The recreational habits of (life) scientists

[This post has been lurking about since, oops, May, so I thought I better put it out there!] I’m sure everyone has favourite inductive hypotheses about the world that they mull over as potential research questions–if only they weren’t so utterly trivial. Besides, I usually only notice the confirmatory evidence for mine. The co-incidence of … Read more

simon says … hooray!

My friend and colleague Simon Greenhill handed in his PhD thesis today. Having read bits of it, seen the results of other bits of it, and generally parasitised off his hard work in creating and maintaining the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, I feel quite certain it’ll be a bestseller. But seriously: congratulations, Simon, bloody great job!

Darwin married his cousin: a lesson on cultural diversity

From Sunday’s Observer, Split over health risk to cousins who marry: A major medical row will erupt this month when scientists and health experts hold two key meetings to discuss the controversial subject of marriages between cousins and their impact on health in Britain. Really? I love the clairvoyance afforded to newspaper journalists. They obviously also … Read more