Category: Latest News

Is it diversity or is it self-serving special pleading, Dershowitz asks.

Passive-aggressive avowals of philistinism, mandarin prose and postmodern hermeneutics combined with barbarian thrusting at the gates, and other odd combinations.

Story, fiction, narrative; fact, evidence, truth; and patrolling the border between them.

School leaving age should be tied to needs of economy, boffin says. But what of education as a good in itself?

An experiment shows that, contrary to neoclassical market theory, efficiency can depend on experience.

Because scientists often disagree, therefore we might as well believe whatever we like? Scientific American says No.

Is natural science a better model for historians than social science?

A mix of fanciful evolutionary psychology, teasing and polemic for weekend reading.

Archaeologists have investigated the crash site of either a weather balloon or an alien ship. If they find it was the former, will the alien story go away?

An anthology of the best of Lingua Franca, and its ‘mingling of intellectual excitement with human folly and intrigue peculiar to academia.’

Gravity is the great equalizer, it makes the rich fall down with the poor.

What is history, what is theory, is biography a branch of history or is it creative writing (let’s hope not!), is theory as important as research, do readers want narrative, and more questions.

James Traub on the conflict between research and ideology in US education, where a priori beliefs have ‘tremendous force’ in shaping judgments of effectiveness.

The philosopher answers questions on the Guardian’s Discussion Board, including one from Butterflies and Wheels.

Frederick Crews updates his perplexed Pooh with lashings of jargon, obscurantism, and pretention.

Surely adult education is the best weapon against woolly thinking. It would be nice if it could be well funded.

Or are there other explanations. ‘Maybe instructors used to be too stingy with their marks and have become more reasonable.’ Hmm.

A French court has ordered an encyclopaedia publisher to remove a passge from the next edition that questions the numbers killed at Auschwitz.

‘Economists had long assumed that beliefs and decisions conformed to logical rules.’ What a strange thing to assume. But Kahneman and Tversky did the studies that corrected the mistake.

Are the stars reversing course? If evolutionary psychology is accepted in The Nation, perhaps the protracted attempt at denial finally is ending.