This is the year that AI in science first began to scare me. (Disclaimer: I’m not talking about machine learning, which is a useful and powerful scientific tool. I’m using the term AI here as ...

This is the year that AI in science first began to scare me. (Disclaimer: I’m not talking about machine learning, which is a useful and powerful scientific tool. I’m using the term AI here as ...

Update (17:00 03 Mar): all members of the UK or international scientific community were invited to indicate their support by signing the letter. The opportunity to do so closed at 17:00 UK time on 03 ...

Ironically, in the week when my co-authors and I are publishing a paper proposing framework to tackle the reluctance of researchers to publish negative results, one of the most important null results ...

It never seems as if the academic stress will end, until suddenly, sometime in late June, it just does. The students disperse for the academic year like fluffy tree pollen on the wind. The final marks ...

Susanna Clarke: Piranesi A young man called Piranesi lives in a strange, Borgesian world, an infinite series of gigantic marble halls styled on classical lines, and ornamented by uncountable statues.

This year I read 64 books, the first time since records began (2014) that the number has exceeded my age in years (I am 62). The total might be inflated, though, as some of the books have been ...

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been caught in the flurry of the early-spring conference season, crisscrossing continents to take part in that most ritualistic of scientific pastimes: networking, giving ...

The preachers and the scientists got soaked just the same I cannot point to a moment when I knew I was called to serve God like this. The image is more like a watercolour, built up in layers, or a ...

The anticipation of Christmas under commercial pressure has also made it harder to sustain the appropriate sense of alert watchfulness. We as a staff team at St Mary’s Hornsey Rise try to sustain our ...

What follows is a review of Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares: If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies – it was going to be part of my monthly book blog but the review got so long I felt it should have a ...

There has been much fuss and flapdoodle about a company called Colossal Biosciences that aims to use the wonders of modern genetic technology to call extinct species back from the other side of the ...