Science
Letters
Veritas vincit Sir: Professor Dawkins eloquently and engagingly defines true truth for us (‘Matters of fact’, 19 December). It seems…
Matters of fact
What is truth? You can speak of moral truths and aesthetic truths but I’m not concerned with those here, important…
A singular mind
Roger Penrose on his Nobel Prize, the beauty of physics – and why AI is nothing to fear
A Titan of science
This book, soaked like the Dutch Republic itself ‘in ink and paint’, is enchanting to the point of escapism. The…
The science of scent
Harold McGee’s Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells is an ambitious and enormous work. Indeed it’s so…
The solving of a biological mystery
DNA is the blueprint that encodes the instructions to make proteins. Proteins are the building blocks and the machines that…
Confirmation bias
Diversity training doesn’t work
The politics of mask-wearing
We are enjoined by certain experts to wear face masks while having sexual intercourse. No change there, then, for me.…
How we can overcome Britain’s problem with scientific illiteracy
It occurs to me that one of the most important lessons we’ve learnt so far during this time of plague…
Do face masks work? A note on the evidence
Should we, or should we not be compelled to wear face masks during a virus epidemic? It sounds a simple…
The corona puzzle
There is still plenty we don’t understand about the virus
Back to basics
How British science can flourish after Brexit
The purity myth
In the award-winning musical Avenue Q, filthy-minded puppets sang about schadenfreude, internet porn, loud sex, the uselessness of an English…
Accidents waiting to happen
Humanity has come startlingly close to destroying itself in the 75 or so years in which it has had the…
A remarkable, common skill
Probably most of the world is bilingual, or more than bilingual. It is common in many countries to speak a…
It’s science, not protest, that will save the planet
One might expect that the challenge of climate change would encourage many young people to take up Stem (science, technology,…
Radio 4’s The Art of Innovation is a series that — for once — deserves the label ‘landmark’
Radio 4, how do I love thee? Rather as one loves the flocked wallpaper that came with the house. It…
Business is the only area of human activity where you get paid to change your mind
In 1891, a 29-year-old man moved from Philadelphia to Chicago intending to start a business. With $32 to his name,…
Earth dying in five billion years I can deal with, but not a world-weary Brian Cox
When you see the opening caption ‘4.6 billion years ago’, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re watching a programme…
How plastic saved the elephant and tortoise
Plastics — even venerable, historically eloquent plastics — hardly draw the eye. As this show’s insightful accompanying publication (a snip…
The man who never cried
It was odd listening to Jim Al-Khalili being interviewed on Radio 4 on Tuesday morning rather than the other way…
It’s not science I don’t trust – it’s the scientists
Everyone knows the real reason people like Donald Trump are sceptical of climate change is that conservatives are fundamentally anti-science.…
Conversations with a penis, having a laugh about Brexit and why titles matter: Edinburgh Festival reviewed
David Greig has written the international festival’s flagship drama, Midsummer. This farcical romance is performed as a party piece by…
The selective breeding of pets: how far should we go?
It was in his play Back to Methuselah that George Bernard Shaw honoured a lesser known aspect of Charles Darwin’s…
Exhilaratingly original, C4’s Flowers is much more than just a ‘dark comedy’
On Wednesday, BBC Four made an unexpectedly strong case that the human body is a bit rubbish. Our ill-designed spines,…
