Tom Chivers

Tom Chivers is a science writer. His second book, How to Read Numbers, is out now.

@TomChivers

Tom Chivers is a science writer. His second book, How to Read Numbers, is out now.

Is it worth vaccinating children?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

How long can humans survive?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

The progressive way to boost birth rates

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

It’s time to end mandatory isolation

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Repeat after me: Covid doesn’t spread on surfaces

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Is the pandemic over?

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

How not to talk to a science denier

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

The world’s most powerful space telescope is finally launching

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

How many lives has bioethics cost?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Millions of adults can’t be boostered

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Britain’s booster plan won’t work

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

New Zealand’s smoking ban will backfire

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Trans counselling is not conversion therapy

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Should Big Pharma be destroyed?

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

The good news about the Omicron variant

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Has the UK reached herd immunity?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Is the WHO inventing diseases?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

The genius of John von Neumann

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Increasing MPs salaries is a good bet

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

There is no spiking epidemic

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

The Lib Dems are deluded on the environment

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

The great climate change fallacy

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Red tape will cause more Covid deaths

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

We can escape Christmas lockdown

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Why the West should keep buying cheap crap

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Why Prevent will never work

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Prince William is wrong: let Bezos go to space!

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

The men who failed Britain

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

PCRs are not as reliable as you might think

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

There will always be bad men in the police

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Robots are teaching us how humans think

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

How to solve the fuel crisis

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

If you have a cough, what are the odds it’s Covid?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Are diet pills immoral?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Scrapping SATs will not reduce racial inequality

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Are we heading for another winter lockdown?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

At last — a system to make flying guilt free

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

The Left’s science denial

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

The right way to look at the Bangladesh mask study

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

How not to talk to a science denier

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

NICE has created an ‘unholy mess’

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

What we’re not being told about ME

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

The beautiful world of heavy metal

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Don’t let your beliefs become your identity

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Who would kill children to save the planet?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Do racist Euros tweets tell us anything about the UK?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Can we trust the climate scientists?

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

Why did we give up on AstraZeneca?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Is the world finally going to banish malaria?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

What Warhammer taught me about football

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Are scientists inching closer to a cure for genetic diseases?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Will China invade Taiwan?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

How a single meeting in Oxford saved millions of lives

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Why is bestiality so disgusting?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Ivermectin: life saver or time waster?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Are Twitter trolls mentally ill?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Hot weather leads to more crime and murder — but why?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Why third jabs are inevitable

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Don’t take university rankings too seriously

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Who will save humanity?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

The WHO’s opposition to vaping could cost millions of lives

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

The science of bullshit

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Does leaded petrol cause crime?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Can Dominic Cummings read the room?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Social psychology nearly ruined my favourite film

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Who isn’t getting vaccinated?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

The digital world won’t harm you

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Will science survive politics?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Waiving the vaccine IP is a huge blunder

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Have we seen the end of Covid?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

How to be a Young Earth creationist in 2021

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

We could end India’s Covid nightmare

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Will social psychology ever clean up its act?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

The joy of magic mushrooms

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

On the AstraZeneca jab, I may have been wrong about Europe

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Nobody will win the Culture Wars

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

It’s a techbro’s world now — we just live in it

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

How racist are Britain’s schools?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

The US-AstraZeneca vaccine spat will cost lives

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

The cost of vaccine caution

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

How far are we from World War III?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

How safe is the AstraZeneca jab?

BY Tom Chivers / 9 mins

Why don’t women feel safe?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

The Fukushima ‘disaster’ was hardly worth the name

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Will we pass the Boris roadmap tests?

BY Tom Chivers / 10 mins

No, social media is not as bad as heroin

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Don’t worry about your sperm count

BY Tom Chivers / 9 mins

A second helping of Eat Out to Help Out? Don’t make me sick!

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Should we vaccinate children?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Let’s face it: Test, Trace and Isolate was an expensive failure

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

When did we give up on persuasion?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Are we seeing a vaccine effect already?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

How worrying is the South Africa variant?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Should we be vaccinating young people first?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Can the vaccine keep up with the Covid variants?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Kate Bingham saved vaccines when Europe couldn’t

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Is a vaccine trade war brewing?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Latest infections data may be less gloomy than the headlines

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

What Covid tests can we trust?

