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Displaying results 73701 - 73750 of 87951
Encounters With Behaviorists
Recently, I saw a famous learning theorist -- perhaps one of the two most influential learning theorists in the last 40 or so years; if ΔV = αβ(λ - ΣV) means anything to you, you'll have narrowed it down to the two -- give a talk at the behavioral neuroscience area's weekly colloqium here. The talk, on extinction, was interesting I suppose, but what really caught my attention was the speaker's language. At some point, I had to look around to make sure I wasn't at a Watson talk, circa 1915, because he kept saying things that I'd thought, well, people didn't say anymore. For example, twice…
An Unbearable Tortuosity Of Logic
On 24 November 2008, the United Nations reported the outcome of the Human Rights Council's Working Group On Right To Development. They held a vote on the question of whether people have a right to food. The United States of America voted against this: By a vote of 180 in favour to 1 against (United States) and no abstentions, the Committee also approved a resolution on the right to food, by which the Assembly would "consider it intolerable" that more than 6 million children still died every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday, and that the number of undernourished…
Of Earthquakes and Pigs
Geophysicists have href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-09/whoi-m2e091008.php">issued a warning, that the May earthquake in China has increased the risk of a follow-up quake. Geophysicists used computer models to calculate the changes in stress along the Xianshuihe, Kunlun, and Min Jiang faults—strike-slip faults like the San Andreas—which lie about 150 to 450 kilometers (90 to 280 miles) from the Longmen Shan rupture that caused the devastating quake. The research team also examined seismic activity in the region over the past decade. They found that the May 12 event…
Disturbing Report About Microsoft Vista
It's kind of technical, but interesting if you care about the inner workings of the machine you are using to read this post. Microsoft Vista has built in an elaborate system to prevent copying of protected digital content. In so doing, Microsoft has imposted stringent requirements on hardware manufacturers. They also have created a system that will have built-in performance penalties. The digital content will have to be encrypted and decrypted many times, as it passes from the DVD drive, to the CPU, the sound card, the video card. All that adds overhead to the various processors. It…
Halos in the sky
I just got back from this evening's Cafe Scientifique — where were you guys? — and I got to see lots of pretty pictures of halos and sundogs and light pillars. One of the nice things about living in Morris is that we actually get a lot of that weird atmospheric phenomena here, because we have lots of the raw material for them here: ice crystals. Vast drifting clouds of hexagonal crystals, flat and columnar, of various proportions, floating in the sky at various orientations to both refract and reflect light into our eyes. I won't go into all the details, since you weren't there. And since…
Monkey controls robotic arm with brain-computer interface
Neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh report that they have successfully trained monkeys to feed themselves using a robotic arm controlled by a brain-computer interface (BCI). The study has been covered extensively in the media, and I've written quite a lot about these devices in the past, so, rather than elaborate on it here, I'll refer you to my previous posts, and to this post by Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science. However, I suggest that the new study is somewhat overhyped in some of the news stories that I've read. According to The Independent, for example, it is "a…
Google Earth image of Moses parting the Red Sea
God's Eye View, which depicts four biblical events as if captured by Google Earth, is the work of The Glue Society, a collective of writers, designers and art/ film directors based in Sydney, Australia. Says Glue Society member James Dive: We like to disorientate audiences a little with all our work. And with this piece we felt technology now allows events which may or may not have happened to be visualized and made to appear dramatically real. As a method of representation satellite photography is so trusted; it has been interesting to mess with that trust. Dive reiterates something I…
My Big Fat Italian Christmas
Yesterday we arrived back in Boston. The 4 previous day my wife and I were celebrating Christmas up in Montreal with my giant "Italo-Canadese" family. Here are some pics of each night's festivities: Night 1: My Parents host my father's side of the family. Lots of people, lots of food. Here's a pic of most people in attendance taken by my wife. The kids' table is not visible. I'm on the left playing the part of waiter. Night 2: My brother and his girlfriend host a dinner. Not as many people as the night before, but just as much food including our first turkey for this holiday season. Night 3…
Bacterial Mitosis
I guess prokaryotes are looking more and more like eukaryotes. It turns out that their DNA is moved around by cytoskeletal filaments. The most recent (and one of the most dramatic) examples can be seen in a recent article in G&D where Fogel and Waldor describe how ParAI polymers yank the DNA around by being attaching to ParBI proteins that are anchored to specific sites called parSI sites. Although ParAI is shares structural features with MreB and thus actin, it is the functional analogue of our microtubules, ParBI would be like our kinetochores and parSI is the equivalent of our…
How to Save The Ocean
