David Canter

As a British academic schooled, from an early age, in the niceties of public debate, I’m struggling to understand the acceptability of a president behaving as Donald Trump did in his recently televised confrontation with former Vice President Joe Biden. I know the House of Commons can have rowdy shouting by opposition members that can interrupt a person giving a speech, even the prime minister.

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Race only became a term that implied a radical difference in the nature of people in the 18th century (this illustration of the ‘types of mankind’ dates from the next century, in 1893). The impact of the Black Lives Matter movement has been impressive and far too long in arriving. It is therefore a pity that discrimination against people of color should get confused with the unhelpful

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Is this an example of a government following the science? Some years ago, as a way of showing the impotence of social science, especially psychology, I asked, ‘Why has psychology not created any weapons of mass destruction?” After all, the natural sciences, which are used as the models for social science, each have their own WMD. Biology has its biological weapons, chemistry its toxins and

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