How do we stop a resurgence of fascism?
Is it bad to write for hard-right outlets? There is no doubt that the Overton window has shifted to the right during the last decade or two.  It is now common to hear people saying things that, even in 2010 would have been thought to be frankly fascistic. I recall a conversation with the great biophysicist, Sir Bernard Katz, in 1992. He had come to UCL in 1936 to escape from the Nazi regime in Leipzig.  When I suggested to him that he must have been very pleased about the reunification of Germany, he pulled a long face and said “hmm, let’s wait to see what crawls out from under stones”.  ...
Source: DC's goodscience - March 11, 2024 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized Alan Sokal anti-vaccination antiscience Deborah Cohen fascism Margaret McCartney Paul Marshall Quillette sceptics skeptics Spiked Toby Young transgender UnHerd Source Type: blogs

Bloody Religion
Go to follow-up “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”Steven Weinberg In 2003, I started a web page that documented the horrors of the Iraq war. The title of the page was corrie.html, because one of the first entries was about Rachel Corrie. This was it. On Sunday, 16th March 2003, a 23-year-old American peace activist, Rachel Corrie, was crushed to death by a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the Israeli army destroying homes in the Gaza Strip. You can read here some of th...
Source: DC's goodscience - October 15, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Palestine war Gaza Israel Source Type: blogs

Bloody Religion
“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”Steven Weinberg In 2003, I started a web page that documented the horrors of the Iraq war. The title of the page was corrie.html, because one of the first entries was about Rachel Corrie. This was it. On Sunday, 16th March 2003, a 23-year-old American peace activist, Rachel Corrie, was crushed to death by a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the Israeli army destroying homes in the Gaza Strip. You can read here some of the emails that she ...
Source: DC's goodscience - October 15, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Palestine war Gaza Israel Source Type: blogs

A letter to our member of parliament
Today, in desperation, we sent a letter to our MP. Usually such letters get a boiler plate response, dictated by Conservative Central Office. We aren’t hopeful about changing the mind of our MP. Before he was elected he ran a shockingly misogynist web site, now deleted. But it’s essential to do what one can to about democracy while we still have some. Dear Mike Penning I doubt whether this will be the only letter you’ll get along these lines.1. The Conservative party used to be the party of business. Brexit has destituted many small businesses and impoverished the UK. That’s not  just my...
Source: DC's goodscience - April 14, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized Boris Johnson democracy politics Priti Patel Putin Ukraine Source Type: blogs

A letter to our member of parliament
Today, in desperation, we sent a letter to our MP. Usually such letters get a boiler plate response, dictated by Conservative Central Office. We aren’t hopeful about changing the mind of our MP. Before he was elected he ran a shockingly misogynist web site, now deleted. But it’s essential to do what one can to about democracy while we still have some. Dear Mike Penning I doubt whether this will be the only letter you’ll get along these lines.1. The Conservative party used to be the party of business. Brexit has destituted many small businesses and impoverished the UK. That’s not  jus...
Source: DC's goodscience - April 14, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized Boris Johnson democracy politics Priti Patel Putin Ukraine Source Type: blogs

Why p values can ’ t tell you what you need to know and what to do about it
Conclusions in the 2017 paper).  If you were willing to assume a 50:50 prior chance of there being a real effect the p = 0.005 would correspond to FPR50 = 0.034, which sounds satisfactory (from Table, above, or web calculator). But if, for example, you are testing a hypothesis about teleportation or mind-reading or homeopathy then you probably wouldn’t be willing to give a prior of 50% to that being right before the experiment. If the prior  probability of there being a real effect were 0.1, rather than 0.5, the Table above shows that observation of p = 0.005 would suggest, in my example, FPR = 0.24 an...
Source: DC's goodscience - October 18, 2020 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized P values seminars statistics Source Type: blogs

Why p values can ’ t tell you what you need to know and what to do about it
Conclusions in the 2017 paper).  If you were willing to assume a 50:50 prior chance of there being a real effect the p = 0.005 would correspond to FPR50 = 0.034, which sounds satisfactory (from Table, above, or web calculator). But if, for example, you are testing a hypothesis about teleportation or mind-reading or homeopathy then you probably wouldn’t be willing to give a prior of 50% to that being right before the experiment. If the prior  probability of there being a real effect were 0.1, rather than 0.5, the Table above shows that observation of p = 0.005 would suggest, in my example, FPR = 0.24 an...
Source: DC's goodscience - October 18, 2020 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized P values seminars statistics Source Type: blogs

The transgender question
I am going to set out my current views about the transgender problem. It’s something that has caused a lot of discussion on twitter, much of it unpleasantly vituperative. When I refer to ‘problem’ I’m referring to the vituperation, not, of course, the existence of transgender people.  Short posts on twitter don’t allow nuance, so I thought it might be helpful to lay out my views here in the (doubtless vain) hope of being able to move on to talk about other things.  This will be my last word on it, because I feel that the time spent on this single problem has become counterproductive. ...
Source: DC's goodscience - July 28, 2020 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized Green party Greens JK Rowling Rosi Sexton trans transgender Source Type: blogs