&Here's the list beginning with my thoughts. Hopefully the readers can suggest other ideas and revisions with the goal of this being a central archive for active ways to conserve our oceans. Start by eating the right fish or not eating fish at all. This is probably the easiest. You yield the greatest power when you make simple decisions at the table. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch makes this easy with downloadable charts to carry with you for every region in the U.S. With respect to fishing, Conservation Magazine also lists 10 ways to save the ocean. The list is comprised of…
Evolutionary Escalation In Squids and Whales
How do you find squid in the dark depths if you are a toothed whale or dolphin? Lindberg an expert on molluscs and Pyenson an expert on whale evolution propose that ecolocation in the ondontocetes, or toothed whales, arose as mechanism to locate squid buffets. To view this story we need to go back, way back. 45 million years ago the land mammals entered freshwater and evolved the necessary equipment to survive in an aqueous medium except obviously the ability to breath underwater. These first whales did not echolocate, which is known because their foreheads were not scooped to allow for "…
Giant Antarctic Marine Worm - Parbolasia Corrugatus
Zooillogix would like to take a moment to introduce you to Parborlasia corrugatus, a proboscis worm residing in the waters of Antarctica. We should note that we were inspired to learn more about these cute little fellows from this outstanding pic we saw on Ugly Overload. Photo credit Jeff Miller P. corrugatus grows up to two meters in length, comes in a variety of delightful colors, and kills its prey by rapidly and repeatedly stabbing it with a harpoon-like barbed proboscis! This proboscis has adhesive secretions which secure it in place. When threatened, this fast moving giant death worm…
How to Build Your Own Zoo Exhibit
Ever wanted to build a world-class exhibit for your pet Asian Sloth Bear in your backyard or living room but didn't know where to start? What kind of furniture do sloth bears prefer? How do they feel about toile? Can you feed them chocolate? Well now your problems are solved, thanks to ZooLex! ZooLex is a service of the World Zoo and Aquarium Association (WAZA), and includes a small but growing collection of design specs and industry resources for folks in the zoo exhibit planning business. As you might imagine, every last detail needs to be mapped out, from safety, cleaning and feeding to…
Newly Discovered Snail "Breaks All the Shell Rules"
Any snail enthusiast knows that their favorite creatures' shells follow certain stead-fast rules: They are cone shaped, right handed, and spiral on a single axis logarithmically. Well, let me just tell you what a shock it was to the snail community when scientists recently discovered the Opisthostoma vermiculum in Malaysia. The snail version of James Dean, the Opisthostoma vermiculum's shell breaks all the rules and answers to no one. Do you think you're the boss of it? You're not. What a Hell's Angel's shell would look like if he wore one... Seen in the picture above the Opisthostoma…
Details for NYC bloggers/readers meet-up.
For those of you who expressed an interest (even telepathically) in the meet-up of ScienceBlogs bloggers and readers in the three-dimensional world (specifically, Manhattan) next Saturday, I now have much more precise details: UPDATE: We won't be meeting at the Arthur Ross Terrace. (Thundershowers are in the forecast, and our group looks like it will be large.) When I have information on the actual venue (and how to get there) I will post it here. We'll be meeting at 2:00 pm on Saturday, August 9, at the Arthur Ross Terrace at the American Museum of Natural History in Central Park. Once…
links for 2008-01-09
see jane in the academy: one by one. An interesting addition to the tenure dossier: a public talk on one's research. (tags: academia tenure) Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog: "As a profession, is philosophy in a better or worse state than it was in 1997?" I think the philosophers quoted have interestingly different ideas of what constitutes the well-being of a profession. (tags: philosophy academia) A Philosophy Job Market Blog: Lately There Ain't Been Much Work, On Account of the Economy How hard *was* the job market in philosophy 10 years ago? (And did they really have to walk to…
Nazis, teabaggers…same difference
Last week, Glenn Beck was full of praise for a book he had claimed to have read overnight, which he regarded as a valuable source documenting the perfidy of commies. It was titled The Red Network, by Elizabeth Dilling. This morning, he is having a little trouble remembering the title and is claiming to be getting falsely tarred with accusations of being a "Jew loving Nazi sympathizer" by the Left (it's always the Left, because as we all know, there are no Jews on the Left). His lapse of memory is amusing because it has been revealed that Dilling was a fanatical anti-Semite who conspired with…
OpenWetWare
Regular readers know I frequently suggest the community of science would be better off if its institutional contexts favored more collaboration and less competition. (I'm not the only one.) So I wanted to mention a project, OpenWetWare that's trying to move biology in that direction. The project "is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering." Its website is a wiki where members can contribute information about crucial experimental materials (and how to make them), experimental…
Local fatwa envy
We have another flaming authoritarian cretin of inexplicable popularity here in Minnesota: Bradlee Dean. He runs an outfit called "You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministries", which trundles about the region bringing the word of god and Bradlee Dean to kids. He actually gets into the schools, despite the fact that he's a hateful sectarian weirdo. The scam they run is to claim that they'll entertain kids with a rock concert and bring an anti-drug, anti-sex message…neatly omitting any mention of evangelical proselytizing. You might be wondering what "controversial issues" that aren't for the "…
ScienceBlogs house band: some nominations.
