You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any more. --Mark Twain
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is also a graduate student at the University of Kansas, completing a doctorate in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not modeling species distributions or battling creationists, he writes about developments in progressive politics and the sciences.
The opinions expressed here are his own, do not reflect the official position of the NCSE. Indeed, older posts may no longer reflect his own official position.
It is not clear why the number of academic freedom cases seem to be increasing. Is it because the iron hand of ideological conformity is squeezing professors more tightly? Or is it because more subjects of attack are fighting back in court?
Or is it because he's making numbers up from thin air? Might it be not clear that the number of academic freedom cases is increasing? Could Chapman's staff be ginning up meritless claims of academic freedom violations so he has things to blog about?
Convention centers and convention center hotels should offer free internet access. There's no excuse not to do so.
And no, Louisville Convention Center, it does not cost $100/day to provide access in your exhibit hall. Hell will freeze over before I or any sane person would pay anything like that. Frankly, hotel-near-the-Louisville-Convention-Center, $12.95 is too much to spend per day. Charge a dollar a day if it makes you feel better.
An interesting new article today at the Skeptic's Dictionary, explaining the backfire effect. Several recent papers have found that information contradicting people's initial beliefs can actually increase their acceptance of those beliefs. This is true in political contexts and in religious context. In one example, people given false information about a Supreme Court nominee (which played to their biases) wound up retaining their heightened negative views of the nominee after having the negative claims refuted.
Skeptic's Dictionary author Robert Carroll concludes:
The backfire effect should be distinguished from the continued influence effect, whereby one learns "facts" about an event that later turn out to be false or unfounded, but the discredited information continues to influence reasoning and understanding even after one has been corrected. The backfire and continued influence effects should be disheartening to those who think that the first step in arguing with those who base their beliefs on misinformation should be to get their opponents to see what the facts are. Correcting errors may be pointless when dealing with some people. Critical thinkers, one would hope, would want errors corrected. At the very least, getting the facts right might prevent some faulty inferences and prevent one from behaving in ways that could prove harmful. For example, getting the facts straight about tobacco and alcohol would be a first step in guidance toward reasonable actions regarding those substances. Johnson and Seifert have argued that providing a plausible causal alternative, rather than simply negating misinformation, mitigates the continued influence effect. They may be right for some beliefs, but I have not found that providing a causal alternative to astrologers, acupuncturists, homeopaths, parapsychologists, or defenders of applied kinesiology, for example, has had much effect on true believers. Political beliefs, religious beliefs, and woo-woo beliefs seem impenetrable to facts that contradict them. Changes in these beliefs seem more likely to occur outside of direct confrontation with opponents.
These scientific findings seem relevant to thebacklashdebate of a couple weeks ago.
I spent the last few days at the 5th Netroots Nation, in Las Vegas. As always, the conference has been a whirlwind of political geekery and good, clean fun. This year featured a video address by the President, and Q&A sessions with the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader of the Senate, not to mention two panels on the use of snark in politics.
My obligations here finished early. I'd been involved with three panel submissions, of which two were approved: one about politicized sciences and the other on politicized education. My colleague Steve Newton took over on the latter panel, organized by Texas Freedom Network and featuring two candidates for Texas State Board of Education as well as TFN's Dan Quinn and the incomparably Michael Bérubé. Both panels went off on Thursday, leaving the rest of the meeting to schmooze.
My panel was the first session of the conference, and featured DailyKos's DemfromCT, aka Greg Dworkin, a doctor who has spent the last few years trying to increase public preparedness around pandemic flu as well as vaccination more generally. He's got a nice post summarizing his talk up at DailyKos, connecting flu preparedness, the importance of the internet and bloggers in reaching out to the public, and the whooping cough epidemic in California being driven by anti-science anti-vaccine beliefs. I spoke about the usual thing, as you can see in the video above. And I was followed by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, co-authors of Merchants of Doubt, a great history of the global warming denial movement. Hopefully the video of the full conversation will be posted soon.
I'd asked the panelists to present a somewhat positive account at least of the science, if not the politics of the issue, on the assumption that we'd have plenty of time in the discussion to cover the bad stuff, and I think that worked out well. During a discussion of the balance between the need for expertise and transparency in communicating science, I managed to work in a mention of #sbFAIL and Pepsiblog, pointing out that they had legitimate experts, but lacked the openness that makes real blogs effective in science communications.
We also talked about science journalism, and about the common theme of all these forms of science denial: a rejection of the value of expertise. Alas that I couldn't show Don McLeroy's famous "Someone has to stand up to experts" rant. Check out good summaries of the panel at Northwest Progressive Institute, ClimateScienceWatch,and Delaware Liberal.
