06 December 2010 by Marion Kilgour
On December 6, 1989, Marc Lépin walked into the École Polytechnique in Montréal with a rifle. He shot one woman in the hallway, walked into a classroom full of engineering students, ordered the men to leave, and killed 6 of the 10 women remaining. He then continued through the school, shooting women, and men if [...]
Posted in Canada, Culture, History, Quebec, Social Sciences2 Comments
15 September 2010 by Marion Kilgour
Back in November, I wrote a post about Canadian Blood Services (CBS), and their indefinite ban on donations from men who have had sex with men (MSM). The point of the post was that an indefinite ban is not supported by science. Well, the ruling for Canadian Blood Services v. Kyle Freeman is in, and [...]
Posted in Canada, Health, Health Policy, Probability and Statistics1 Comment
24 August 2010 by Marion Kilgour
In the past three months, the Harper government has said some things about statistics that are blatantly wrong and received some media attention, which is a bit unusual. What things did the government say, and were they actually correct? First, in June the government announced that it would be replacing the mandatory long form census [...]
Posted in Canada, Critical Thinking, Economics, Probability and Statistics8 Comments
16 March 2010 by Marion Kilgour
I was chatting with the nice man who runs the photography studio near my house the other day, and somehow our conversation wandered into the environment. He proudly informed me that he had converted his car, by himself, to use hydrogen as fuel. The mechanical engineer in me made me lean forward a bit with [...]
Posted in Pseudoscience3 Comments
10 November 2009 by Marion Kilgour
About a month ago, I heard about a lawsuit and countersuit between Canadian Blood Services (CBS) and Kyle Freeman and realized that, even though the case deals with everything from public perception to reasonable limits of people’s rights, science would be a large part of it. Kyle Freeman is gay, and donated blood regularly. To [...]
Posted in Canada, Health, Health Policy, ScienceComments Off
