Fairy dust sprinkled from ivory towers

On the basis that the "impact agenda" is important I thought it worth while responding to Paul Krugman, who seems to  think I'...

Dogmatic Indifference

Last week Roger Pielke Jr had a letter to the FT published where he questioned the effectiveness of a carbon cap in China.  Paul Krugman re...

Scientific facts and democratic values

I spoke at the Circling the Square conference last week, keeping closely to the text I put up before I went to Nottingham.  The most signi...

Piketty and the problems of data interpretation

I have not read Piketty, but like many in my position I will not let that stop me talking about the debate of his book focusing on data inte...

Is it robust knowledge or make believe? Evidence, uncertainty and the role of values.

I am participating in the " Circling the square:Research, politics, media and impact " conference next week and I am collecting m...

Objections to Objectivity

I start with a warning that this is a synthesis-in-development of some thoughts about mathematics, economics, objectivity and justification....

When being wrong is right

I attended the Mathematical Cultures workshop/conference a the London Mathematical Society at the start of the month where I presented Is f...

The Legitimacy of High Frequency Trading

Mark Thoma brought my attention to a post by Dean Baker,  High Speed Trading and Slow-Witted Economic Policy .  High Frequency Trading, or ...

Why do we take physicists seriously?

My undergraduate degree was in physics, at Imperial College which is/was the centre of logical positivist applied physics: when students wen...