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Without Experiment, There Is No Theory

A lot of people have been blogging and Twittering about this subway map of science, which puts various branches of science in the place of the lines on the London Underground map, showing connections between them. It's a huge graphic, but a kind of cool image. I do, however, have a problem with it, which is illustrated by the key to the lines shown at right. The category of physics is presented as "Theoretical Physics and Quantum Mechanics." I have no problem with the quantum part, as quantum mechanics is one of the greatest intellectual achievements in human history. I do have a problem…

Why Every Dog Should Love Quantum Physics 4: Lasers

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is now listed as "In Stock" at Amazon, so it's the perfect time to order a dozen or so copies for your last-minute holiday gift needs. "But, wait," you say, "why do I want to teach my dog physics? Particularly quantum physics-- why does anyone need to know that?" The answer is: "Lasers." Lasers are pretty awesome, right? Let's ask an expert: If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One! OK, maybe he's a bad one to ask. Still, lasers are pretty awesome, and lasers…

Links for 2009-09-26

Zoom-Whirl Orbits in Black Hole Binaries Title of the week from PRL. (tags: science physics articles theory gravity) Phase-Slip Interferometry for Precision Force Measurements "We demonstrate a novel atom interferometric force sensor based on phase slips in the dynamic evolution of a squeezed-state array of degenerate 87Rb atoms confined in a one-dimensional optical lattice. The truncated Wigner approximation is used to model our observations." (tags: science articles physics atoms optics low-temperature experiment theory precision-measurement) Bose-Einstein Condensation of Alkaline…

links for 2009-04-30

Confessions of a Community College Dean: The Boy, On Scientists "My hero is a scientist. Every day they mak EXITING discoveries. They also make AWESOME potions, space probes and cool new ships. They launch rockets and space ships. I like it when the Space Shuttle goes up. It always makes me think of the scientists who made it. Scientists are really cool!" (tags: science kid-stuff dean-dad) EzraKlein Archive | The American Prospect "One of the quirks of the elite political debate is that it tends to occur in dense cities with extremely impressive transportation infrastructures. DC. New…

Checklist: Check!

SteelyKid was delivered by Caesarean section (MacDuff won't stand a chance...). They let me in to the operating room just before the moment of delivery, and I stuck around while they cleaned her up and did the early tests that they do on newborns, before they brought her over for me and Kate to see. While we were waiting (and quietly rejoicing), the surgeons were going about the business of closing things up. I have an unholy aversion to all things medical, so I tried not to pay too much attention to what they were doing, but I gradually became aware of a pattern: one of the nurses would…

Morris Area High Schools … for Christ

Speaking of bad teaching and schools that screw up under community pressure, it looks like we have an ugly story here in Morris. Last week, the student at the Morris Area High School were released from classes (you know, those sessions where they are supposed to learn something) to listen to some motivational speaker babbling about healthy lifestyles and abstinence, and apparently telling them that Madonna was a lesbian, among other tidbits. I've only heard third-hand about the event itself — Skatje's still in touch with friends at the high school, but she didn't actually attend herself — but…

Thoughts on a Creation Science Presentation

A two hour presentation was given at a local church last night by creation scientist whom I won't name. This presentation overall lacked direction and seemed to jump from one topic to another without really stopping to make a point. About a third of the presentation was about dinosaur diversity, talking briefly about neat features that a variety of dinosaurs have. Various weather phenomena that could have caused the flood described in Genesis were vaguely presented without any solid background or logic. Fossils were also discussed, again without really any rhyme or reason. There were two…

Literary Divination

Over at Making Light, Abi has proposed a parlour game using books as Tarot cards. As always for Making Light, the resulting comment thread is full of dizzyingly erudite responses, and clever literary in-jokes. But it strikes me that there's a fundamental flaw in the game-- Abi's examples all involve selected works, chosen to be appropriate for the subject of the reading. For true divination, though, you need an element of randomness, whether it be yarrow stalks tossed in the air, or the iTunes randomizer. Fortunately, we have LibraryThing: if you look at our library, you'll see a "Random…

Culture of Corruption, Part II?

