Posted inFun
Reader Survey
Something fun for everybody: the WMBriggs.com reader survey! Come and tell us about yourself and learn what you only suspected about everybody else. It should only take 20 seconds or…
Posted inBook review Philosophy
Author Says Machines Will Take Over The World
At the Singularity awaits The Beast. Or so says James Barrat in Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era (Yours Truly only read the free…
Posted inStatistics
The Top Five Mistakes In Marketing Statistics
Forgive me the title, won't you? It is my own creation, I admit, but numbered promises are eminently clickable. Plus they are the norm in business writing. Anyway, the real…
Posted inCulture
On Who Regulates Medicine
From Louis Jolyon West, "The Medical World of Dr Stephen Maturin", in Patrick O'Brian: Critical Essays and a Bibliography, 1994, edited by A.E. Cunningham, WW Norton, New York, First American…
Posted inCulture Philosophy
Could A Virgin Birth Ever Really Happen?
In an article Salon mistitled "About that 'immaculate' conception"1---the immaculate conception speaks of St Mary's entry into the world, not Jesus's---Daniel Engber, a developmental neuroscientist at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, gives us…
Posted inCulture Statistics
Scientism, Legalism and Precaution: Regulating Nutrition and Health Claims in Europe
Announcing a new paper, with official title "Scientism, Legalism and Precaution -- Contending with Regulating Nutrition and Health Claims in Europe" in European Food and Feed Law Review by Jaap…
Posted inStatistics
Twenty Tips For Interpreting Scientific Claims
Title of today's post is taken from article of the same name in Nature by William Sutherland, David Spiegelhalter, Mark Burgman. Several readers asked me to comment. I'll assume you've…
Posted inCulture Philosophy Statistics
Friedrich A. Hayek’s Lecture “The Pretense of Knowledge”
This was reprinted in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. I've chopped it into parts for commenting. To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the…