Science & Society

Bad news for bloggers; the courts love to protect journalists, even those shysters who use 'anonymous' sources that have directly led to the rash of modern journalists inventing even Pulitzer Prize-winning stories that were made from whole cloth - but bloggers are not under that umbrella. Uber-progressive Oregon is, no surprise, not on the side of the little guy here and instead went with the most expensive attorney. U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez declared last week that a blogger does not get the same protection as a journalist and so can be sued for defamation. The judge said…

I looked at my watch after the English gentleman walked away. The half hour discussion had begun with my question, “Excuse me sir, could you please tell me about places to see in this town?” I had to stop this person and ask him because unlike anyone else my age, I lacked a 3G-enabled phone with maps. Liverpool had just started to feel the right place to walk around and explore. Paper maps have been in use since ages, but there has been a sure and steady shift in the cartographic terrain since the Global Positioning System (GPS) was made public in 1995. The system’s ability to direct users at…

By the time Dr. Maciej Zwieniecki returned to the blackboard, I’d gotten sufficiently lost in the intricacies of fluid dynamics that I wasn’t sure how much more I could absorb from his lecture on vertical water transport in trees.  Still, I could objectively admire his off-the-cuff artwork as he brushed away a cross-section of a tree and quickly outlined a perfectly recognizable…fighter jet? The audience watched, bemused. Maciej chuckled, then explained how mechanisms borrowed from tree physiology might one day be used to efficiently transfer heat from jet wings to the cockpit.  At…

I attended a science online event a few weeks ago about research articles in the news but not reviewed. Most of the discussions were focused on how we perceive peer-reviewed articles, and those that are not reviewed. Both scientists and science writers at this event seemed to think presenting research without peer review was beneficial for some fields of research and more risky for other fields. As a medical researcher I was unaware that physicists often present their work on the website arXiv.org, without peer review. To me, this seems a healthy way to present and share science. Although I…

OPERATIC CONCERN -- James Ph.Kotsybar   Oh, little neutral one of tiny mass, anomalous traveller from the sun, you fly through matter that photons can’t pass: Could this explain the races that you’ve won?   Since Einstein, no one believed it could be that anything could go faster than light -- deemed simply an impossibility, for Relativity hasto be right.   If true, the results are quite terrible, and give complacent physicists a scare. In terms of a modern day parable, you are the tortoise; the photon’s the hare.   Though steady, light  (itseems) can’t keep up pace.…

Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw commented to the effect that it's wrong in some professional or moral way to blog about science.  (How odd coming from a man who presents science on TV, and another man who authors books.)  Others have posted thoughtful measured responses;I will now proceed to say the impolitic things that only a “hero outside of science”, beholden to almost no one could get away with.  Thus I will demonstrate one of the main benefits of this open medium.   They say that it is a recipe for disaster to blog about science.(Melodramatic much?)  Giving Nuclear…

Roger Pielke, Jr. is one of the most authentic science communicators around.  When the science is solid, he supports it, regardless of the political or cultural implications, and when it is crap, he ridicules it.   Really, that is what everyone in science media should do, but Pielke is one of few progressives who ridicule both sides when they say stupid things. In a recent blog post he tees off on the announcement by Chris Mooney of his new book, "The Republican Brain".  I didn't think much of it when Mooney made the announcement (he was kind enough to link to my piece…

"Fool Me Twice" is the title of a new book on science and politics by Shawn Lawrence Otto. Subtitled "Fighting the Assault on Science in America", it addresses a topic which is often presented as a kind of problem to be solved to gain scientific credibility but is rarely considered as closely as it needs to be.  Otto begins by discussing some common incidences in politics and initially appears that perhaps an element of political bias is present in these arguments. However, after a brief discussion of politics he introduces a different view of the political landscape that extends beyond…

Eco-friendly water bottles, hybrid vehicles, eco-clothes, wearable computing are only a few examples of how science and fashion have been going hand-in-hand over the past decade. A new item was added to the long list in October, when an Austrian designer produced “embrace-stock” bracelets simply by following the stock history using scientific data visualization. “Pick a random or non-random time period in stock history, visualize the performance of the chosen stocks with a stock line chart diagram and use those lines as lead for the bracelet design,” says the designer, Paul Kweton, on his…

I am a Science 2.0 newbie: I have written my first article  only a few days ago, and a second one shortly afterwards.  But I have soon realized that there is a sort of underground debate going on, about whether non-scientists should trust scientists about their claims, whether there exists a scientific establishment trying in every possible way to ignore/refute unorthodox ideas, and so on. I think a scientist should be seriously concerned with these issues, and should not answer with sentences like "we know what we're doing", "we're working for you" and similar. I think a good way…