hrynyshyn
Posts by this author
July 21, 2006
This week's Science includes an interesting "forum" on the value of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), that wing of the U.S. National Institutes of Health charged with checking out whether or not herbal remedies and other medical techniques not sanctioned by MDs…
July 20, 2006
The fact that yesterday's veto was Bush's first, after more than five years in office, does't interest me all that much. Thomas Jefferson's veto record is a big fat zero and I see nothing wrong with that. What I found bothersome was Bush's justification. He said embryonic stem cell research crosses…
July 19, 2006
You've heard of Jefferson's wall of separation between church and state? How about a wall of separation between church and store? According to the Globe and Mail, there is one now, between a new Wal-Mart outlet and a next-door religious retreat:
After a 10-year battle with its Jesuit neighbours in…
July 19, 2006
Could it be a coincidence that this column summarizing the political right's infatuation with bad science in England appeared only a couple of days after Chris "Republican War on Science" Mooney arrived in London?
Polly Toynbee of the Guardian writes about the right-wing's shift from climate-change…
July 19, 2006
For anyone needing a good primer on the stem cell situation when it comes to the state of the science, Rick Weiss has a good recap in today's Washington Post.
The core issue:
Religious conservatives, in particular, believe that even human embryos in the earliest stages of life are beings with moral…
July 17, 2006
Chris Mooney is sick of the stick. The hockey stick, that is. I don't blame him. How often should we have to revisit the tired argument over whether today's climate is warmer than any time in the last 400 years or 1000? But here we are again, thanks to Joe Barton's House Committee on Energy and…
July 14, 2006
Anyone want to take a run at anticipating the reaction from creationists to the news that "Finches on Galapagos Islands [are] Evolving" (Associated Press, July 14)? I'm thinking they will latch onto the story's first paragraph, which ever so slightly introduces a microscopic degree of uncertainty…
July 13, 2006
Is every species of living thing on the planet equally deserving of protection?
I don't think you're going to find too much sympathy for such an extreme position. For one thing, you can't give rights to dinner. I can foresee a time when some of the higher primates, and perhaps some cetaceans, may…
July 13, 2006
A study just published in the journal Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management concludes that the Prince William Sound ecosystem has fully recovered 17 years after the Exxon Valdez struck a reef and lost 11 million gallons of crude to the Gulf of Alaska. That's not the most interesting…
July 12, 2006
No sign yet that the science-and-religion debate is heating (or, as the Brits say, hotting) up in the public sphere, but a continuing and expanding dialog on the subject in EOS has been brought to my attention. What started as an appeal to include some philosophy in NASA's mission planning has…
July 11, 2006
This might be premature, but it's beginning to look like the debate between believers and scientists is getting some traction in the public sphere again. And that would be a good thing, if for no other reason that it gives us a chance to improve the quality of the discourse. The latest offerings,…
July 8, 2006
Climate change has been blamed for a lot of things, sometimes not entirely based on the scientific evidence. But this is a first, at least to me:
From today's Guardian:
A vast chunk of Europe's most ill-famed mountain threatens to break loose and crash down in the next few days, a geologist…
July 7, 2006
Former science columnist turned blogger and all-round wise old guy Chet Raymo writes on his blog today that his Irish neighbors don't understand what's going on in America when it comes to the ascendancy of religiosity. I don't have an answer, but his question suggests a possible answer to a…
July 6, 2006
Last weekend's Los Angeles Times included a curious essay by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert titled "If only gay sex caused global warming." How can you resist?
The basic thesis, drawn from evolutionary biology, is threats are meaningless without a face to associate. To wit:
...global warming…
July 5, 2006
I'm sure Robert Samuelson isn't the only pundit who doesn't buy Al Gore's argument that climate change is a moral issue. The Newsweek editor and Washington Post columnist weighs in on "An Inconvient Truth" today by rejecting Gore's characterization of the problem.
The trouble with the global…
July 4, 2006
On the eve of America's 230th, the New York Times steps to the plate with a short, sweet editorial calling for more and better science education:
Some universities have already realized the need for better ways of teaching. But this means revising an incentive system that has historically rewarded…
July 3, 2006
Would-be 2008 presidential candidate John McCain has had every opportunity to distance himself from the retrogressive anti-Enlightenment policies of the current administration, but he just can't seem to bring himself to do it, even when polls that put Bush's approval rating at all-time lows suggest…
June 30, 2006
Having worked as a communications officer for more than one scientific outfit, I can sympathize with the outreach guys at the University of Leicester. But methinks they took their attention-grabbing-headline lessons a bit too seriously. A story making the rounds of the science PR wires today asks:…
June 29, 2006
Barack Obama is right. Barack Obama is also wrong. Not only should this not be surprising, it should be welcome. Because no other position is tenable when it comes to the subject of the role of faith in politics.
Obama, widely considered one of the brightest hopes for the Democrats come 2012 (if…
June 28, 2006
One more time, with gusto: "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused." So said Bush Jr. the other day. As Chris "Intersection" Mooney, noted, the only "debate" over the causes of climate change is taking place in Bush's mind. Meanwhile, however, there are very real…
June 26, 2006
No. I'm not talking about Dick Cheney's metric for how probable a threat must be before taking it seriously (that would be 1 %). Instead we have this bizarre statement in Newsday from a researcher of the paranorma identified only as "Wendy":
"Only one-tenth of 1 percent of all those who claim to…
June 22, 2006
If I had $50,000 -- and no mortgage -- I'd love to bid on a letter that's just surfaced and is about to be auctioned off by Sotheby's. It's from the revered Charles Darwin to the Reverend William Denton. New Scientist has a short item with a couple of excerpts:
"I am very far from being surprised…
June 22, 2006
Everyone's had a good time taking shots at Ann Coulter's inability to think straight. Some valiant types, like PZ Myers, have even sacrified several hours of their lives to reading and picking apart her pathetic prose. Everything she says is wrong, particularly her efforts to explain why evolution…
June 21, 2006
Move over Fritjof Capra. The author of The Tao of Physics captured the imaginations of naive readers a couple of decades back by exploring the similarities between quantum theory and Eastern philosophies. But as the New York Times' Dennis Overbye reported Tuesday, Chinese scientists are more…
June 20, 2006
The American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973. The Pentagon is still mulling it over, according to a report from AP.
WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon document classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder, decades after mental health experts…
June 20, 2006
Yesterday's non-decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on just how far the Army Corps of Engineers can go in telling developers what they can and cannot build produced no identifiable winners or losers. But a close look at the rulings hints at how the court will treat science in future cases.
In the…
June 16, 2006
I wasn't going to wade into the Stephen-Hawking-has-lost-it debate, but then I came across an otherwise unrelated story this morning pitting Cosmologist Numero Uno against the late Pope John Paul II.
For those unfamiliar with the fuss, Hawking had the nerve last week to publicly support the idea of…
June 15, 2006
Time for some consequential feedback from Doubtful readers. It's:The ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-to-help-science-classrooms-a-thon!
Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is the coolest part of school, important, and worth understanding. If you're reading the blogs here,…
June 14, 2006
This week's "ask a science blogger question" from the SEED gang is: "Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?"
First, to be fair, I don't really have an area of expertise, at least, not…
June 13, 2006
How do you rank on the Scale of Doubt?
Jennifer Michael Hecht, who teaches at Nassau Community College in New York, has come up with one of those clever little web quizzes to accompany her book Doubt: A History.
First, take the quiz.
If you think she might know what she's talking about, and have…