Science & Society

Via Nobel Intent: A man with the non-existent but increasingly believed-in electromagnetic sensitivity disorder is suing his neighbor to get her to shut off her wi-fi and stop using her cell phone. Apparently, fluorescent lights and dimmer switches are bad for this guy too. Unfortunately, this guy is going to need to shut off a lot more if he's really sensitive to electromagnetic radiation: TV signals, radio stations, and the sun: To get you started on the literature on 'EMF sensitivity', check out this: Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the adverse symptoms experienced by…

Let's face it, in practice, science is what scientists do. Then, who's a scientist? Simply delivered, a human with values. Well, our humanity has had plenty of practice in that realm. Remember William Osler for instance. His recommendation for a physician was to be a humanitarian, scientist, and artist. I have been reviewing the oaths taken by the medical profession. Below is my version of their oath. At the time of being admitted as a member of the science profession: One. I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity; Two. I will give to my…

One of the things that I've learned during my scientific training is how to find the background information that I need to understand a new scientific subject, and how to identify the unresolved issues in the field. My own troubles completing these tasks made me wonder how hard this must be for someone who isn't immersed in scientific culture like I am, so in this blog post I'd like to discuss strategies and resources for teaching yourself about scientific topics. I see three basic levels of scientific development from which a person may approach this problem: expert, informed, or naive. I…

While marking old science books as keepers or giveaways, I paused to browse through an old favorite and modern classic published in 1979, the famous "physics for philosophers" book, "The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics" by journalist Gary Zukav. I have already permanently loaned out my copy of physicist Fritjof Capra's similarly themed, earlier book, "The Tao of Physics," first published in 1975, which I skimmed through a few years ago, long after my excitement over Zukav's book had worn off. Like Zukav, Capra examines parallels between eastern mysticism and modern…

The strangest idea for a reality TV show that I've heard to date comes courtesy of Slashdot this morning. "Terminal illness got you down? Does your future seems bleak? Channel 4 and production company Fulcrum TV would like to brighten your day by making you the star of an upcoming documentary." A British TV station and production company are "currently keen to talk to some one who, faced with the knowledge of their own terminal illness and all that it entails, would nonethelessconsider undergoing the process of an ancient Egyptian embalming," according to an advertisement. The body of the…

An expert panel of library scientists, publishers, and university academics said today that the results of scientific research funded by the federal government should be made freely available to the public "as soon as possible after those results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal." The Scholarly Publishing Roundtable was convened last summer by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, in collaboration with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).  Policymakers asked the group to examine the current state of scholarly publishing and seek…

The annual AAAS conference is being held next month in San Diego and I went last year (here and here and here) , despite it being a Chicago February, but most of you did not, thus the reason for the title.   Yes, I saw Carl Wieman and Dave Deamer, but that is a pretty small subset given our rather large community, so before I commit to lending the 2010 version my journalistic thews I'd like to know if any of you are going. Last year was, predictably, global warming, since Al Gore was the keynote speaker, and this year the theme this year is bridging science and society.   Sounds…

Connecting my earlier post on PhD job realities and Melissa's blog post on Entitlement Culture is today's Ph.D comic (by Jorge Cham): Alex, the Daytime Astronomer Tues and Fri here, via RSS feed, and twitter @skydayRead about my own private space venture in The Satellite Diaries

Policy makers and lobbyists who want to enact a carbon tax would do well to choose their words carefully, say Columbia University Psychologists. In a new study in Psychological Science, the research team suggests that since voters typically don't like higher taxes, policy proposals aimed at reducing CO2 emissions should be referred to as 'carbon offsets' in order to generate the most public support. The semantic trick even works on those who are most resistant to a political response to climate change--Republicans.   In the experiment, volunteers (who self-identified as Democrats,…

Richard Fortey reviews The Genesis Enigma in The Times Literary Supplement: The reader will search in vain for a reference to Jean-André de Luc (1727–1817) in this eccentric book by Andrew Parker. Martin Rudwick described in Bursting the Limits of Time (2005) how de Luc treated the Bible as a historical resource that might be taken into account alongside the evidence of fieldwork to discern the history of the earth; the Good Book provided a narrative to be taken seriously and often literally. De Luc’s was a perfectly respectable intellectual position for his time (he also coined the word “…