A study published recently in Science magazine investigated human volition in patients undergoing brain surgery. Michel Desmurget and his colleagues electrically stimulated the brains of seven subjects awake under local anaesthesia. When th…

Newspapers recently showed pictures of two people, a man and a woman, who underwent facial  transplantations after serious accidents disfigured a large part of their faces. Both recipients were satisfied with the result, and they hope…

The University of Oxford and the British government have come under fire for spending £300,000 on a study showing that 'ducks like water' (see e.g. The Guardian). The Taxpayer's Alliance has issued a statement pillorying this &#…

Recently in the news, a report published by the independent think-tank Demos reminds us of the importance of the capacity for self-control (it also mentions empathy, to which most of the following remarks apply) in determining life outcomes…

It would be foolish of me to attempt to say anything substantive about the ethics of abortion in a blog post. But I do want to comment on Obama’s recent foray into the question, as well as on one interpretation of those comments. Addressing…

Labour MP Shahid Malik has resigned as justice minister after claims about his expenses were published in the Daily Telegraph: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8051091.stmShortly before standing down, he claimed that the extensive med…

Few people in the UK could have missed the furious storm about MPs’ expense claims that has dominated the news headlines for the past several weeks.  A steady flow of stories has revealed not only which MPs bent the rules on exp…

The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare has recently declared that it is impossible to deny abortions to women who base their decision on the sex of the foetus. This ruling came about after a case where a woman twice aborted foetus…

Today I just want to put a question.  Pope Benedict is in Israel.  When a visiting VIP is in Israel – and they don’t get more VI than the Pope – he or she is invariably taken to the Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem.  Wal…

In the last few days the influenza pandemic has led to over 800 deaths, with another 240,000 expected in coming months. There has been rioting over the government response to the pandemic leading to 8 protesters and 7 police being injured. …