The Center for Science Writings

This is my last Horganism post, or at least the last on Discover.com. I’ve enjoyed myself, in large part because you’ve been such smart responders. You’ve kept me on my toes by treating my skepticism skeptically. Thanks! I plan to start blogging again soon on the website of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology, my academic home. Keep an eye out at stevens.edu/csw. Peace, John

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Some readers have wondered what my problem is with Big Pharma, which in my last post I accused of corrupting medicine and journalism. My problem with Big Pharma is that its products are often–and especially in the case of psychiatric drugs–much less effective than claimed. This was a major theme of my book The Undiscovered Mind. See also my short 1999 oped for the Times, "Placebo Nation." That’s also

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The medical watchdog Vera Hassner Sharaz of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, whom I praised back in December, has attacked Newsweek for its cover story, “Men and Depression.” Newsweek, which like many mass-media outlets relies heavily on drug-company ads, states:

“Six million American men will be diagnosed with depression this year. But millions more suffer silently, unaware that their problem has a name or unwilling to seek

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A reader has passed on a story about another green program gone awry, "Tire reef off Florida proves a disaster." Here’s the intro:

A mile offshore from this city’s high-rise condos and spring-break bars lie as many as 2 million old tires, strewn across the ocean floor — a white-walled, steel-belted monument to good intentions gone awry.

The tires were unloaded there in 1972 to create an artificial

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Andrei, my friend and nemesis, worries in his response to my last post, “The Green Bandwagon,” that I’ve lost my critical faculties lately, and have degenerated into slogan-spouting: “War is bad.” “Nature is good.” The road to hell, he warns, is paved with good intentions. And platitudes.

He’s struck a soft spot. A couple of weeks ago the New York Times ran a story, “Once a

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I got a job at Stevens Institute of Technology two years ago in part because I enjoy infecting susceptible young minds with memes. I get a special kick, I admit, out of propagating negative memes, like those in The End of Science. But lately I’ve found satisfaction in spreading positive messages, pointing out, for example, that science and engineering can help us solve some of our most pressing problems, such

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We’re seeking nominations for the next Stevens Center for Science Writings Green Book Award, the first of which was given to Edward Wilson for The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. Candidates for the award, which includes a check for $5000, must be nonfiction books that address environmental issues and are published sometime in 2007.

Just to give you a sense of what

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At Stevens, the science/engineering school where I’ve been teaching the last year or so, I’m trying to raise awareness of environmental issues among students and faculty. With that in mind, I just created the Stevens Center for Science Writings “Green Book Award.” I’m thrilled to announce that Edward O. Wilson, one of our era’s greatest and most eloquent scientists, will receive the first Green Book Award for his new book

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In this week’s New Yorker, Adam Gopnik critiques David Bell’s book The First Total War, the subject of my last post . Citing Genghis Khan and other masters of destruction, Gopnik points out that total war—in which huge conscripted armies seek not merely to defeat but to destroy each other, along, often, with civilian populations–preceded the Napoleonic era. Gopnik also faults Bell for overstating the analogies between post-revolutionary

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I’ve been arguing ad nauseam lately that the first step toward ending war is to believe that we can do it. I was thus taken aback by the headline of an essay in the Sunday New York Times Magazine: “The Peace Paradox: How an urge to end war can lead to more war.”

David A. Bell, author of a book about Napoleon’s misadventures, notes that after the French

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