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Science & Nature

The Why of the World

Allured by the promise of Big Data, science has shortchanged causal explanation in favor of data-driven prediction. But ultimately we must ask why.

Tim Maudlin

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Science & Nature

Philosophy & Religion, Science & Nature

What Makes Science Trustworthy

The “scientific method” of high school textbooks does not exist. But there are scientific methods, and they play an essential role in making scientific knowledge reliable.

Philip Kitcher

Politics, Science & Nature

What the Health Care Debate Still Gets Wrong

A decade ago, Harvard surgeon Atul Gawande helped popularize the idea that health care spending is high because we use too much medicine. He was wrong: it’s the prices, and who pays them.

Adam Gaffney

Science & Nature

Global Warming, Market Opportunity

On the lure of climate entrepreneurism.

Troy Vettese

Reading Lists, Science & Nature

“Listen to the Science”

Are scientists more virtuous than the rest of us? Can religion and science be happily reconciled? 

Matt Lord, Boston Review

Science & Nature

Apocalypse Now

What Brazilian conservatives gain by letting the Amazon burn.

Gianpaolo Baiocchi

Science & Nature

Is Science Political?

Many take the separation between science and politics for granted, but this view of science has its own political history: it was developed, in part, as an anti-communist tool of the Cold War.

Michael D. Gordin

Reading Lists, Science & Nature

Highway to Hell

A reading list for our time of climate crisis. 

Rosie Gillies, Boston Review

Science & Nature

It Was Not Supposed to End This Way

The Anthropocene challenges liberalism’s vision of permanent progress. So why has it become another technocratic tool of liberal bureaucracy?

Geoff Mann

Science & Nature

Is There a Human Blueprint?

Two new books from intellectual giants Robert Plomin and Nicholas Christakis revive the “nature vs. nurture” debate about what makes people different from one another.

C. Brandon Ogbunu, C. Malik Boykin

Class & Inequality, Science & Nature

Overdosing in Appalachia

Harm reduction strategies have their roots in 1980s HIV activism, but they are starting to spread in rural America in response to the opioid crisis.

Lesly-Marie Buer

Gender & Sexuality, Science & Nature

Who's Your Daddy?

The meaning of fatherhood remains elusive, even in the age of DNA-based paternity testing.

Nara Milanich

Science & Nature

The Sins of “Smart” Cities

What happens when we reframe complex social and political issues as technical puzzles? Two new books challenge modern cities' over-reliance on data and technology.

Ruth Miller

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