Policy
sb admin | January 26, 2009What is science's rightful place?
In our heads, of course. All of our heads.
But Seed is asking, so let me elaborate briefly.
As I said before, science is not just active participation in research. Science is a mindset.
We are all born scientists, exploring the world around us and experimenting with it. When we grow up, we continue being scientists in our day-to-day lives.
If you walk into a room and flip a switch and the light does not come on, what do you do? I doubt that you throw yourself on the floor in fear, speaking in tongues, praying, blaming the Aliens or asking the Government to…
clock | January 25, 2009In our heads, of course. All of our heads.
But Seed is asking, so let me elaborate briefly.
As I said before, science is not just active participation in research. Science is a mindset.
We are all born scientists, exploring the world around us and experimenting with it. When we grow up, we continue being scientists in our day-to-day lives.
If you walk into a room and flip a switch and the light does not come on, what do you do? I doubt that you throw yourself on the floor in fear, speaking in tongues, praying, blaming the Aliens or asking the Government to help you. You calmly go about…
jrosenhouse | January 23, 2009If you have some time this weekend, be sure to read this magnificent article from Vanity Fair. It presents excerpts from intervies conducted withhundreds of Bush administration officials and other politically important individuals, going through the entire eight years of the presidency. If a fiction writer devised a short story along these lines, no one would believe it. The article is quite long, so be certain you are in a comfy chair and have a nice beverage before starting. It's hard to capture the spirit of the article in just a few quotes, but here's a taste:
February 14, 2002 The…
sb admin | January 23, 2009Findings should be presented truthfully and fairly, their outcome being as independent from politics as possible. From those unbiased findings, we should make sound policy decisions. Misrepresenting science does a major disservice to everyone, and we shouldn't stand for it.
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pharyngula | January 23, 2009Obama is about to lift the gag order that prohibited federal funds going to international groups that performed abortions.
He has ordered a review of all of Bush's last-minute policy acts, stopping them cold.
And look at this:
President Obama is expected to loosen the restrictions [on stem cell research], which many researchers and advocates have complained severely set back work toward curing disease such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes.
Okarma said Geron did not use any federal funding for its research, and that the Bush restrictions had "devastated the field."
This is something…
oracknows | January 20, 2009I never thought I'd finally see the day, but George W. Bush is no longer President of the United States, and Barack Obama is. I have to say, I've paid attention to Presidential Inaugurations since 1981, and I can't recall one greeted with as much excitement, hope, and expectation. All around my university, in my medical center, and even in my cancer center, auditoriums were set up and the oath of office and inaugural speeches televised on the big screens there. At my cancer center, the auditorium was packed. Our cancer center director was there, as was most of the center leadership and many…
j7uy5 | January 12, 2009Two things happened to the New York Times recently. For one, they announced that they will place advertisements on their front page. Two, they are publishing Opinion columns written by Bono.
I suspect the two are not unrelated. Which is another way of saying that I suspect the two are related, in this case, by economic necessity.
This brings to mind a minor memory, the telling of which may illustrate a point. I distinctly recall standing in line at a supermarket, while a random glance fell upon a copy of a new magazine: People. Within an instant, I had the thought, "how dumb, no one…
oracknows | January 6, 2009As I was sitting in the O.R. lounge yesterday afternoon between cases, the television in the lounge was tuned to CNN. One thing I noted was some rather fawning coverage of President Bush regarding the military that seemed as though it belonged on FOX News rather than CNN. Not long after that, Wolf Blitzer breathlessly reported that CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, had apparently been approached by the Obama Transition Team about becoming the new Surgeon General. I thought to myself, "Hmmm. That's interesting." And then I went back to the O.R. to finish up my schedule.…
drorzel | January 2, 2009
Refuted economic doctrines #1: The efficient markets hypothesis at John Quiggin
"I'm starting my long-promised series of posts on economic doctrines and policy proposals that have been refuted or rendered obsolete by the financial crisis. [...] Number One on the list is a topic I've covered plenty of times before (in fact, I was writing about it fifteen years ago), the efficient (financial) markets hypothesis. "
(tags: politics economics social-science society)
Robert Donoghue - 'This guy gets a blanket'
"I discovered Donald Westlake in high school, when I was randomly raiding the local…
mikethemadbiologist | January 2, 2009If you thought this post was about is more wrong, the Israelis or the Palestinians, you've come to the wrong place. What I want to talk about is something that, in the early 1980s, I called Reaganite Judaism.
If the term is unclear, it is a backhanded reference to the nascent neoconservative movement (Troll-be-gone: that term was used by neocons themselves in Commentary magazine) as another denomination of Judaism (e.g., Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, and Reform).
