so special about “science”,...
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How Do You Tell if Someone is a Real Scientist or Not?
Jay Seegert recently wrote a guest article titled “How Do You Tell if Someone is a Real Scientist or Not?” Being riddled with so much derp that just cannot be allowed to stand, I thought I’d write a...
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17% vs 9%
I was recently invited to attend a scientific programme related to medical imagining, the exact details of which I won’t bore people with. The talks were the usual mix you can expect from this sort of...
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We still need scientists on Question Time
Not too long ago, Martin Robbins of the Lay Scientist blog pointed out an interesting fact about the BBC’s Question Time programme: that since the 2010 general election, there have only been two...
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No, Disco Tute, Chemistry is Not Wrong.
Thanks to a previous post, it’s been pointed out to me that creationist do, albeit on fairly rare occasions, go after the chemical sciences. And what was sent my way was an article almost intelligently...
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How To Be A Proper Fucking Scientist – A Short Quiz
Recently, this little quiz from Time Magazine has been doing the rounds. Reactions to it have mostly gone along the lines of – and I’ll paraphrase here - “Holy fucking shit how the fuck can people not...
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Chemistry by Chance – How Even Qualified Chemists Cease to Understand...
Part 2 and Part 3 I’m going back on a chemistry and creationism kick. You know, because I can. And in this case, I’m going to look at this article* by Charles McCombs, Ph.D – apparently a Ph.D in...
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Chemistry by Chance – How Even Qualified Chemists Cease to Understand...
See Part 1 and Part 3 Time to continue slogging through this… so… 4. The Problem of Reactivity In this 4th section, McComb’s gradually tries to get into a little bit of abiogenesis and evolutionary...
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10 Questions for Climate Change Denialists
From politicians to regular old average folk on the street, many people seem to reject the idea that the climate has been adversely affected by man-made activity. Yet science seems to be pretty sound...
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Things You Should Probably Stop Saying –“BUT EVERYTHING IS A CHEMICAL!”
Anyone who hasn’t lived under a rock somewhere in the barren wastelands of nowhere will probably at some point heard about dangerous “chemicals” in our food and water supply. It’s an amazingly common...
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Yes, You Are Allowed to Say Whatever You Want – You’re Asking For Something Else
Whenever something like Tim Hunt’s clusterderp happens in the world, there’s one phrase I can absolutely count on hearing almost immediately. It’s so unavoidable, so foreseeable and so inevitable that...
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Magical Narrative Thinking
Before I begin, this focuses on a very specific example – so, if you have time, have a think about how it generalises. There are countless examples out there, in fiction especially, but where it bleeds...
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The Predictability of Science Churnalism + Bonus Sweary Rant
Ca. 20 hours ago, I dropped the following comment on Facebook: Currently trending is that the Philae lander has perhaps found life on a comet… yeah, if that turns out to be verified and not just media...
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No, Scientists Didn’t Do The Thing
I threatened to write this a few posts back, and after I Fucking Don’t Understand Science’s last clusterfuck, I’m going to. So next time a major science story gets reported in the popular press, this...
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What I’d say to climate change deniers if… fuck it, I AM saying this
You may have read this before, so you know where this is going… I just wanted to say to you by the way of introductory remarks that I’m extremely miffed about this subject, and in my quest to try to...
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Things You Should Probably Stop Saying –“BUT EVERYTHING IS A CHEMICAL!”
Anyone who hasn’t lived under a rock somewhere in the barren wastelands of nowhere will probably at some point heard about dangerous “chemicals” in our food and water supply. It’s an amazingly common...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Yes, You Are Allowed to Say Whatever You Want – You’re Asking For Something Else
Whenever something like Tim Hunt’s clusterderp happens in the world, there’s one phrase I can absolutely count on hearing almost immediately. It’s so unavoidable, so foreseeable and so inevitable that...
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