communicating science
pharyngula | August 2, 2014Take a look at the kind of profit you can make from various businesses. This is pretty good money.
We all know Apple's business model is to build cool gadgets with high end stuff inside that it then sells at a high markup for premium design and ease of use -- they're at least creating something novel. But what makes Wiley and Elsevier so profitable?
That's the genius of it all. Their customers create everything, they charge the customers for the privilege of selling it to the publisher, and then they sell it back to their customers. Imagine if Apple did that: all of you homebrew computer…
pharyngula | August 1, 2014Kate Clancy comments on a 'satire' published in a serious journal.
Genome Biology published a satirical piece by Neil Hall today, and since I’m American and he’s British I don’t find it funny. No wait, it’s that I’m female and he’s male. Or maybe that I’m junior and he’s senior. I’ve got it, it’s because he has a ton of publications (many times the number I have), and I have a ton of Twitter followers (many times the number he has). Meaning, my K-index knocks his out of the park.
Let me back up. You see, Hall created a joke metric he calls the Kardashian Index, which is one’s Twitter…
pharyngula | July 15, 2014Dang, I teach all this stuff about genes and chromosomes and epigenetics, but I don't have the advantage of giant floating holographic molecules floating around me. Maybe I'll have to steal this for my classes.
Although it could use some discussion of Blaschko's lines, to explain why you get a stripey pattern rather than just salt-and-pepper.
pharyngula | June 26, 2014Chris Mooney is galloping around on his anti-science education hobby-horse again. That's a harsh way to put it, but that's what I see when he goes off on these crusades for changing everything by modifying the tone of the discussion. It's all ideology and politics, don't you know — if we could just frame our policy questions and decisions in a way that appealed to the conservative know-nothings, we'd be able to make progress and accomplish things. And, as usual, I expect he won't recognize the irony of the fact that the way he communicates his message alienates scientists and science…
pharyngula | March 24, 2014
The featured speaker at this year's National Science Teacher Association conference in Boston is…Mayim Bialik.
The lucky ones among you are saying right now, "who?". Others may know her from her television work, but maybe don't know the full story behind her 'science' activism.
She's an actor who plays Sheldon's girlfriend on Big Bang Theory. Right there, as far as I'm concerned, we have a major strike against her: I detest that show. It's the equivalent of a minstrel show for scientists, where scientists are portrayed as gross caricatures of the real thing — socially inept, egotistical…
pharyngula | November 14, 2013So you won't be surprised that I really like that Erin Podolak has asked, Can We Stop Talking About Carl Sagan?
It feels like I’m committing an act of science communication sacrilege here, but I have a confession to make: Carl Sagan means absolutely nothing to me. No more than any other dude from my parents 1970′s yearbooks that could rock the turtle neck/blazer combo with the best of them. There, my secret is out.
I’m not saying I don’t like Sagan – I’m saying Sagan has zero influence on me or what I do. To me, Sagan is a stereotypical old white guy scientist who made some show that a lot of…
pharyngula | November 1, 2013Every time you use a plastic bag at the grocery store or buy another bottle of water you are contributing to the deluge of one-use, throw-away plastic products that pile up in our landfills or float out to sea. One group in Baton Rouge is trying to raise consciousness with Sacred Waste, a performance art piece that illustrates the problem.
This performance art show is a unique blend of art and science – it conveys some of its information in some unusual and compelling ways: the costumes, the set, and all the props are made of discarded plastic – each costume is made of 100-300 plastic bags,…
pharyngula | October 8, 2013James May, one of the presenters on Top Gear, is trying his hand at providing a little science education. I want to say…please stop. Here he is trying to answer the question, "Are humans still evolving?" In the end he says the right answer — yes they are! — but the path he takes to get there is terrible.
It's little things that make me wonder if anyone is actually editing his copy. For instance, he helpfully explains that you, the viewer, were produced by your parents having sex. Then he says:
That's how evolution is driven: by reproduction. But is that still true?
Uh, yes? We haven't…
pharyngula | October 4, 2013John Bohannon of Science magazine has developed a fake science paper generator. He wrote a little, simple program, pushes a button, and gets hundreds of phony papers, each unique with different authors and different molecules and different cancers, in a format that's painfully familiar to anyone who has read any cancer journals recently.
The goal was to create a credible but mundane scientific paper, one with such grave errors that a competent peer reviewer should easily identify it as flawed and unpublishable. Submitting identical papers to hundreds of journals would be asking for trouble.…
pharyngula | October 29, 2012I approve this plan. A number of researchers have gotten together and worked out a grand strategy for sequencing the genomes of a collection of cephalopods. This involves surveying the phylogeny of cephalopods and trying to pick species to sample that adequately cover the diversity of the group, while also selecting model species that have found utility in a number of research areas — two criteria that are often in conflict with one another. Fortunately, the authors seemed to have found a set that satisfies both (although it would have been nice to see the Spirulida and Vampyromorpha make…
pharyngula | June 22, 2012The European Commission is trying to get more women involved in science, which is good, except…look at their Science: It's a Girl Thing campaign. Jesus wept.
