Category: Uncategorized

The Skeptic and The Fool

The internet is a fantastic place. You can find some of the most intelligent ideas and some of the most fantastically stupid ideas. Lately, the internet has been providing more of the latter. My response hasn’t been what I’d like it to be. For over ten years I’ve been studying conspiracism, science denialism, and political […]

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How Not to Argue for Animal Rights Online: What Proponents of Animal Rights Should Learn from the Revised Dietary Guidelines on Meat-Eating

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last week, you have seen the new systematic review of the existing evidence concerning the health effects and dietary guidelines surrounding red meat and processed meats. Without getting into the gory details, the review evaluates of the quality of the evidence that had guided previous dietary […]

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Surviving and Thriving in Grad School

Here’s an article I wrote on how to survive and thrive in grad school. It was published in the American Philosophical Association (APA) blog: http://blog.apaonline.org/2019/09/09/thriving-and-surviving-grad-school/ An excerpt:One of the biggest traps you can fall into is to fail to be grateful for the extreme privilege of going to grad school. You begin to complain about how […]

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The Next Big Misinformation Campaign: Plant-Based and Clean Meats Are Dangerous!!!

I. IntroductionPlant-based meats and clean (aka lab-grown) meats will be the next targets of a well-financed major misinformation campaign. In the long run, the traditional meat industry is not going to be able to compete on price or quality. An informed consumer will rarely pay more for an inferior or similar product. The meat industry […]

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Theories of Constitutional Interpretation and How to Think About Upcoming Constitutional Cases

I. Introduction Anytime a constitutional case intersects with the culture wars, you can bet your bottom dollar that everyone on social media will magically become a constitutional scholar–in their own minds anyway. Yes, folks, merely believing something is sufficient for it being true. But I digress (already)… In this post, I’m going to give an […]

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How to Prevent Your Students from Plagiarizing: Stop Looking for A Technological Solution

Anyone teaching in college these days knows that plagiarism is a growing problem. Not just the incidence rate but student attitudes. Here’s an excerpt from a recent NPR piece on it: Student: Technically, I don’t think it’s cheating because, like, you’re paying someone to write an essay, which they don’t plagiarize, but they write everything […]

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