Science & Society

Increasingly one can't help but notice the tone of many of today's hot button science topics have decidedly left the realm of science and become firmly entrenched in advocacy.  My choice of discussion is Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) foods. While I don't intent to pick on Steve Savage, since he is clearly a very knowledgeable individual, I couldn't help but be struck by his recent article which seemed to cross far over the line into advocacy.  Moreover, I certainly don't intend to impugn anything about Steve as anything other than that we have a disagreement on this topic.…

Gerald Warner Blows Wind Gerald Warner is not a scientist: he is a polemicist.  A very good polemicist, if that means someone who knows how to make good use of the diatribe dictionary.  If there is a word or phrase which will get Gerald Warner a high ranking in a Google search, you can be sure to find it in his latest anti-warmist diatribe. I have four questions and a request for you, Gerald Warner. Question #1Why do you feel the need to use the loaded language which I cite below ?  If you have any facts about climate science which thousands of scientists have missed, you…

If you want to have a good time, visit Spain.  It isn't just the tapas. They have bars. A lot of them.  The average is one bar for every 132 residents. For comparison, the US state with the most bars per capita is North Dakota - one for every 1,620 North Dakotans. The lowest region in Spain, Murcia, has one bar for every 531 people, three times as many bars as the booziest state in the US. (1) And that's after 50,000 bars in Spain have closed due to the lousy economy. So if you don't think North Dakotans party hard enough, Spain is the place to be. Extremadura has a bar for…

Some groups insist that eating meat is bad for the environment. They even invented a bogus metric, it takes a gallon of gas to make a pound of beef, to show the environmental harm of not being a vegetarian. Wildlife groups have a different agenda - balancing nature in diversity hotspots with a better life for people living there and instead of looking at ways to ban meat, they looked at ways to make meat safer. A new paper by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and regional partners finds that a new approach to beef production in southern Africa could positively…

It's not often that the Hallmark Channel gets a shout-out on Science 2.0 but when they send young people into space, I'm in. I got an email about an upcoming movie and it intrigued me so the publicist not only put me in touch with interesting people to interview, they sent along an exclusive clip just for you.  Bonus: There is also a sweepstakes and we all love to win free stuff. The movie is called Space Warriors (Friday, May 31st, 8PM/7PM Central Time) and it is about a group of competitive young people at an elite space camp who are vying for a seat on the space shuttle. Like all the…

One has to be careful how one reads.  A few years ago I used this short bit from Darwin’s Descent of Man (page 174) to tease a Welsh friend: Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts — and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population would be Celts, but five-sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of Saxons that remained.  In the eternal ‘struggle for existence,’ it would be the inferior and less favoured race that had prevailed — and prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults…

Does more food labeling related to calories and nutrition make a difference?  About one third of American kids and teens is overweight or obese, nearly triple the rate in 1963, making it a much bigger health concern than smoking or drug abuse. Meanwhile, a paper in the Journal of Public Health says obese kids are more likely to be paying attention to calorie information in restaurants.  40 percent of kids aged 9-18 read calorie information yet 33 percent are overweight. What gives? Various advocates blame their pet fundraising cause.  Obesity is blamed on economics - obesity…

Pundits are wrong more often than they are right but when preaching to the faithful, being accurate is less important than being confident. It's no different in politics or sports or business shows.  You often choose to be accurate - or be popular.  "In a perfect world, you want to be accurate and confident," says Jadrian Wooten of Washington State University economics program, who co-wrote a paper on the subject with Ben Smith, a fellow economics graduate. Smith originally wanted to test the accuracy and confidence of stock market pundits, taking inspiration from stock watcher and…

Ernie Pyle, the iconic embedded World War II embedded journalist killed by Japanese machine gun fire in 1945, made famous the adage, "There are no atheists in foxholes."  He was making a point that it's better to be safe than sorry when your life is on the line - not letting the Devil get you cornered, he wrote, was the justification for a soldier who dug round foxholes. Atheists are a tiny minority anyway and there are even fewer in a war zone, Pyle felt. And he knew more soldiers than perhaps any journalist ever will. But does war really transform people, or does it simply make the…

The Importance Of The Literature The public at large, and unfortunately too many writers, do not know how vital a properly conducted survey of the scientific literature can be.  We must remember the motto of the Royal Society - nullius in verba - do not rely on anybody's word.  If the mythical "everybody" is stating the same "fact" or citing exactly the same source: question it.  Reappraise it.  Investigate. This article was inspired by Hontas Farmer's newest blog.  It occurred to me that I spend many a happy hour doing literature research but I do not write about it…