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To cooperate or free-ride: picking the right pond
Cooperation can get off the ground when people can punish cheats, and a new study shows that people choose environments that allow punishment over ones in which cheats go free.Why do people get...
View ArticleDaddy, what did YOU do in the War on Evolution?
A friend of mine who publishes Macmillan’s popular science books passed this onto me. It’s a poster by Michael Stebbins, the author of a recently published Macmillan book (Sex, Drugs and...
View ArticleCool site
Just a short post to let you know about a cool site I found with links to many talks and radio shows featuring the likes of Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Steve Pinker and Michael Shermer, and also to...
View ArticleIt’s been a long time….
I’ve had a bit of a break from blogging while I concentrated on a few other things, but I’m back on board again, and plan to make regular updates as before, although I’m sure you all managed just fine...
View ArticlePunishment: A Global Tour
A while back I wrote about a paper that explored the role of punishment in maintaining cooperation among unrelated people — currently one of the hottest topics in the human behavioural sciences. But...
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Beware of the Others?
New research published in Natureshows how biases towards members of our social group, and against those outside it, shape how generous we are to people and how we punish others for transgressing social...
View ArticleBe Afraid, Be Very Afraid
I’ve just watched a trailer for the new documentary Jesus Camp, which charts the rising trend of recruiting children into ‘God’s Army’ and instructing them on their moral duty to wage a Christian war...
View ArticleSoap For The Soul
The notion of spiritual and moral purification through rituals of physical cleansing such as baptism might be based on more than mere metaphor, suggests new research published in a recent issue of...
View ArticleTenacious Neanderthals
Neanderthals, our closest relatives in the fossil record, might have survived for longer, and co-habited with modern humans more extensively, than previous studies have proposed, suggests a paper...
View ArticleDawkins the Dogmatist?
After reading Richard Dawkins’s new book, The God Delusion, Andrew Brownasks“who would have thought him capable of writing one this bad?” Are Dawkins’s ideas as daft as Brown suggests?People are, quite...
View ArticleDelusions of faith as a science - Henry Gee on Richard Dawkins
Henry Gee, a senior editor at Nature who has handled many of the most important papers on palaeontology over the past decade, has weighed in on Richard Dawkins’s latest polemic, The God Delusion, in an...
View ArticlePSOM Back To Life!
After a long hiatus, PSOM is set to get going again. It’s been about a year since I last posted, and I should perhaps explain why I’ve not been blogging. Last December I left my job as an editor at the...
View ArticlePride and Preferences – Or How We Live With Our Decisions
No one likes to admit to having made a mistake. Just look at all the politicians and business people who, with a mess on their hands and owing the public or shareholders an explanation, have uttered...
View ArticleNatural-Born Killers?
Lately I’ve been thinking about some of the darker facets of human nature, particularly the human capacity for killing each other. There’s enough going on around the world to justify sinking in to a...
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Evolution’s Engine
The ongoing wars over the teaching of evolution (particularly in the US) have elevated into public consciousness an unlikely topic: molecular microbiology. Modern day creationists, rebranding...
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Scientific Happenings on the South Coast
Brighton, UK, is playing host to fourth annual science festival between 23 February and 2 March, and there is lots on offer for anyone living in the region and interested in a bit of brain food. You...
View ArticleTwo feet good...
Along with a big brain, walking upright on two feet has often been taken to be a defining feature of the human line. In this week’s New Scientist I have a feature article on some recent ideas about...
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Gracious giving and helping hands
Two new papers on prosocial behaviour in monkeys suggest that giving to others can be self-rewarding, and also sensitive to situations.Primates are particularly social species. Not only do they...
View ArticleHappy 200th, Darwin!
Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave in the Tora Bora Mountains or somewhere similarly remote you’ll have heard that this is a big Darwin year. Not only is it the great man’s 200th birthday (today,...
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The evolution of disgust
New reseaerch illuminates the path from "oral won't" to "moral don't".Confronted with the worst excesses of human wickedness and moral depravity, we’re apt to respond not just with condemnation, but...
View ArticleIs belief all it’s cracked up to be?
The endless debates and arguments sparked off in recent years by the phenomenal success of books by the New Atheists — an irritating term to describe writers such as Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Sam...
View ArticleTorture, Inc.
The story of how torture became part of standard operating practice at Guantanamo Bay is by now widely known (Andrew Sullivan over at The Atlantic has written extensively, and with great sense, about...
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Oh what a lovely molecule!
The continuing adventures with the astonishing hormone oxytocinOxytocin is small but remarkable molecule. It clocks in at just nine amino acids — compared to 524 for our blood’s oxygen carrier,...
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The Evolution of Biological Innovation
The theory evolution by natural selection, boiled down to its bare bones, is pretty simple. All it requires is that a few conditions be met among a population of animals or plants (or any other...
View ArticleThoughts on the Templeton Foundation
It’s no secret that many atheists don’t much like the John Templeton Foundation (hereafter just ‘Templeton’), and have a pretty low opinion of people who accept Templeton funding and financial support....
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