Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
Category: Science
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In the modern world, progress means unemployment. Recent events in the US show that fear of the wreckage of progress is beginning to affect major political movements in the developed world, although it’s unlikely that the new champion of the mythical “white working class” is going to ease the problems they are supposed to be…
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Recently I wrote a post criticizing an article at the National Bureau of Economic Research that found a legal ivory sale in 2008 led to an increase in elephant poaching. This paper used a measure of illegal poaching called commonly the PIKE, which is measured through counting carcasses discovered in searches of designated areas. This…
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Last week’s Journal of the American Medical Association had an excellent article by Chapman et al giving a robust analysis of the effect of the change in Australia’s gun laws that happened in 1996. These laws (the National Firearms Agreement) were enacted very rapidly after a major mass shooting (the Port Arthur massacre) in which…
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This week’s Journal of the American Medical Association features an excellent article by Barack Obama, reviewing the implementation and outcomes of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). Obviously large parts of this article were likely written by someone else, since Obama is too busy with his secret Muslim conspiracies to write a full…
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Today the Guardian reported on a new study that claims a large sale of legal ivory in 2008 actually led to an increase in illegal elephant poaching. Basically in 2008 China and Japan were allowed to pay for a large stockpile of legally-obtained ivory, in the hopes that this would crash the market and drive…
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I’ve just returned a week with the WHO in Geneva, where I was working on tobacco control. The tobacco control lobby have made huge achievements in the last 20 years, managing to turn the tide of tobacco use in many countries and pushing some countries (like Australia) towards the dream of zero tobacco, without criminalizing…
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Ted Cruz has won Iowa, primarily on the back of the Evangelical vote. The Republican party is clearly seriously divided at the moment, but outside the disputed politics of the Presidential election, it’s pretty clear that Republican candidates for House and Senate are generally very anti-choice. There is talk of a government shutdown over funding…
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Over Christmas large swathes of northern England drowned, washed away in a huge flood caused by storms from the Atlantic. The same storms battered the Irish coast, and are now moving up towards the arctic, where the North Pole is expected to be 1C – 30C above the average for this time of year –…
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This morning Japanese time the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) closed in Paris with agreement on what is being hailed as a ground-breaking deal on mitigating global warming. The basic outlines of the deal, summarized by the Guardian here are: An aspirational goal of keeping global mean temperature rise below 1.5C A pledge to reach…
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I have just returned from a training course in Italy, where I learnt some analysis skills with about 20 other early career researchers from around Europe. I was the only health researcher, and all the rest were studying ecology or agriculture of some kind. I was expecting this, but I was really surprise to…
Compromise and Conceit 