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Getting cause and consequence confused is a surprisingly common error in science Latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal: Scientists like to remind us not to confuse cause and effect. But they’re not immune from making that mistake themselves. Last week, for example, a flurry of sociological headlines emanating from a conference […]

The BBC has plumbed new depths with its recent reporting on shale gas. Its reporter Richard Black wrote a story about the old Cornell University claim that shale gas production emits more greenhouse-warming gases than coal. I happen to know quite a bit about this study and I know that it is based on very extreme […]

Alan Carlin has a peer reviewed paper in The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, which concludes that climate policy is, in my terminology, a tourniquet for a nosebleed: The economic benefits of reducing CO2 emissions may be about two orders of magnitude less than those estimated by most economists because the climate sensitivity […]

The Times has been serialising seven chapters of The Rational Optimist for a week each. The last one is available now.

The discovery, announced this week, of several genetic mutations that predispose people toward Alzheimer’s disease is intriguing, because the genes are associated with cholesterol metabolism and inflammation. The Alzheimer’s jigsaw is a long way from being complete, but the pieces are emerging, and this new evidence fits quite nicely with the other pieces in suggesting […]

As I keep saying, shale gas is indeed revolutionising world energy supply. The US Energy Information Administration officially uses the word `vast’ for shale gas resources outside the US: Although the shale gas resource estimates will likely change over time as additional information becomes available, the report shows that the international shale gas resource base is […]

Here is how the first mobile computer, the Osborne 1, compares with an iPad 2 (hat tip Cafe Hayek):  

Here is how the first mobile computer, the Osborne 1, compares with an iPad 2 (hat tip Cafe Hayek):  

I wrote this piece for The Times yesterday (original behind paywall)     I call it my tourniquet theory and it goes like this: if you are bleeding to death from a severed limb, then a tourniquet may save your life, but if you have a nosebleed, then a tourniquet round your neck will do more […]

My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is about trying to evolve, rather than ordain, solution to obesity Sometimes we find it easy to identify a problem and impossible to think of a solution. Obesity is a good example. Almost everybody agrees that it is a growing burden on health systems and […]