Recently, someone shared the cover of a soon to be released book, entitled The Physics of Climate Change, authored by Lawrence M. Krauss and expressed excitement about the book’s impending publication and the prospect of…
I feel a lot of non-science editors just switch off when they read science stuff. A friend told me this earlier today, during yet another conversation about how many of the editorial issues that assail…
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) performs an impressive feat every time it accelerates billions of protons to nearly the speed of light – and not in terms of the energy alone. For example, you release…
The people involved with the RECOVERY clinical trial have announced via statements to the press that they have found very encouraging results about the use of dexamethasone in people with severe COVID-19 who had to…
Say you need to store a square image 1,000 pixels wide to a side with the smallest filesize (setting aside compression techniques). The image begins with the colour #009900 on the left side and, as…
What are epidemiological models for? You can use models to inform policy and other decision-making. But you can’t use them to manufacture a number that you can advertise in order to draw praise. That’s what…
I was slightly disappointed to read a report in the New York Times this morning. Entitled ‘Two Huge COVID-19 Studies Are Retracted After Scientists Sound Alarms’, it discussed the implications of two large studies of…
Borders are often a bad thing because they create separation that is unconducive for what are generally considered to be socially desirable outcomes. And they’re often instituted to maximise political outcomes, especially of the electoral…
Just spotted this ad on the website of The Better India, a journalism website that focuses on “positive stories”: India’s nationwide lockdown has many important lessons – including the fact that it wasn’t useful in…
On June 1 last year, I wrote: Today, I complete seven years of trying to piece together a picture of what journalism is and where I fit in. Today, I begin my ninth year as…
In December 2014, public health researchers and activists gathered at a public forum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to discuss how our perception of diseases and their causative pathogens influences our ideas of what we can and…