Recipes for Science is an introductory textbook about scientific methods and reasoning that I coauthored with Matteo Colombo and Cory Wright. For the 2nd ed (2024), my colleague Lucas Dunlap produced 17 videos on topics from the book, for use with or without the book. #philsci #philsky #scicomm 🧪

Recipes for Science - YouTube

youtube.com

Here is a free access link to my article about trust in science and educating thoughtful citizens, just published in The American Biology Teacher: online.ucpress.edu/abt/article/...

Here is a free access link to my article about trust in science and educating thoughtful citizens, just published in The American Biology Teacher: online.ucpress.edu/abt/article/...

Available here 😁 yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Alchemy

Flush with hundreds of illustrations, this book revisits the histories of chemistry, medicine, ideas, and culture through the lens of alchemy  “Philip Bal...

yalebooks.yale.edu

Here is a free access link to my article about trust in science and educating thoughtful citizens, just published in The American Biology Teacher: online.ucpress.edu/abt/article/...

Trump wants MMR vaccine split up: the science behind why it’s a bad idea. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Trump wants MMR vaccine split up: the science behind why it’s a bad idea

Numerous studies have shown that separating childhood jabs will delay protection and increase costs for families.

nature.com

Delighted by this recent review of my Mendel book on GoodReads! Check it out: www.goodreads.com/book/show/19...

How we Get Mendel Wrong, and Why it Matters

This book illustrates that the stereotypical representa…

goodreads.com

Coming in spring 2027: #CharlesDarwin's Geological Diary and Field Notes from the Voyage of the 'Beagle' by John van Wyhe and Gordon Chancellor, from Oxford UP: global.oup.com/academic/pro... #geology #HPS #histsci

This article by @smellosopher.bsky.social on Mary Hesse, of whom I was/am scandalously ignorant is a brilliant introduction to a brilliant and important thinker about how science works.

1st book review! “Lombrozo unpacks the psychology of explanations in rich detail and sharply analyzes how explaining can help and hinder…The result is a fresh, engrossing take on an important aspect of human behavior.” 😀 www.publishersweekly.com/9780063395008

Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand by Tania Lombrozo

People explain what they experience, feel, and encounter in order to understand the present and anticipate the future, according...

publishersweekly.com

I wrote a book! It's called WHY WE ASK WHY, and it's about the human drive to explain, combining psychology, philosophy, and stories. It will be released on October 6, but it's currently available for pre-order from Barnes & Noble at 25% off with code PREORDER25.

First real post on the new blog! If you follow human genetics, you've likely of "missing heritability". If you look at twins to estimate heritability, you get values much larger than what molecular genomic methods produce. IQ, for example, goes from 50-80% heritability to 10-15%. Which is right?

With @remyfurrer.bsky.social, a new piece in Nature Human Behavior. The standard description of a polygenic score as a "genetic predisposition" essentializes a statistical construct. It's not language policing: PGS are a new kind of entity; now is the time to think carefully about what they are.

Polygenic risk scores are not genetic predispositions - Nature Human Behaviour

Nature Human Behaviour - Polygenic risk scores are not genetic predispositions

nature.com

My review of Crick by @matthewcobb.bsky.social . A fine book. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Crick: A Mind in Motion. By Matthew Cobb. New York: Basic Books. $36.00. xi + 595 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 9781541602885 (hc); 9781541602878 (eb). 2025. | The Quarterly Review of Biology: Vol 101, No 2

journals.uchicago.edu

When the CDC conveys uncertainty, but the evidence is certain, public trust is compromised and it fosters science denialism; results of a randomized study of ~3,000 participants @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Amazon has a global technical issue; my paperback is still stuck. But! The eBook & hardback are available. If you want to read beyond telling and retrieval get a copy: mybook.to/teachingmean... I'd really appreciate the support (and an honest review to help this calamitous launch).

