Education
scientificactivist | January 26, 2009Last Friday the British Minister of Science, Paul Drayson, visited the science area of Oxford University to give a short speech and take questions. The audience was a fairly random assortment of a couple of hundred academics and students, mostly from the sciences. I was invited to fill one of ten graduate student slots granted to the Department of Biochemistry. It was a nice gesture by Drayson, and I think he was legitimately interested in hearing from scientists. Based on what I witnessed, though, I hope that he took some of it in.
Drayson spoke and took questions about his role and the…
oracknows | January 23, 2009When it comes to science, I've always detested The Huffington Post.
Nearly four years ago, when Arianna Huffington's vanity group political blog went live, I was the first one to notice a most disturbing trend about it. As far as I knew at the time (or know now), I was the only one to have noticed that The Huffington Post had become a hotbed of antivaccine propaganda a mere three weeks after its launch. It was home to David Kirby, author of that paean to the mercury militia Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, A Medical Controversy and now antivaccine blogger on both…
clock | January 22, 2009From Center for Science Education:
When: Friday, January 30, 2009 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM
Where: LSRC B101 Love Auditorium
Description: Bruce Alberts, a prominent biochemist strongly commited to the improvement of science education, began service as Editor-in-Chief of Science in March 2008. He is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. Alberts has been instrumental in developing the National Science Education standards implemented in school systems nationwide. He is a major proponent of "science as inquiry" teaching that…
pontiff | January 22, 2009Part three in my continuing pedantic slow-as-molasses walk through Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.
List of posts here: introduction, ch 1, ch 2.
SPOILER ALERT: Dude, I can't talk about the book without giving away what the book is about, so if you don't want the book's main ideas to be spoiled, don't continue reading.
IDIOT ALERT: I'm in no way qualified in most of the fields Gladwell will touch on, so please, a grain of salt, before you start complaining about my ignorance. Yes I'm an idiot, please tell me why!
Having, in the past chapter (hopefully) convinced us that…
tfk | January 22, 2009Casey Luskin, Disco. Inst's attack caterpillar, posts an Epilogue on Dr. Meyer’s Texas Testimony: Stephen Meyer Demolishes Darwinist Personal Attacks:
The first question the Texas Darwinists asked was whether Dr. Meyer has a Ph.D. in biology. No, Dr. Meyer answered, he merely holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and History of Science from Cambridge University that focused on the history of evolution. As usual, the Darwinists are not being self-reflective, because one of their own experts--Gerald Skoog--doesn't even have a Ph.D.--he has an Ed.D. in Secondary Education. Thankfully, one board member…
tfk | January 21, 2009In November, the Texas Board of Education met to consider their new science standards. As I've mentioned a major point of contention is a reference in the current standards to "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific explanations, a concept only ever applied to evolution, and without any clear explanation of what it means.
In the course of 6 hours of testimony, witnesses constantly asked what these "weaknesses" were, and got no clarity. Finally, at an ungodly hour, Cynthia Dunbar (the one who thinks public schools are evil and that President Obama is a s3kr1t Mussulman) gave her explanation…
jlynch | January 16, 2009Arizona Republicans have proposed that education - from kindergarten through university - should be the first thing to get the chop in a proposed budget. They are looking to cut $1.5 billion from education over the next 18 months with the K-12 system being hit for nearly $1 billion of that. I agree with our Board of Regents that the proposed $500,000 cut to the universities would be “cataclysmic in the depth and breadth of devastation they will cause to our higher-education system in Arizona.” Even a short-term cut in funding will have serious implications for the competitiveness of Arizona.…
clock | January 15, 2009I get e-mails about such events, so I thought I'd share, so you can attend some of these talks if you want:
NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott will be speaking twice in North Carolina shortly.
First, at 7:00 p.m. on January 27, she will be speaking on "Darwin's Legacy in Science and Society" in the Wright Auditorium on the East Carolina University campus in Greenville. "Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 was an extraordinary milestone for science, but it also had profound effects on theology, philosophy, literature, and society in general. Nowhere is…
drorzel | January 14, 2009
slacktivist: Gerbils and polar bears
"What I'm trying to say here is a bit tricky, because it involves to some extent comparing those Palin supporters to Grandin's neurotic gerbils, and I don't suppose anyone likes being compared to neurotic gerbils. And it probably doesn't help that I'm prefacing this by saying that I mean no offense in comparing them to neurotic gerbils. But I find the comparison illustrative, so here goes."
(tags: politics psychology society culture US religion biology slacktivist)
FemaleScienceProfessor: In Praise of B Students
"When choosing undergrad research…
sb admin | January 14, 2009By Lindsey Realmuto
As of January 1, 2009 we can all rest assured that pharmaceutical companies may voluntarily stop barraging our physicians and nurses with free mugs, pens, and trinkets carrying drug logos. PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry trade group, has updated their industry marketing guidelines, and the companies that choose to comply with them will stop giving free logoed items to prescribers. Thank goodness! Now I feel safe that my doctor is free from the shackles of industry influence.
