Gladwell hatin’
Some red meat for readers, Malcolm Gladwell, Memes and Intellectual Honesty:Gladwell comes across as a child trying to explain why his hand was in the cookie jar. He advances a series of unconvincing, somewhat contradictory explanations, hoping that we…
Spengler does it again!
Just Spengler (David Goldman) being Spengler, From “Zionism is Racism” to “Judaism is Racism”:Judaism has nothing to do with race-there are Jews of every race-but it does have to do with family. Jews are members of Abraham’s family. Not only tradition,…
TCHH & curly hair in Europeans
Common Variants in the Trichohyalin Gene Are Associated with Straight Hair in Europeans:Hair morphology is highly differentiated between populations and among people of European ancestry. Whereas hair morphology in East Asian populations has been studi…
The quest for common variants & cognition
A genome-wide study of common SNPs and CNVs in cognitive performance in the CANTAB:Psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia are commonly accompanied by cognitive impairments that are treatment resistant and crucial to functional outcome. There has b…
Applied Statistics over at ScienceBlogs
Just a reminder, Andrew Gelman is now blogging at ScienceBlogs under “Applied Statistics”.
Coffee or not
Real vs Placebo Coffee. There’s a real effect. Though interestingly those who secretly were given decaf didn’t notice it in their self-reports.
Razib Khan: Unlike Singer, Confucius recognised the natural impulse to impose a heirarchy on the value of human life
Unlike Singer, Confucius recognised the natural impulse to impose a heirarchy on the value of human life – and his ideas endured
No one will deny that Peter Singer can provoke. Most recently, in The Life You Can Save, Singer lays out a utilitarian argument for attacking world poverty, extending ideas from his 1971 essay, Famine, Affluence and Morality. Certainly the facts are indisputable, and the logic crisp.
Razib Khan: Darwinism provides a deductive tool, but many of the inferences leave much to be desired in explaining the world as it is
Darwinism provides a deductive tool, but many of the inferences leave much to be desired in explaining the world as it is
“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” So asserted Theodosius Dobzhansky, to which one might respond that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of physics. But what has quantum mechanics to do with behavioral ecology? The enthusiasm of many social scientists for the Darwinian paradigm resembles this ontological leap. An evolutionary psychologist may contend that a preference for blondes is the outcome powerful adaptations, how powerful can it be if only a small minority of humans are blonde? Darwinism provides a deductive tool, but many of the inferences leave much to be desired in explaining the world as it is.
Razib Khan: Polygamy may be the natural, though unfair, order of things
Some religions accept polygamy; others abhor it. But in nature, it’s often a case of winner-takes-all-the-wivesAmong mammals a larger proportion of females than males reproduce, the extent of the imbalance signalled by gender differences in size. Eleph…
Razib Khan: Prophecies of the extinction of religion, or its triumph, fall prey to the weaknesses of linear prediction
Prophecies of the extinction of religion, or its triumph, fall prey to the weaknesses of linear predictionConservative commentator Mark Steyn declares that Europe will soon be dominated by Muslims. The polemicist Sam Harris observes that half of Swedes…