I almost entitled this post "Lying to Congress, Part II," to be congruent with my href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/07/lying_to_congress.php">previous post, but it has not been established conclusively that anyone has lied.  All we know at this point is that information is being withheld, and it appears as though someone is lying.   From Fox News: href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,206967,00.html">Congressmen: Dept. of Interior Fudged Oil Drilling Contracts Thursday, August 03, 2006 WASHINGTON — Two congressmen said Thursday someone at the Interior…

Mailbag: How to light a photo backdrop with the MP-E lens

A reader asks: I also have a MP-E lens with the MT-24EX flash unit. I was curious to know something I didnât see you mention in your recent blog post about this setup. Could you share any technical points regarding how you achieve the visible backgrounds with that lens? In general, I get very nice shots with everything beyond the focused subject completely blacked out. Since dark areas in photographs are the bits that aren't sending light to the camera, it follows that getting a visible backdrop means applying light behind the subject. Earlier, I wrote that the black backdrop in insect…

Images of the Archbold Biological Station

dawn in the scrub I spent last week in central Florida at the Archbold Biological Station. Archbold preserves 5,000 hectares of Florida sand scrub, some of the last remaining patches of an ecosystem now largely lost to agriculture and strip malls.  The sand scrub is an odd place, a fossil beach from when sea levels were high enough to restrict peninsular Florida to a narrow sandbar.  Water runs right through the coarse sand, leaving the scrub looking much like a desert in spite of regular afternoon rains.  Cacti thrive.  It is a paradoxical place. The scrub is also remarkable for…

Urge to kill…fading…fading…fading

Steven Pinker has a new book coming out next week, and I'm very much looking forward to it. It is titled The Better Angels Of Our Nature: How Violence Has Declined, and its premise is that humans have been becoming increasingly less violent over time. I'm very sympathetic to this view: I think cooperation, not conflict, has been the hallmark of human evolution. There's an overview of Pinker's argument at Edge. Believe it or not--and I know most people do not--violence has been in decline over long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence. The…

Survey of women geoscientists

While I'm working on my course design stuff, please help some of my lovely bloggy friends conduct some research on how women geoscientists use blogs. Over the past several years, the geoscience blogosphere has blossomed so much that this fall, the Geological Society of America (GSA) will be convening a Pardee Keynote Symposium called "Google Earth to Geoblogs: Digital Innovations in the Geosciences." Kim Hannula started wondering how blogs serve women geoscientists. Kim recruited the rest of us and we decided to approach this problem as scientists - by collecting data and analyzing the…

Secret messages to inconsiderate and entitled mess-makers

Dear student who left a 3 oz. blob of ketchup right where people step out of the stairway and into the hallway, The dozens of people who will have to sidestep your mess this afternoon do not appreciate you and your laziness. There are bathrooms with paper towels 15 m away from the spot where you made your mess. I'm the mother of a toddler, and I know for a fact that paper towels will do an admirable job of wiping up most spilled food. Even if you didn't manage to get every last drop of ketchup off the linoleum, people would much rather accidentally step in a few smudges of it than step in…

"Too busy for a pie contest" chicken pot pie

When the Overlordz announced a pie contest in honor of Pi day, I thought that I might be able to muster something up. But after seeing Janet's seven(!) delectable pies, Maria's pie + cocktail, Jess's "yes pecan" pie, and Zuska's bird pie, I realized that I don't have the skills or the time to compete with these kitchen mavens. I'm a busy woman. Most nights dinner is done in a hurry and deserts are a rare luxury. Baked deserts even more so. But I can make a mean pot pie. It's quick, it's easy, and it's comfort food. I got the original inspiration from Real Simple, but the recipe is…

Pharm Girl, not mine

I just learned last week from Insider/Jack Friday at Pharmagossip that Reese Witherspoon will be starring in (and producing) a movie entitled, "Pharm Girl." (btw, if you are interested in the pharma industry and don't follow Pharmagossip, you must do so.) Reese Witherspoon is going into Big Pharma Universal Pictures is developing "Pharm Girl," an aspirational comedy centering on one woman's odyssey through the drug industry. "Bad Santa" screenwriters Glenn Ficarra and John Requa are writing the screenplay and in talks to direct. Witherspoon is producing via her Type A banner and will play…

Heroin Hits The Heartland

When one thinks of a heroin user, thoughts most often come to mind of a person living in squalor in a big metropolitan city or that of an artsy, poetic hipster (while there are many literary works on the life of heroin users, my all-time favorite is Basketball Diaries, an autobiographical account written by Jim Carroll during the ages of 12 to 15. From this description of Carroll's two works on his life with heroin at the catholicboy.com website of Carroll scholar, Dr Cassie Carter: "After reading about 30 pages of the Diaries, [Jack] Kerouac stated that 'at the age of 13, Jim Carroll writes…

Not Mr Kotter, but PalMD's White Coat Underground: Welcome Back!

