William M. Briggs

The peer-reviewed paper is "Is pregnancy a disease? A normative approach" by Ann Smajdor and Joona Räsänen in BMJ's Journal of Medical Ethics. (Incidentally, for new readers, I always emphasize…

First basics of models and the Deadly Sin. Also the superiority of relevance over the misleading idea of independence. WARNING for those reading the email version! The text below might…

Here is an anecdote---one of several in a theme, they say---about the actor Jim Caviezel during the filming of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ: This was especially evident…

The scientist stood before them.He announced his result with glee.It sounds impossible?Can you say it's not bull?It's true 'cause my P is wee! Until classical statistics, with its focus on…

I have admitted many times, grudgingly, beginning long ago, that computer science guys are brilliant at marketing. That adjective is a woeful understatement. Genius, though so overused to be almost…

This is only a sketch of what's to come. In essence, today we begin the Class anew. Everything is about to get much harder, or much easier, depending on your…

The peer-reviewed paper is "Carbon majors and the scientific case for climate liability" by Christopher W Callahan and Justin S Mankin in Nature, a paper doubtless written using electricity provided…

Here is how the political magazine Nature opened its article "25 million deaths: what could happen if the US ends global health funding: Models estimate the ginormous potential impact of…