Environmental catastrophism

The New Generation Society’s Kennedy Lecture aimed to embrace the kind of challenge that its namesake laid before the world nearly half a century ago. “Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars,...

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The Royal Society’s ‘motto-morphosis’

Nullius in Verba, the motto of the prestigious Royal Society in London, is usually translated as ‘on the word of no one’. When it was coined back in 1663, it was intended to distance science from the methods of the ancient universities, which relied heavily on the...

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Respect the facts

Sir, – “Nullius in Verba”, the motto of the Royal Society, is usually translated as “on the word of no one”. That is a fine motto, the message being that knowledge about the material universe should be based on appeals to experimental evidence rather than authority....

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Every silver lining has a cloud

Little is certain in the field of global climate prediction. But one thing is for sure: if all those worst-case scenarios made so much of by environmentalists come true, we really are screwed. So you might expect those same environmentalists to be rather excited by a...

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Debunking the debunkers

There should be more to scepticism than angry rants about stupid religious people or New Age mysticism. Responding to the apparent rise and rise of ‘bunk’ - creationism, homeopathy, fad diets and bad science - a new movement of sceptics is mobilising to defend the...

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A chilling climate for science

'Art was made to disturb, science reassures.' Like all the best quotes, this one from cubist painter Georges Braque makes you think, but it doesn't quite ring true. Both science and art have the capacity to disturb and reassure. Scientific breakthroughs - like the...

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