Let me just start off this post by thanking Mark and Chris Hoofnagle for inviting PalMD to join them at denialism blog. Through Orac, I had followed Pal at his White Coat Underground and was delighted when the Hoof-gents invited PalMD to a bigger forum in their ScienceBlogs digs. PalMD has now metamorphosized with his old blog now on ScienceBlogs. Congratulations, friend! My Mom, a retired nurse, will understand completely when I say that PalMD is the kind of doc I once thought I could be (and Mom, you've got to put this guy in your bookmarks!). Many speak of Pal's criticism of…

Smartphone hivemind: Treo, Blackberry, or iPhone?

Okay, my friends. My two years of imprisonment are up. I love my Treo 700p but it is time for me to make a change. Any reviews of new Treos I've seen tell me that I need to attend a funeral. So, if I am to change, let me tell you first what I love: 1. a good synch-able scheduling function - I look back at this schedule when composing my annual report of scholarly activities for The Man. I like to synch it with my personal computer but NOT with the corporate Outlook. 2. keeping my personal stuff far separate from my business stuff (but I like the real-time push of business e-mail) 3. a real…

Melamine and cyanuric acid revisited

This morning's post from Molecule of the Day reminds me to ask "cyanuric acid question." With the recent adulterations with melamine of Chinese milk and milk products (like White Rabbit chocolates) and foods with other milk-derived ingredients, we wonder if we will ultimately hear that a compound from fertilizer, cyanuric acid, is part of the mix. Melamine is a cheap chemical that gives a false positive in typical protein assays; therefore, it can be used to make food appear to contain more protein than it actually does. You'll often hear of cyanuric acid being referred to as a pool chemical…

Presidential debate focused on science & technology

Yes! "A Call for a Presidential Debate on Science & Technology." Imagine a presidential debate focused solely on issues of science and technology as they relate to medicine, international competitiveness, terrorism, public health, embryonic stem cell research, bioethics of genotyping and other molecular diagnostics, research policy/funding and job creation, or minimization of health disparities, among others. Science Debate 2008 is a grassroots initiative spearheaded by a growing number of scientists and other concerned citizens. The signatories to our "Call for a Presidential Debate on…

Great local source on the Polk County school board

All the kool kids are keeping their eyes on the Polk County, Florida, school board and their contention that 'intelligent design' should be taught alongside evolution in their public schools. Fortunately, several states have groups of concerned citizens who contend that actual science should be taught in schools, lest we continue to suffer as a society from the erosion of critical thinking skills. Florida Citizens for Science (FCS, or FlCfS) is one of those valuable groups. Brandon Haught has been doing a terrific job keeping us apprised of local developments via the Florida Citizens for…

Don't Bogart My Insulin

Scott Hensley at the WSJ.com Health Blog had a banner day today with the sad withdrawal by Pfizer of their inhaled insulin product, Exubera. When I was a pharmacy professor in the mid-1990s, we shared Pharma's optimism that an inhaled insulin product would be a godsend for diabetes patients who had to inject themselves with this essential hormone. The Terra Sig blog also has a historical soft spot for insulin since it was first crystallized by our nom-sake, Prof John Jacob Abel (PNAS 1926; 12:132-6 - PDF here). Well, Abel must be quite disappointed somewhere out there in the Great Beyond:…

NASCAR As An Infectious Disease

The Southland is all abuzz today following yesterday's Charlotte Observer article by Lisa Zagaroli that members of the US House Homeland Security Committee were advised to get vaccinations (for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, diphtheria and influenza) before traveling to car races in Concord, NC, and Taladega, AL. Neither NASCAR fans or local politicians were pleased with the insinuations: Rep. Robin Hayes, a Republican from Concord, took umbrage when he heard about it. "I have never heard of immunizations for domestic travel, and as the representative for Concord, N.C., I feel compelled…