Ben thinks it's time to start auditioning for a ScienceBlogs house band. Under the guidance of the Adventures in Ethics and Science Musical Advisory Panel (i.e., the sprogs), I've come up with a few suggestions: They Might Be Giants. In their prodigious catalogue, they have made it clear that they value the nerdy as a contribution to pop culture. They rock the accordian. But, as younger offspring asks, "Why aren't there any girl Giants?" Shonen Knife. Don't dare to laugh them off as "bubblegum". This cute package will mess you up if you try to resist the beat it's serving. But more of…
"Roman numerals? They didn't even try to teach us that in school!"
Sadly, this makes me think more kids should have been watching M&M commercials in December of 1999. As reported by the Gainesville Sun: Proofreaders at the University of Florida appear to have failed the Pepsi challenge. UF has called off a massive giveaway of Gator T-shirts, paid for by Pepsi, upon realizing that Roman numerals intended to denote the year "2006" on the shirts actually translated into "26" in standard Arabic numerals. "The giveaway was halted," said Mike Hill, UF's associate athletics director for external affairs. "We identified the problem on the first day of…
Intelligence, moral wisdom, and reactions to the University of Alabama-Huntsville shootings.
From a recent article in the New York Times considering University of Alabama-Huntsville shooter Amy Bishop's scientific stature and finding it lacking, this comment on why so many denizens of the internet think they can understand why she did what she did: Why did people who knew Dr. Bishop only through reading about her crime make excuses for her? Joanathan D. Moreno, a professor of medical ethics and the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks reactions have to do with a long tradition that goes back to Plato. The idea, he said, is that someone who is…
Dr. Free-Ride plays with molecular gastronomy.
Today I decided to play with some chemicals I ordered to try to spherify V-8. It's the molecular gastronomy thing where you mix a liquid with sodium alginate, then drip it into an aqueous solution of calcium chloride to get the juice-alginate mixture to gel, forming a skin around a liquid center. My first attempt did not produce the results I was shooting for. First off, my kitchen scale, a lovely little device that measures with a precision of 1/8 ounce or 1 gram, is not great for measuring tenths of grams. Who knew that I'd miss Mettler balances (and weighing boats)? Second of all, V-8,…
"Time to throw the switch" open thread
The day is here. Time to throw the switch. What do I mean? I've been mentioning that I wanted to turn on the option that states, "Comment author must have a previously approved comment." What that means is that any new commenter's first comment will automatically go to moderation. I'll approve it (unless it's spam or I suspect it's a sockpuppet), and then you'll be able to comment normally. The reason I want to turn this option on is to make it more difficult for morphing sockpuppets to disrupt the conversation. I'm also tired of so much spam getting through. Never having used this option…
Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith...
