Playing host to this month's Carnival, I've had the fun of trawling the web for a few interesting posts by Africans on relevant topics (scepticism, science, etc), and having read submissions I've received for the carnival.  If you'd like to host a Carnival then get hold of Mike at michael{dot}meadon{at}gmail{dot}com and volunteer for a position as host, vacancies as early as next month!  Take a look at the guidelines here.  Anyway, here are the relevant...

Tim Harford has a fantastic column today talking about the campaign behind the Robin Hood tax. He argued previously that the campaign was misguided, but what scares him more are the ways in which those who support the campaign - bloggers, commenters, twitterers - have tried to 'argue' to support the tax. What did they do? They appealed to authority. How? The supporters reiterated that 'Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman said [X]' or 'Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz said...

I shall host this month's Carnival of the Africans on Feb 28th. If you happen to be an African Sceptical or Scientific blogger, please email me your submissions by 9pm Feb 27 so I can attempt to publish by 9pm Feb 28th. The guidelines are here. Angela, the Skeptic Detective, hosted the previous edition here. You can contact me at simon{dot}d{dot}halliday{at}gmail{dot}com. I look forward to your sceptical and scientific posts. I will trawl the web to find additional...

This week's Nature has a paper by Elizabeth Tricomi, Antonio Rangel, Colin F. Camerer & John P. O’Doherty, reporting on 'Neural evidence for inequality averse social preferences'. Eurekalert reported on it here. I would have read the paper anyway, but a quotation from one of the researchers, John O'Doherty in the Eurekalert article pricked my ears up, "[We can] try to understand how these changes in valuation actually translate into changes in behavior. For example,...

Oh gosh, it looks like I'm going to have to comment on South African politics again. Floyd Shivambu waxes incoherent about Jeremy Cronin's recent public letter about transparent debate about nationalisation. Shivambu said, "Why a communist cadre in the form of Jeremy Cronin refuses to constructively input into the nationalisation of mines perspective even when humbly requested to is worrying. But as they say, blood is thicker than water." What does that mean? Let...

So I don't venture into political commentary too regularly, but I thought I'd highlight the role of evidence in the recent ANCYL vs. The Star conflict. The Star ran a report on the lifestyle of SA leaders, beginning with Julius Malema. ANCYL then responded saying that the report was 'untrue and opportunistic'. So let's go with the claims and counterclaims, the evidence presented, and the interpretation of this by the parties. One general comment, the ANCYL representatives...

Though I wish I could substitute "Lecture" with "Save the day", I'm not mighty mouse. I will be lecturing Intermediate Microeconomics at the University of Cape Town during April and May. We are using Perloff's Microeconomics: Theory and Applications with Calculus which is a demon of a book technically (mathematically rigorous) and will be a challenge to teach with, but still good because of its comprehensiveness and the mathematical preparation the students will have...

If you are at all interested in evolution, wildlife or photography, I strongly recommend you take a look at the Natural History Museum's Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the year Competition.  If you're not in London or the surrounds, then take a look at the online gallery of the winners, runners-up and special commendations.  There were several phenomenal shots taken by professionals, amateurs and competitors in the special categories for children...

Do you treat money someone gives you and money you earn at work differently? I think I do.  This question is central to my dissertation research in which I plan to look at several methodological issues in economics.  One of these issues - legitimacy - coheres around the way in which we treat earned endowments differently to how we treat windfall endowments.  It goes back to an idea of Milton Friedman's in his permanent income hypothesis: we humans treat...

A new South African law blog has come onto the scene - For Voet's Sake.  It's a team blog with contributions from several young South Africans, some of them graduate students in law at the University of Cape Town and a couple of others clerking at the constitutional court (as far as I understand it).  The blog has the potential to speak about all kinds of interesting topics and to offer high quality but accessible insights into the functioning and practice...

I just wanted to highlight some recent sceptical victories that have been covered in the press - just in case you missed them. Almost everyone should now know about The Lancet deciding to retract Andrew Wakefield's MMR scare paper (reports here and here, Lancet press release here).  Wakefield's paper tried to show that vaccinations cause autism and he has been at the forefront of the vaccination-autism conspiracy for some time.  I hope that this disempowers...

A recent post by William Easterly at The Aid Watch blog, 'Who Gets the Last Seat on the Plane?' reminded me of an article by Deirdre McCloskey, 'Voodoo Economics' in which McCloskey relates the wishes of children (and, in the context of Easterly, development officials) to magic and magical thinking.  Many's the economist or statistician who wishes that there were endless resources, that there were always another seat on the plane, that there were water, food, bricks...

Last week I started something I'd like to try and make semi-regular: comments in the popular and academic press about gender. A new NBER paper (one of the authors of which is Rachel Croson, one of my favourite economists) describes the results from a randomized controlled trial that some economists ran on themselves, well sort of.  The committee for the Status of Women in the Economic Profession started an RCT on a mentoring program for women in the profession. ...

Janice Roberts at the M&G reports on water issues in South Africa.  The article's headline is 'SA water demand will exceed supply by 2025'.  So, first off, the title is wrong.  Second, the article doesn't tell us what the underlying models are, what's being held constant, what's varying.  We need to know these in order to understand what the author is trying to say, because she evidently isn't saying it well. So, first off, Supply and Demand...

David Sloane Wilson, a controversial and fascinating figure, has a series of posts up on Economics and Evolution.  I commented quite comprehensively on the first post in support, and I'll reproduce it here for the sake of interest. Here are the links to the three posts that are currently up:Economics and Evolution as different paradigms IEconomics and Evolution as different paradigms II: The Allais ParadoxEconomics and Evolution as different paradigms III: The...

After getting a bit frustrated with Tim Harford last week for his inaccurate discussion about altruism, yesterday he offered an insightful post about probabilities and clustering.  So, how likely do you think it is that you will get 6 two yolk eggs in your half-dozen egg box? Well, Harford was told that getting one two yolk egg occurs with a probability of 1 in 1000.  So, if you get six of them (and if, BIG IF, they are independent events) you simply multiply...