A nice review of my book Trusting Science by Dana Zeidler in Science & Education. Delighted and grateful to read this. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The Pedagogical Primacy of Trusting Science - Science & Education

Science & Education -

link.springer.com

I wrote for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social about Kathryn Paige Harden's new book, an attempt to popularize the eugenics of criminality. I read it as a gambit to build liberal support for the project animating far right politics today, inspired by Replacement theory.

Los Angeles Review of Books@lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 4mo ago

"The book reads like an 'Eat Pray Love' of biotech grifting, designed to make her into a public figure based on her personal journey." Jonathan Basile reviews Kathryn Paige Harden’s “Original Sin.” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/original-sin-eugenics-scientific-calvinism-kathryn-paige-harden/

« …the growing divide between how much universities say they value interdisciplinary research and how poorly their internal structures are set up to reward it. What made Donovan a singular talent also made it easier for him to fall between the cracks. » So true …

Kostas Kampourakis@kampourakisk.bsky.social · 5mo ago

A brilliant colleague who now has to leave science education research… www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...

A brilliant colleague who now has to leave science education research… www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...

A star scientist showed that better genetics lessons could reduce racism. It was the death knell for his career

Brian Donovan had persuaded high school teachers and education researchers that prejudice might be ended by changing how genetics is taught.

statnews.com

Just published: "Improving scientific mentoring with history and philosophy of science" (open access) With my good friends and colleagues Alan Love and Tobias Uller. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Indeed! I have been thinking: If we delete Fisher’s name from buildings, should we also stop using the methods he developed? I have no easy answer, but owning a field’s history and acknowledging both what we like and do not like is a decent way to go.

T. Ryan Gregory 🇨🇦@tryangregory.bsky.social · 5mo ago

One eugenicist (Fisher) *founded* the journal Heredity, which is the journal of the Genetics Society of the UK. It's a mainstream journal. I've published in it. Pretending that eugenicists were just a bunch of cranks is utterly absurd. No, we have to own that history. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just published: "Improving scientific mentoring with history and philosophy of science" (open access) With my good friends and colleagues Alan Love and Tobias Uller. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

It is usually scientists who make such claims, but it seems that historians can do it as well. Mendel did not write about any atoms of heredity or hereditary factors, as Bob Olby explained clearly in 1979: adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1979His...

Los Angeles Review of Books@lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 6mo ago

"Genetics and eugenics were born as conjoined twins." An excerpt about the neo-Darwin idea of "modern synthesis" and its eugenics ties, from Jessica Riskin's new book "The Power of Life"—out tomorrow: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/eugenics-genetics-evolution-modern-synthesis-darwin-riskin-1/

It was a pleasure to talk to Phil for an hour and a half about the conceptual foundations of the life sciences as part of his New Biology project. It's an exciting time to be a philosopher of biology! #hpbio #philsci #philsky

Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I had a great talk with philosopher of biology Dan Nicholson, for the New Biology project with Marginalia Review of Books, about going beyond the machine metaphor in biology. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ds0...

Delighted to be giving a talk in about 4 weeks at the Stanford Center for Computational, Evolutionary and Human Genomics. I am grateful to Noah Rosenberg for the invitation. cehg.stanford.edu/cehg-program...

I had a great talk with philosopher of biology Dan Nicholson, for the New Biology project with Marginalia Review of Books, about going beyond the machine metaphor in biology. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ds0...

Rethinking Life: Beyond the Machine Metaphor

YouTube video by Marginalia Review of Books

youtube.com

Now out: Cultural evolution and Social Ontology: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge), edited by Martina Valković and me. Available (with discount code below) at: www.routledge.com/Cultural-Evo...

For those interested in the relation between HPS and science itself, here is our new page about HPS Mentoring in Science (with Alan Love and Tobias Uller) www.hps-mentoring-in-biology.org

OK, I have a US jacket design now. I think it looks rather handsome. The book is published in the autumn, in both the UK (Little Brown) and US (University of Chicago Press).