Free speech at the outer limits

On January 12, Peter W. Wood, president of an American organisation called the National Association of Scholars (NAS), wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal against attempts by one individual to prevent NAS from organising a conference on science’s reproducibility crisis. As it turns out, the individual – Leonid Teytelman – has been fighting …

My country is burning. Why should I work?

A few days ago, I found asking myself the following question: My country is burning, why should I work? I ended up with some (admittedly inchoate) thoughts, delineated below. I’m trying to fight off this abject helplessness I’m feeling and edit some science articles, and failing. I’m not able to justify to myself why I …

To understand #NotInMyName

The more vicious public debates we have, the more it will seem like a ‘conversation’ cordoned off to those masses for whom an awareness of social and political issues is only just budding.