nisbetmc | January 16, 2007
In case you missed it, ScienceBlogs lit up last week with news that Federal Way school district in Seattle has banned Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, in part because the presentation conflicts with creationist views and does not depict a fiery End Times for the earth. (Go here, here, here, and here, to name just a few posts.)
The deeply distressing news from Federal Way is yet another sign that at the local level, elements of the conservative movement are broadening their attacks on the cultural authority of science by challenging not only the consensus on evolutionary science, but also in…
nisbetmc | January 15, 2007
Bird flu is suddenly back in the news as officials in Indonesia report new cases this week. In a spring 2006 Skeptical Inquirer Online column, after evaluating trends in reporting and opinion polling, I offered this outlook on the nature of news coverage and its impact on public perceptions:
Though experts are often quick to criticize the media, so far, there is little evidence that news coverage of Avian flu has promoted undue alarm among the American public. Public attention to the topic remains relatively low, while few Americans express worry that they or their family might contract the…
nisbetmc | January 15, 2007Back in the fall, after hosting a class "blog" debate on the Internet and community, more than a few readers asked me whether I would post the reading list for the undergrad course I teach here at American University. Below is the schedule of readings assigned for the spring semester, along with a course description. As of right now, this spring semester's blog debate is scheduled to take place between April 26 and May 3.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course is an introduction to research exploring the many dimensions of "communication and society." As we will review, mass communication and…
nisbetmc | January 15, 2007For those that have been following the debate over the recent Chronicle of Higher Ed rankings of top US research universities, the publication is currently hosting an interesting discussion with the creator of the index, anthropologist Lawrence B. Martin, former graduate dean at SUNY Stony Brook Check it out here. And see this news report by the Chronicle on reaction to the index.
nisbetmc | January 15, 2007
By far, the most successful buzz marketing campaign of the past decade has been Apple's ability to dominate news coverage with the release of their latest i-products. NPR's On the Media interviews Wired columnist Pete Mortenson on how Apple gets journalists and news organizations to do their PR for them, heralding new products as page one news. Just press play above to listen.
nisbetmc | January 15, 2007
Every Tuesday, the Project for Excellence in Journalism will be releasing their weekly news index report, an analysis that tracks the major stories across media sectors including daily newspapers, online news, network TV news, cable news, and radio. Last week was the first report for 2007.
According to their numbers, the top story across all outlets was the official takeover by new Democratic Congressional leadership, which made up 15% of the overall newshole. That was followed by the death and state funeral of Gerald R. Ford (12%). The debate over U.S. Iraq policy finished third at 9%. By…
nisbetmc | January 15, 2007The same week Harvard unveiled its plans for a 250 acre Life Sciences campus, Scotland's University of Edinburgh announced a $115 million dollar Stem Cell Research Institute to be directed by Ian Wilmut. At universities across Europe, Asia, the US, and Canada, there's a race to be at the forefront of life sciences research.
Indeed, in the recent Chronicle of Higher Ed rankings of US universities, those schools with advanced medical and life sciences research dominated the top twenty. At public universities like UCSF, Berkeley, the other UC flagships, and the University of Wisconsin, their…
nisbetmc | January 15, 2007As I predicted last week in my column at Skeptical Inquirer Online, opponents of the House stem cell bill are arguing that science advocates have hyped both the promise and the public demand for research, while recent studies show a "middle way" compromise where funding for new embryonic stem cell lines is not needed. Consider, for example, this column by Yuval Levin at the Weekly Standard.
Meanwhile, the Bush White House, in a 67 page report strategically framed as "Advancing Stem Cell Science Without Destroying Human Life," argues that the latest adult stem cell studies make embryonic…
nisbetmc | January 14, 2007
There's a reason why Harvard continues to dominate institutional rankings. While some universities spend $100s of millions of dollars on their athletic programs and athletic facilities, Harvard sinks its $30 billion endowment into a 250 acre life sciences campus. From the news wires:
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - Harvard University unveiled plans on Thursday for a multibillion-dollar campus expansion that aims to turn America's oldest university into one of the world's top hubs for stem-cell research and other life sciences. The plan, years in the making, will give a radical new…
nisbetmc | January 14, 2007
The NY Times' Barnaby Feder offers this report on the City of Berkeley's decision to regulate nanotechnology locally. As this research area moves more and more into the market, and especially into overtly political contexts like city councils, state legislatures, and Congress, the issue will climb the media agenda, and shift in its framing towards more dramatic interpretations centered on scientific uncertainty, amplified risks, conflict, and the public accountability of scientists, regulators, and industry. It's a pattern I have detailed extensively in studies of stem cell research, plant…
nisbetmc | January 14, 2007You can debate the validity of these metrics endlessly. You can question whether citations and pubs are the best indicators of university quality and impact, and you can deliberate over whether or not the social sciences and humanities should be evaluated using metrics grounded in a physical sciences "lab output" model. Yet according to a calculation of publications and citations, Harvard University tops the recent Chronicle of Higher Ed rankings of doctoral research universities. At #2, UCSF ranks as the top public university overall, and Berkeley and UWisc are the other top placing…
nisbetmc | January 14, 2007Apparently, Dinesh D'Souza, who has been embarrassing himself with wanna-be-academic bomb throwing books for years, has finally thoroughly discredited himself. A fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute, D'Souza in his latest work The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, claims that bin Laden and al-Qaeda don't hate the U.S. because of its policies in the Mideast and the Muslim world but rather because of the "decadence" of America's "cultural left."