I am not worthy

[Sort of a repost from last year, updated appropriately - APB] Five years ago at 11:24 am EDT (1624 GMT), your humble blogger was handed the keys to a whole new vocabulary of love. The gift came in the form of a 7 lb. 13 oz. (3,544 gm), 20.5 inch (52 cm) bundle of drooling, peeing, meconium-pooping bundle of baby girl, yanked from an incision in PharmGirl's abdomen. The lessons of compassion and unconditional love I have been taught by these two women have comprised the most formative experiences of my life. In return, PharmGirl has suffered tremendous indignancies on my behalf: the…

Misguided Autism Treatment Death Leads to Manslaughter Charge

This is just heart-wrenchingly sad: A [Pittsburgh area] doctor was charged with involuntary manslaughter Wednesday for administering a chemical treatment that state police say killed a 5-year-old autistic boy. The child, Abubakar Tariq Nadama, went into cardiac arrest at Dr. Roy E. Kerry's office immediately after undergoing chelation therapy on Aug. 23, 2005. Chelation removes heavy metals from the body and is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating acute heavy metal poisoning, but not for treating autism. Some people who believe autism is caused by a mercury-containing…

Useful and dynamic departmental websites? Anyone? Bueller?

As you begin your week, I was hoping that I might impose upon you for some suggestions or examples from your neck of the woods. Working with my talented and forward-thinking university Web Services colleague, Damond Nollan, I have the opportunity to craft from scratch a website for an academic department. I've found many examples of good, individual laboratory websites and The Scientist even ran a contest two years ago for such sites. However, I've not seen much attention on what makes a good academic department website, what people want to see in a departmental website, or good examples of…

Paul Offit, Amy Wallace, and Conde Nast being sued by anti-vaccinationist

Thanks to the always vigilant eyes of Liz Ditz, Ratbags.com is reporting that pediatric immunologist and vaccine developer Dr. Paul Offit, writer Amy Wallace, and Condé Nast (publisher of Wired magazine) are being sued for libel in US District Court by Barbara Loe Fisher, founder and acting president of the so-called National Vaccine Information Center. Readers will recall that Wallace's article on Dr. Offit and the fear and misinformation propagated by anti-vaccinationists was the centerpiece of a feature in Wired magazine aptly titled, "Epidemic of Fear." My short take: The lawsuit is an…

What if retired profs offer to help and no one listens?

As state university systems are making budget cuts and furloughing professors while have to expand course sections to meet burgeoning enrollment, one solution may be to tap the expertise of retired professors in the area. The Research Triangle area of North Carolina, home to over a dozen colleges and universities, is also home to at least 600 retired professors. This morning, Eric Ferreri of the Raleigh News & Observer, one of the best higher-ed reporters in the biz, reports on the offers from very accomplished profs who want to give back to their community and the relative lack of…

Canadian government muzzles its scientists

Sting was right. History will teach us nothing. Seemingly oblivious to the disaster that was the Bush administration's efforts to limit media access to government scientists, Canada's governing politicians are following in their American neighbor's footsteps. According to Margaret Munro of the National Post, Environment Canada has "muzzled" its scientists, ordering them to refer all media queries to Ottawa where communications officers will help them respond with "approved lines." The new policy, which went into force in recent weeks and sent a chill through the department research divisions…

The Inevitability of Stupidity case study 567: Jim Watson

Sooner or later, it would seem even the most brilliant and accomplished scientist says something stupid. James Watson's disappointing pronouncement on race and intelligence is in no way excusable, but it may be explainable. Would that it were not so, but I fear the law of inevitable stupidity will only become more apparent thanks to human longevity and the ever-expanding volume of the blogosphere. Watson is far from being alone when it comes to that subset of distinguished and accomplished elder statesmen and women of academia who have stepped over the line of reason. Consider these other…

Why the ice caps are an endangered species

James Hansen isn't satisfied with an audience limited to those that read his peer-reviewed scientific papers and the odd Congressional hearing attendee. In this essay, NASA's top climate scientist takes the substance of a recent paper that discusses the "reticence" of some climatologists to make their fears about dangerous climate change public and gives his argument a more accessible treatment. The New Scientist version is gripping stuff, right from the first paragraph, which also appears in almost identical form in the Environmental Research Letters original. I find it almost inconceivable…

Sunday Sermon: Just say no to faith-based policy

Just in case you were wondering why so many science bloggers devote so much keystrokes to criticizing religion, the Washington Post's Rob Stein has this convenient reminder of the danger of letting faith inform public policy: The long decline in sexual activity among U.S. teenagers, hailed as one of the nation's most important social and public health successes, appears to have stalled. After decreasing steadily and significantly for more than a decade, the percentage of teenagers having intercourse began to plateau in 2001 and has failed to budge since then, despite the intensified focus in…

Rio. Carnaval. Darwin?

