Josh Mitteldorf 
Very early in the pandemic, the infamous “Proximate origins” paper was published in Nature Medicine, using nonsensical reasoning to “prove” that COVID could not have come from a lab. The Big Lie held its ground for over two years, before Jon Stewart sneered at it and Jeffrey Sachs added gravitas to the case against the “Wet Market hypothesis”. Then in December, … Read more
You are to be forgiven if you don’t see the difference between a “beautiful theory” and an “ugly theory”. Einstein’s General Relativity is a beautiful theory because it can be described simply in words, and those words lead in turn to horrendously intractable mathematics. The words are that the density of energy (including mass, momentum, … Read more
About a billion years ago, there was a high-powered bacterium — we’ll call her Mitey — who was skilled at redox chemistry. This is the same chemistry that runs batteries, and it’s much more energy intensive than the organic chemistry of life that came before. Mitey was a parasite who used her high-power chemistry to … Read more
In 1898, William James was engaged by Harvard to lecture on the subject of “human immortality”. He devoted the lecture to the hypothesis that the brain does not create consciousness, but rather that the brain is a connector between consciousness and physical reality. Radio broadcasts were the new technology of that era, and he used the metaphor … Read more
How does the brain create consciousness? Thirty years ago, David Chalmers called this the Hard Problem, and the name has stuck. In the paradigm of reductionist science, there are only physical matter and physical causes. There is no need for emotions or sensations or intentions — indeed, there is no room for these things, because … Read more
Robust experimental results from more than a century of research in parapsychology are incompatible with the laws of physics as we understand them. This presents the greatest challenge in science today. Viewed in another way, it may be the greatest opportunity we have for addressing long-standing problems and controversies in mainstream science, including The “measurement … Read more
A young Mark Twain had a vivid dream in which his brother died in an explosion. As recounted in a biography by Albert Paine, he was thoroughly shaken the next day. In his dream, Twain saw details, including a red rose on Henry’s chest as he lay in the casket. Two weeks later, Henry Clemens died … Read more
We now have many mummies and skeletons, mostly from western South America, that are sort of human-like, but don’t fit into any mainstream history of humanity. There are so many congenitally elongated skulls that they must correspond to a subspecies, perhaps with dominant relationship to people with heads we regard as normal. That would help … Read more
The past causes the future. The future is undetermined, and cannot reach back to have an effect on the past. Call this the “principle of causality”. It is so ingrained in our thinking that we don’t know how to make sense of the world without it. And yet, quantum mechanics subtly defies the principle. A … Read more
Bioweapons research was responsible for global devastation on the scale of a world war. This is an important and delightfully readable new book. I’m going to argue that it is actually understated. Seeded by imported Nazi scientists after WW2, the US military has conducted extensive research into bioweapons research, which mushroomed as it went underground … Read more