Science & Society

Do scientists hate scientists who talk to the public? From an old piece by Jared Diamond: Later that day, during a group discussion about the importance of communicating science to the public, I commented on a disturbing paradox: scientists who do communicate effectively with the public often find their colleagues responding with scorn, and even punishing them in ways that affect their careers. My remarks stimulated Sagan to address the meeting eloquently for 15 minutes. He described how he, too, had taken flak from other scientists, but—he paused, as if to choose his words carefully—the…

If you want to have staying power on the Internet, you need to have turnover, says a new analysis published in the Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. Not only do you need to be 'heterogeneous', you need to be diverse.    Folks, we may be in trouble.   We only write about science and no one ever leaves which means we are doomed to fail.   Obviously you are wondering how it is possible to even study such a thing as an online community.   Something like 4Chan should not work at all, because it is complete chaos and a leftist…

Godfrey Bloom Demands Re-evaluation Of IPCC Re-evaluation Godfrey Bloom MEP bemoans the fact that: "There appears to be a woeful lack of candour and commonsense in modern day politicians." Godfrey Bloom runs TBO Investments Ltd., a small1 tax advice outfit.  In order to boost his business by raising his media profile, he writes a lot about taxes.  Mostly, he is against any proposal that would increase his clients' tax liabilities.  He is also totally against such 21st century technological innovations as windmills and much prefers the "conventional methods, coal, oil, gas,…

UK Parliament Debates Climate Science Report If somebody is in favor of making our planet a better place to live, you can bet your life that somebody with a louder voice is against it.  Demonstrating that, at least in political attitudes to science, there really is 'nothing new under the sun', I present highlights of a UK Parliament debate on the undesirability of pollution controls.----------------- From Hansard, the official reports of Parliamentary proceedings, July 1849, on reducing smoke pollution from the burning of coal, hansard.millbanksystems.com: The debate in Parliament on…

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of California, San Diego and Harvard say they have provided the first laboratory evidence that cooperative behavior is contagious.  Researchers showed that when one person gave money to help others in a "public-goods game," where people had the opportunity to cooperate with each other, the recipients were more likely to give their own money away to other people in future games. This created a domino effect in which one person's generosity spread first to three people and then to…

It is a while since I wrote anything here: Mea Culpa, I shall eventually resume the series I started, but for now I feel there are more urgent and important issues at stake, for which reason I will move something from my other blog over to this forum where I think it will reach a more informed audience: So here is part 1. originally posted January 10th 2010 with part 2. to follow shortly. This is undoubtedly one of my longer blogs coming in at something like 3500 words. I hope you have the patience to see it through as the implications are very important, and in myfollow up blogs I will be…

Cherry Picking At The Tree Of KnowledgeThe fruit of the cherry is easily spoiled: rough handling, bird pecks, insect bites, mold - all can render the cherry unappealing or inedible. The cherry picker is trained to pick only the best cherries: the ones that will appeal most to consumers. Fruit pickers, tree surgeons and others often use a hydraulic lift to reach into high work areas.  These lifts can let the operator reach exactly the right spot - exactly the right cherry, in a manner of speaking. By extension, the machine is called a cherry-picker. By analogy, anyone who selects only the…

Just a quick thought, prompted by my response to "TV as Teacher". We can blame the corporate media for pumping our kids full of distorted values and promoting gross stupidity, but the thing is, they're doing the same to the kids' parents - to you and to me. How are some people able to resist this toxic waste yet others welcome it either consciously or blindly? What is our mental vaccine that repels this ubiquitous barrage on our senses? Is it our scientific training? Maybe, more importantly, our training in critical thinking, a quality we can port to every aspect of our life? Half of the…

Alan Caruba Has A Problem With The Truth About Accuracy In Media Alan_Caruba recently wrote a guest column for AIM.  AIM promotes itself as Accuracy in Media for fairness, balance and accuracy in news reporting.  I'm all for accuracy in news reports.  I strive to practice what I preach by presenting the facts and letting my readers decide.  As I am so fond of saying, I don't want to do your thinking for you. It was with high hopes of witnessing accuracy in media at work that I went to AIM's web site to have a good read.  I read Alan Coruba's guest column.  I…

Disclaimer: As we do not know just how science and society will evolve over the next few decades, much of this is entirely speculative. Good day to everyone. Today I come to you as Toy Soldier #TS21243 to represent Dr. Steel's vision of a Utopian Playland. “As children all we really wanted to do was play. and then school got in the way. The first thirteen yearsof school is a "have to". We might rather be thinking about dinosaurs or unicorns, but we're told to concentrate on math and English. It's a daily exercise of memorization and regurgitation of seemingly inapplicable information. The…