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falsifiability

Good intentions are not good enough

2018-01-23T17:04:18+00:00January 23rd, 2018|Featured|

I genuinely believe that everyone involved in education is well-intentioned. If making money was the prime motivation I'm sure we could find other, more profitable areas to operate in. Like international arms trading. Everyone wants the best for young people, but, of course, there's little agreement on what this should look like. Human beings are tribal. We band together with those who share our ideological preferences and make those with whom we disagree the enemy. This makes a certain kind of sense. If someone dissents from our well-considered opinion about how children ought to be educated we're prone to engaging in [...]

My idea for making science a more fundamental part of culture and society

2018-07-23T09:12:59+01:00June 2nd, 2017|Featured|

I've been asked to contribute an idea to the British Science Association's campaign, Science: not just for scientists. Their aim is to compile "100 ideas to make science a more fundamental part of culture and society". My idea, if you're interested, is falsifiability. If you want to vote for my idea, or any other, you can do so here. The importance of being wrong What I love about science is that it’s not an attempt to prove ideas to be right; instead it’s all about testing theories to destruction in the hope of finding them to be wrong. This is a lesson [...]

Are you fooling yourself? Education and epidemiology

2017-04-29T19:00:32+01:00April 29th, 2017|research|

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman Epidemiology is the science of trying to find out what makes people healthier. Epidemiologists look at data to identify causal links between improved health and other factors. It is a correlational science which means that it can never really prove a causal link it can only suggest that a connection between two or more variables is unlikely to be caused by chance. Correlation is a tricksy business. Perfect correlations tend not [...]

The closed circle: Why being wrong is so useful

2016-06-15T22:55:21+01:00October 30th, 2015|psychology|

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others. Fyodor Dostoevsky A closed circle argument is one where there is no possibility of convincing an opponent that they might be wrong. They are right because they're right. Imagine you wake to find yourself in a psychiatric ward, deemed by all and sundry to be mad. Any attempt to argue that you are not, in point of fact, mad, is evidence that you are 'in denial'. Any evidence you cite in support of your sanity is dismissed as an elaborate attempt to buttress your denial. There is no way out of [...]

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