Policy
bcohen | March 21, 2007To make note of our newest member of the left sidebar blogroll, this is a post about Prometheus. Prometheus is a science policy weblog co-authored by a consortium of policy analysts, engineers, scientists, and STS types at or near or connected to the University of Colorado at Boulder. The blog is hosted, specifically, by the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. Their conversations are generally high-level and well-informed; the debate and dialogue doesn't seem to devolve into ad hominem very often, if ever; their approach strikes me as collegial and rigorous at the same time…
tfk | March 16, 2007Bruce Bartlett defends the media against charges of partisanship at RealClearPolitics. Maybe the press was partisan once upon a time, he says, but not any longer. He tells the lefties now complaining about the partisan media (since he acknowledges that it has moved rightward):
The problem for those on the left these days is that during the long period when there was a pronounced liberal bias in the media, they got lazy. They just assumed that the major media would automatically take their side, do hit jobs on conservatives and basically do their job for them. By contrast, conservatives have…
cmooney | March 9, 2007I was deeply heartened that my post on the IPCC communication failure from a while back prompted valuable commentary on this blog. One comment in particular was so useful and constructive that I'm reproducing it in its entirety here as a way of prompting further discussion.
I had written that when it comes to communicating the urgency of addressing climate change, "We all have a great deal more to do...and the clock is ticking." This prompted a lengthy comment from "hmd," who enumerated, in detail, the various snags and roadblocks that prevent the scientific community (broadly conceived) from…
cmooney | March 2, 2007 There's a very interesting write-up of a talk fellow ScienceBlogger Matt Nisbet, of Framing Science, just gave at Illinois State. The write up comes from the student paper over there. Here's an excerpt:
Through a theory called "Framing," Nisbet displayed how the media can affect people's views on politics.
"Framing," Nisbet said, "gives certain dimensions of a complex topic greater apparent relevance." In other words, framing emphasizes different aspects of a topic and what gets emphasized is all based on the writer's opinion. The whole thing, as Nisbet said, is "reference dependent."
Nisbet…
nisbetmc | March 1, 2007The Golden Rule in politics is never promise something you can't deliver. In 1997 Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol and committed to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12, yet emissions today are now more than 30% above the target. Last week, it was claimed by Eddie Goldenberg, a former party policy advisor, that at the time, Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretian committed the country to Kyoto fully expecting to fall short of the targets. Here's how the Globe and Mail reported the comments:
"I am not sure that Canadian public opinion -- which was…
cmooney | March 1, 2007
As I noted yesterday, a very important paper (PDF) has just come out on hurricanes and global warming, by Jim Kossin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies and his colleagues. The paper was published in Geophysical Research Letters. Here's how the University of Wisconsin-Madison's press release describes Kossin's results:
HEADLINE: New evidence that global warming fuels stronger Atlantic hurricanes
MADISON -- Atmospheric scientists have uncovered fresh evidence to support the hotly debated theory that global warming has contributed…
kcontreary | February 28, 2007Over at The Frontal Cortex, Jonah has a blog referring to a WSJ article impugning economic jurisdiction in questions outside the traditional bounds of economics. Specifically, the article cites a paper recently publicized by Cornell University claiming to establish a causal link between early childhood television viewing and autism. The thrust of the article is that the statistical tools used by economists are ill-equipped to address such questions and should be treated as suspect by the natural sciences.
The answer, as with all things, is a bit of yes and a bit of no.
I would like to begin…
sb admin | February 28, 2007By Liz Borkowski
Last week, the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP) held a panel discussion on the FDA featuring four former FDA Commissioners. While all of the panelists made a point of saying that there are a lot of wonderful people working at the FDA, they also acknowledged that the agency has some serious issues that must be addressed.
David Kessler, MD (FDA Commissioner from 1990 â 1997) remarked that being at the event was âin some ways very bittersweet.â He reflected:
I left the agency now a decade ago and I thought had done a pretty good job. Frank had approved…
tqa | February 26, 2007
Amanda Adams of OMB Watch was kind enough to draw my attention to a post by Paul Sherman over at the blog of the Center for Competitive Politics. It appears that Mr. Sherman liked neither the tone nor the substance of my last post on astroturf disclosure legislation. He was appalled by some of the things I said about the fine folks at American Target Advertising, citing my post as an example of how "proponents of disclosure...can be downright nasty to those who disagree with them." The tone of my response to Fitzgibbons and the ATA folks, and the tone of the remainder of this response to Mr…
tfk | February 26, 2007The ultra-wingnuts at the Council for National Policy can't decide who to endorse:
Many conservatives have already declared their hostility to Senator John McCain of Arizona, …[who] once denounced Christian conservative leaders as “agents of intolerance,” and to former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, because of his liberal views on abortion and gay rights and his three marriages.
