An irregular exploration of the struggle between the power of rational discourse and the scientific method on one hand, and the forces of superstition and dogma on the other.
James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
The Demon-Haunted World:
Science as a Candle
in the Dark,
by Carl Sagan
(A
review)
The Doubter's Companion:
by John Ralston Saul (Excerpts)
Skeptic Magazine: www.skeptic.com
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal: www.csicop.org
A poem by Yehuda Amichai:
The
Place
Where We Are Right
The Meaning of the
Island of Doubt
By doubting we come to inquiry; and through inquiry we perceive truth.
--- Peter Abelard
Undisguised clarity is easily mistaken for arrogance.
-- Richard Dawkins
As for evolution, it happened. Deal with it.
-- Michael Shermer.
March 31, 2007
Ransom Myers had a habit of telling people what they didn't want to hear. In the 1990s, his employers in the Canadian government didn't like it when he told them overfishing was to blame for the collapse of the northern...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 5:46 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 30, 2007
OK. I've read Hansen's new paper, which has been submitted to Environmental Research Letters, but not published. It's basically a review of existing, well-established science followed some personal opinion on the responsibility of scientists to express themselves, so I doubt...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 1:24 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: philosophy
I have only read the first few paragraphs, but know the rest of "Scientific reticence and sea level rise" will be fascinating. Jim Hansen bemoans the conservatism of science. Hmmm. I shall offer my thoughts this weekend, but wanted to...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 6:55 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 29, 2007
Category: science culture
A friend of mine, who has a pretty well-exercised brain, tried to get under my skin the other day by invoking the specter of climate change "alarmists," suggesting that we've been there before and should reserve a fair bit of...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 3:15 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 28, 2007
Category: climate
Bjorn Lomborg, the ex-Greenpeace bad-boy of statistics, is back at it. In last week's National Post, Canada's right-wing embarrassment of a newspaper, he once again takes on climate change activists. The problem with Lomborg, a man trained to play with...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 8:00 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 27, 2007
Category: science culture
This week's Nature explores the growth of university-level instruction in that most incredible of non-conventional medical therapeutic techniques, homeopathy. That's troubling enough, but apparently it's only a part of an even more disturbing trend: the granting of BSc degrees, by...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 8:38 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 20, 2007
Category: climate
You've got to hand it to John Edwards. He's always trying to do the right thing, or at least appear to be doing the right thing. Last week he announced that his campaign for the White House will be a...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:26 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 16, 2007
Category: science culture
Just because you were right yesterday doesn't mean you're going to be right tomorrow. Even if you're one of the most important contributors to biology, like Lynn Margulis, there's no reason anyone should keep paying attention to you if you...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 11:22 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 14, 2007
Category: ecology
Marine biologists have discovered that there's a lot more life in the ocean that can turn sunlight into fuel than anyone thought. The authors of the paper in which the finding appears don't come out and say it in their...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 6:57 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 13, 2007
Category: evolution
Often have I tried to draw attention to creationist propaganda masquerading as reasoned discourse. Lest I leave the impression that the mainstream media are incapable of portraying biological evolution as the only scientific explanation for the diversity of life on...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:33 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 12, 2007
Category: evolution
Sciblogger Rob Knop of Galactic Interactions has learned that the best way to attract comments to a science blog is to post something about religion. (Hence the title of this post; we all like site traffic). I suspect that religosity...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:02 AM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 9, 2007
Category: mix and match
On the occasion of PZ "Pharyngula" Myers' 50th birthday, I'd like pay homage to the one science blogger who can bump another's site traffic by an order of magnitude with one link. Also, who else but PZ could generate dozens...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 12:08 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 8, 2007
Category: climate
Towards the tail end of Al Gore's climate-change slide show -- the one in "An Inconvenient Truth" -- there's a slide on three misconceptions propagated by those who, for lack of a better term, have been called skeptics. One of...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 12:50 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 6, 2007
Category: humor
GMO paranoia meets UFO conspiracies. Very clever....
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 8:51 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 5, 2007
Category: religiosity
Another day, another example of the moral bankruptcy of the James Dobson gang....
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 8:17 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 4, 2007
Category: religiosity
Titled simply "Darwin's God," the feature in today's New York Times Sunday Magazine is a overview of theoretical musings -- you can't really call them full-fledges theories -- on why religion is so common among human societies. Not much in...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 2:54 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 2, 2007
Category: technology
Tomorrow's lunar eclipse has got the moon on my brain, and I'm not the only one. Washinton Post columnist Charles Krauthammer gets it wrong so often that I rarely bother to even glace at his output, but today he touches...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 12:11 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: science culture
Every now and then, a science story comes along that reminds me just how full of awe and wonder the real world is. This particular story is a few weeks old, but it didn't seem to generate a lot of...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 6:39 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 1, 2007
Category: pseudo-science
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and it was more that little appropriate that I might be reminded of that particular truism by a friend of mine who just happens to be a librarian. The lesson involves a variation...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 8:47 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