I just learned something that will sadden the heart of any Doctor Who fan. Elizabeth Sladen, who played longtime companion of the Doctor Sarah Jane Smith, has died of cancer: Doctor Who star Elisabeth Sladen, who was also in spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, has died aged 63. Sladen appeared as Doctor Who assistant Sarah Jane Smith in the BBC television sci-fi series between 1973 and 1976, opposite Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. The Liverpool-born actress appeared in four series from 2007 of The Sarah Jane Adventures on children's channel CBBC. Sladen had been battling cancer for some…
That's some tongue
Behold the spectacularly long-tongued glossophagine nectar bat, Anoura fistulata: Anoura fistulata feeding from a test tube filled with sugared water; its tongue (pink) can extend to 150% of body length. This length of tongue is unusual for the genus, and there is an explanation for how it can fit all of that into its mouth: it doesn't. The base of the tongue has been carried back deep into the chest in a pocket of epithelium, and is actually rooted in the animal's chest. Ventral view of A. fistulata, showing tongue (pink), glossal tube and tongue retractor muscle (blue), and skeletal…
Three Academic Books on Bird Migration
These are the kinds of books you get if you are either a scientists studying bird migration and related issues, or a very serious bird geek. The first two can be obtained at very low prices used, but the third will set you back at least 50 bucks US$ if you want a used copy. Note the spread of publication dates. It is not the case that the oldest book is out of date in all respects: Quite the contrary. Alerstam reviews theory and ideas that have not been revisited or revised to any great degree. Also, it is interesting to see how changes in the field develop over a decade or so. In any…
Steve Jobs: "Android tracks you, Apple does not."
According to Steve Jobs, Apple's iPhone and/or Apple corporation (the distinction is important but often muddled in this conversation) does not track its users' geographical location, but Android (which is neither a phone nor a company, but a system ... another important yet muddled distinction) does. Supposedly: One MacRumors reader emailed Apple CEO Steve Jobs asking for clarification on the issue while hinting about a switch to Android if adequate explanations are not forthcoming. Jobs reportedly responded, turning the tables by claiming both that Apple does not track users and that…
Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks to Alarmingly Small Range
Scientists have been measuring sea ice very carefully since 1979. Prior to that, there are estimates that are of varying degrees of usefulness. I know for a fact that many New England lighthouses were attached to land by winter-long ice in places that have not had sea ice in any living person's memory, and there are similar bits and pieces of historical data suggesting that sea ice was once much more extensive in the Northern Hemisphere than at present. Since 1979 there have been three years in which Arctic sea ice reached a rather alarming minimum size prior to reforming. We are in one…
Michael Egnor, Paleyist surgeon
The Discovery Institute seems well pleased with their new anachronistic acolyte, a modern neurosurgeon who harks back fondly to the ancient wheeze of Natural Theology from a few centuries back. He's been promoted to being a regular contributor on the DI Media Complaints Division web page, and he manages to combine the arrogance of a surgeon with the ignorance of most creationist hacks in a way that I'm sure the other DI fellows envy — he's like the apotheosis of the Intelligent Design ideal. Why, he's got the dishonesty of Wells, the pomposity of Johnson, the ineffectual stupidity of Luskin,…
Unconnected interesting items.
Nearly Extinct Tree gets new lease, Elephants invade South America, Python on Wall Street. There is a species of tree in New Zealand that has only one individual in the wild. They thought it was a female, but it turns out that there are individuals (among those cultivated by gardeners) that seem to have some kind of male parts anyway, and it is possible now to re-establish the species in the wild. Originally, the tree, Pennantia baylisiana, was nearly wiped out because of goats released into their previously goat-free habitat. Keep an eye on this story. Interesting things may develop.…
Carroll steps up to the plate...
The physicist Sean Carroll takes on Eagleton, and also makes a few comments on The God Delusion—key point, I think: Dawkins took on too many issues at once in the book, and opened himself up to criticisms on the weaker parts that are used to dismiss the stronger parts. I agree. Most of the discussion takes up a weakness in theology, and it parallels the weakness in Dawkins' book: the confusion between different concepts of this god-thingie. Theologians play that one like a harp, though, turning it into a useful strategem. Toss the attractive, personal, loving or vengeful anthropomorphic…
The Deluded and the Shills
John Quiggin notes that Michael Shermer and Sir David Attenborough have now accepted that the evidence for global warming is overwhelming and that the skeptics now mostly consist of the deluded like Ken Ring and the shills like the CEI. Speaking of which, here's the latest from Ken Ring. Cameron: CO2 is all around us, its part of what makes air air. Plants take up CO2 through stomata, on the UNDERSIDE of their leaves Kenny - not a good strategy for your "falling CO2". Ken Ring: If CO2 doesn't fall then how does it get to vegetation? I suppose you think it rises then twists in the air doing a…
Top ten right-wing Australian blogs
It would be crass to post a top ten list where your own blog was number one. But if you posted a list where some other blog was number one and then that other blog returned the favour, well, that wouldn't be crass would it? Anyway, here are the top ten Alexa-ranked-by-traffic right-wing Australian blogs. Tim Blair: 50,087 Catallaxy files: 225,663 Gravett.org (Yobbo plus a bunch of RWDBs I can't tell apart): 488,606 Observation Deck (Bernard Slattery, James McConvill, Peter Faris QC et al): 502,086 Blithering Bunny: 848,020 Man of Lettuce: 1,566,151 Whacking Day: 1,791,563…
How did I miss this contest?
