Chris Mooney
oracknows | August 4, 2014
As prolific as I am, I have actually slowed down. Long time readers know this, as I used to have a post up seven days a week and sometimes two or more in a day. These days, I’ve made it a rule that I don’t post on weekends (except if something really catches my eye and I can’t control the blogging itch until Monday), and I almost never post more than once a day on weekdays. Heck, of late I’ve even been known to miss a weekday every now and then without even recycling posts from my not-so-super-secret other blog. It’s good, as I was a bit insane back then.
What I’m talking about is an…
denialism | March 26, 2012He had to realize Nisbett's framing was worthless and write a whole book on defective Republican reasoning to realize it but it sounds like Chris Mooney has come around to the right way to confront denialism:
The only solution, then, is to make organized climate denial simply beyond the pale. It has to be the case that taking such a stand is tantamount to asserting that smoking is completely safe, no big deal, go ahead and have two packs a day.
Sounds a little bit like what I wrote in 2007 when I pointed out denialists should not even be debated:
The goal instead must be to enforce standards…
tsmith | November 18, 2010The second edition of the Rock Stars of Science is now out online, and in the November 23rd ("Men of the Year") edition of GQ magazine. As Chris Mooney notes, this is a campaign funded by the Geoffery Beene Foundation, working to raise recognition of scientists' work (and scientists, period, since roughly half of the American population can't name a single living scientist). Part of the campaign is to make science noticeable and "cool;" I'll quote from the press release:
ROCK S.O.S⢠aims to bridge a serious recognition gap for science, observes journalist Chris Mooney, co-author of the…
hrynyshyn | July 1, 2010My first reaction to the papier du jour among climate communications activists was "meh." It's not that Chris Mooney's latest ruminations on the gap between what the public thinks about scientific issues and what scientists have to say isn't worth reading. It's just that we've been down this road so many times now, the standards of what passes for new and remarkable are getting rather high.
That didn't stop Andy Revkin, Joe Romm, and Evil Monkey from posting lengthy and hard-hitting responses, though. So I gave it a second look, and I've now concluded that "Do Scientists Understand the Public…
drorzel | June 30, 2010The kerfuffle of the moment in the science blogosphere once again relates to Chris Mooney, who is pretty much a kerfuffle looking for a place to happen at this point. This time around it centers around a Washington Post op-ed that is basically the executive summary of a American Academy of Arts and Sciences paper that is itself the executive summary version of a series of four workshops on science and the public. You can get a reasonable sense of the kerfuffle from the links in Chris's responses to the responses.
I'm currently making one of my intermittent attempts to be a better person--…
oracknows | February 16, 2010I realize that Chris Mooney is a polarizing figure here on the ol' ScienceBlogs, but I have to give him props for doing a damned fine job handling questions about vaccines, autism, and Andrew Wakefield's utterly discredited 1998 Lancet study, which was retracted by the Lancet's editors last week:
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I wish I could say the same thing for Nancy Snyderman. Although she was mostly right, I cringed--big time--when she insisted that there are no studies that show a link between vaccines and autism. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!…
oracknows | February 5, 2010Thanks to Andrew Wakefield, it's been pretty much vaccine week for me. Well, mostly anyway, I did manage to have some fun with Mike Adams and the immune system, but otherwise it's been all vaccines all the time this week. As I mentioned yesterday, at the risk of dwelling on one topic so long that I start driving away readers, I've just decided to ride the wave and go with it until it's over. Unless something blows up over the weekend, I rather suspect that, for all intents and purposes, it'll be over as of today and I can move on to other topics starting Monday. At least I hope so.
But there'…
terrasig | January 1, 2010Steve Silberman and Rebecca Skloot just pointed out to me an editorial from science writer Chris Mooney that has appeared online and will be in the Sunday, January 3rd edition of The Washington Post.
In the essay, "On issues like global warming and evolution, scientists need to speak up," Mooney continues his longstanding call to scientists to take ownership in combating scientific misinformation, invoking the very weak response of the scientific community to the aftermath of e-mails and documents hacked from the Climatic Research Institute at the University of East Anglia.