I'm sitting here in Minnesota, anticipating another midweek snowstorm that's on the way, and what do I learn? If I were in Rio de Janeiro I could be watching Carnaval. Heck, I could be dancing in the streets with a big fruity drink in my hand, blowing kisses to the lovely girls in exotic costumes. Maybe I could even write it off. Look at this: one of the clubs is celebrating Darwin's voyage of the Beagle with an hour-long parade. Here's the announcement from the club. Science still commemorates 150 years of the first publication of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, the book that caused a true world…

Sunday Function

Time for a vacation! Grab a globe of the earth and pick a random number between 0 and 180 degrees for your latitude and between 0 and 360 for your longitude and set off on your vacation. It's exciting! You're bound for anywhere on earth, and every obscure location has the same probability of being chosen! "Not so fast," the stern voice of vector calculus intones. "In fact not every location is equally probable. You're most likely to be visiting one of the polar regions if you pick a location using your method." Why is this? Picture abstractly a globe of the earth with a latidude and…

Bacon and Asimov

Friday I met my first ScienceBlogger in person. Nick Anthis from The Scientific Activist was in town, and as he's a former Aggie we got to trade a few stories about the university and the different kinds of work we're doing. He's a cool dude! It was very nice meeting him, and I think it might just inspire me to try to organize a reader meet-up at some point. College Station is tiny and in the middle of nowhere, but I think there's a few other Texas ScienceBloggers as well so maybe we could have a group meet somewhere big and convenient like Dallas or Houston. We'll worry about that later…

Twinkies and the Farm Bill

While doing some background research on democracy, science, and environmental policy, I found myself reviewing some of the thousands of public comments offered for the 2007 Farm Bill we've referenced at this site several times (here's one, on science). Interesting Stuff. Farm Bill legislation has been in the works for a few years, with public hearings across the nation and opportunities for input into the process by farmers, farm associations, environmental groups, and agro-business all the while. It was passed by the House this Summer and is now being debated in the Senate. When I first…

Live-tweeting the World Conference of Science Journalists

For the next three days, I will be at the World Conference of Science Journalists live-tweeting the sessions I'm attending. The talks so far have been excellent but so far, the live-tweeting experience has been a revelation. I have Word open on the right of my screen for note-taking and Tweetdeck on the left for tweeting and collating what others are saying with the #wcsj hashtag. I was initially very sceptical of doing this but the perks have been numerous. Most of all, it's a strangely exhilarating experience to hear what other people think and respond to while the talks are actually…

Sunday links

The big story this week was obviously the unveiling of Ida (Darwinius maxillae), the fossil that would CHANGE EVERYTHING!!!!11!11!!!!1! Everyone's pitched in with their take on the fossil, but if you had to pick any sources to watch, choose Laelaps and the Loom. Brian produced the first detailed analysis of the paper, while Carl's kept tabs on the story's timeline, including the amusing furore over whether Darwinius's name was actually rightly assigned. Steven Novella at Neurologica gives a great account of the pseudoscience of spontaneous human combustion. Miriam from the Oyster's Garter…

Rebuilding

Eight years ago today a terrorist group attacked and killed more than three thousand people. Nothing I can say can improve on what other have said in the memory of this horror, and nothing I can say will change any opinions about what followed. I would, however, like to express my bitterness and disappointment on the failure to do the one thing almost everyone agreed upon even before the smoke cleared. There was only one right, proper, and American thing to do: rebuild. Rebuild the twin towers as they were, with an extra few feet in height as an act of defiance. Even building a different…

Ice Cream and Air Compressors

Let's say you've got one of these, and you're dusting off your computer: (img source) As you spray, you'll notice the can getting cold. You've probably noticed this in similar contexts: propane tanks getting cold, helium tanks getting cold, compressed air tanks running pneumatic tools getting cold, etc. It seems that when air escapes from an enclosure, it gets cold. Well, there's a reason. Imagine if you will a elementary school gymnasium filled with kids and adults. The principle of the school announces free ice cream in the field outside of the gym and flings the doors open. The kids…

Going Deeper

In high school and introductory college chemistry you're going to do a lot of problems involving the ideal gas law. It runs something like this: PV = nRT So simple I don't even have to typeset it. Pressure times volume equals the number of moles (n) times a particular ideal gas constant (R) times the temperature in Kelvin. It's an idealization, but a pretty good one. For your average gas at roughly room temperature and pressure it's good to within a few percent. In those intro chemistry courses, that's the end of the story. The equation says what the equation says, and that's the end of…

Physics. Also maybe computer games!

