Dr Kathleen Taylor Researcher and science writer affiliated to the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford To email me click here.

Hello and welcome!

For anyone curious about my work, this is the place.

Who I am

I trained as a neuroscientist, as my research background shows, after doing a first degree in philosophy and physiology. In 2003 I started out on a new career as a nonfiction writer. To find out more, there's my personal info.

What I do

I write books about the science of human brains and behaviour. Described as 'academic, but highly readable', so far two have been published, Brainwashing and Cruelty.

Please note that I have been advised against acting as a consultant on individual cases of suspected brainwashing, so will no longer respond to such enquiries. Whatever my personal sympathy for desperate situations, I cannot add professional value to the information available in the book.

A third book, The Brain Ascendancy, is currently under consideration by Oxford University Press.

I'm planning a fourth and fifth, working titles The Science Con and God the Psychologist.

If you'd like to see for yourself, both Brainwashing and Cruelty are available on Amazon.co.uk.

Book news

• 20th December 2011 It's 'review of the year' time. Everyone else is doing one, so here's my view of 2011 in science.
• December 2011 Following the death of Kim Jong-il, the Guardian have asked me for a piece on brainwashing. Cue lots of work to meet their four-hour deadline!
• December 2011 OUP have got back to me with changes they want to make to the current submission. Cue lots of work on images etc.
• November 2011 I have decided to make the next book the one about science. I was in London on the 2nd, talking to Richard Dawkins for his latest TV series (out January). A fascinating experience! I even talked about the new book a bit; he seemed interested. Whether a publisher will be, that's the question.
• September 2011 So far so good with The Brain Ascendancy. I have two projects in mind for the next book, one on science itself, one more about science and religion. Can't decide which to do first; both seem important ...
• September 2011 Perhaps I need an agent. It's a lonely job, writing, and I could do with a knowledgeable ally. Someone who cares about good, thoughtful, well-written scholarship. Someon who might read and comment on a draft, answer emails, someone who loves science. But in this fast, mimetic age of blogs and Kindles, does such a person even exist?

Key ideas

• Brainwashing Humans are very good at changing other humans' minds. We do this in a range of ways, from gentle to extremely coercive, but the underlying techniques are the same. Understand those techniques, and even the most extraordinary cases of apparent brainwashing can be seen as what they are: cruel and clever applications of psychology.
• Cruelty But why do people want to inflict such psychological torture? 'Because they're evil' is a common response. At the heart of evil lies cruelty. To prevent cruelty, we have two choices: eliminate its source, or understand it. But the first only makes us cruel! So understanding what drives cruel behaviour, however unpleasant, is essential if we are to solve the problems it poses. This is really hard to do - and not just because it requires knowing more about how brains work. We are afraid of condoning, or even becoming, callous or even sadistically cruel ourselves. I hated writing Cruelty, and it is at times a challenging read. But its message is vital.
• The Brain Ascendancy To understand cruelty, we need more neuroscience and psychology. Fortunately, now's the time. We're entering a new era in those sciences: the era when brain research comes into its own and supplants the dominance of the physical sciences. Physics and chemistry are called 'hard sciences' because of their mathematical rigour, but the brain sciences face far tougher intellectual challenges. Mathematicising about entities like strings and branes - which may not even exist - is child's play compared with writing an equation to predict the future behaviour of Mr Jones the manager from Stoke-on-Trent. Yet this century we may be able to read Mr Jones' mind and change his brain, curing his phobias, predicting his likelihood of violence, and much more. We haven't begun to grasp what that may mean for human societies. It could be amazing, or appalling; it's up to us to choose which path we take.
• The Science Con I write about human brains and their sciences, but as an observer not a worshipper. I believe we can and will understand our brains, but we'll do it piecemeal and imperfectly, and that raises risks of exploitation. To guard against these, we need to know more about science ... but not in the usual sense in which that claim is urged. I'm a child of the Enlightenment, and I think science is the best method we have for doing many things, but I also think there's a lot wrong with how it's done in the West today.
• God the Psychologist Some scientists can be very dismissive of religion - an intellectual position which, like most such generalisations, is only compatible with hefty ignorance of the subject matter. Personally I'd rather not have representatives of my beloved science flaunting their lack of knowledge as if they were proud of it, but it's their choice. My view is that saying 'religion isn't worth considering' (usually before proceeding to consider it at angry length) is as silly as, say, the government claiming that the food industry isn't worth considering when they're trying to get obesity levels down. Whether religion has anything to offer intellectually (as opposed to culturally) is not a foregone conclusion.

Publications

For a flavour of my earlier work, there is my research page, or for a list of publications click here for HTML or here for PDF.