Information Opinion A week ago, The BFD published a review of the Pfizer vaccine trials in which I analysed the actual data released by the company. The takeaway for readers was that the numbers simply did not justify government decisions. Pfizer trumpeted headlines about over 43,000 participants enrolled in
Perhaps nothing exemplifies the bureaucratic lunacy crushing Australians in the name of “covid rules” than the case of Nikolai Petrovsky. Professor Petrovsky is one of Australia’s most respected vaccinologists. He has led the development of an Australian-made covid vaccine: a vaccine currently in phase 3 trials and ready
Jacinda Ardern, for all her posturing and wind-bagging about climate change, isn’t even deigning to grace the world’s biggest climate gab-fest. Probably she knew she’d be competing for the cameras with the media’s favourite climate pinup-girl. There’s nothing a diva hates worse
James Shaw, co-leader of the Green Party, believes people can reduce the world’s temperature. Perhaps this thinking comes from a Maori legend: How Maui Slowed The Sun. Maui was annoyed that the sun went down too quickly, and he had to eat his meal in the dark. His
Here’s a weird time-perspective for you to consider: we live closer in time to Cleopatra than she did to the building of the great pyramids. The Great Pyramid of Giza was more than 2600 years old when Cleopatra was alive. By contrast, she lived less than two thousand
From the moment astronomers first trained telescopes on it, Venus was long an enigma. Shrouded entirely in thick white clouds which help make it one of the brightest objects in the night sky, nothing was known of Venus’ surface. That mystery allowed speculation to run riot. C. S. Lewis, in
In his epic The Winds of War, Herman Wouk refers to the “curious universal smirk of Germans when discussing Jews: condescending, facetious, and cold, with superior awareness of a very private inside joke”. I’ve often noticed a similar look when discussing climate science with alarmists. Mention a scientist or
Edgar Allan Poe may have loathed “those little slices of death”, but sleep is even more crucial to us than food. We can survive weeks without food — no more than a week without sleep (the record is 11 days). There’s a reason sleep deprivation is classed as torture. But,
There is little doubt that we live in an age when reason and the scientific revolution are under concerted assault – from all sides. The left like to demonise the right as “anti-science”, but they might want to take a long, hard look in the mirror. The religious right might
Thomas Crow particle.scitech.org.au Thomas Crow is an Australian science writer. He has a background in professional writing, biochemistry and genetics. He writes for Australian and New Zealand research institutes and publications like Crikey. He’s a horror and gothic fantasy fan. He thinks of himself as a
Jonathan Miltimore fee.org Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller,
Sodom and Gomorrah are perhaps the best known of the five “cities of the plain” which feature so prominently in Genesis — and a byword for God’s destructive wrath. The historic city and location of the cities has long been debated. But, the Biblical and other Hebrew sources are clear
It’s said that “Whenever something eats, something dies”. But this wasn’t always so: the earliest organisms were likely microbes that absorbed nutrients directly from their environment. Even today “extremophile” organisms feast on the chemical soup spewing out of deep-ocean volcanic vents. But, at some point in Earth’
Can we just lay off the vax wars now? We’ve got the vaxholes blaming the unvaccinated for rising Covid cases, while the anti-vaxxers shout back that it’s the vaccinated who are the real Covid Marys. Turns out they’re probably both wrong. A new study has examined
