On Thursday 16th October, Professor Kenneth Kendler delivered his second (and final) Loebel Lecture, entitled ‘The dappled causal world for psychiatric disorders: implications for psychiatric nosology’. You can view it online he…

A GP in Guildford has recently revealed that the NHS is to pay GPs £55 each time they diagnose dementia in a patient. Writing on the medical website Pulse, Dr Martin Brunet, called the incentive scheme a “bribe,” put in place so that the go…

This is a guest post by Oliver P. Hauser & David G. Rand. “It often strikes me that the complex problems we face in the world – problems of corruption, environment, politics, and so on – almost always indicate a failur…

What causes psychiatric disorders, such as depression or alcohol abuse disorders? It’s obvious that  background and upbringing often play a significant role, as do life events, such as losing one’s spouse or one’s job. And we also know now …

The new DPP Alison Saunders has clarified the Policy for Prosecutors in Respect of Cases of Encouraging or Assisting Suicide issued by the previous DPP, Keir Starmer, in 2010. This has led to claims by right to life groups that assisted sui…

A recent article by Marc Bekoff, written for the website The Dodo, asks whether it might be true that researchers who currently test on animals are less humane than their predecessors. Bekoff thinks it is. His reasons for that belief seem t…

We’re not good at large numbers. Our brains are adapted to living in groups of perhaps 150 individuals. City living is a very recent innovation, and our psychological mechanisms struggle to cope with it. One way in which we may go astray is…

You do not have a right not to be offended,  insulted or verbally abused. You do not have that right because it might be right to offend, insult or verbally abuse you. You might believe stupid things, or even sensible things, and take offen…

Reposted from an article in “the Conversation”.  In a world where too many go to bed hungry, it comes as a shock to realise that more than half the world’s food production is left to rot, lost in transit, thrown out, or otherwise wasted. Th…

Following six months in the UK with no access to a television, I’ve had the opportunity to rediscover the delights of prime-time news media exposure since returning to Australia. If I had to point to the (world) issue that is foremost…