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When I alighted Amtrak 365 this Wednesday morning and came up the station stairs into the brilliant daylight and saw my old familiar Chicago River, hugged by its skyscrapers and its grand Lyric Opera, I started smiling uncontrollably. I had a feeling I would finally be meeting my grandbook today, at lunch with my former…

When I arrived Augustana College, in Rock Island, Illinois, on Tuesday to speak on academic freedom, the campus was a bit abuzz because of some controversial “chalking.” Overnight, someone had written pro-Trump slogans on many of the campus sidewalks. Turns out it was members of the College Republicans, although that wasn’t clear at the time. Various folks…

Not long ago, I wrote about how we should try hard to avoid real or perceived financial conflicts of interest where vaccinations concerned. Many vaccines are too important to public health to have financial conflicts of interest leading to patient and caregiver skepticism—and even cynicism—of the type that is not that unreasonable where some drugs are concerned.…

I spoke with FIRE’s Nico Perrino on the So to Speak podcast about free speech on campus. Have a listen.

David Robert Grimes recently had the unenviable task of facing off against Andrew Wakefield on Irish radio. Dr. Grimes is a physicist who also functions as an advocate for science in the public realm. I very much respect his work. Wakefield, on the other hand, is infamous for having falsely claimed that vaccines cause autism. (They…

As I’ve been accused before of being a writer in the genre of “Quit Lit,” I’m disinclined to add an essay to the growing genre of “Why I’m Thinking of Leaving Twitter.” But I also hate being misunderstood, and the folks on my Twitter feed think it’s just the trolls. The trolls are awful. I really do…

FiveThirtyEight has launched a new science podcast called Sparks, and they had me on as the inaugural guest to talk about Galileo’s Middle Finger. My son, who is a huge FiveThirtyEight fan, was more impressed than when I was on Oprah. Listen here.

Note: In July 2015, the LA Times asked me to write a commentary on the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s ruling in the case of Dutee Chand. I wrote a piece looking at the ruling, but the editor wanted a somewhat different piece, so what was ultimately published was pretty different from what I originally penned. Since…

I was honored to give the keynote for the Student Network Conference of FIRE (the Foundation for Indvidual Rights in Education). You can watch it thorugh this link from the Heterodox Academy. The talk itself is about 35 minutes long, and then there’s a Q&A that’s pretty interesting.

A week ago I gave the keynote at the Student Network Conference of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Today, FIRE’s photographer Aaron Reese sent me this photo from that event, and I smiled at the juxtaposition of two things: FIRE’s logo in the background and my magenta water bottle in the foreground. There’s a…