John Horgan
The scientific rationale for agnosticism
There is such a thing as being too picky, especially when it comes to things like work, love and nourishment ...
Viewpoint: Wishful worries? Fears about the transhumanist, human-enhancement movement are overblown
[A] problem arises when pundits concerned about possible social and ethical downsides of a technology exaggerate its technical feasibility. This ...
Do psychiatric drugs do more harm than good to treat mental illness?
In the book [Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America], which ...
Viewpoint: US spends huge on cancer medicine but doesn’t have a lot to show for it
The aggressive, can-do American approach to health care isn’t working when it comes to medicine in general and cancer medicine ...
‘Genealogical anxiety’ and why questioning the genesis of your core beliefs ‘can liberate you’
I recently encountered a term for a syndrome that has bugged me since childhood: genealogical anxiety. The phrase was coined by ...
Experiencing self-awareness: How children discover who they are
[I remember] when I first became self-conscious, aware of myself as something weird, distinct from the rest of the world, ...
Viewpoint: Aggressive US approach to cancer doing ‘more harm than good’
To paraphrase [author and oncologist Siddhartha] Mukherjee, testing represents an inversion—or perversion--of the Hippocratic oath to do no harm. A ...
Mind or matter? How consciousness in the universe could be ‘eternal’
Which is more fundamental, mind or matter? You would think, in our ultra-materialistic era, that debate would be settled. But ...
Viewpoint: Are women instinctually attracted to dominant men?
[Anthropologist Richard Wrangham writes:] Women don’t like many specific acts of demonic males. But paradoxically, many women do regularly find ...
Gay conversion? Grotesque brain implants used to try to ‘cure’ homosexuality
[Editor's note: John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology.] Homosexuality has been treated with lobotomies, ...
Blind faith: Do we place too much confidence in cancer tests?
My previous post presented data showing that the PSA test for prostate cancer harms more men than it helps...[However,] many ...
‘World’s smartest physicist’ believes consciousness will remain unsolvable
Some mind-ponderers...argue that consciousness is unsolvable. Philosopher Owen Flanagan calls these pessimists “mysterians,” after the 60’s-era rock group “Question Mark ...
Are Olympic athletes using ‘gene doping’ to improve performance?
The World Anti-Doping Agency, WADA, which advises the Olympics and other sports organizations on illicit performance-enhancement, has accused Russia of ...
NY Times article sparks call for greater ethical awareness in science journalism
Major media, New York Times included, have a history of hyping up what turned out to be erroneous claims linking complex ...