Science & Society
On my first day at the Erice School of Science Journalism this past week I attended a lecture by Alessio Cimarelli, who discussed "When Data Journalism meets Science: a "Hackathon"". The speaker (who owns the site called "dataninja") showed several examples of how to mine the web to construct databases and display results on several topics. It was quite interesting to see the techniques he used, but I felt compelled to interrupt him at some point, in the interest of the school participants.
The fact is, he was showing his results as if they were accurate measurements of the researched feature…
How effective has the war on science by Greenpeace, Union of Concerned Scientists and their progressive donor base been?
Very effective. Effective enough that even when reading about the Irish Potato Famine of 1850, which caused millions to suffer and die, an alarming number would let many perish if it meant using science to prevent it.
If you thought genetically modified potatoes could avert late blight disease, spare a million countrymen from starvation and keep another million from emigrating off the Emerald Isle, would you plant these newfangled spuds? If not, not only do…
Americans lead the world in adult science literacy, it has nearly tripled since 1988. What other trend occurred since 1988? A lot fewer people read newspapers.
If people are smarter about science than ever, and they read fewer newspapers than ever, newspapers were not doing a very good job covering science. And in the 2000s, the 'churnalism' culture, pretending to be doing journalism when it is just a rehashed press release (such as this) caused people to stop subscribing and just sign up for a press release RSS news feed.
But analysts and journalists alike have blamed the Internet for…
Quebecers are particularly hostile toward the development of natural gas, but this aversion is driven less by 'not in my backyard' (NIMBY) attitudes than 'not in anyone's backyard (NIABY), according to a comparative study of 2,500 Quebecers and Americans conducted by Éric Montpetit and Erick Lachapelle of the University of Montreal's Department of Political Science.
The study wanted to find out why Quebecers oppose the development of natural gas so fiercely, since it is far cleaner than coal and obviously does not have the political risk of nuclear power.
According to the findings, the…
Illegal immigrants from Mexico who move to the United States often face barriers like poorly paying jobs, crowded housing and family separation. Such obstacles, and the migration process itself, may be detrimental to their health. Health even drops for people who enter the US legally.
Due to belief in an executive order for immigration amnesty by American President Barack Obama that will bypass Congressional action, Mexicans believe they will get a free pass on immigration status and have been sending unaccompanied children into the country. They believe by the time a deportation hearing…
Scientist often end up using two computers, one for scientific work, another for everything else. Thanks to really practical and affordable virtualization that is no longer necessary. The hardware is now cheap enough for the average consumer-scientist to afford. The software has caught up to the hardware. What used to be a frustrating experience as programs ran like molasses in January is now good enough to be practical. The ultimate system for a scientist used to be one computer with two separate system boards joined in one case. One board running a…
Scientist often need one computer for research and another for collaboration and communication. With the Hardware and software available now we can finally do everything on one computer system. The key is virtualization. This is not really a totally new idea in computing. However, now computer systems capable of virtualization are cheap enough to be bought by the average consumer-scientist. The virtualized operating system will run fast enough to actually be usable thanks to hardware level virtualization. Last but not least Windows 7, 8, and 8.1…
Why do so many criminals convicted of misdemeanors then get involved in violent crime?
It turns out that in many cases it's because they weren't misdemeanors at all, they were felony crimes that were reduced during plea bargaining. And that policy, according to an article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, leads to more violent crimes that could be prevented.
The small, preliminary study re-analyzed data on 787 individuals under age 35 who had violent misdemeanor convictions and purchased handguns in California in 1989 or 1990. The goal was to assess the impact of…
Advocates for open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens often claim that they are doing jobs legal residents won't. That isn't really true, they just do some jobs for less, because their illegal status makes them unable to compete.
The most dangerous jobs actually pay quite well - and they don't hire people who are not allowed to be in America legally. But jobs that are hazardous and can be done without concern for legal status can be done by illegal aliens - it just doesn't pay well.
"Undocumented Mexicans receive effectively no wage premium for working in dangerous settings, whereas most…
Hank |
Can you imagine how difficult it is to juggle peer review for 10,000 published studies per year? That's 40 every single working day, without the time it took to look at the ones that got rejected.
It's unmanageable to me, yet it happens. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences does it. Their system, where National Academy of Sciences members can just advocate for their friends and get articles published, leads to hilarious results, like when advertising majors get hand edited by a gender studies psychologist and claim that female hurricane names are more dangerous, but for the most…