Arlene Goldbard

I’ve been reading a lot about nutrition lately, as part of my program to age gracefully. I thought I was acquiring information that would help me preserve my good health, and I guess I was. But it turned out my real subject was how scientific blind spots—confirmation bias, foregone conclusions, beliefs that resist reality-testing—obscure the […]

Let me stipulate it upfront: as a form of political action, the full-page ad is not my favorite. Often, such ads are clarion calls to condemnation. Many seem predicated on the hope that the perpetrators of destructive acts will be shamed by such attention. But really, I think they just turn the page and get […]

Enormous props to the people at One Laptop Per Child, who so perfectly express the growing phenomenon of social entrepreneurship (do good, do well).
They’ve worked for years to perfect the XO laptop, which can be manufactured at a price that actually makes computer technology accessible to children in the developing world. In each era, […]

Not along ago, I visited a friend who is deeply plugged into the sound-the-alarm networks I sometimes find it easy to dismiss: Y2K! Avian flu! And so on. As soon as I walked in the door, she said this: “I’m worried that they’re going to declare a national emergency and suspend the next election—a coup.” […]

I gave a couple of talks in a distant city a few weeks ago, one on each day of a two-day conference. That entailed being introduced several times, first as Goldfarb, then Goldberg. Everyone whose heritage diverges from this country’s uncannily persistent normative WASP-philia collides with prejudice on a regular basis. The garbling of my […]