Returning to reality, what we as patients and consumers should be more concerned about is how…
drorzel | January 13, 2009
Haidinger's brush: the unknown sense
"Yes !!! With some effort you can learn to see what remains invisible to most people! Without the help of any instrument you will be able to tell not only if the light you look at is strongly polarized or not, but also if it is linearly polarized or circularly polarized and, moreover, in which direction it vibrates or rotates. Any time that you raise your eyes to the blue sky you will be rewarded by the same clues that guide bees in their flight. Acquire P-Ray Vision ! "
(tags: science physics biology optics)
EzraKlein Archive | The American Prospect…
jrosenhouse | January 11, 2009Now that the big ScienceBlogs software upgrade is complete, I can tell you about the big conference in Washington D.C. Lucky you!
According to careercast.com, mathematicians have the most wonderful job there is. I am inclined to agree, of course. I don't understand why everyone doesn't get a PhD in the subject and join the fun.
This is the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings, so called because it is organized jointly by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America (no Monty Python jokes, please.) It is basically a big math party. Feeling glum about the…
clock | January 9, 2009Like we did with the Tripoli Six....
From Declan Butler, reproduced here in its entirety, as it is important:
Iran has summarily tried two of the nation's HIV researchers with communicating with an "enemy government," in a half-day trial that started and ended on 31 December in Tehran's Revolutionary Court. There will be no further court hearings, and a verdict is expected within days.
The brothers, Arash and Kamiar Alaei, who have achieved international acclaim for their progressive HIV-prevention programme, have been held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison since their arrest last June (see…
jstemwedel | January 9, 2009You know what makes an already scary world a lot scarier? When a government decides it's a crime for disease researchers to do their job.
From Declan Butler:
Iran has summarily tried two of the nation's HIV researchers with communicating with an "enemy government," in a half-day trial that started and ended on 31 December in Tehran's Revolutionary Court. There will be no further court hearings, and a verdict is expected within days.
The brothers, Arash and Kamiar Alaei, who have achieved international acclaim for their progressive HIV-prevention programme, have been held in Tehran's…
cortex | January 9, 2009In November 2007, I had a longish article in Best Life Magazine on the psychology of chronic back pain. Apparently, the version of the article on the Best Life website no longer works, and I regularly get emails from people asking to read the actual text. So in order to establish a future reference and permanent link, I'm going to post all 5000 words below the fold:
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BACK PAIN
A growing cadre of doctors and scientists now believes that chronic back pain is a disease of the nervous system, not the spine. This breakthrough has opened the doors to new kinds of treatments that…
sb admin | January 8, 2009by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
Many of you were readers here when science bloggers and scienceblogs in particular played a pivotal role in the case of the Tripoli 6, medics under sentence of death in Libya over trumped up charges of infecting children with HIV. Another urgent matter now confronts the worldwide scientific community involving two Iranian doctors. Declan Butler, Nature senior correspondent, has described the situation in a post at one of the Nature blogs:
Iran puts leading HIV scientists on trial
Posted on behalf of Declan Butler
Iran has summarily tried two of the…
revere | January 7, 2009Many of you were readers here when science bloggers and scienceblogs in particular played a pivotal role in the case of the Tripoli 6, medics under sentence of death in Libya over trumped up charges of infecting children with HIV. Another urgent matter now confronts the worldwide scientific community involving two Iranian doctors. Declan Butler, Nature senior correspondent, has described the situation in a post at one of the Nature blogs:
Iran puts leading HIV scientists on trial
Posted on behalf of Declan Butler
Iran has summarily tried two of the nation's HIV researchers with communicating…
drorzel | January 7, 2009In response to my request for uncomfortable questions, Lou asks:
As a private college professor and a new parent, I'm sure you are aware that the current rates of tuition growth are unsustainable indefinitely. When do you expect to see the rates drop back to inflation levels, rather than continuing to grow 3-4% above it?
The short answer is "The minute that students and parents start going elsewhere." The setting of tuition rates is a Black Art, but the essential calculation is striking a balance between "What do we need to improve our operation?" and "What will the market bear?" If people…
oracknows | January 6, 2009If there's one thing I've learned over the last four years of examining the various forms of woo out there, it's to be very, very skeptical whenever an advocate of a highly dubious-sounding "therapy" points to a study as "proof" that the therapy, whatever it is, works. Usually, what I find is a small pilot study with inadequate controls or even a poorly designed study. For example, the acupuncture literature is rife with these sorts of studies. It's also rife with larger studies for which the control was inadequate--or for which there was no real control at all. This phenomenon is…
clock | January 4, 2009
Let's highlight the rest of the participants of this year's ScienceOnline09 conference:
Theresa Van Acker is a science teacher at the Morehead Montessori Elementary School in Durham.
Dani Vasco is a student at the Riverside High School and was a part of Duke's Summer research program which includes obligatory student blogging - Dani's blog is here.
Robyn Walker is the Communications Assistant at the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment.
Robin Walls and Nathan Walls are software developers for McClatchy Interactive.
Adnaan Wasey is the Web Editor for The Takeaway at WNYC Radio…