If expert advice on the pandemic turns out to be wrong, it will have dire consequences for how reliable scientific evidence is treated in other policy areas, such as climate change.
- Senior Research Fellow, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
Some argue humans lack the altruism and long-term thinking that is needed to deal with the climate crisis. So how can you stay motivated?
The world may feel polarised, but most people chop and change their views.
Sceptics are not necessarily less intelligent or knowledgeable.
Money can corrupt. But that doesn’t mean all types of funding – or intentions – are the same.
Intuitively, we believe offering someone options automatically expands their freedom. But that isn’t always true. Sometimes, more options can lead to less freedom.
Every year, millions of people around the world make New Year’s resolutions. And every year, the great majority of us break and abandon those resolutions. Psychology research can help.
Public engagement of academics has increased enormously in recent decades. But this new level of engagement is producing problems and conflicts for which many academics are ill-prepared.
Scientists seek out drugs to cure what ails us but we now know that some common medications affect our moral capacity. Since it’s happening already, the question is, should we be worried?
David Leyonhjelm’s parliamentary inquiry into what he calls “the nanny state” reflects a view of human beings as essentially independent individuals. But that’s not kind of society most of us want.
If survey data are to be trusted, there’s a surprisingly weak relationship between money and happiness. As national incomes rise, happiness does not increase. Consider this: happiness in the United States…
In the second instalment of Biology and Blame, Neil Levy considers how neuroscience can affect legal judgements. Can human beings still be held responsible in the age of neuroscience? Some people say no…
Every now and then, and rarely far apart in time, the media features a story about an assault in public where bystanders failed to come to the victim’s aid. Of course, there are many possible reasons why…
We live in an age of great public fascination with minds and brains; books about brain plasticity, for instance, regularly make the bestseller lists. This fascination is not merely the product of our thirst…
Is sex addiction real? That is, is it really a disorder, involving diminished control over behaviour? Questions such as these are difficult to answer because it’s always difficult to distinguish diminished…
An American neuroscientist claims to have solved the problem of free will. Peter Tse, who works at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, says that the key to free will lies in how neurons can rewire each…
It now appears that the scientist who seemed to be advocating that we clone Neanderthals was suggesting only that “we need to start talking about it.” Ethics is an essential part of such a conversation…
The infamous Youtube video capturing a young man abusing women on a Melbourne bus for the crime of singing in French, and being supported in his violent tirade by fellow passengers, raises the uncomfortable…
Are animals conscious? Notoriously, the famous 17th century philosopher René Descartes thought they were not. He believed that possession of a soul was necessary for rational thought and for consciousness…
Whenever I hear dire predictions concerning the social impact of new technologies, I recall a similar prediction made nearly 2,500 years ago. In the Phaedrus, Plato recounts a myth, according to which…
For most of the last couple of centuries, philosophers have had the question of free will largely to themselves (prior to that date, the distinction between philosophy and the natural sciences was less…
Some people seem born lucky. Everything they touch turns to gold. Others are dogged by misfortune. It’s not just people who might be lucky or unlucky – it can be single acts. When the ball hits a post…
The debate over the use of mandatory pre-commitment technology in poker machines is the latest front in an ongoing war that pits advocates of personal responsibility against people motivated by concerns…
Welcome to part four of _On the brain, a Conversation series by people whose job it is to know as much as there is to know about the body’s most complex organ. Here, Neil Levy, Head of Neuroethics at Florey…
Welcome to Peer Review, a series in which we ask leading academics to review books written by people in the same field. Here Neil Levy, ARC Future Fellow, based at the Florey Neuroscience Institutes, reviews…
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