communicating science
pharyngula | December 23, 2010It really isn't that hard to learn to think scientifically — kids can do it. In a beautiful example of communicating science by doing it, students at Blackawton Primary School designed and executed an experiment in vision and learning by bees, and got it published in Biology Letters, which is making the paper available for free. It's nicely done, an exercise in training bees to use color or spatial cues to find sugar water, and you can actually see how the kids were thinking, devising new tests to determine which of those two cues the animals were using. They were also quite good at looking…
pharyngula | December 18, 2010On Atheist Talk radio on Sunday morning at 9am Central time, James Kakalios will be joining the gang at Minnesota Atheists to talk about his new book, The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics: A Math-Free Exploration of the Science that Made Our World(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It should be very entertaining. The book looks good, although I've only had a chance to flip through it so far…but it's right here by my side at the computer desk, and it's on my short list of books to get read over break.
We also have some videos by Jim Kakalios, and here's one…although I hesitate to put it here. The first…
pharyngula | December 18, 2010I got a request to collect participants for an online survey on science fiction — take a look and help out if you want. It's long, and a little depressing: it's a list of science fiction movies and TV shows, and you're supposed to rate their scientific accuracy. I think I'm rather picky about that, so just about all of 'em got slammed when I did it.
I am conducting a small pilot-study on the properties of various sci-fi works (focusing on film and TV in particular). For the purposes of this study I designed two web forms (Web-form 1 & Web-form 2) that ask participants to rate sci-fi works…
pharyngula | December 14, 2010This is really well done: Darryl Cunningham explains global warming with simple, clear illustrations and explanations. I want to steal it all, put it in a pdf, and print out a few hundred copies to hand out to the deniers.
pharyngula | December 9, 2010I'm really liking these CreatureCast videos Casey Dunn's students put together — and there are two new ones, on moray eels and stomatopods. That's communicating science!
Also, Dunn has a new book, Practical Computing for Biologists, also available on Amazon right now. I'm going to have to get a copy; it might be a good idea to introduce more students to the basics, too.
pharyngula | December 7, 2010I got a surprising amount of criticism of my review of the arsenic-eating bacteria paper — some people thought I was too harsh and too skeptical and too cynical. Haven't those people ever sat through a grad school journal club? We're trained to eviscerate even the best papers, and I actually had to restrain myself a lot.
Anyway, I'm a pussycat. You want thorough skepticism, read Rosie Redfield's drawing and quartering of the paper, which rips into the hasty methodology of the work. Man, after that, the body ain't even twitching any more, and they're going to have to clean up the pieces with a…
pharyngula | December 5, 2010It's still going on. Jerry Coyne repeated our common criticism that the NCSE spends too much effort promoting Christianity; then Richard Hoppe fires back, complaining that his comment was held in moderation (Coyne has been sick for a while, you know…I wish people would have more patience), and then repeating the common and misguided defense that NCSE is not an atheist organization. We know. We've both agreed on multiple occasions that the NCSE should not be an atheist organization. But still we get this same tiresome objection.
NCSE's main remit is defending the teaching of evolution in the…
pharyngula | November 30, 2010This is a fascinating way to present data about global and historical economies:
I'm also kind of blown away by the fact that the BBC has a documentary about statistics. How do they get an audience without blowing things up or the occasional sleazy sexual affair?
pharyngula | November 27, 2010Jerry Lewis, the comedian, hosts a yearly telethon to raise money for children with muscular dystrophy. I find it entirely unwatchable, because it comes across as patronizing and condescending, and seeing Jerry Lewis mug for the camera and present himself as the loving, maudlin hero trying to save these pathetic, pitiful wretches makes me want to kick him in the balls. I think he means well and he does want to raise money for a worthy charity, but by turning the ill into their disease he diminishes them. And by talking down to them and referring to people with muscular dystrophy as "Jerry's…
pharyngula | November 26, 2010Are you a science journalist? Do you work with science journalists? Print this cartoon out and hang it all over your workplace.
