Education
oracknows | June 1, 2007Let's face it, energy woo can get boring. It's always "resonance this" and "vibration that," to the point that it all starts to sound the same. Such is the reason that I've become somewhat reluctant to take on more energy woo for Your Friday Dose of Woo. It takes a truly bizarre bit of energy woo to get me interested anymore, and this has me worried that either (1) I'm running out of woo (probably not a problem, as the Woo Folder is still pretty full) or (2) I need to diversify the woo, so to speak. This brings me to a little housekeeping about Your Friday Dose of Woo. It occurs to me that it…
tqa | May 31, 2007
Yesterday, Casey Luskin posted yet another article outlining still more of the Discovery Institute's complaints about the Iowa State decision to deny tenure to DI Fellow and ID proponent Guillermo Gonzalez. This one complains about the characterization of Gonzalez as "having slowed down considerably" and "not started new things." (That characterization appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education last week.)
I have no intention of getting into a debate over the precise merits of Dr. Gonzalez's case, for a number of reasons. First of all, I'm one of those who believes that the effort that…
sciencetolife | May 29, 2007Vaccines, indoor plumbing, antibiotics and a better understanding of geography. These are some of the responses I obtained when I posed the following question to a panel of scientists, journalists, authors and public health experts:
What scientific advancements do you think have made the greatest impact on global health and why?
Their responses, I hope, will initiate and engage conversation about the impact of science on human life. Do you agree, disagree, have anything to add? Your opinions are always welcome.
1. Ruth Levine Ph.D.
Vice President for Programs and Operations, Center for…
grrlscientist | May 28, 2007tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Pied Avocets, which returned to nest in Britain in 1948, now nest widely around the south-east coastline.
Image: BBC News.
Birds in Science
Palaeontologists fired a broadside over a fossil which is the cornerstone evidence to back the theory that birds descended from dinosaurs. The row focuses on Sinosauropteryx, a fossil found in 1994 by a farmer in Liaoning province, northeastern China, a treasure trove of the Early Cretaceous period some 130 million years ago. About the size of a turkey, the long-tailed meat-eating…
pharyngula | May 27, 2007
This week, the creationist Ken Ham and his organization, Answers in Genesis, are practicing the Big Lie. They have spent tens of millions of dollars to create a glossy simulacrum of a museum, a slick imitation of a scientific enterprise veneered over long disproved religious fables, and they are gathering crowds and world-wide attention to the grand opening of their edifice of deceit. You can now take a photographic tour of the exhibits and see for yourself—it's not science at all, but merely a series of Bible stories dolled up in dioramas.
The blogosphere is also giving them some attention…
sb admin | May 24, 2007Today, the Institute of Medicine released its report Ending the Tobacco Problem: A Blueprint for the Nation. In a public briefing Richard J. Bonnie, Chair of the IOM Committee on Reducing Tobacco Use, explained that âending the tobacco problemâ means reducing tobacco use âso substantially that it is no longer a significant public health problem.â
In the U.S., tobacco use claims an estimated 440,000 lives and rings up an estimated $89 billion in health care costs every year. Worldwide, itâs responsible for five million deaths each year, making it the second major cause of death.
The reduction…
clock | May 23, 2007As promised, I will gather here (and update a couple of times during the day) some of the most interesting posts from around the blogosphere about the celebrations of the 300th birthday of Carl von Linne aka Carolus Linnaeus, the guy you cussed at when, back in high school, you had to memorize the order of taxonomic categories: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species (and you all know the mnemonic, don't you?).
So, what's with the name? Is it Linnaeus or von Linne? Merriam-Webster explains:
But today we come not to praise Linnaeus but to parse his various names. When…
oracknows | May 22, 2007I've complained on multiple occasions about the infiltration of non-evidence-based "medicine" (a.k.a. woo) into every level of medicine in the U.S.. Worst of all, it's infiltrating medical education in a big way, starting with the pro-woo activism of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), to various educational programs in various medical schools, to even the mandatory medical curriculum in at least one prestigious medical school. This is more than just teaching what various "alternative medical" therapies are, so that new physicians know what their patients are referring to or…
tqa | May 21, 2007
The Discovery Institute is (still, and predictably) in an uproar over Iowa's decision to reject Intelligent Design proponent Guillermo Gonzalez's tenure application. The DI is claiming that the decision could not possibly be anything other than an example of discrimination against a brave non-Darwinian scientist by the Darwinian Orthodoxy. Personally, I think it's something different. I think it's about the money.
According to an article that was just published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Gonzalez has not received any major research grants since arriving at Iowa. Casey Luskin of…
cmooney | May 21, 2007Exciting news out of my very own little North Carolina town..
Last week, Dr. Peter Agre announced he'll evaluate a run for the Senate in 2008 as a Democrat from Minnesota. (The seat is currently held by Republican Senator Norm Coleman).
Well everyone loves a Renaissance man and Dr. Agre has that 'IT' factor! He won me over by being outspoken on the need to improve science and math education and advance and strengthen science. After more than 25 years at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, he became Vice Chancellor for Science and Technology and James B. Duke Professor of…
ksharpe | May 21, 2007Meet Ian Hart, the athletic and self-confessedly "BoBo" author of Integrity of Science, a blog about public policy and the abuse of science—a fan of Caravaggio and detractor of strip malls.