Read the WPost review calling the polemic the "worst nonfiction book about terrorism from a major publishing house…
nisbetmc | January 14, 2007
In a fall 2007 bond proposal, incoming Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Lt. Gov. David Paterson are hoping to sell voters on spending up to $2 billion over 10 years to promote advances and economic development through research on stem cells and in other life sciences (Gannett News Service).
Back in 2005, a polling study conducted by the Survey Research Institute at Cornell University depicted a NY public, that while still yet to solidify their opinions, appear supportive of spending big state cash on stem cell research.
According to the results, 45% of NYers would be likely to vote for such a bond…
nisbetmc | January 13, 2007
A battle appears to be brewing in Texas over the proposed Presidential library at SMU:
DALLAS - Negotiations to build George W. Bush's presidential library at Southern Methodist University have divided the campus, pitting the administration and some alumni against liberal-leaning faculty members who say the project would be an embarrassment to the school. Some professors have complained that the combined library, museum and think tank would celebrate a presidency that unnecessarily took the country into a war.
nisbetmc | January 12, 2007What was the impact of Bush's Iraq speech? Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post has an excellent round up of media and pundit reaction to the president's primetime TV appearance. Meanwhile, ABC News and CBS News have posted revealing results from overnight polls.
Yet the most entertaining, if not the least scientifically valid guage of public response comes by way of Slate magazine. The online commentary site partnered with HCD Research, a market-research company, in a project to investigate "real time" viewer reaction to Bush's Tuesday night speech. HCD surveys people over the Internet by…
nisbetmc | January 11, 2007In the Senate, stem cell proponents figure that they have 66 to 67 votes lined up in support of the funding bill passed today in the House. As I previously noted, a number of options are on the table to overcome an anticipated Bush veto of the bill, but where does public opinion stand on the matter?
Back in the summer, when Bush vetoed a similar version of the bill, only 32% of the public in a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll favored the action. Asked slightly differently by Gallup, only 36% said they approved of the decision. More recently, in a poll released Jan. 4 by the Civil Society…
nisbetmc | January 11, 2007
This afternoon, as expected, the House passed the stem cell funding bill, 253 to 174, falling well short of the 290 votes needed to overturn a Bush veto. Debate now moves to the Senate, where news reports peg support teetering right at the 2/3 majority needed in the chamber to override the anticipated presidential veto.
So what are the options and where are things headed? A range of possibilities exist, with many floated this week in press reports:
a) Supporters keep passing versions of the bill, and Bush keeps vetoing, until public pressure builds, and either House members shift their…
nisbetmc | January 10, 2007
Over at the Huffington Post, David Roberts concedes my point about why the Pandora's Box frame of looming catastrophe may not be the best way to communicate the urgency of climate change. Yet he disagrees that environmental advocates should be concerned about opening themselves up to claims of "alarmism" from climate skeptics.
This is a classic earnest progressive concern, as though if we just keep all our p's and q's in order, we'll render ourselves immune to criticism. Guess what? There's a whole class of people with careers and reputations built around criticizing greens and casting…
nisbetmc | January 10, 2007
Despite my misgivings about the vast commercialization of college athletics, and its impact on university culture, I did tune in to at least parts of Monday night's BCS championship game. Just in case you were one of the 20 million or so viewers wondering how star OSU receiver Ted Ginn might have injured his ankle after returning the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown...the picture above, captured by the Columbus Dispatch, tells it all, and the paper has the scoop here. Consider this the "soft journalism" post of the week.
nisbetmc | January 8, 2007
As a follow up to a previous post, NPR runs this story on the use of "surge" to describe the Administration's plan for more of the same in Iraq, featuring an interview with linguist Deborah Tannen.
Earlier this week, CNN's Jack Cafferty called the Administration's bluff, describing the use of "surge" as masking their intentions to escalate the war in Iraq. See the clip above.
Here's my question: If journalists are well aware of the strategic and misleading nature of the term, why do they continue to use it in all their reports? Sometimes you just have to scratch your head and wonder.