Summer vacation, it turns out, is an opportunity for me to reflect on how close we are to global catastrophe. Over the past few of years, as some of my exasperated friends and colleagues will testify, I’ve taken to asking myself and others, on a regular basis, whether we are in 1936 or in 1939.…
The twin insights at the heart of pseudoscience’s appeal
This week, a comic by Andrew Greenstone (Beyond Belief: Exhausted by the unknown at the cryptozoology conference), allowed me to crystalize two of the principles that I think are at the heart of pseudoscience’s appeal, not only to the public, but to scientists as well. The comic is about cryptozoology, but its lessons are highly…