Refugee Repatriation During Conf1ict: A New Conventional Wisdom

Challenging conventional wisdom.

Testing Conventional Wisdom

In my recent article, ‘Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?’, I presented evidence and arguments that called into doubt two widely shared assumptions: (1) that countries generally comply with their human rights treaty commitments and (2) that countries’ practices will be better if they have ratified treaties than they otherwise would be. In response, Professors Ryan Goodman and Derek Jin...

Strong science challenges conventional wisdom: new perspectives on ovarian biology

Conventional wisdom, sometimes defined as "truth", is said to be based on evidence that may or may not be so. The same definition may apply to dogma. A wonderful aspect of the scientific community is that it is not afraid to challenge dogma. Johnson et al., in their 11 March 2004 paper in Nature [1], have provided compelling evidence for the existence of proliferative germ cells that give rise ...

Challenging conventional and unconventional wisdom.

Cardiologists, epidemiologists, and molecular scientists at the 48th Scientific Sessions of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) in New Orleans, La, ventured into new territory, questioning the accepted treatments for various populations of patients and promising ones that have been widely heralded as the next generation in heart disease therapy. Leading the challengers was David E. Wennber...

Conventional wisdom and climate history.

T he Younger Dryas interval, a cold snap that chilled many parts of the world for 1,500 years or so in the midst of the last deglaciation ( 13,000–11,500 years ago), is perhaps the best known and most studied paleoclimate event of the last 2 million years. Only a few years ago, it was well accepted that a change in the drainage routing of the huge proglacial lake that fronted the North American...