If you’ve been following the fracas about biologist E. O. Wilson and the intimations that he was a racist or at least friendly with racists, you’ll know that there are at least three articles accusing him either explicitly or implicitly of racism (see here, here, and here).  Wilson’s also been defended by many of his … Continue reading Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins: In defense of E. O. Wilson

There’s a new article in Science for the People magazine by Stacy Farina and Matthew Gibbons, which argues that E. O. Wilson was a racist. This is a different, more serious, and far better documented article than the Scientific American hit job by Monica McLemore, whose “research” apparently resulted from reading the last chapter of Sociobiology, … Continue reading More accusations that E. O. Wilson was a racist

Two days ago I wrote (and fulminated) about the Society of Systematic Biologists’ (SSB’s) hamhanded vote to remove the name of Ernst Mayr from its award for the best student paper at the annual meeting—for no reason other than Mayr was a white man. (They can’t get him on bigotry, for he was a vigorous … Continue reading A grad student weighs in on the SSB’s attempt to delete Ernst Mayr’s name from his award

UPDATE: Reader Enrico called this article to my attention; it’s very relevant to Scientific American’s claims here, which it doesn’t support. Click to read (and subscribe if you read regularly): Ritchie parses the many meanings of this slogan, but here’s the one that Scientific American appears to use: The first point they might be making is … Continue reading Scientific American goes defensive; tries to pretend that every social justice screed is a “science story”

Good morning: it’s November 5, 2017, and Ceiling Cat’s Day, on which we are instructed to eat, read science and then nap. Foodwise, it’s both National Chinese Take-Out Day (the name suggests one should go out with a Chinese person) and National Doughtnut Day. In the UK (and, says, Wikipedia, in New Zealand, Newfoundland, and … Continue reading Sunday: Hili dialogue

King’s College, formerly “The College of Christ the King”, is a Catholic school in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania with about 2300 students. On November 4, the school hosted the annual Eastern Pennsylvania Philosophical Association Conference, a one-day affair in which papers were given on all aspects of philosophy. (The keynote speaker was Massimo Pigliucci, who spoke about stoicism.) … Continue reading A philosopher criticizes Faith Versus Fact for not addressing Sophisticated Theology