BY Tom Chivers / 11 mins

What explains the Germany Covid surge?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Will schools be open by summer?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Amid Covid crisis we can’t wait for perfect data

BY Tom Chivers / 9 mins

Boris Johnson fails the marshmallow test

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

What’s the real cost of sending kids back to school?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

The nerds who saw the dangers of Covid

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Did anyone predict coronavirus?

BY Tom Chivers / 9 mins

How dangerous is the Covid mutation?

BY Tom Chivers / 11 mins

Unconscious Bias Training is an empty PR drill

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

The perils of liberals politicising science

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Your Christmas gifts are worth less than you think

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

How the mob can silence you

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

Healthcare workers will be the first piece of the vaccine jigsaw

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

DeepMind’s superhuman intelligence

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

I am utterly confused about the Oxford vaccine

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Why the Oxford vaccine is different

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Why we should be confident in the Oxford vaccine

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Should Big Pharma profit from Covid?

BY Tom Chivers / 10 mins

Are we overly worried about anti-vaxxers?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Yes, the vaccine is really on its way

BY Tom Chivers / 10 mins

What’s your vote really worth?

BY Tom Chivers / 10 mins

The real reason flu cases are falling

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

It pays to believe obviously untrue things

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Maybe the US travel ban wasn’t stupid

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Will a vaccine stop Covid?

BY Tom Chivers / 10 mins

Will this new ‘lockdown’ make any difference?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

The German coronavirus mystery

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

Did the Government waste £161m in Moonshot money?

BY Tom Chivers / 10 mins

Why does Trump get to choose if Regeneron works?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Vitamin D is no silver bullet

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Has Covid become less dangerous?

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

How risky are the human challenge trials?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Is this the second wave?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

If your child has the sniffles, is it Covid or a cold?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Why everyone is stupid except me

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

The paranoid style in vaccine science

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Why a little knowledge is a dangerous thing

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Let’s all meet up in the year 3000

BY Tom Chivers / 9 mins

A lesson in statistics… for the FDA

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Why is middle age so depressing?

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

Jeremy Farrar is right: axing Public Health England is foolish

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

What worms can teach us about the AI apocalypse

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Will there be a second wave of coronavirus?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Why your negative antibody test might be wrong

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

From Covid to crime: how media hype distorts risk

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Covid could become the new common cold

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Forget Mars, why aren’t we going to Titan?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Is there really a Covid mental health crisis?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Finally! A way to analyse NHS data from 17 million people

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Can you really teach kids not to be racist?

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

I’m on the Oxford vaccine trial — here’s what it’s like

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

The nerd’s guide to football

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Slate Star Codex must remain anonymous

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

We all need a Devil to play Advocate

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Doctors’ orders: Re-open the schools!

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

What’s the point of contact tracing?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Why is the Government U-turning on masks?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Will the BLM protests cause a Covid spike?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Did Dominic Cummings cause a lockdown breakdown?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Will there be a second Covid wave?

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

Another day, another misleading Corona study!

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Do any Covid-19 ‘cures’ actually work?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

How much difference would an earlier shutdown have made?

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Is it safe to reopen schools?

BY Tom Chivers / 8 mins

Does remdesivir treat Covid-19?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

We should be very wary of the R value

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

I told you so! 100,000 tests was a foolish target

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Is the lockdown doing more harm than good?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Stop obsessing over the 100,000 test target

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

When will we get the Covid-19 vaccine?

BY Tom Chivers / 9 mins

Beware of Covid confimation bias

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Did anyone predict coronavirus?

BY Tom Chivers / 9 mins

Why did the New York Times bury its own Covid story?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Don’t put too much faith in Covid-19 metrics

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Beware unchecked scientific theories about Covid

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

How far away are ‘immunity passports’?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

A glimpse inside a virus-testing laboratory

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

How likely are you to die of coronavirus?