What's your name?
Ian Hart
What do you do when you're not blogging?
I'm the Communications Director for the Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan, independent think-tank in Oakland, California, that uses interdisciplinary analysis to develop solutions to threats to sustainability at the intersection of environment, development, and society.
In my free time I paint (oils in a realist style), run marathons, and…
mikethemadbiologist | May 19, 2007In all the recounting of Jerry Falwell's life, almost all of the focus has been on Falwell's 'religiously' motivated positions. But this ignores Falwell's first political activity: to defend the system of American apartheid known as segregation. Racism, not abortion or other 'religious' issues, was what gave rise to the 'religious' right. Max Blumenthal reminds us of this:
Indeed, it was race-not abortion or the attendant suite of so-called "values" issues-that propelled Falwell and his evangelical allies into political activism....
Falwell launched on the warpath against civil rights…
evolgen | May 17, 2007Keith Robison, at Omics! Omics!, asks and answers the question, "What math courses should a biologist take in college?" His answer: a good statistics course is a must (one where you learn about experimental design and Bayesian statistics), and a survey course that covers topics like graph theory and matrix math would provide a nice introduction to important topics (that course probably doesn't exist at most colleges). He also advocates taking a programming class and turning math education into something more stimulating rather than rote drilling (easier said than done).
This being a blog, I,…
oracknows | May 17, 2007
When I learned of this, I had been highly tempted trot out everybody's favorite undead Führer for a little fun with the Church of Scientology's latest antics. Indeed, when you find out what I'm about to discuss, you'll see why it was a candidate for the loving chomp of his rotting jaws. Heck, I even started to do the whole Hitler zombie schtick that regular readers all know and some even love (or at least tolerate--well, most of you, anyway). As I typed away, though, I was having more and more trouble. My conscience was feeling more and more troubled. After all, I've lovingly crafted maybe…
sb admin | May 16, 2007By Adam M. Finkel
Two weeks ago, Congress officially asked a question that would have been unutterable during the first six years of the Bush Administration: "Have OSHA Standards Kept up with Workplace Hazards?" I was not surprised to read Assistant Secretary Ed Foulke's testimony, in which he tried mightily to make the molehill of OSHA regulatory activity since 2001 look like a (small) mountain. In my experience as a former OSHA executive, each of the Assistant Secretaries since at least 1997 has assigned a small army of spin-meisters to look for data, any data, that will make the agency…
sb admin | May 16, 2007I'm in an interesting position. Having so recently posted my own bitch and whine about how my tenure case is in trouble, suddenly we learn that Intelligent Design advocate Guillermo Gonzalez-- somebody who, frankly, has been viewed as a thorn in the side of astronomy by a large fraction of astronomers-- has been denied tenure.
I'm in no position to comment, but will do so anyway, because that's my way.
My own whine and rant suggests (or, anyway, states) that I think that the reasons my tenure case is on the rocks aren't the greatest of reasons. I know I'm a good teacher, and I know that I'm…
mikethemadbiologist | May 15, 2007And by "it", I don't mean the good stuff. Harvard dean Theda Skocpol has announced a new initiative to improve undergraduate teaching at Harvard. I'll believe it when I see it--which means it will never happen. Here's why.
The short version is that every year (give or take), some prestigious university announces that they are going to improve teaching. And then it never happens. At this point, it's not cynical to assume the worst, it's cynical to announce a 'new teaching initiative.' In response to this announcement, Aspazia and Steve Gimbel both describe how teaching isn't rewarded…
jstemwedel | May 12, 2007In part I of the interview, my mother described what it was like to be propelled by her dream of being an astronomer from being at home with four children to being in an undergraduate physics classroom and finding a serious mentor.
Part II: Out of the comfort zone and into the graduate program:
Were you encouraged by the folks at Rutgers-Newark with whom you were taking physics coursework to move on to graduate work?
As I was nearing the point of exhausting the undergraduate physics curriculum, and with no graduate physics program offered on that campus, my professors all encouraged me to…
thusspakezuska | May 12, 2007The theme of the upcoming Scientiae carnival is "Mothers and Others, women who have influenced you along the way". So here are my musings. scientiae-carnival
I am fond of saying that my mom is the reason I became an engineer. She is not, of course, the sole reason I became an engineer, nor is she the sole person responsible for me sticking it out despite all the crap I had to put up with and all the jerkwads who tried to discourage me and get me to quit along the way. But she played a pretty significant role, and that's all the more remarkable given who she is and where she came from.…
sb admin | May 11, 2007By David Michaels
In the din of the recent press attention and Senate and House hearings on about OSHAâs failings, itâs easy to forget that OSHA has saved many lives, too. Some evidence on that score comes from a new paper three colleagues and I have just published in Chest (Welch LS, Haile E, Dement J, Michaels D. Change in prevalence of asbestos-related disease among sheet metal workers 1986 to 2004. Chest. 2007;131:863-9).
Before the newly formed OSHA issued its first asbestos standard in 1971, uncontrolled asbestos exposure occurred in numerous workplaces across the country. OSHA…