Many were also suspicious of former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts … a dossier [circulated at the meeting attacked]… liberal elements of his record on abortion, stem cell research and gay rights.…
Gov. Mike…
mikethemadbiologist | February 24, 2007At a recent National Press Club roundtable about the effect of the internet on the job of the White House correspondents, journalist Richard Wolffe had this to say about bloggers:
They want us to play a role that isn't really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. ... It's not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they throw their hands up and surrender. ... It's not a political exercise, it's a journalistic exercise. And I think often the blogs are looking for us to be political advocates more than journalistic ones.
In…
sb admin | February 23, 2007By David Michaels
In the issue of Science Magazine on your virtual newsstand today, Don Kennedy has written a powerful editorial entitled âScience, Information, and Power.â (sub required) Dr. Kennedy observes that the confrontation between Congress and the White House over the production and control of science used in regulation is about an issue fundamental to both science and democracy â the presidentâs claims to exclusive power over knowledge.
Drawing as examples the House Oversight Committeeâs hearings on politicization of federal science, along with the recent changes President Bush…
pharyngula | February 20, 2007Ugh. Jim Wallis. That left-wing theo-nut.
Progressive politics is remembering its own religious history and recovering the language of faith. Democrats are learning to connect issues with values and are now engaging with the faith community. They are running more candidates who have been emboldened to come out of the closet as believers themselves.
What planet is he from? Have American politicians of any party been afraid to label themselves as religious at any time in the past century? We see the opposite problem: they all declare themselves best buddies with a god.
He also goes on to do…
pharyngula | February 19, 2007Nathan Newman asks a good question about Mitt Romney's rejection of the godless:
And at some level, why shouldn't a person's religious beliefs be relevant?
They should be. However, when one holds a minority belief about religion, one that is widely reviled, then it is to one's interest to insist that religion be off the table. That's a purely pragmatic concern. In addition, I think there's an element of resentment: we atheists have been told so often to sit down and shut up and keep our opinions out of the debate, even by people who don't believe in religion themselves, that we tend to get a…
drorzel | February 16, 2007Inside Higher Ed has a story today about a former Middlebury College president who is launching a non-profit organization to advocate a serious discussion about drinking age laws in the US. As he notes, real data on the topic are a little hard to come by:
What was striking about the research, McCardell said, was how little of it conclusively backs up claims about the positive impact of the 21-year-old drinking age. "This is by definition a very emotional issue, but what we need is an informed and dispassionate debate," he said. He said that the major flaw in analyses to date has been false…
stoat | February 13, 2007...but also about global warming. See here. And also Lubos's blog. And what did he have to say?
President Klaus also expressed his opinion on the recent finding of the UN scientific panel on global warming. In his opinion, warming is a myth. Oh dear, not a very good start.
Václav Klaus: I don't see any destruction of the planet and I've never seen any... I would like to demonstrate my non-militant mood by showing that I have brought a Europencil Ah, is that the evidence for lack of destruction? More seriously, I would draw a distinction between environmental damage and global warming. The…
clock | February 11, 2007A bunch of new links on the Basic Concepts and Terms in Science list (or my 'enhanced' list, if you prefer).
Bitch PhD has a new (paying!) gig at Suicide Girls News Blog and starts out with a post explaining the Plan B: How Does This Plan Work?
Revere on Effect Measure: Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: the Edwards blogger dust-up
Ezra Klein, in an op-ed in The Guardian (online only): We want a divider, not a uniter, and more on the topic on his own blog: More Shamefaced Obama Skepticism
Chuckles1 puts it even better: The OTHER Abraham Lincoln
A comment by Elizabeth Edwards - Response to a…
cortex | February 10, 2007So Hillary Clinton came to my town today. She packed the local high school gym and brought with her a phalanx of television cameras, hordes of reporters and a hefty dose of political celebrity. (The doors opened at 1:15, and the gym was filled to capacity by 1:30.)
What did she say? Nothing particularly revelatory, apart from the fact that she took the stage to Jesus Jones' "Right Here, Right Now." She was predictably eloquent on issues where the crowd was behind her (universal health care, Bush's incompetence, abortion, stem-cell research, etc.) and predictably evasive/nuanced on issues…
bcohen | February 9, 2007I mean the title in a different sense than most science bloggers or SciBlog readers will likely presume. I mean it as one who studies science, not one who practices it - given the complexity, esteem, importance, and promise of the scientific enterprise, such deeper understandings of what this science thing is would seem requisite. Thus, over the past thirty or forty years, a lot of people have worked to develop the area of study known as "science and technology studies" (or, with slightly differing emphases that I don't need to get into here, "science, technology, and society" - "STS" in…
clock | February 8, 2007Ah, why do I have to be so busy on a news-filled day (no, not Anna Nicole Smith)? I barely saw the computer today. I'd get home, have about 5 minutes before I have to go out again and so on. NPR did not mention Edwards until 4pm or so (that I heard in the car), so when I first got home I only had time to open e-mail, scan about 50 new messages, home in to the one that had the news, open it, get the links and quickly post without more than a quick skim of the statements by Edwards and others, let alone any time to add commentary (except for what the title implied I felt at the time). And…