Science & Society

Andrea Kuszewski is not a fan of a critique of some concepts in Chris Mooney's latest book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality. Give it a read. Once she gets rolling, her defense of psychology is pretty good, the piece just gets a little tangential because she seems more interested in defending a friend (and slamming the authors of the piece she does not like) than addressing the science issues, but some of her arguments have merit. I'll try and stay more on topic and address a few points I don't agree with but you can give it a look and decide for…

Unless he gets hit by a bus, Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee and be given the opportunity to lose in the election this fall. I am not being a partisan liberal in saying that. He will lose. He has done some things right; announcing he won't take any taxpayer financing was smart. It means he can do what Sen. Barack Obama was able to do in 2008 and raise an unlimited amount of money and spend twice as much money as his opponent, whose name was on the campaign finance reform law and who couldn't very well renege on his own policy.  Unfortunately, he can't also do what Sen.…

Two decades after colleges got politicians to declare a college education a 'right' (fuzzy correlation/causation statistics showing a college education meant higher lifetime earnings made that part easy), schools that have put up lots of new buildings and had the culture turn on them due to bits of high-profile chicanery like charging $89,000 for a two-year program in "environmental journalism", are fighting back the same way government fights back when they overspend and the public doesn't want to pay more in taxes to cover it; they start trotting out high-profile sacrificial lambs.…

Steven Muller, President of The National Association of Residential Providers for Adults with Autism has released the following statement regarding the Judge Rotenberg Center: The video of staff at the Judge Rotenberg Center applying electrical shock as punishment for teenagers with developmental disabilities is deeply disturbing and an embarrassment to those professionals that devote their career to helping people. Yes, there are some individuals that display extremely aggressive behaviors toward self or others. Yes, some families are grateful that this center has accepted…

In an open science community like Science 2.0, people will feel like they can just sign up and babble about anything and if you protest that what they are doing is not really science (wormholes, brand new theory of everything, social psychology, etc.), they will object with a few predictable responses certain to make everyone chuckle. They go something like; Galileo was oppressed too, Einstein did his best work as a patent clerk, etc. If someone on the right wants to debunk biology, for example, and is denied here, they will complain Big Science (that would be us) is part of some vast, left-…

If you are freezing eggs or ovarian tissue to delay childbearing for social reasons, society should reply 'thanks, but no thanks', according to a recent analysis. Fertility preservation, freezing eggs or ovarian tissue, was originally intended for women undergoing medical treatments that could affect their fertility, but now is also used by women who are "trying to create a backup plan for delaying pregnancy," says Dr. Jennifer Hirshfeld-Cytron, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Illinois at Chicago and lead author of the study.  Using decision-analysis…

A statement about more people focusing on the content (rather than side issues) of my column lately has led to an out of hand comment section over on Enrico Uva’s Quote of the Week. The comments are mainly people* complaining about “censorship” on Science2.0, supposedly especially occurring at my column here. [* Not surprisingly, all people whose comments I removed, mostly crackpots, one schizophrenic that talks to aliens, who I remove because she is a stalker (nothing more vicious than rejected love).] Simple minds who have swallowed hook, line, and sinker a pseudo-democratic doctrine that…

SUMMARY George Friedman has observed that the entire pattern of traditional life is collapsing and no clear alternative patterns are emerging. This view is appropriate to our times. The human race is in transition. No one; human or artificial intelligence can predict the outcome of our next century. What can be predicted is the evolution of a number of technologies whose inertia makes them unstoppable. Genetic engineering, nanotechnology and robotics are the harbingers of a very different community of intelligent life forms on earth. With the addition of artificial intelligence these four…

Recently, Real Clear Science drew our attention to Chimps show lethal side, about incidents where chimps kill other chimps.  Or “apes kill each other”, as the article actually says, but in my more hyper-logical frame of mind that sounds a bit like “pistols for two, coffee for none.” However, the article (and the link to it from RCS) then goes on to refer to ‘chimp homicides’.  It becomes quickly apparent that they are not referring to humans being killed by chimps. Now the similarity of chimps to humans is strong enough even to reach into popular song: Cigareets is a blot on the…

Tenzin Gyatso, who some call “Dalai Lama” and other funny names, has been awarded the 2012 Templeton Prize, as announced here, and if you look at the given justification, you could be excused for mistaking the Templeton Prize for a straight science award and Tenzin for a scientist. Tenzin has supposedly a “long-standing engagement with multiple dimensions of science”   “Specifically, he encourages serious scientific investigative reviews of the power of compassion and its broad potential to address the world's fundamental problems” The latter reminds of prayer healing and the flawed…