Skeptophilia

I have to admit that COVID-19 has me a little skittish. I know all the reassuring bits -- that most people who contract it have few or no ...

Why are humans so prone to falling for complete bunk? I ask this question because of two rather distressing studies that I ran into a whil...

A couple of days ago I broke my cardinal rule -- arguing with strangers about politics on the internet -- when someone posted a snarky reply...

As of this morning, six explosive devices addressed to prominent critics of Donald Trump have been discovered , one of them (the one mailed ...

It's simultaneously amusing and a little frightening how sure we all are of our own opinions. When challenged, we tend to react either...

A couple of days ago, NPR  ran a piece about conservatives who are leaving liberal areas so they can live amongst like-minded folks.  The ar...

When I first read Richard Dawkins's fiery and controversial diatribe The God Delusion , one of the points he made that struck me the mos...

The rather regrettable human tendency to assume that everyone in Our Tribe is honest and clever and valiant, and everyone in the Other Tribe...

At the same time that social media has opened up possibilities for long-distance (and cross-cultural) contact, and allowed us to befriend pe...

A post I saw on Twitter yesterday called to mind one of my particular pet peeves, which is blaming a person's general assholery on belon...

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of New York University has pioneered research into what he calls the "five channels of morality...

What is it about elections that makes us treat each other so horribly? This election has been a bad one -- divisive and petty, appealing t...