Time for one last post in this vague series about genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In it I am going to commit the ultimate sin and defend Monsanto. Or rather, I want to do for it what I did for organic farming. I’m not interested in attacking organic farming but I would like to shed light… Read More Monsanto: The Anti-GMO Boogeyman
I was explaining red shifts of galaxies to a colleague at work earlier this week when they asked me how fast the universe is expanding. Although I have made a conscious effort to remember the figure in the past I was unable to recall it. I knew there was a 7 in it and parsecs… Read More Stupid Science. It Can’t Even Measure How Fast The Universe Is Expanding
In my last post I mentioned the serendipitous discovery of x-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen and how many of us had heard the story. Well, it seems that many of us have not heard the story. So here it is. I was reminded of it as an example as I had recently seen the famous picture… Read More The First Ever X-Ray
Gone are the days when a gentleman scientist of reasonable intelligence could singlehandedly make new scientific discoveries by mixing random chemicals together and seeing what happens. It is now rare for the lone genius to come up with a breakthrough in a classic Eureka! moment. Science, at its heart, is now a very collaborative endeavour.… Read More New Titanium Alloy is Hardest Ever Discovered: Good News for Dodgy Hips
It is time, at last, for my eagerly anticipated exposé of the organic farming industry (OFI). The eagle eyed/bored amongst you will have noticed that I missed my usual ‘a post every other day’ deadline yesterday. Blame it on this post. I’ve put a lot of hours into researching and fact checking this. What follows… Read More The Distasteful Truth About Organic Farming
Today we’re going to get a bit meta. Just as important, if not more important, than science is the science of science itself. How do we know if the papers being published every day of the week are of a high enough standard to be trusted and to take human knowledge forward? What proportion of… Read More P-Hacking
On February 6th 2015 the Supreme Court of Canada annulled the part of the Criminal Code that made physician assisted death (PAD) illegal for a “competent adult person who (1) clearly consents to the termination of life and (2) has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease, or disability) that causes enduring… Read More Physician-Assisted Death: A Conversation We Need to Have
Lying. You do it. I do it. We all do it. Whether it’s just a little white lie or an outright, in your face deception no one has ever gone a lifetime without telling porkies. Most of the time it’s harmless, like perpetuating the Santa Claus myth or saying that your significant other’s new haircut… Read More The Truth Behind Lie Detectors
For the first time ever we have discovered clouds of water around an astronomical body outside of our solar system. WISE 0855 is a brown dwarf about 7 light years from earth, so extremely close in cosmic terms, and was first discovered in 2014. Since then astronomers at UCSC have been trying to get a… Read More Brown Dwarf Found to Have Water in Atmosphere and Earth-like Temperature
The little one asked me a question this morning that I had no idea how to answer. Simply put, it was: why is the hair on our head long but the hair on our eyebrows is short? I had literally no clue. As adults, we have hair over pretty much our entire bodies and it… Read More The Mystery of the Growing Hair