Hopefully I'll figure out how to get my Keynote slides into Slideshare soon, so you can see them in better quality than the video above could capture.
Now I'm off to another conference, and am sending this from the free wireless network at the Las Vegas airport.
With whooping cough now at epidemic levels, it's becoming clear that one of the primary culprits is the idiotic trend over the last 10 years of parents, mostly affluent whites, opting out of vaccination out of a baseless fear that the vaccines are unsafe.
Yesterday, Bora Zivkovic announced he was leaving ScienceBlogs. This is kinda huge. Bora is as close to a scienceblogging god as any scienceblogger will admit to believing in. He gives every evidence of omnipresence and omniscience about the interplay of science and the internet. He's created many of the ideas that keep the scienceblogging community together, not least the Science Online conferences.
And his Sb farewell shows why he's so beloved. He seems to have taken the two weeks since Pepsiblog was announced and decided to go out with a bang. He analyzes what Scienceblogs did well, how it created its own ecosystem of sciencebloggers and how it affected the way other sciencebloggers did what they do. And then he looked forward, predicting, how those ecosystems would change in the wake of Pepsiblog, and the ongoing exodus from Scienceblogs in the wake of its ill-considered plan to sell its respectability to the highest bidder.
One of his most striking predictions is that the exodus was not over:
And more are leaving, and will be leaving, due to "Bion's effect" [which explains why people stay at parties to remain part of a group, and then all leave at once as soon as a few group members head for the door]…
Yes, suddenly everyone is getting their coats on, all at the same time. This party is not as fun as it once was. Time to go.
When the first round of people decamped from Scienceblogs, I thought hard about joining them. And I didn't do it then for three reasons. First, I really do like Scienceblogs. Despite all the nonsense they do, for the noncommunication and the slow payment, I like it here. I like the people and I like the mission. I want them to succeed and I want to be part of that success. Second, I don't want to blog on my own. I like the people here and even as our ranks diminish, I'd rather be part of this group than not. Third, I'm going to be on a bit of a planned blogging hiatus starting Thursday because of my wedding and honeymoon, and a couple conferences I'm going to this week and next, and I'd rather make any move after I get back and have time to build traffic at a new site.
But Bora is right about Bion's effect. I felt it two weeks ago, and feel it even more strongly now. The people who make Scienceblogs a community are all leaving, and the party's over. I don't know quite what I'll do, yet. Maybe management will figure it all out between now and when I get back from Brazil, and we'll all look back and laugh. I hope so. I still want Sb to succeed. But it won't without the bloggers it already lost. PZ, who hasn't left yet, makes up a lot of the site's traffic, but Bora is what keeps Scienceblogs ticking. I'd say he was the soul, but a lot of us are realizing that Sb's soul disappeared a while ago.
I'll be tying up some loose ends in the next few days, and will have more to say on TfK's future plan before the blog goes darkish for the wedding and honeymoon.
In February, at the AAAS meetings in San Diego, Stephen Schneider gave a gangbuster talk about climate change denial. Schneider was energetic, feisty, and absolutely right about the challenges faced by scientists trying to talk to the media. NCSE's Genie Scott, a fellow panelist, came away deeply impressed, and she knows more than most about giving a good presentation on how scientists should react to science denial. Little wonder, since Schneider has been at the heart of research on global warming since the early 1970s, and has recognized for just as long that the science is not enough.
His scientific memoir – Science as a Contact Sport – is full of the energy he displayed on stage, and provides great background on the ways scientists, policymakers, and the press have been working together and at odds throughout the lifetime of this political issue. Schneider was a forceful and effective advocate for policies that would slow or stop global warming, as well as a committed researcher on the causes and consequences of global warming, and even on the sociology of climate change denialism.
He died last night at the age of 65. His life's work, both as a scientist and as a policy advocate, will be carried on by his students and by the many people he touched through his tireless efforts. He will be missed.
Sensuous Curmudgeon and PZ are both having fun poking through the background of Kansas gubernatorial candidate Joan Heffington. Heffington forthrightly calls for creationism to be taught in public schools, and pledged to demand advocates offer a “biblical and constitutional reason exist for the passage of any new law." Yeesh.
PZ responds to this development:
Quick, somebody reassure me that she's a fringe candidate without a prayer of getting into office. Please. It's Monday, the day is painful enough.
Right now, Brownback is leading his Democratic rival for the Kansas governorship by a 2-1 margin. There are some things about that poll's internal demographics that look hinky, but I believe that Brownback has vastly greater name recognition than Tom Holland. So why not drop some cash on Tom Holland for Governor, and do your part to keep Brownback out of the halls of power.
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
I'm another year older, as is Mick Jagger!
Yes, she's a fringe candidate without a prayer of getting into public office. But that's not good news, because Sam Brownback (
