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The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
A novelist and two neuroscientists came by Big Think’s offices this past week. Jonathan Safran Foer, one of the most acclaimed young novelists of the past decade, spoke to us […]
It’s often said that children are the designers of humanity’s future. International research consultancy Latitude and ReadWriteWeb decided to take the adage literally, asking children to envision the future of […]
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Scheck thinks we should do away with judicial elections, and should do more to educate the judiciary about scientific evidence.
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Eyewitness testimony is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions, says Scheck. Psychologists and researchers have demonstrated a variety of ways that witnesses regularly misidentify suspects.
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“Nothing guarantees the conviction of an innocent person more than a lawyer that is not adequately funded or not competent to do the job,” says Scheck.
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Sometimes a prosecutor doesn’t want to admit that they’re wrong. Other times they don’t want to face the victim’s family after a conviction is overturned.
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Barry Scheck says the Innocence Project has transformed the way that the criminal justice system looks at error.
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Scheck’s group will take up the case of a convicted prisoner if there is the possibility that a DNA test—or multiple DNA tests—could prove them innocent.
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A conversation with the attorney and founder of the Innocence Project.
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Appel thinks it’s most important that children be born into families that want them. “My concern is for the potential gay child born into the bigoted family who mistreats that […]
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Appel thinks the most pressing ethical issue of our time is “the arbitrary distinction that people have more or fewer rights because they were born on one side of the […]
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Forcing people to make a doctor’s appointment in order to get medicine keeps some people from getting the care they need.
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In objecting to all of these phenomena, people say they’re concerned about the welfare of the individuals. But they’re really just interested in imposing their own social or religious values […]
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A person should have the right to end their own life, so long as they can prove that they are thinking rationally over a prolonged period of several days.
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The bioethicist believes that life should be divined by cognizance, by sentience, and by the ability to interact with the world. Infants who can’t do that should have their lives […]
As we discussed in the previous Going Mental posts, some of the most fundamental mechanisms of the human brain remain a mystery to scientists. Consciousness, intelligence, and sleep are so […]
In a now famous skit from Saturday Night Live, William Shatner told a room full of Trekkies to “get a life.” Like Shatner, highbrows tend to dismiss fan culture as […]
Most people consider anonymous sex in public places to be a crude, rude and immoral act. But “all that is rude ought not to be civilized with death,” as Walter […]
If you’re not a computer programmer, the name Bjarne Stroustrup might not mean that much to you. The creator of the coding language C++ isn’t exactly a household name. But […]