Sorry I'm a bit late on this. (Yes, I know that Tara and John pimped this contest nearly a month ago, but somehow it slipped by me to mention it myself; that is, until Skepchick reminded me of it as I caught up on my blog reading over the weekend. If you've read my Medicine and Evolution series, you'll know I'd be interested in this contest. From the Alliance for Science, it is an essay contest for high school students. The topic is Why would I want my doctor to have studied evolution? They're asking for an essay of 1,000 words or less, and the due date is March 31. Official rules are here.…
Parting fools from their money
BetUS.com has set up a bunch of bets for suckers on global warming. Ker Than at LiveScience has the story: BetUS.com spokesman Reed Richards said the company will personally back numerous bets, or "propositions," posted on the website related to global warming. "It's part of a campaign we've been doing for the past two and a half years called 'pop culture gaming,'" Richards said. "You can wager on things in the headlines." One bet gives members 1-to-5 odds that scientists will prove global warming exists beyond any scientific doubt by the end of this year. Another gives 100-to-1 odds that…
IPCC AR4 released
The IPCC has released the Summary For Policymakers of the Fourth Assessment Report. Some of the conclusions: Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely [defined as >90% probability] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations The equilibrium climate sensitivity is a measure of the climate system response to sustained radiative forcing. It is not a projection but is defined as the global average surface warming following a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations. It is likely [>66% chance]…
Taking "touchy-feely" to a whole new level
And, worse, this is from my home state as well: LANSING - A Rochester Hills chiropractor defended the techniques of a Fenton chiropractor accused of performing unorthodox breast treatments. The teen girls treated by Robert J. Moore have spinal curvatures that may have caused their bodies to tilt and force one breast to droop lower than the other, said Dr. Robert Ducharme, a chiropractor who testified Tuesday in Moore's defense. Moore risks losing his chiropractic license after four women, including two teenage girls, claim he fondled them during office and after-hours visits. Moore, 41,…
Midweek reading
Unfortunately, I didn't have time to write much for today. Fortunately, this gives me the perfect opportunity to remedy a situation in which I've been remiss. As you know, Kathleen Seidel has been tirelessly exposing the dubious science promoted by Mark and David Geier, who advocate using Lupron to shut of sex hormone synthesis as a means of "treating" autism by "making chelation therapy more effective." She's posted much more since I last referenced her. The advantage of my not having much time is that you can read the results of her investigations directly without my extensive commentary.…
Two weeks from blog post to paper submitted
It's only taken two weeks to go from the blog posts shredding McLean et al to a paper submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research. The authors are G. Foster, J. D. Annan, P. D. Jones, M. E. Mann, B. Mullan, J. Renwick, J. Salinger, G. A. Schmidt, and K. E. Trenberth and the abstract says: McLean et al. [2009] (henceforth MFC09) claim that the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), as represented by the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), accounts for as much as 72% of the global tropospheric temperature anomaly (GTTA) and an even higher 81% of this anomaly in the tropics. They conclude…
Marohasy's dishonesty
Pure Poison is a new blog covering the intellectual dishonesty of Australia's punditocrats. Tobias Ziegler covers Marohasy's response to Bond University's categorical denial of her claim that Jon Jenkins had been fired for his opinions: But her most disingenuous statement was the following: My original blog piece included both fact and opinion. You may disagree with my opinion (based on the facts and my world view), but the facts stand. Mr Lambert queried the facts unsuccessfully. His opinion (based on his world view), though, has not changed. Marohasy claimed that "[f]or his opinion,"…
Why you should study statistics, part 2
Back in 2006, Tim Blair declared I'd lean towards the official police figures myself (although jerked-around crime counting methods make comparisons problematic), mainly because they're, you know, official police figures. The British Crime Survey is just a survey. Alas, he backed the wrong horse, as this story from the BBC proves: Police miscount serious violence A number of police forces in England and Wales have been undercounting some of the most serious violent crimes, the government has admitted. It means figures for serious violent crimes rose by 22% compared to last year - rather…
The Australian's War on Science XIX