News from around the world of physics: Near and dear to my heart is any clever experiment involving lasers. And via Swans on Tea, this one's a doozy. It's paddleball, but instead of a rubber ball you have a single atom. And instead of a paddle you have a beam of laser pulses. No string, so it's an extra challenge. Of all the esoteric ways people have devised to measure g, I think this one is the best. Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad discusses science writing. Lots of it isn't very good, but he gives some excellent examples of the cream of the crop. Very, very far down my list of…

You’d *almost* feel sorry for Luskin

Over at PT, Nick piles on Luskin: One aside: the fact that Behe wrote a chunk of Pandas is important in several ways apart from pure history. First, this makes Pandas, rather than Darwin's Black Box (or really, a few of his web articles), the first published expression of Behe's IC argument. Second, it means that Behe, like all of the other major players in the ID movement, pretty clearly endorsed the ID movement's get-into-the-public-schools-first, do-the-scientific-research-later philosophy and practice. Third, it nukes Luskin's indignancy about Miller failing to distinguish the blood-…

2009 ASU-MBL History of Biology Seminar: Theory in the Life Sciences

2009 ASU-MBL History of Biology Seminar: Theory in the Life Sciences May 20-27 Application Deadline: January 15, 2009 The MBL-ASU History of Biology Seminar is an intensive week with annually varying topics designed for a group of no more than 25 advanced graduate students, postdoctoral associates, younger scholars, and established researchers in biology, history, philosophy, and the social sciences. The 2009 seminar will focus on the meaning of "theory in biology" as well as "biological theory." What makes biological theories different from theories in the physical sciences, and how has…

Apple Pie From Scratch

Via physicsandcake, on some days I wish I was as dorky and as elegant as Carl Sagan: Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every…

Comments on the Morphine-for-PTSD Article

I've been mulling this over for a few days, finally deciding to write about it.  There was an article in the NYT on 13 January 2010 about an NEJM article: href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/health/research/14morphine.html"> href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/health/research/14morphine.html">Morphine May Help Traumatic Stress By BENEDICT CAREY Published: January 13, 2010 Doctors have long hoped to discover a "morning-after pill" to blunt the often disabling emotional fallout from traumatic experiences. Now it appears that they have had one on hand all along: morphine...In…

Calling It What It Is

There you go again, Mr. George Will.  In case you've somehow missed the fray, George Will has posted two ( href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302514.html">2/15/2009, href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/26/AR2009022602906.html">2/29/09 2/27/2009 ) columns containing misinformation about climate change.  These have been debunked and otherwise criticized on href="http://www.google.com/cse?cx=017254414699180528062%3Auyrcvn__yd0&q=george+will&sa.x=0&sa.y=0&sa=search">ScienceBlogs and elsewhere…

Pew: Messages Americans Receive at Church About Science

When I was invited by the Pew team earlier this year to make suggestions about items and questions to measure in their recently released survey on science and the public, I suggested that Pew ask a variation of a question that they have used in the past that queries respondents on the types of messages and information relative to politics they might receive in church. Given their expertise in the area, they were probably already well ahead of me in thinking along similar lines. I was interested in the potential results based in part on a study I co-authored at the journal Political Behavior…

Revkin on the Environmental Story Bigger than Climate

Over at the Columbia Journalism Review, Curtis Brainard offers a must-read interview with the NY Times Andrew Revkin, the environment beat's most influential reporter. Revkin has been covering the environment for a quarter century and was recently awarded by Columbia University the prestigious Chancellor Award for sustained career achievement. At the award ceremony, Revkin asserted again his view that climate change is not the dominant story of our time. Rather, as he puts it, climate change is a symptom of the much bigger challenge of sustainability: coming to terms with explosive…