May 29, 2025 01:26 PM
The bad science behind expensive nuclear power
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-bad...e-nuclear/
INTRO: How a dubious theory of radiation damage based on fruit flies and a secretive weapons testing program came to be — and why its time may now be up...
The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull, a disputed femur and a bitter feud over humanity’s origins
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025...ty-origins
EXCERPTS: When fossilised remains were discovered in the Djurab desert in 2001, they were hailed as radically rewriting the history of our species. But not everyone was convinced – and the bitter argument that followed has consumed the lives of scholars ever since...
[...] Palaeoanthropology is a notoriously disputatious, not to say vicious, field. In part, this is an effect of self-selection: given its prestige, and its philosophical, even metaphysical implications, the study of human prehistory attracts the most ambitious and, as one member of the discipline put it to me, “the most psychotic”, palaeontologists.
There is, additionally, a cultural divide within the field between, speaking very broadly, field workers and laboratory specialists. The former disdain the latter as “armchair palaeontologists”; the latter disdain the former as “fossil hunters”... (MORE - details)
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-bad...e-nuclear/
INTRO: How a dubious theory of radiation damage based on fruit flies and a secretive weapons testing program came to be — and why its time may now be up...
The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull, a disputed femur and a bitter feud over humanity’s origins
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025...ty-origins
EXCERPTS: When fossilised remains were discovered in the Djurab desert in 2001, they were hailed as radically rewriting the history of our species. But not everyone was convinced – and the bitter argument that followed has consumed the lives of scholars ever since...
[...] Palaeoanthropology is a notoriously disputatious, not to say vicious, field. In part, this is an effect of self-selection: given its prestige, and its philosophical, even metaphysical implications, the study of human prehistory attracts the most ambitious and, as one member of the discipline put it to me, “the most psychotic”, palaeontologists.
There is, additionally, a cultural divide within the field between, speaking very broadly, field workers and laboratory specialists. The former disdain the latter as “armchair palaeontologists”; the latter disdain the former as “fossil hunters”... (MORE - details)
