Science deniers | Beth Byrnes

Sciense and nonsense

Posted on February 12, 2015 34 Comments

Following my theme from last week, thinking about my dad and his influence on my life, I was intrigued by an ad I saw recently from Bayer. My dad worked for Sterling Drug, which owned Bayer, early in his career as a bench chemist. Sceptical as I am about a chinese wall being erected between […]

Behind the surface

Posted on November 15, 2013 18 Comments

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates suggests that looking merely at the surface of things as most of us do in our daily lives, will not lead us to understand the phenomena that underpin the workings of the world. While this is not welcome news, it actually explains why we are so easily misled by people with […]

Time is running out

Posted on November 14, 2013 16 Comments

Is this the way our democracy is supposed to work? http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-republicans-rig-the-game-20131111 National Republicans have waged an unrelenting campaign to exploit every weakness and anachronism in our electoral system. Through a combination of hyperpartisan redistricting of the House, unprecedented obstructionism in the Senate and racist voter suppression in the states, today’s GOP has locked in political […]

We the sheeple …

Posted on September 24, 2013 9 Comments

Over the weekend, watching all my usual news shows, I was bombarded by talk of the looming twin crises of government funding and debt ceiling showdowns. The media, in their usual, ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ fashion, were stirring the cauldron again, instilling a growing sense of dread that something terrible is about to happen, […]

Let’s put brain cells on this

Posted on August 23, 2013 29 Comments

The new IPCC report on climate change is due out in September. This week the maintstream media shared a preview of its findings, which will also be found on its homepage. You can read this Politico summary right now. I don’t need to say too much about the issue of climate change itself. It is […]