2011

It’s one of those situations where everything we knew about the tiger’s (thylacine wolf’s) extinction is true, but some new information rounds out the picture. From “Tasmanian Tiger’s Jaw Was Too Small to Attack Sheep, Study Shows” (ScienceDaily, Aug. 31, 2011), we learn: Australia’s iconic thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, was hunted to death in the early Twentieth century for allegedly killing sheep; however, a new study published in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology has found that the tiger had such weak jaws that its prey was probably no larger than a possum. “Our research has shown that its rather feeble jaw restricted it to catching smaller, more agile prey,” said lead author Marie Attard, of the University Read More ›

Oft said before but bears repeating: Jonah Goldberg on the media role in the bunkum cult of the expert: There are no more devout members of the cult of expertise than mainstream journalists. They rely on experts for guidance about what is “mainstream” and accurate and what is not. Sometimes that’s fine. Surgeons are extremely reliable sources to explain how a heart attack happens. They’re not as reliable at telling you who will have one, save in a statistical sense, and even less reliable at telling you when a specific person will have one. That’s because prediction is hard. Experts — in politics, economics, climate — are very, very bad at telling people what will happen tomorrow, let alone next Read More ›