Science & Society

In the movies, aliens and evil empires want to kill us.  Despite their advanced technology, they end up landing ground troops to do so.  Worse, the forces of evil-- alien or human-- tend to be lousy shots.  How unrealistic is this? 1) Aliens who come to earth want to kill us. This isn't unreasonable. "Hawking's Conclusion" is that aliens are hostile, "looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach". Reaching into SF movies, though, not all aliens are evil world-conquerors.  The exception is the lone exploring alien, who is befuddled by our odd ways. …

Last weekend, Satoshi Kanazawa wrote in Psychology Today that black women are considered less attractive than other women but black men are considered more attractive than other men.   Being a good evolutionary psychologist, he set out to do a 'whatsupwiththat?' article and map some data to that topology and piece the whole thing together. As you can imagine, it will involve sex and surveys of college students.  This is evolutionary psychology, after all.  As you can also imagine, Psychology Today was thrilled at the prospect of all those controversial pageviews but, apparently…

Satoshi Kanazawa has caused a firestorm by asserting that African women are less attractive than other races women. For this he has been called racist. He actually didn’t say anything new, or for that matter scientifically incorrect. However politically incorrect and insensitively stated it was. The man is guilty of being so stepped in his scientific ivory tower that he forgot how what he says may affect real people in the world. That said the conclusions of such work no matter how disturbing and un PC must not be grounds for a scientist in any field to lose his or her job. He didn’t say…

Satoshi Kanazawa has caused a firestorm by asserting that African women are less attractive than other races women. For this he has been called racist. He actually didn’t say anything new, or for that matter scientifically incorrect. However politically incorrect and insensitively stated it was. The man is guilty of being so stepped in his scientific ivory tower that he forgot how what he says may affect real people in the world. That said the conclusions of such work no matter how disturbing and un PC must not be grounds for a scientist in any field to lose his or her job. He didn’t say…

Anyone who have been working in a multidisciplinary science project knows how hard it is to establish coherent dialogs that make sense and are productive for all participants. Scientists from each discipline tend to form their own 'head' creating an unmanageable n-headed troll. Implementation of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is such a project. In this article I discuss how we can use new media to facilitate an effective dialog that connects all GEOSS science and technology stakeholders, the citizens that will both build and use GEOSS. Trolls with many heads can…

Digital communications is no longer a free-for-all, it can take you right to courts of law if you use it and people don't like what it tells them about you.   A US court just slashed alimony payments (Cardone v. Cardone, 2011 WL 1566992, Conn.Super. April 4, 2011) to an ex-wife because of her blog posts, which detailed how she was sailing around the Caribbean for months with her new boyfriend while she rented out her apartment.    The poor sap ex-husband had been paying for 10 years and the court reduced it by 70% because she was clearly living with someone else and being…

The Porton Group, the private equity partner of the British Ministry of Defence, has accused 3M Corporation of "negligence and possible recklessness putting lives at risk" due to "botched" 2007 clinical trials of a medical device called "BacLite," which can detect within five hours the presence of the potentially deadly MRSA/staph "superbug." The trials were conducted after notification of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and after seeking FDA advice, which 3M proceeded to ignore, according to Porton.  As a result, Baclite was withdrawn and the group that sold it to 3M…

Mike Adams ought to have his library card revoked or limited to the children’s section as he obviously has a serious problem with reading comprehension. He takes Hawking’s The Grand Design and manages to butcher it and the ideas in it so badly that anyone having read Hawking’s book will wonder what Adams read in its place, or perhaps if Adams was tripping on one of his own products. Colloidal silver perhaps? Oh, if only he were a sickly shade of blue, all the better to stand out in a crowd. Adams, in his slick video entitled The God Within (referring to himself, no…

It may surprise you to learn this but Nature (the magazine, not the bitch) is not a fan of yours.  Or ours.  Or anyone not part of their multi-billion dollar publishing conglomerate. They don't think much of scientists, who are to feel privileged for submitting their work for free and handing over copyright to the private sector for all eternity (unless you want to pay an extra 5 grand or so) and they don't think much of bloggers, although they have tried to bolster Nature Networks into the big leagues, provided their writers don't actually contribute anything interesting - and if…

What if a study were produced that said there was something fundamental about how women react to men and it was discussed by the head of a medical body and its official publication?   If you are the head of that medical body and the official publication and you discuss it, should you be forced to step down? Lazar Greenfield, new president of the American College of Surgeons, wrote a Valentine's Day  editorial in Surgery News and referenced a study a few years ago that claimed hormones in semen act as an antidepressant in women.   He's no stranger to publishing, he was lead…