Serious man sits at microscope. Fashionable, slender girls slink in on ridiculous high heels and vogue to shots of bubbling flasks, splashes of makeup, twirling skirts, and giggling hot chicks. Seriously, this is not how you get women excited about science, by masquerading it as an exercise shallow catwalking. This is a campaign that perpetuates myths about women's preferences. The lab is not a place where you strut in 3" heels.
How…
pharyngula | June 17, 2012
And they know it. Ken Ham has started a new billboard campaign for the creation "museum", with a variety of different designs, all featuring prehistoric* creatures as draws to get kids and family to attend. Here are some examples:
Notice what's smart about them? They're focused, featuring an element that they clearly know is a key draw, dinosaurs; they're eye-catching; they're professionally designed and have thematic unity; and the Creation "Museum" knows that good marketing is a way to get people to come in to their propaganda mill. You know they invested a good chunk of money in this…
pharyngula | February 17, 2012It's really easy to set up a completely fake peer-reviewed journal, which is a great boon to pseudoscientists, quacks, creationists, and con artists. They can be tripped up, though, since they aren't aware of all the inside jokes and strange habits of scientists. Here's one, a journal called "Molecular Biology", that was exposed because they were a little to eager to recruit "editors"…editors who would never be called upon to edit anything, but would just provide a name for window dressing.
I'm delighted to inform you that Peter Uhnemann from the⨠Daniel-Duesentrieb Institute in Germany was…
pharyngula | January 16, 2012Along with SOPA and PIPA, our government is contemplating another acronym with deplorable consequences for the free dissemination of information: RWA, the Research Works Act. This is a bill to, it says, "ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector", where the important phrase is "private sector" — it's purpose is to guarantee that for-profit corporations retain control over the publication of scientific information. Here are the restrictions it would impose:
No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage…
pharyngula | January 15, 2012Every year he asks people questions, and every year he compiles the answers. This year, the question is "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?", and he got 188 completely different answers back.
Did he forget to ask you? Then you can leave your answer in the comments here.
(Also on FtB)
pharyngula | January 2, 2012Hey! Remember that seven year old blogger who writes about paleozoic creatures? He's going to be eight, and he knows what he wants for his birthday: A trip to the Field Museum at the University of Chicago. Friends and family are trying to raise money so he can go.
Wait a minute…I haven't been to the Field Museum, either, despite having been to Chicago several times in the last few years. What's wrong with me? I should be telling you to pay for my trip!
No, I'll be altruistic: contribute to the young man's dreams and inspire him to be a scientist when he grows up. I'll just try to get their…
pharyngula | December 10, 2011I have really been looking forward to seeing David Attenborough's latest, Frozen Planet, here in the US. I've seen brief snippets of the show on youtube, and like all of these big BBC nature productions, I'm sure it's stunning. And then I hear that the Discovery Channel has bought the rights! Hooray!
But wait, experience cautions us. Remember when American television replaced Attenborough's narration with Sigourney Weaver? And <shudder> Oprah Winfrey? ANd when the Oprah version dropped the references to evolution? What kind of insane butchery would they perpetrate this time around?
Well…
pharyngula | December 4, 2011The future is arriving fast. Here are the instructions for assembling a $500 home molecular biology laboratory — you can do it! And it's getting cheaper all the time!
The widespread and increasing availability of second-hand professional laboratory equipment or inexpensive new commercial surrogates means that it is now unchallenging to set up a fully functional molecular laboratory for less than $500 in equipment costs. Coupled with the presence of sources for all reagents and supplies needed in formats that are safe for general use, the work presented here demonstrates that capacity to set…
pharyngula | December 1, 2011How to write an academic review: Cartmill on Haraway. It's a fine lesson on scholarly knife-fighting, and I think I'll have to use it as an example next time I teach our scientific writing course.
(Also on FtB)
pharyngula | September 14, 2011I completely missed this, because I was distracted: Jerry Coyne celebrated the life of Stephen Jay Gould this past weekend — Gould's birthday was 10 September. I did not know that. It's the same as my wife's! I knew there was something in the stars that attracted me to her. Of course, it's going to be awkward now when every year on 10 September I wake up, turn to my wife, give her a kiss, and announce "Happy Stephen Jay Gould's birthday, dear! Let's celebrate by reading some of his essays!"
In the spirit of Coyne's essay, I will say that I greatly appreciated the man. I didn't know him well…