Reaganite Judaism's tenets--a trinity if you will--were:
Buy Israel bonds.
Make the Holocaust the essence of Judaism…
oracknows | January 2, 2009Here we go again.
You know, now that it's 2009, I had hoped that one of the most irritating people alive would continue his blissful quiet. I'm referring, of course, to Deepak Chopra, that Indian physician who demonstrates that a medical training is no protection whatsoever against pseudoscientific and anti-scientific thinking. Indeed, Chopra goes far beyond that in that, not only has he become a leader of the so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) movement, also sometimes called the "integrative medicine" (IM) movement that seeks to "integrate" treatments that range from…
tfk | December 23, 2008Mike the Mad Biologist is, well, mad. In writing about Obama's science team, I commented that:
scientists often distinguish [technical challenges] from the challenges in testing our broad conceptual understanding of the laws of nature. While "test tube jockeys" often produce important results, there tends to be a certain skepticism of their work. Similarly, medical research is so focused on the practical application that scientists in other fields are dubious about regarding medical researchers as being engaged in the same sort of enterprise as a theoretical physicist or a landscape…
cmooney | December 22, 2008John Tierney, Roger Pielke, Jr., and Chris Horner have the knives out.
Joe Romm and Tim Lambert have begun the defenses.
I find the attacks pretty baseless. But I'd like to hear readers thoughts on all of this, as I may well be writing more about it....
CORRECTION: The Roger Pielke Jr. post is from August. It is not part of a wave of attacks on John Holdren. Sorry about that mistake.
nisbetmc | December 21, 2008Now that Obama has his science and environmental policy team in place, there's great optimism for important new directions in policy. Yet it will take smart and effective communication to meaningfully engage Americans on these policies, especially in the context of an overwhelming public focus on the economy.
Consider that in a WPost/ABC News poll released today, when asked in an open-ended question to name the most important problem the President and Congress should focus on, 55% named the economy, 1% named gas prices/energy, and less than 1% named greenhouse gases/global warming.
When asked…
tfk | December 20, 2008
In his weekly address, President-elect Obama says:
the truth is that promoting science isn't just about providing resources – it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient – especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States – and I could not have a…
tfk | December 18, 2008In an interview defending himself against justified charges of homophobia, Rick Warren insisted:
For 5,000 years, every single culture and every single religion has defined marriage as a man and a woman.
Not quite. As the polygamous founder of the polygamy-espousing Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints noted, "ancient patriarchs and prophets like Abraham, Moses, Isaac, Jacob, David, and so on were permitted to have more than one wife," and "the Mosaic Law, which both Jews and Christians believe to have been inspired by God, makes provisions for polygamy (see Exodus 21:10 and…
drorzel | December 17, 2008
Barack Obama Defeats Barack Hussein Obama | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"Though few had heard of the freedom-hating extremist before, Barack Hussein Obama quickly garnered attention in several key regions of the country, and saw his popularity buoyed by conservative talk-radio hosts, mass e-mail forwards, and thousands of Americans riding on the backs of flatbed trucks."
(tags: politics US silly onion)
PhDinHistory: Social Darwinism or Meritocracy in the History Profession?
"Would you like to know where you will end up in the history profession? I have discovered a formula…
razib | December 17, 2008Matt Yglesias has a post up, Illusions of Rationalism, where he seems to dismiss some of the anger in the Left-blogosphere at the coronation of Princess Caroline. Like Matt, I don't really care that much who gets anointed to the throne of the junior Senator from New York, though that has much to do with my relative minimal investment in the particularities of the Democrats within the legislative branch. Yglesias is correct to note:
But of course that's not how things work at all. The whole business of electioneering is full of irrationality and tradition all the way from top to bottom. The…
tfk | December 17, 2008At the Inaugural ceremonies, the opening invocation will be given by Rick Warren, evangelical author of The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? and all-around wanker.
He called for political assassination, telling Sean Hannity that it is the role of government to "take [] out" leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and denying that the suggestion could be taken as "something dark, evil."
Given that attitude, it's hardly a surprise that he recently gave George W. Bush a Peace Award, though he later clarified that "the Peace Award was not about peace in domestic — or foreign policy…
drorzel | December 15, 2008
kast_sko
Throw a shoe at George Bush. In Norwegian.
(tags: politics silly games internet)
Kevin Drum - Mother Jones Blog: DC Charters
"Look: even your most novice educational researcher knows that comparing test scores is useless unless you control pretty carefully for things like parental involvement and expenditure levels. And most of the studies I've seen suggest that once you do that, charters perform about the same as traditional schools. At most, they perform only slightly better."
(tags: academia education blogs social-science politics US)
Online Introductory physics text | Dot…