26
I know this is counterintuitive, and hard to get one’s head around. But that is the exact point of science: to disabuse you of your intuition, which is not an infallible way of perceiving reality. If you think your intuition trumps maths then we’re not going to get along.
28
The ‘is Die Hard a Christmas movie’ question is fully resolved with my son’s Hans Gruber Nakatomi Tower Advent Calendar, and let that be the end of it. Welcome to the party, pal!
29
Alternative headline: discrimination abounds as disproportionate number of privately educated pupils admitted to Cambridge, for the 700th year in a row.
30
Apart from the fact that this makes no sense, literally everyone in Europe is descended from Charlemagne, and all people in the UK with any longstanding British ancestry are descended from Edward III.
These are straight up facts. Wooooh mystery! twitter.com/StephenM/statu…
31
Fascinating. The father of Boris Johnson espousing very clear eugenics policies, and Great Replacement ideology whilst referring to the fecundity of ‘black and brown and yellow races’ as opposed to indigenous Britons twitter.com/Xx17965797N/st…
32
I love these SO MUCH. twitter.com/juanbuis/statu…
33
This date aligns with a prominent mass murder in Norwich in 1190CE when many Jewish people were killed during antisemitic riots, following the beginning of the Third Crusade.
34
One of the true joys of my job is that I get to read books before they are published. So instead of dunking on funky ballsweat like Sapiens, here are 5 books coming out this year that I have read/am reading, that are splendid. 1/x
35
In 1144, Norwich had been the setting for a foundational event in the history of antisemitism when the family of a boy – canonised as St. William of Norwich - claimed that local Jews had murdered him: this became the first documented invocation of the hideous Blood Libel myth.
36
The presence of that many skeletons, many children, some with head injuries and some head first, strongly indicates they were deliberately thrown in the well in a murderous or violent act. Radiocarbon dating puts the incident securely between 1161–1216 CE.
37
This is (like the lactose/milk paper last month) is another barnstorming piece of #totalscience led by @mt_genes, Ian Barnes (@NHM_London) and also @Boothicus et al,
Here’s the paper itself
bit.ly/3pYd0sl
38
Well done to these guys in The Men’s Fellowship competition. The Women’s Fellowship happens at a later date presumably. twitter.com/Cambridge_Uni/…
39
Many of us have been saying this for years. Sapiens is brimming with errors both trivial and profound, and a casualness with evidence that is Petersonesque. I know of no book where expert criticism and popularity are so polar.
currentaffairs.org/2022/07/the-da…
40
See if you can guess who is right here. Is it
A) Science - a complex social process where thousands of people model, measure and test multiple scenarios and hypotheses using methodologies, advanced technology and statistics developed over centuries, or
B) Toby Young? 🧐 twitter.com/toadmeister/st…
41
I didn’t think this was possible, but Snoop’s voiceover is better than Attenborough’s. twitter.com/MichaelWarbur1…
42
I love it when a newspaper confesses its prejudices so overtly. It's 'social engineering' when it positively affects state schools applications, not when the whole system is gamed to advantage private school kids?
Unless you truly believe the rich kids are somehow... better?
43
Denigrating modern art is from the standard fascist playbook. The Nazis held an exhibition titled Degenerate Art in 1937, including Van Gogh, Picasso and Matisse, hanging their works chaotically with slogans like “nature as seen by sick minds”. twitter.com/michaeljknowle…
44
‘I did my own research’ has peaked with this. And it was peer reviewed by Michael Green and Shant Grapps
45
As it is my job to relate everything to eugenics*, and in the US, actual Gilead-style eugenics is being discussed at the highest level, a quick thread about this article that is causing much ire.
* semi-sarcasm
46
‘The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be will be utterly submerged, It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.’
Tom Buchanan, The Great Gatsby (1925)
47
BUT! The new study in @Nature shows that this story is not correct. It’s incredible, 360 work, combining archaeology, chemistry, genetics, epidemiology, and more than 500,000 people living and dead, to reveal the wild complexity of human evolution. 10/n
go.nature.com/3S85w31
48
I'm not sure Sunak has 'won' anything. He's defaulted to become Prime Minister of the U.K., which when you think about it is a funny way to run a serious country.
Or even a small sports club to be honest.
49
RESULTS
* It turns out that milk consumption was common for thousands of years *before* the LP gene spread significantly: so selection of this gene is unlikely to be due to its positive effects because it allowed individuals to consume more milk.
13/n
50
Without seeing the details, this seems like a potentially catastrophically bad idea. Antibiotic resistance through overuse is one of the greatest threats facing global medicine, and giving them out with less restrictions will feed that.
This policy runs contra to all expertise. twitter.com/dr_ayan/status…
Back off man, I'm a scientist.
President of @Humanists_UK
Lecturer in Genetics @UCL
Genetics, race, eugenics, history of science, + movies, books, cricket.