BY STEWART SLATER The Columnists’ Paradox is that the more one writes, the less one need be read. We all have our relatively fixed biases and a reasonably finite store of stories and references, and it does not take too long (longer than my own writing “career” to date though, obviously…) for those to become sufficiently well-known to readers that they can predict with almost … Continue reading Awfully Clever
BY GLORIA MOSS & NIALL McCRAE How Robert Maxwell created the academic peer review system Publication of research results, theoretical propositions and scholarly essays is not a free-for-all. As shown by the dogmatism around climate change and Covid-19, sceptics struggle to get papers in print. The gatekeeper is the peer-review system, which people take for granted as a screening process to ensure rigour in scientific … Continue reading Tinker, Tailor, Publisher, Spy
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The Genetic Fallacy is used by those short cutting their way to triumph in debate or – more often these days – defending the indefensible. How does this fallacy work? Regardless of the merits of a proposal or argument, the proposal or argument gets shot down because of whence it heralds. In the eyes of the user of the fallacy, it is … Continue reading The Genetic Fallacy