The central lesson…
tlambert | September 20, 2009Chris Mooney seems somewhat bemused by Jennifer Marohasy's response to his interview on Lateline. Marohasy claimed:
according to an interview Mr Mooney gave last night on Australian television if you don't believe in AGW you aren't even a scientist.
Compare with what Mooney actually said:
If you're talking about the basic question of: is global warming happening, due to human greenhouse gas emissions? Then the scientists who dispute that, seriously, are very small. And if you look through the scientific literature you will not find that argument being prominently made.
And if you think…
ddobbs | July 13, 2009
Greg Laden, trying to toss a line between the "New Atheists" and 'Accommodationists" who are currently squabbling about a dust-up featuring PZ Myers v Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirshenbaum (who apparently rough Myers up a bit in their book Unscientific America), writes:
Now, I just want to make this point: I learned early on (when I was still an altar boy) that where religion and life conflict -- where the religion was not doing a good job at explaining the bits and pieces of life that were not making sense -- it was OK to drop the details of the religion part and chalk it up to mystery.
I'…
illconsidered | March 25, 2009I may be very late to the party, but I would still like to refer readers to Chris Mooney's Op-Ed response to the recent George Will fiasco.
Congratulations, Chris, it is very well presented and important material. I can't however share your warm fuzzies for the WaPo's change of heart, because, well somehow presenting two sides to a debate, you know, bat-shit crazy versus intelligent reality, still falls a little short for me!
terrasig | March 21, 2009Kudos to The Washington Post for publishing an op-ed by author, journalist, blogger, Chris Mooney, on the George Will WaPo global warming fiasco. Author of "The Republican War on Science," "Storm World," and co-author with Sheril Kirshenbaum of the forthcoming "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future."
This is Mooney at his best - first and last paragraph:
A recent controversy over claims about climate science by Post op-ed columnist George F. Will raises a critical question: Can we ever know, on any contentious or politicized topic, how to recognize the real…
tlambert | March 21, 2009The Washington Post has published Chris Mooney's reply to George Will's misinformation. Mooney corrects some of Will's false and misleading claims and finishes with:
Readers and commentators must learn to share some practices with scientists -- following up on sources, taking scientific knowledge seriously rather than cherry-picking misleading bits of information, and applying critical thinking to the weighing of evidence. That, in the end, is all that good science really is. It's also what good journalism and commentary alike must strive to be -- now more than ever.
There is also a letter…
amillikan | January 27, 2009ScienceBlogger Chris Mooney appeared on The Colbert report yesterday to discuss the Bush Administration's 'war on science.' According to Chris, the scientists won the war on science when President Obama was elected.
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The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Obama's New Science Policy - Chris Mooney
Colbert at ChristmasColbert Christmas DVD
Green ScreenBill O'Reilly Interview
"The Bush Administration was systematically undermining scientific knowledge on a lot of different issues that have a lot of different policy implications," Mooney said in the interview.
Colbert, known…
amillikan | January 24, 2009
Monday, January 26, ScienceBlogger Chris Mooney will be a guest on The Colbert Report, hosted by the one and only Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central. Mooney and Colbert will discuss Bush's "war on science" and how the Obama administration can change the scientific climate in America.
Mooney is a contributor to The Intersection where he blogs with Sheril Kirshenbaum. Together, the two have co-authored a book titled "Unscientific America: How Science Illiteracy Threatens Our Future." The book hasn't been released yet, but you just can't get enough of Chris Mooney, you can pre-order the book…
amillikan | January 19, 2009In this week's Science Saturday, science writers Chris Mooney and Carl Zimmer look ahead at the scientific controversies and discoveries of the coming year. Will Craig Venter finally produce artificial life in 2009? Will NASA find proof of Martian life? Will the public become even less informed about science? And perhaps most importantly, will Obama's science policy improve on Bush's?
grrlscientist | February 15, 2007The Bush administration has made no secret of its disdain for science, especially science that pertains to global warming, stem-cell research and endangered animals and plants. The chilling effect this has on science, public health and on the public good is documented in Chris Mooney's book, The Republican War on Science (Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2005, 2006), which was recently released in paperback.
As Mooney argues in this well-written book, disregard for scientists and the scientific method has been carefully nurtured by the modern conservative movement, which is a movement anchored in…