Monthly Archives: December 2011

Christopher Hitchens – the view through his last book Hitch-22

Posted on December 21, 2011 by sciencepolice2010

Christopher Hitchens is fascinating to me not just because he constantly criticised to the point where ‘critic’ no longer seemed adequate, but also because of the parallels of his life with mine which he often developed down avenues that wouldn’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Book reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Even the Good Guys: Pallen’s “The Rough Guide to Evolution”, and Circularity

Posted on December 1, 2011 by sciencepolice2010

This and the preceding three postings clear some important things up, this time relating to top class scientists. When I saw John Hawks at Birmingham I also encountered Mark Pallen whose main claim to fame 😉 is being professor of … Continue reading →

Posted in Book reviews, Philosophy of science | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Even The Good Guys: DOGma, DOGma, DOGma, DOGma and more DOGma

Posted on December 1, 2011 by sciencepolice2010

Back in May, Razib Khan covered the Vonholdt et al. 2011 paper. This was one of the actually surprisingly few dog genomics papers that also covered wolves, but like all the others, it reported evidence that was fully consistent with … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Even the Good Guys: Let A Million Flowers At Least Start To Bloom! Not Just ‘The’ Null Hypothesis

Posted on December 1, 2011 by sciencepolice2010

I was rather shocked to read John criticising people for merely floating a theory that agreed with the evidence as they saw it, and was pretty simple. It’s not as if they were claiming any alternative was impossible. The job … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy of science | Leave a comment

Even the Good Guys: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Really?

Posted on December 1, 2011 by sciencepolice2010

Amazingly, it looks like the Australopithecus sediba fossils found at Malapa, 1.9mys old and small-brained but ‘perhaps human ancestors’, might have preserved skin, John Hawks reports. But… he blogs, 3rd Sept 2011: “Suppose it’s really skin, or some other soft … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy of science | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment