Science & Society

Environmental groups are concerned they have lost the trust of the public regarding global warming so they have taken to new marketing approaches.    They started the last decade with runaway public interest and goodwill and ended it with scandals and black marks on the credibility of the climate field. We started the last decade with an IPCC report that was the first to galvanize public attention on the issue of pollution and its warming effect - but ended it with a marketing video showing a teacher blowing up two students who didn't accept global warming, which didn't go over all…

"2010 was a banner year for science news and also a good one for Science's news department. This year, our reporting team garnered six awards for stories published in the magazine or online. You can read more about these honors below, and if you want to check out the full stories, we've made them all free with registration. Thanks for your readership—and happy holidays from the news staff at Science." No Sign Yet of Himalayan Meltdown, Indian Report Finds. Italian Scientists Provide Food With Thought. Scientists Decry "Flawed" and "Horrifying" Nationality Tests. and more..... click here…

On August 21, 10:25:20 and 10:51:16, a mid-level aid on my opponent's staff signed up on my Political Action Committee's website to "Turn out voters, Make policy, Fundraise, Volunteer in general" on both occasions.  This occurred only 4 days after an annoucement was sent to the broader Columbia Alumni Community.  A few days later a lobbyist from a large Albany Law Firm asked for a call.  "What do you want kid?" He asked me.  "You can't be serious about trying to unseat a sitting speaker.  There are easier ways to get into public office."  On August 31st, 10…

What is the most popular form of Citizen Science? Some want to make us believe it is SETI@home, 8 year olds being pressured by overenthusiastic teachers, or people in their backyards looking for comets. As I already mentioned, the most popular Citizen Science, and moreover the most useful by far, is the gazillions of people trying out new psychoactive substances, carefully recording their reactions, producing them with ever more ingenious methods in their kitchens, breeding better forms of active plants, exploring drug-combinations, inventing better routes of administration, and so on and so…

The Economist argues, as they would be expected to argue, given their free market leaning, that due to the glut of Ph.D.s and therefore the poor job market (in academia), it is a waste of time.   A Ph.D. who enters the job corporate world for anything except basic research has the wrong set of skills, according to corporate hiring managers, so it is actually better to hire a bachelor's or Masters degree and spend the time in the corporate world.  Numbers bear it out.  While a Ph.D. earns more than a bachelor's degree today the difference between a Ph.D. and a Masters is barely…

Jonah Lehrer in The New Yorker about the slipperiness of the scientific method: "The Truth Wears Off: Is There Something Wrong With The Scientific Method?" The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern research. Replicability is how the community enforces itself. It’s a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. Most of the time, scientists know what results they want, and that can influence the results they get. The premise of replicability is that the scientific community can correct for these flaws. But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings…

Sorry I've been absent for a while. (I hope you missed me!) Here's one thing that's been keeping me busy: Having played a role in Austin's transformation into “Silicon Hills,” and having consulted for various cities that hope to boost their own high tech economies – and having written a book about it back in '06 – I've been traveling and speaking for UNESCO, helping Asian, Caribbean, and Latin American countries launch their technopolis initiatives. Domestically, the Obama administration has made industrial clusters an important part of its innovation policy. An official of a very large US…

Some shameful self-propaganda is in order today... Such posts have usually borne good fruits in the past, so why not! In June 2009 I attended in London the World Conference of Science Journalists. I was invited there by the organizers, to participate in a panel on "Blogs, Big Physics, and Breaking News", where together with James Gillies (head of Communications at CERN) and Matthew Chalmers (a freelance science writer), and moderated by Matin Durrani from Physics World, we discussed the impact of blogs in the communication of physics and related topics. A writeup of my contribution ("Where…

I thought I was going into Christmas recess, but then I saw this: Graduate students the world over have got to be feeling like slackers right now: A group of 8- to 10-year-old British schoolchildren have published a scientific paper in the peer-reviewed (Royal Society) journal Biology Letters. Also spricht, not Zarathustra, but Live Science in 8-Year-Olds Publish Scientific Study on Bees This is a must-read, both for the experiment itself and the wider implications.  For the latter, I would recommend the podcast first.  The page also contains links to a free downloadable PDF of the…

For too long, scientists have ducked away from public service, not because their peers have been unwilling to elect them, but because there is a sense among scientifically educated people that politics is something to be avoided -- something that is inherently corrupting about the idea of becoming a politician causes most scientists.  For too long, our long term public welfare has been held hostage by our public representatives who act as primarily as politicians rather than statesmen and stateswomen.  The distinction between the two being that politicians seek only to advance…