Cognitive Framing Differences Between Liberals and Conser...

I work in the cognitive and brain sciences. In the 1990's, I undertook to answer a question in my field: How do the various policy positions of conservatives and progressives hang together? Take conservatism: What does being against abortion have to do with being for owning guns? What does owning guns have to do with denying the reality of global warming? How does being anti-government fit with wanting a stronger military? How can you be pro-life and for the death penalty? Progressives have t...

 People Freed by DNA Evidence

...there is a distressingly long list of people who have been wrongly convicted on eye-witness testimony and subsequently freed - sometimes after many years - because of new evidence from DNA. In Texas alone, thirty-five condemned people have been exonerated since DNA evidence became admissible in court. And that's just the ones who are still alive. Given the gusto with which the State of Texas enforces the death penalty (during his six years as Governor, George W. Bush signed a death warrant...

 Logical Fallacies

In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged to justify two contradictory propositions. Among these fallacies are: Ad hominem - Latin for 'to the man', attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g., the Reve...