Some scientific questions now seem to be a matter of tribal identity.
Category: Latest News
Welcome to our archive of news stories relevant to the project of fighting fashionable nonsense. The stories are drawn from the electronic pages of the world’s media. On this page, you’ll find links to those stories that have been featured on Butterflies and Wheels during the current year. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find links to separate archives of stories from previous years.
We’re always pleased to hear about news stories that you think should be featured on Butterflies and Wheels. Just send an email here, if you want to point one out to us.
A note about links
Inevitably links go out of date. We suggest, therefore, that you make hard-copies of the stories that particularly interest you.
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Charles is too dangerous to be king
Immovably convinced of his own rightness, he views his critics with the weary resignation of an early Christian martyr.
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A new Sokal hoax in “integrative medicine”
John McLachlan sent an absurd proposal to an International Conference on Integrative Medicine. It was accepted…
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Jesus and Mo on neurology and religion
Or what Mo and Paul have in common.
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Ricky Gervais on “Why don’t you believe in God?”
“I get that question all the time. I always try to give a sensitive, reasoned answer. This is usually awkward, time consuming and pointless.”
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Chapter 19 of Murphy report: main points
“Walsh agreed to go to a psychiatrist and was ‘grateful that he had been given a second chance’.”
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Scale of Walsh cover-up by church is breathtaking
Archbishops, bishops, chancellors, vicars general, parish priests – the list of senior clerics who knew of Walsh’s serial sexual abuse of children is virtually endless.
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“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repealed
It’s done!
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Scientist alleges religious discrimination in hiring
University scientists wondered to each other in internal e-mails if Gaskell’s religion would interfere with the job, which included public outreach.
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Dickens is not cozy hot chocolate reading
Great Expectations is a bitter, tragic novel.
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Steiner Waldorf Schools Part 3: racism
Yet more reasons to think that Steiner schools are all based on pseudoscience: Steiner’s Spiritual Science.
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Guardian leaks police documents on Assange
“The case against Assange is laid out in police material held in Stockholm to which the Guardian received unauthorised access.”
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Israel: rabbi issues anti-Arab edict
Forbidding Jews to rent flats or sell property to non-Jews; Arab students are bullied and threatened.
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Kenan Malik on Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly
The more that liberals concede on free speech and Muslim sensitivities, the more that Islamists gain a spurious moral legitimacy.
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Bad Faith awards 2010
And the winner is – Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, head of the UK Islamic Sharia Council.
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Massimo Pigliucci on Objectivist politics
By far the weakest point of the Objectivist conception of rights is that they limit themselves to what are called negative rights.
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Pamela Ronald on trying to counter woo on TV
Which is difficult when the producers cut all the examples (such as reduced insecticide use, disease resistant papaya, Golden rice).
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“Rock star of science” peddles pseudoscience
Mehmet Oz is an alarmist about GM crops.
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Going to a movie in which women are stoned to death
And some of the audience applauds.
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Templeton asks: is atheism unnatural?
Why yes, it is. Thank you for asking.