The latest volley from the Australian is an article by John McLean. You might remember him as the guy who kept steering Andrew Bolt into brick walls. He's now styling himself as a "climate data analyst and a member of the Australian Climate Science Coalition", which might sound impressive if you didn't know that the only qualification he holds is a Bachelor of Architecture and that the Australian Climate Science Coalition doesn't contain any climate scientists. Anyway, his article is just a rehash of his earlier one where he accused the IPCC of lying about the scientific support for his…
Groundpundit Day
Oh look, it's Glenn Reynolds: Cracks in the Consensus? Hey, science advances by changing its mind in response to new data. The worrisome thing would be if people didn't. And from his link: Professor Oleg Sorokhtin of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences is advising people "to stock up on fur coats" because he expects an extended period of global cooling, an assessment that is echoed by Kenneth Tapping of the U.S. National Academy of Science's National Research Council. Both scientists contend solar activity explains most of the temperature variation in the Earth's atmosphere. We know…
The carbon footprint gotcha
What Mark Kleiman says John Tierney, demoted from the NYT op-ed page and now continuing his libertarian propagandizing in the guise of "science writing," points out that flying around to climate-change conferences creates a large carbon footprint for high-profile environmental activists. That allows Tierney to claim the sort of faux-populist gotcha! so beloved among glibertarians and greedhead conservatives. (The theocrat, nativist, and imperialist wings of conservatism prefer their faux-populist gotcha!s on different topics.) If you travel frequently by air, even on commercial flights, you…
Here's one not to miss: Richard Dawkins on the Colbert Report
Thanks to Norm, I recently found out that Richard Dawkins now has a web page (the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science). Certainly, any self-respecting skeptic would have to add that one to his sidebar, which I've now done. Even though I don't always agree with the vociferousness of some of Dawkin's views, he is vigorous defender of science and critical thinking. (I also like where he has placed Ann Coulter on his website.) Thanks to the generosity of our Seed overlords in using their contacts with the book industry, I was greeted upon my return from North Carolina with a nice…
Editor-in-Chief of Remote Sensing agrees that Spencer and Braswell (2011) should not have been published; resigns
Wolfgang Wagner, Editor-in-Chief of Remote Sensing writes: Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science. Their aim is to achieve highest scientific standards by carrying out a rigorous peer review that is, as a minimum requirement, supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims. Unfortunately, as many climate researchers and engaged observers of the climate change debate pointed out in various internet discussion fora, the paper by Spencer and Braswell [1] that was recently published in Remote Sensing is most likely problematic in both aspects and…
DeLong explains Easterbrook
How can Gregg Easterbrook be publishing a science column in Slate? Brad DeLong explains it all. The fact that Easterbook's writing is "lively" and "provocative" and that he is a member of the appropriate social networks is sufficient reason to publish him as a "science writer." I can see where "lively" and "provocative" are necessary pre-conditions for getting a column in a popular magazine, but are they sufficient? No. Would they hire someone for a gossip column who had never heard of Scarlet Johansson or Brad Pitt? There is this phenomenon called "expertise" that ought to be part of the…
Rosegate scandal still growing: David Rose admits that he has no credibility
There have been two shock new developments in the Rosegate scandal. First, Deltoid can reveal that as well as misrepresenting Murari Lal and Mojib Latif, David Rose did the same thing to Roger Pielke Jr. Just as with Lal and Latif, no correction has been made. Second, in a comment left here David Rose has admitted that he has no credibility, conceding that "nothing I write here will make a scrap of difference". While it's certainly true that Rose lacks credibility, it's worth reflecting on why. I imagine you've noticed that when a reporter writes about something that you are expert on,…
The creator of the MMR vaccine "saddened" by the controversy stirred up by Andrew Wakefield
Via Black Triangle, I've come across an article about a real medical hero, a man responsible for the development of many of the vaccines we have today. Indeed, it can be argued that this man, Dr. Maurice Hillman, may have saved more lives than any other physician in history. Those who remember him describe his reaction to the controversy stirred up by Andrew Wakefield: The MMR was introduced into the UK in 1988, but became increasingly controversial following Andrew Wakefield's study published in the Lancet in the late 1990s, which linked the vaccine with autism. That study has now been…
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