There is an extremely interesting (albeit long) article in the upcoming New York Times Magazine (they post their lead articles online a few days before the magazine itself comes out) about noted scientist and global warming skeptic, Freemon Dyson. The article makes note of the fact that Dyson is widely considered to be one [...]

Check out this article, describing two recently published studies on the effectiveness of a common type of prostate screenings. The gist is that blood exams that look for prostate cancer don’t actually prolong the lives of even at-risk men, on average. In other words, this type of prostate screening may be a large [...]

It’s always dangerous to tell a chatty cab driver that you study Political Science. I learned that one the hard way when I was an undergraduate. The driver in question proceeded to spend most of my thirty minute ride from the airport explaining to me how the country has gotten away from the [...]

Watson, a nobel Prize winner who in conjunction with Crick first understood the nature of DNA, recently incited a storm of controversy by insinuating that different racial groups had different levels of intelligence. To start, I don’t agree with his statements. I’ve read into the genetics of race, and teach classes on intelligence [...]

So far as I can tell, there is absolutely no evidence that vaccines have any link to autism in children. The CDC has issued a report reviewing the evidence and has found no connection between MMR vaccines and autism. A similar report was issued by the Institute of Medicine, rejecting any [...]

Today’s New York Times has an extremely interesting article discussing new advances in the field of evolutionary-development, and what it means for our understanding of the processes of evolution.  Assuming that the information presented in this article is correct (a decent assumption, but one should always take mass-media articles on technical subjects with a significant [...]

In an excellent blog entry at NYTimes.com, law professor Stanley Fish notes that three recent books critiquing religion all share a few basic ideas, including the dismissal of faith. These books, like so many others who attack religious belief, set faith as the opposite of reason and then claim that any argument that cannot [...]

So, Yahoo news recently reported that kids who’s parents are divorced are much more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and be prescribed Ritalin. Of course, the implication is that divorce causes kids to get ADHD. Here are some other possible explanations:
1) Kids who act out and have ADHD lead to more stressful family [...]

I’ve thought about this a lot, and I just don’t get it.
In 1979, Marilee Jones applied for a job at the MIT Admissions Office. It was an entry level position to work with a group whose goal was to increase the number of women at MIT. At the time, Ms. Jones probably needed [...]