BY Tom Chivers / 12 mins

Half the country infected? I doubt it

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Would you take a coronavirus risk?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

How does the UK compare to the rest of the world on handling Covid-19?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Self-isolation is feeding my Warhammer addiction

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Can we build a herd immunity to Covid-19?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Memo to Donald Trump: travel bans don’t work

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Coronavirus is the wake-up call we need

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

What are the odds a sneeze will give you coronavirus?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

In praise of uncynical children’s books

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Stop looking for coronavirus ‘super-spreaders’

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Does the BBC know astrology isn’t real?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Are economists really this stupid?

BY Tom Chivers / 9 mins

Time for big tech to share data about themselves

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

‘Eugenics is possible’ is not the same as ‘eugenics is good’

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Got to hand it to him, Boris is good on cycling

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

How daughters turn fathers into feminists

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Geek tip: if it doesn’t say “Registered Report,” don’t trust it

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Are mental health apps totally useless?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Social media broadens our opinions? Sorry, don’t believe it

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

It’s time for the doom-mongers to clock off

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

China’s coronavirus will not be the next Black Death

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Why the drugs don’t work

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

How racist are you?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Could the Cummings nerd army fix broken Britain?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Can patriotism be progressive?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

So did ‘idiot voters’ get it wrong?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Is the ‘epidemic of loneliness’ fake news?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

The dangers of festive over-indulgence

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Does Dominic Cummings get survivorship bias?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Why Corbynistas can never admit they’re wrong

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

No, the rain probably won’t affect voter turnout

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

Of course biological sex exists

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Why it’s so easy to invent conspiracy theories

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Do manifestos make a difference?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Labour’s billionaire bashing will backfire

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Let loose the lynx!

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Turning off the lights won’t save the planet

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Why won’t Jordan Peterson heed his own advice?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Do Leave voters really think ‘violence is a price worth paying’?

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Should we worry about footballers heading the ball?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Is Boris Johnson trying to rig the election?

BY Tom Chivers / 7 mins

Will Brexit leave us dining on rat poo?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Should we trust AI to hire and fire?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

My technology lesson for Boris

BY Tom Chivers / 2 mins

Why climate change isn’t the end of the world

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Statistically, you shouldn’t believe the news

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Stop hating on vaping

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Don’t blame Boris for hate crime

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Dominic Cummings is no chicken

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Was it The Sun wot won Brexit?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Are ‘gateway’ drugs a fiction?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

The myth of the ‘growth mindset’

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Who are you calling a snowflake?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Who’s afraid of the feminists?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Do humans have a future?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

How unstable are our politicians?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Our toxic pollution paranoia

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

What’s wellbeing worth?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

No, you can’t pray the gay away

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Do men want sex more than women?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Government’s dirty secret

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Is the ‘epidemic of loneliness’ fake news?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Will the machines take control?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Why do the Greens make so many see red?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Just how harmful is porn?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

The latest front in the gender wars

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Stop trying to explain mass shootings

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

How we made a monster

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Do police numbers really affect knife crime?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Is cancer screening doing more harm than good?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Are you truly unfakeable?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Do we really have a ‘suicidal generation’?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Is this the end of personal responsibility?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

How politics makes us irrational

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

The risks of scaremongering

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

What’s the point of arguing with an idiot?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Why you should read more history

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

How racist is Britain?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

How bigoted is Brexit?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Has a Chinese chancer won the gene-editing race?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Could you predict Brexit?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Why we should fear technophobia

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Don’t fight dirty with statistics

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Are you in control of your politics?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

How much does your opinion count?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Should we edit genes to boost IQ?

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

Don’t be so quick to laugh at the ‘grievance study’ hoax

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Can we really call Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

What can Occam’s razor tell us about God?

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

What’s the point of arguing with an idiot?

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

So you think you’re open-minded…

BY Tom Chivers / 6 mins

What an octopus can teach us about being human

BY Tom Chivers / 3 mins

How Disney shows an AI apocalypse is possible

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins

Why you can’t rely on the news media to understand… science

BY Tom Chivers / 4 mins

Why flawed science should concern us all

BY Tom Chivers / 5 mins