links for 2009-01-28

"Our Benevolent Seed Overlords ask "What is science's rightful place?" which refers to a line from Obama's inaugural address where he vowed to "restore science to its rightful place."
Since ScienceBlogling Jake discussed the importance of basing policy on evidence--as well as correctly recognizing that the method we use to solve problems does not shed much light on whether we should address those problems in the first place--I want to bring up one problem that science faces: it is, to a great extent, elitist."

They can't convince me that Glasshouse is anything but excruciating, but some pretty smart people have written articles about Charlie's books.

"Doing some quick searches in response to our co-bloggerâs co-bloggerâs post about the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, I came across the following chart detailing the ratio of reported cases to deaths in San Fransisco. Not only is it a priceless statistical representation of panic, it also captures the malleability of even professional opinion."

"There is essentially zero causation between Obamaâs installation in the oval office and market performance on the same day. Itâs not like stock brokers woke up that Tuesday morning, flipped on their TVs, discovered that Obama was about to become president, and decided to dump their portfolios."

"Arguably science is the most successful human activity of all time. Which is not to say that life within it is always utopian, as several of my colleagues have pointed out in articles about pharmaceutical industry payments to medical researchers.

But nobody was ever sent to prison for espousing the wrong value for the Hubble constant. There is always room for more data to argue over.

So if youâre going to get gooey about something, thatâs not so bad."