The transgender question
I am going to set out my current views about the transgender problem. It’s something that has caused a lot of discussion on twitter, much of it unpleasantly vituperative. This is the question alluded to in the title, not, of course, the existence of transgender people.  Short posts on twitter don’t allow nuance, so I thought it might be helpful to lay out my views here in the (doubtless vain) hope of being able to move on to talk about other things.  This will be my last word on it, because I feel that the time spent on this single problem has become counterproductive. The problem is very complicated...
Source: DC's goodscience - July 28, 2020 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized Green party Greens JK Rowling Rosi Sexton trans transgender Source Type: blogs

Dr Rosi Sexton for leader of the Green Party
There will soon be an election for the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales.  I support Dr Sexton for the job. Here’s my endorsement. I’ll say why below. I support Dr Sexton as a candidate to lead the Green Party (England and Wales). She said “The Green Party is a political party, not a lifestyle movement”. That’s perceptive. For too long the Green party in the UK has been regarded as marginal, even as tree-huggers. That’s the case despite their success in local government and in other European countries which have fairer voting systems. She continued “We need to be ser...
Source: DC's goodscience - July 6, 2020 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Dr Rosi Sexton for leader of the Green Party
There will soon be an election for the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales.  I support Dr Sexton for the job. Here’s my endorsement. I’ll say why below. I support Dr Sexton as a candidate to lead the Green Party (England and Wales). She said “The Green Party is a political party, not a lifestyle movement”. That’s perceptive. For too long the Green party in the UK has been regarded as marginal, even as tree-huggers. That’s the case despite their success in local government and in other European countries which have fairer voting systems. She continued “We need to be ser...
Source: DC's goodscience - July 6, 2020 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

The toppling of Edward Colston
During the Black Lives Matter demonstrations on Sunday 7th June, the statue of Edward Colston was pulled down and dumped in the harbour in Bristol. I think that it was the most beautiful thing that happened yesterday. Colston made his money from the slave trade. 84,000 humans were transported on his ships. 19,000 of them died because of the appalling conditions on slave ships. The statue was erected 174 years after he died, and, astonishingly, 62 years after the abolition of slavery. According to Historic England, the plaque on the statue read thus. Edward Colston   Born 1636 Died 1721. Erected by citizens of Bristol as...
Source: DC's goodscience - June 8, 2020 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized Black Lives Matter Colston Edward Colston Priti Patel Source Type: blogs

The toppling of Edward Colston
During the Black Lives Matter demonstrations on Sunday 7th June, the statue of Edward Colston was pulled down and dumped in the harbour in Bristol. I think that it was the most beautiful thing that happened yesterday. Colston made his money from the slave trade. 84,000 humans were transported on his ships. 19,000 of them died because of the appalling conditions on slave ships. The statue was erected 174 years after he died, and, astonishingly, 62 years after the abolition of slavery. According to Historic England, the plaque on the statue read thus. Edward Colston   Born 1636 Died 1721. Erected by citizens of Bristol as...
Source: DC's goodscience - June 8, 2020 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized Black Lives Matter Colston Edward Colston Priti Patel Source Type: blogs

Exponential growth is terrifying
This example illustrates just how fast exponential growth is. It was proposed on twitter by Charles Arthur (@charlesarthur) who attributes the idea to Simon Moores. The stadium version is a variant of the better known ‘grains of wheat (or rice) on a chessboard‘ problem. The stadium example is better, I think, because the time element gives it a sense of urgency, and that’s what we need right now. Here’s Wembley Stadium. The watering system develops a fault: in minute 1 one drop of water is released; minute 2, two drops, minute 3 four drops, and so on. Every minute the number of drops doubles. How l...
Source: DC's goodscience - March 23, 2020 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: corona COVID-19 epidemiology Uncategorized corona virus exponential geometric SARS-COV-2 Source Type: blogs

Exponential growth is terrifying
This example illustrates just how fast exponential growth is. It was proposed on twitter by Charles Arthur (@charlesarthur) who attributes the idea to Simon Moores. Here’s Wembley Stadium. The watering system develops a fault: in minute 1 one drop of water is released; minute 2, two drops, minute 3 four drops, and so on. Every minute the number of drops doubles. How long will it take to fill Wembley stadium? The answer is that after 44 minutes, before half-time, the stadium would overflow. Here’s why. The sequence is 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, . . . so the nth term in the sequence is 2n – 1. For example, the 4th te...
Source: DC's goodscience - March 23, 2020 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: COVID-19 epidemiology Uncategorized exponential geometric Source Type: blogs