Even though we were on the fringes of Hurricane Sandy, a massive pine tree in our backyard toppled over during the night, even though there was not much wind. We did not even hear it falling, suggesting that it fell over slowly rather than come crashing down, presumably because the cause was the soil being weakened by steady, but not heavy, rain rather than high wind. Fortunately it missed our house and garage and the neighbor’s house and garage and the main damage it caused was to the fence separating our two properties and to a smaller tree that was in its path. [Read more…]

My post about how to distinguish real science from fake science generated some interesting comments, especially over my assertion that we have not as yet been able to come up with an unambiguous way to distinguish science from non-science, and it prompted me to post a follow-up to try and clarify it. [Read more…]

One of the remarkable things about science is that it works. It produces results that are repeatable, testable, and useful. So what is it about this enterprise that we call science that makes it so successful? Philosophers and historians of science have struggled for over a century to answer this question and the related question of how to distinguish science from non-science (the well-known ‘demarcation problem’), and have basically come up empty. [Read more…]