Britain's shadow science minister believes in experts

The shadow within the shadow: how was Canada's sixth prime minister, Charles Tupper, as a doctor?

By land or by sea In the spring of 1866 the “cholera” steamship, SS England, left Queenstown on the southern tip of Ireland, bound for New York with a full complement of immigrants, mostly German and Irish. The SS England was new and fast and her specifications complied with the ventilation and space-per-passenger requirements dictated by the Shipping Act. When she departed Ireland her passenge...

New health minister doesn't mean new regime, say experts.

The second school believes music

The title of the newest and fourteenth book by science writer Philip Ball leaves no doubt: this is a counter-attack on claims made by Steven Pinker in his publications The Language Instinct (1994) and How the Mind Works (1997). Pinker characterized music as ‘auditory cheesecake’ (1997: 534): a tasty bonus but, from an evolutionary point of view, no more than a by-product of much more important ...

Message from the Minister

cause of mental health by creating a greater understanding of the nature of mental disorders and of the possibilities of prevention and of help for those who suffer from them. A lively and well-informed journal is invaluable for stimulating the interest of the public as a whole as well as helping people already actively engaged in work for mental health, and I wish every success to this new ven...

Mad minister disease?

Nearly ten years ago, a hitherto unknown neurological condition, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), appeared in British cows. It was labelled ‘mad cow disease’, because of the strange combination of fear and shambling gait shown by its victims. As more cases came to light, BSE was found to be similar to scrapie in sheep and it was suggested that cows were infected by eating feedstuffs cont...