Oh, and if you're a science editor, please get it tattooed on the back of your hand.
pharyngula | November 22, 2010For all you Symphony of Science fans — here's a fresh entry.
And for all of you who hate autotuning—don't click play!
pharyngula | November 4, 2010But you can't afford the expensive registration and travel costs? Here's the deal for you: a workshop without walls that you attend and participate in over the internet. The subject of this one is Molecular Paleontology and Resurrection: Rewinding the Tape of Life, a discussion of origins of life research. It should be cool; set aside your afternoons on 8-10 November.
pharyngula | October 7, 2010The Smithsonian has opened a new permanent Hall of Human Origins exhibit, which means I need to get out to Washington DC sometime. Unfortunately, it gets a mixed review from Greg Mayer. It sounds like the museum faced the standard dilemma of whether to emphasize information or interaction, and parts of the exhibit steered a little too far in the direction of interactive fluffiness. It also has some underlying weirdness: the hall was funded by a Tea Party bigwig, David Koch, and it also had a "Broader Social Impacts Committee" of mostly religious advisors, which is just plain odd — what was…
pharyngula | October 6, 2010I will suspend my contempt for the HuffPo for one brief moment to link to an important message: Science Friday is being starved to death. Here's what Ira Flatow says:
We at SciFri are facing severe financial difficulties, i.e. raising money. NSF [National Science Foundation] has turned us down for continuing funding, saying they love what we do, we are sorely needed, but it's not their job to fund us. At the same time, NPR has said the same thing, telling us that if we want to stay on the air, etc, we now have to raise all our own money. Despite what listeners may think, NPR only gives us…
pharyngula | September 27, 2010First, read this parody of science journalism. It's the template for just about every science story you'll find in a newspaper, and it's so depressing.
Second, imagine something even worse. Hint: it's the media's coverage of every scientific "controversy" you might think of. It takes a few of the tropes mentioned in the parody, like "shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist" and "quotes from some fringe special interest group of people who, though having no apparent understanding of the…
pharyngula | September 24, 2010SciAm has a nice report on a survey of people's trust of authority figures. On a scale of one to five, with five being the most trustworthy, they were asked who would provide accurate information on a range of scientific issues. Look at these results: scientists are highly regarded, while religious authorities are deeply distrusted.
Before you get too happy about this, though, check out the source of the survey: this was taken of readers of Nature and Scientific American. Can you say sampling bias, boys and girls? That's disappointing; I'd rather see how the general public views these…
pharyngula | September 13, 2010Charlie's Playhouse is having an evolution and art contest for children — with prizes! They should draw how an animal would adapt to an environment they imagine, and for that, some will get goodies from the store. Deadline is 15 November, so get to work.
pharyngula | August 22, 2010Remember that awful, terrible Templeton-funded prayer study that had no controls, was unblinded, and had nothing but subjective measurements of improvement? Now it's being promoted on healthfinder.gov — with not a word of reservation, just a happy claim that prayer might help sight- and hearing-impaired people. It's a beautiful example of bad science reporting, in which they'll admit that maybe it's just the placebo effect, but they still run out and get quotes from people saying this stuff might help.
pharyngula | August 13, 2010That ridiculous article on Biblical diagnosis has been officially retracted, and the editor left a comment at Aetiology:
As Editor-in-Chief of Virology Journal I wish to apologize for the publication of the article entitled ''Influenza or not influenza: Analysis of a case of high fever that happened 2000 years ago in Biblical time", which clearly does not provide the type of robust supporting data required for a case report and does not meet the high standards expected of a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Virology Journal has always operated an exceptionally high standard of thorough peer…
pharyngula | August 5, 2010Nick Denton is one of those interesting fellows in online media: my first impression was that he runs gossipy sites and therefore must be shallow, but then you discover that he's actually got very finely tuned antennae to what people want to read…and if it's gossip, then so be it. But at the same time there are some real insights into what draws and keeps the attention of those fickle creatures called human beings. This routine memo from Denton summarizing the popular stories of the month is wonderfully revealing, and a good lesson for anyone writing on the web.
Kevin Purdy's highly…