The belief that ancient Egyptians needed help from supernatural beings to built the Giza pyramids relies, unavoidably, on racism and colonial attitudes.
Is that a black hole, or a hole in their data?
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Only 1% of published psychology research papers are ever repeated. If psychologists want their discipline to be taken seriously, they’ll need to get their house in order.
Take my radically intuitive theory and ‘poof’, general relativity will be disproved.
Shutterstock/Richard Peterson
General relativity challenges our intuitive conception of how space and time work, which might explain why it’s such a popular target for crank theorists.
Family resemblance isn’t only down to genes, but also to the influence of the environment on those genes.
Mitchell Joyce/Flickr
Jeffrey Craig, Murdoch Children's Research Institute
Epigenetics is increasingly used as a buzzword to sell pseudoscientific products, but the truth of epigenetics is even more interesting – and complex – than the quacks claim.
Scientists should study pseudoscience – see what the pseudoscientists are up to and perhaps (for a laugh) try a few pseudostudies themselves. Critically, scientists must learn what really distinguishes…
Oh no – not that mistake again.
Flickr/Alex Proimos
UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH: What do we actually mean by research and how does it help inform our understanding of things? Understanding what’s being said in any new research can be challenging and there are…
During World War II, residents on the islands in the southern Pacific Ocean saw heavy activity by US planes, bringing in goods and supplies for the soldiers. In many cases, this was the islanders’ first…
Climate change tends to attract some form of protest such as this in 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Flickr/Simon Leufstedt
The debate over climate change is relatively young while nuclear power and pesticides have been heated topics since the 1960s, and fluoridation since the 1950s. So what is it about these scientific controversies…
Your lottery is due, say the zodiac signs on the tarot card.
kvijesh
Most people reading this article will have also read their horoscope at least once. Even though scientific studies have never found evidence for the claims astrologers make, some people still think astrology…
Science or pseudoscience?
Flickr/Aff (formerly Odd Bod)
The word “pseudoscience” is used to describe something that is portrayed as scientific but fails to meet scientific criteria. This misrepresentation occurs because actual science has creditability (which…
Over the previous weekend the morning magazine shows I have on during lazy mornings had 2 glamorous nutritionist types breathlessly discussing the latest ‘superfoods’ that would be big in 2014. It’s difficult…
Claims of mysterious creature sightings dominate cryptozoology – but where is the evidence?
Chi-Yun
All forms of science are reliant on facts, hard evidence and statistics to maintain relevance and credibility. But what of the legitimacy of the so-called “pseudosciences”? A warning: I’m going to pick…
Previous Vice President of the Academy of Science of South Africa and DSI-NRF SARChI chair in Fungal Genomics, Professor in Genetics, University of Pretoria, University of Pretoria