Shouting match over genes versus parents ruffles calm of Radio 3.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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It’s the parents
Oliver James says emphasis on genes to explain human nature is a way to escape guilt.
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It’s not the parents
Steven Pinker says parents have less influence than they think, while peers have more.
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Truth-skeptics make truth-claims
Bernard Williams points out that Nietzsche did not settle for ironic chat or a smug nod at deconstruction-work, and nor should we.
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Deconstructing cant
Twist and turn, avoid details, oversimplify: such postmodern tricks tarnish the integrity of the left.
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But what is the evidence?
Difference feminism as separate education for schoolgirls relies on few and narrow studies, Margaret Talbot says.
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Brakes off or on?
Simon Blackburn on the meaninglessness of exhortations to tolerate all points of view.
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Trickster deity preferred to Darwin
Philip Gosse explained the fossil evidence as God’s little joke.
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Is there no justice?
Outraged father wonders who decided that parents should help children with homework. Surely that’s someone else’s duty.
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Grade deflation not a good idea either
Exams board chief intervened to mark down bright students by way of making A level scores strike a ‘balance’.
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Only an interventionist designer will do
Another entry for the Intelligent Design shelf. No Free Lunch claims that complexity requires intelligence, but reviewer is not persuaded.
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Gas on inner men and their dilemmas
Geneticist Steve Jones predicts redundancy for men, and is aghast at popularity of ‘masculinity industry’ in American universities.
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Three cheers for Balkanization
Home secretary David Blunkett is under attack for saying English is a useful language in the UK.
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Politics and science must be disentangled
Steven Pinker chides critics of Wilson and Dawkins for ’25 years of pointless attacks’
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Time to sweep up Angela’s ashes
Oxford historian Roy Foster takes on tearful or nostalgic myths of Ireland’s past.
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Astronaut thumps moon landing doubter
Would faking a moon landing be more difficult than actually doing one? Probably, but the myth lives on.
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‘I prefer unification to reduction’
Steven Pinker talks to the New York Times about worries over equality and free will that influence our views of the mind.
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Disturbances in the field
In a frivolous-Friday mood, The Guardian offers links to both credulous and skeptical material on crop circles.
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Suspicion fills the gap
The new president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science says the gap between scientists and the public leads to a widespread distrust of rational inquiry.
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Education does not rule out credulity
Michael Shermer in Scientific American says the siren song of pseudoscience can be too alluring to resist.