More teenagers report being bored at school in the UK than in other industrialised nations. Let us hope the response is not to replace teachers with videos.… Read the rest

Even in that supposed heyday of reason, attacks on freethinkers were a favourite sport.… Read the rest

Good news: people who urge grouches to ‘cheer up, you’ll live longer’ are wrong.… Read the rest

Is a poster of a shirtless woman at a Motor Show a stupid throwback to the ’50s or an amusingly knowing and harmless bit of fun? What does it mean that a woman designed the poster? And that a government minister (also a woman) is not amused?… Read the rest

Is the conflict between science and religion inevitable, or a result of tactical decisions?… Read the rest

If you want to make an argument, it’s no good saying the flood ate your homework.… Read the rest

One independent thinker with an aversion to tribalism and cant pays his respects to another.… Read the rest

Shouting at predators, risk-taking, the Big Mistake Hypothesis, altruism; the questions about cooperation and evolution go on being asked.… Read the rest

There is a difference between science and computational play; metaphors can illuminate but not predict.… Read the rest

Nobel prize-winner and his late colleague explored the illogical ways humans make decisions.… Read the rest

Nuffield Council on Bioethics releases report on behavioural genetics, but guides the press to focus on peripheral issue of designer babies.… Read the rest

Is extensive therapy necessary both to survive family life and to raise children who can survive family life?… Read the rest

Hitchens thinking through Orwell and himself at the same time.… Read the rest

Mistakes in evidence, however small, can undermine a case.… Read the rest

Historians dispute a review by a non-historian who seems to have read a different book.… Read the rest

As evidence of Stalin’s mass killings is uncovered, many Russians don’t want to know.… Read the rest

The political uses of putative martyrdom, and the dangers.… Read the rest

Has inequality increased in the last two or three decades, and is it a problem if it has, and is it invidious even to mention the subject, and if so, why?… Read the rest

Deconstructing, psychoanalysing, close reading or rather viewing, rewinding ‘The Sopranos’…are academics watching a little too much television?… Read the rest

Jared Diamond reviews book on evolutionary explanation of religion in which contentious, often oversimplified ideas are treated fairly.… Read the rest