Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
Category: Science
-
Today’s New England Journal of Medicine has a perspective piece arguing that an HIV vaccine remains an essential medical research goal. This might seem a strange question to even be considering, but in the era of test-and-treat strategies it is possible that HIV can be eliminated without resort to a vaccine. It’s a little early…
-
I have got involved in a Saturday-morning stoush about genetically modified (GM) crops at Professor Quiggin’s blog[1]. For those who don’t know him, John Quiggin is a left-wing economist and blogger who wrote the book Zombie Economics, and I think is generally well-respected for his sensible policy views, though he can be spectacularly wrong. I…
-
This week I have been engaged in a Bayesian Statistics Death March with two students and a colleague: four hours a day, locked in the seminar room teaching ourselves Bayesian statistics. We are working through the core chapters of the book Bayesian Data Analysis (3rd Edition) (BDA 3) by Gelman et al. This book is…
-
The Guardian reported recently that a researcher in the UK has developed a climate model for Middle Earth. Apparently he developed a climate model and ran it over six days in a super-computer at Bristol university, and has been able to identify different climate zones in Middle Earth. We now know that the Shire had…
-
Recently Myles Allen wrote a piece for the Guardian suggesting we should use direct action to mandate fossil fuel companies deliver carbon capture technology, and appears to be juxtaposing this with carbon taxes. A few global warming blogs I read took issue with the piece. I’m suspicious about the feasibility of carbon capture technology, so…
-
In case anyone hasn’t noticed, the Philippines was just hit by a monster storm that killed more than 1000 people. It’s likely that this is going to be the third year in a row that the Philippines experiences a new record-setting disaster, and this is also probably the fourth biggest storm on record anywhere in…
-
Earlier this year I posted a prediction of the minimum arctic sea ice extent, in which I used a simple regression model to predict the average September extent. My final conclusion: My final estimate for sea ice extent in September 2013 is 4.69 million square kilometres (95% CI: 4.06 – 5.32 million square kilometres). On…
-
Obamacare has been in place for barely a week, and already the medical journals are publishing editorials and opinion about it. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is particularly interested in health finance reform in America, and has been publishing a lot of speculative material on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for a long…
-
Today’s Guardian has some new notes on the ongoing scandal that is the British education system. This time it’s a new OECD report ranking countries by numeracy and literacy, and the United Kingdom has fallen near the bottom. Worse still, the study finds that on average 16-24 year old Britons perform worse on both numeracy…
-
The New York Times has an interesting and thoughtful article asking why so few women do science, a topic somewhat related to questions sometimes asked on this blog about women and role-playing, and dear to my heart since I graduated in physics and now live in Asia, where science is cool. Why do the English-speaking…
Compromise and Conceit 