I’d learnt this and other tricks through a few years of writing wide-ranging essays on neuroscience for my publication The Spike: often I’d write about cool new work that was at the very fringes of my expertise – like breakthroughs…
So bearing the facts about publishing in mind helps to rebut one common argument against cancellation: it doesn’t suppress ideas. It changes who publishes them, not whether they are published. But the facts about publishing also helps rebut a different…
Narration from the Brahma-Vaivarta Purana Jyeshtha Shukla Ekadashi Vyasadeva replied, “You should fast without drinking even water on the Ekadashi that occurs during the light fortnight of the month of Jyeshtha (May-June) at the time of Mithuna Sankranti when the…
Mandating vaccination can be ethical if it is both necessary and proportionate. A mandate is not necessary if there are less intrusive means of effectively increasing uptake, such as persuasion and incentives. The problem is that less intrusive means may…
As we have discussed in other written evidence submissions on mandatory vaccination and on Covid-19 vaccination certification, vaccination requirements can be ethically permissible and compliant with human rights law. While vaccination requirements would likely interfere with individuals’ rights to private…
Prof Dominic Wilkinson & Dr Jonathan Pugh “That is a tragic and distressing situation that we must do everything possible to avoid repeating. First, we should ensure that all those who are high risk have access to vaccination. There are…
In this article we argue that, In any pandemic response, the measures undertaken by authorities must effective in the sense of actually addressing the viral threats. A strategy that didn’t slow the rate of viral spread, for instance, wouldn’t work…
Job done, but, as Teddy points out: “It wasn’t all such plain sailing. Things weren’t as swimmingly great as we remember. Sometimes you just have got to dig in.” It’s possible I am just a bit giddy at the prospect…
Gopal then went on to sketch an argument that the use of the waiver is itself justified in these terms as an exercise of autonomy, in that the subject themself is shaping through their own choice (itself perhaps informed in…
How do we know we’re not living in a simulation like The Matrix? Jack Freedom, BristolThe long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsPost your…
[embedded content] In this Thinking Out Loud interview with Dr Katrien Devolder (Philosophy, Oxford), Professor Aaron S. Gross (Theology and Religious Studies, San Diego) explains why factory farms are breeding grounds for pandemics, and what we, as individuals, can do…
The seriousness of a wrong can be a function of the harm that is done; that is why though one can wrong someone by kicking them as well as by killing them, it is a more serious wrong to kill…
Hume, who founded classical economics, identified important problems and posed them in interesting forms. However, he made shameful judgments; he held racist views. Individuals are complex. So is history. The Enlightenment in its mainstream form, personified by Hume, was wrong…
As well as direct benefit, vaccines have an important indirect benefit: they reduce the spread of the virus and stop other people from being infected. If you can help others in a significant way, at little personal cost, risk or…
