Science & Society

As I wrote on facebook (for the sign of a professional writer is 'reuse words often'): It's official! As of today I am Professor Antunes, an aerospace engineering assistant professor at Capitol College (capitol-college.edu), newest member of their full-time teaching faculty. A professorship is perhaps the only job for which I'd leave freelancing. It's 1/3rd the hourly pay rate and 3x the work, and I couldn't be happier. They also agreed to a reduced teaching load for semester 1 so I can finish my O'Reilly satellite eBooks. Woo hoo! Among the many congratulations was this trio of cautionaries…

As some of you may be aware, this year the U.S. Congress finally passed the Zadroga Act which will compensate the first responders to the 9/11 attack as well as those that worked at the site for the following months for medical problems arising as a result of their efforts. A sticking point has been that anyone filing claims must be able to demonstrate that any cancers are a direct result of their exposure at ground zero.Needless to say, a recent study which has found no causal link to cancers has created some controversy. The problem here is that science is being used in a manner that simply…

Science 2.0 was founded because, contrary to the beliefs of some scientists and some journalists, the public is really, really smart.  And they know a lot of science, they just frame it through politics more than they used to because scientists and journalists are less diverse politically than they once were. The public doesn't trust journalists and, in addition, scientists don't trust journalists.  The solution was obviously to make the scientists and the science audience the journalists.  Communication was one of my four key pillars in Science 2.0 five years ago and remains…

Science and religion. Often mutual suspicion, sometimes plain hostility, seldom a workable combination. When the active inquiry in science meets the passive belief in religion, worldviews…ideologies clash, usually leaving no progress in understanding in their wake. Anyway, I do not intend to rant about religion, or science, or the relationship between both here. I’ll simply share these videos, made by British neurosurgeon Jonathan Pararajasingham, in which renowned academics share their thoughts and ideas about god. The videos take some time, but I hope you'll find it interesting.  …

A recent NY Times article echoes what I said last week in a meeting about a Science 2.0 television pilot - incredibly literate people who know a lot about science can't name a scientist. It's certainly true.  Adult science literacy has tripled since I was an adult, science scores have gone up for American kids every year for the last decade and the American science audience alone is 65 million people.    But the public don't know who any current scientists are.   They can name Einstein.   The public are certainly not stupid and, obviously, most scientists are not in…

Our more militant brethren in the science and science media community paint all religious people as intellectually immature but AAAS surveys show nearly 40 percent of AAAS members are religious and a new University of Nebraska-Lincoln study challenges the common belief that more intelligent people are less religious. Instead, the article in Review of Religious Research contends, education has a positive effect on Americans' churchgoing habits and their emphasis on religion in daily life. The study analyzed a nationwide sample of thousands of respondents to the General Social Survey.…

Almost 50% of female scientists and 25% of male scientists at the nation's top research universities say career kept them from having as many children as they wanted, something they might do over given the chance. As the saying goes, no one on their death bed ever says they wish they had spent more time at the office. Sociologists Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice and Anne Lincoln of SMU  spent three years asking what junior and senior scientists in physics, astronomy and biology think about discrimination, family life and the state of their careers. They found that both men and women…

Susan Greenfield is always interesting.   And New Scientist is always willing to print anything.  It's a happy time when they get together.    Greenfield once said playing Prokofiev at half speed would lead to depression, leading me to reply so it's no surprise to anyone here she is now correlating the Internet and Autism.   It seems to have surprised at least a few other people, though.    Her reasoning is pretty clear.  Someone wrote in PLoS One that the brain changes and stuff.   Sure, that isn't a peer reviewed article but it's a confirmation…

Racist S.O. B. Satoshi Kanazawa said “Asians can’t think”, are raised to be conformist, plagiarize by copying ‘verbatim’  the work of established scientist while sincerely thinking it’s honoring their masters and not seeing a problem. After reading an article in International Business times by Tech Analyst Jake Thompson on the Samsung VS Apple i pad/Galaxy Tab patent battle. Thompson cited Kanazawa’s 2006 paper in the journal Evolutionary Psychology in which Kanzawa let Asians have it. What a racist prick he is for that. * I have been reading allot about these tablet’s that are so…

In Proofiness - How Gender And Pay Statistics Are Used To Do Bad Things, I noted that some of the statistics regarding gender and pay in science were misconstrued to make it look like science academia is sexist as opposed to simply being unequal in places.   It boggles the mind that academia, commonly regarded as the most progressive occupation in America, much less science academia, which leads the world in quality science due to a focus on excellence regardless of gender or color or religion, can be regarded as sexist.  It takes careful manipulation and filtering of data to make…