Science & Society

“Yesterday night I was in my office in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge packing my stuff, resolved to not go back to research again …” This sad story is another warning to all those enthusiastic about getting into science. One more outtake: “I know of people that have given crippled software to a colleague to sabotage his project. I’ve been violently attacked verbally for having dared talking with my supervisor of a project I was collaborating with, because she feared that I wanted to “steal” her credit. And I can’t blame her: she was “helped” by another postdoc…

Yesterday I wrote about journalist and science blogger Ed Yong's unfortunate run-in with the kind of anachronistic journalism dinosaur that will be extinct one day soon - a PIO who resents blogging. I didn't rehash the work of others who covered points about respect and in general not being an idiot to writers with a large audience - as I said then, the PIOs I have gotten to know have all been terrific so I had no frame of reference.   My concern was that particular PIOs criticism of other PIOs who simply do the job they are paid to do - engage the media world and get us all interested…

This a double whammy, a two-for-the-price-of-one, a joint review (for some value of the word review) of two books with the same title: Kraken. China Miéville's Kraken is a New Weird novel that tracks the adventures of London Natural History Museum curator Billy Harrow. The inexplicable theft of his prize Architeuthis specimen forces him into an other-London of magical knacks, squid cultists, gangsters, and impending Armageddon. Wendy Williams' Kraken is a science book that tracks the research of Stanford squid biologist Julie Stewart. Her study organism Dosidicus is a nexus from which…

I'll tell you flat out, I love Public Information Officers - PIOs in journalism parlance.  Without them, I would never get anywhere near the good stuff I get to write about.   I would much, much rather deal with PIOs directly than through paid clearinghouses like AAAS Eurekalert, which seems to be run by sub-literate pygmies bent on keeping science from being written about.   PIOs, on the other hand, love to get more coverage for their researchers without having to bribe AAAS. But I am not a blogger, nor am I a journalist - and apparently it's not all balloons and ponies…

Online dating is mainstream big business, we all see television commercials for any number of sites catering to any number of interests - but do they work? Dating is hard enough.  As I discussed in Valentine's Day Psychology Advice: Women Like Men Who... there can be some guidelines but trying to use a cookie-cutter approach is difficult anyway.   And online relationships add a level of complexity because people do not have to tell the truth anyway and the girl you're talking to may be an employee of a dating site. Women have it a little easier on the actual date because…

Nothing says science like Valentine's Day and we are positively littered with articles on neuroscience, chemistry and social aspects of romance.   Really, we cover it all.    Not sure who to date? Garth Sundem answers it in The Valentine's Day Man-O-Meter. Be sure to take it as gospel because he never just makes stuff up.  If you need even more help than that, here is his Ultimate Valentine's Day Toolkit. If you're still unsure who to pursue, you may be looking in the wrong places. This study says We Want To Date People Slightly More Attractive Than We Are. How,…

Have you ever found yourself wondering about the species identification of the molluscan muscle in your mouth? The answer can be as slippery as the animal. Accurate seafood labeling is a constant problem, largely due to the length of the supply chain. Customers have to trust what the restaurant or supermarket tells them, and the buyers for those businesses in turn have to trust what their suppliers say. This game of fish telephone can go around the world, as globalization shuttles seafood between distant markets. Among seafood, cephalopod labeling is some of the least informative. Often there…

David Kirby, the author of Evidence of Harm, and a major promoter of the debunked idea that thimerosal causes autism, has a new article at Huffington Post, in which he commits a string a fallacious appeals and specious speculations concerning the persistence of the autism-vaccine myth.  Kirby closes his lengthy piece with an unjustified appeal: “The CDC estimates that there are about 760,000 Americans under 21 with an ASD. Even if just 1 percent of those cases was linked to vaccines (though I believe it is higher), that would mean 7,600 young Americans with a vaccine-associated ASD…

This is so heartwarming. A few days ago a large cephalopod washed up on the beach in Florida, and Beachgoers rushed to the squid's aid. It was spitting out ink and seemed weak, [Lifeguard] Gorman said. "It's used to being in places that are dark and black," he said. "To be in the sunshine on the beach was not a good spot." Er, not to mention that between wet and dry, cephalopods have a definite preference. Here's a video of people collecting the creature into a cooler and bringing it out to deeper water:   The media are calling it a squid, but I'm not so sure. I don't seen any fins at…

The scientific method was formulated in the absence of Google when you needed to carry a library in your head. Now a five year old can gain access to information that was once kept hidden behind cloistered church walls and institutions that only rich men (often only rich white Christian men) had access to.  Printing hard-copies is nearly obsolete as the rate of discovery is out-pacing the rate of publishing.  Who needs an encyclopedia set when Wikipedia is updated daily and includes discussions regarding data validity, and if you really want a hard copy you can compile your own…