communicating science
pharyngula | July 26, 2009Mooney and Kirshenbaum continue their campaign with an op-ed in the Boston Globe, which, as we all know, has rigorous standards. Their explanation for scientific illiteracy in America is simple: it's the scientists' fault for being so aloof and distant. Their solution is also simple: philanthropists and universities need to give more money to employ media-savvy scientists. How…nice.
I will say one good thing about their op-ed, though. It contains the full content of their entire book. Read the essay, now you don't need to buy the book, since it covers it fully, including all the non-existent…
laelaps | July 21, 2009
Mentioning Richard Dawkins is a quick way to polarize a conversation. One acquaintance once told me that she refused to read anything by Stephen Jay Gould because of Dawkins' criticisms while, on the other hand, many of my friends have voiced their exasperation with the English biologist's attacks on religion. Regardless of whether you consider him a saint or a sinner, though, Dawkins is one of the most controversial scientific figures working today, and Fern Elsdon-Baker has contributed The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy to the ongoing arguments about the "…
pharyngula | July 17, 2009I feel obligated to reply to Mooney and Kirshenbaum's latest complaint, but I can't really get motivated. Their argument has become so absurd and so petty that it seems a waste of time anymore.
All they've done is confessed that they are on a personal vendetta: they are very upset with me, they admit that my existence is a central reason that they left the scienceblogs network, and you can just feel the roiling resentment that people dare to criticize them, persistently and at length…and it's all my fault.
I did not address their scapegoating of PZ Myers and Pharyngula in my reviews of the…
pharyngula | July 14, 2009An important tip to book authors who want to decry the ability of others to engage a consensus: don't alienate the literate, thinking part of your readership yourself. Mooney and Kirshenbaum make much of the fact that those wicked "New Atheists" are going to drive away support for science, a fact not in evidence, but they seem oblivious to the fact that their recommendation to hush up a significant element of the public voice of science is going to alienate us, and it's working to bite them in the ass right now. In other words, Jerry Coyne's review of their book is online.
I'll start with my…
pharyngula | July 13, 2009Since there has been so much talk about Carl Sagan lately, let's hear it from the man himself, in his last interview with Charlie Rose. He's interestingly complicated.
pharyngula | July 13, 2009Mooney and Kirshenbaum have been so stung by my criticisms of their book that they have launched a multi-part rebuttal to my review. Here's my reply to their reply.
We didn't get personal, and we didn't attack atheism in general! Hmmm. Here's a sampling of what they do say: "Myers' actions were incredibly destructive and unnecessary". I "set the cause backward". New Atheists believe that "religious faith should not be benignly tolerated". The "New Atheists" are "nasty bullying". They're "shrill". In last year's voting for best science blog, I was the "devil's choice". Blogging brings out…
pharyngula | July 12, 2009Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum are discussing their book on Daily Kos. The subject of my review has come up a few times, and one commenter cited this sentence from me:
Following this, he proceeds to damn the "New Atheists" for "collapsing the distinction" between methodological and philosophical naturalism, and argues that Dawkins is taking a philosophical position and misusing science to claim it "entirely precludes God's existence."
Then the commenter asks, "My question is, did you in fact say that Dawkins uses science to 'entirely preclude God's existence?'"
Here is Chris Mooney's…
pharyngula | July 12, 2009I've got to stop being so longwinded. Here's a very clear summary of the entire "New Atheist"/accommodationist debate. I'll put it below the fold because it does have a few naughty words in it, and unfortunately the children will use that as an excuse to ignore the message.
There are two main views concerning the reason why Americans are so pathetically fucking delusional at the population level concerning the nature of objective reality, especially in relation to the history of the planet Earth.
One view is that the problem is that scientists and science teachers are no good at explaining…
pharyngula | July 10, 2009I get called fairly often for quick fact checks by science journalists, which is a good thing. I've also written a fair number of science pieces for publication, which get improved by good editors, which is also a good thing. But there are also ugly tales of bad editing and the difficult realities of getting science stories published, and I got one this morning that I post with the author's permission.
I just read your post on journalist integrity, which reminded me to thank you again for your help with my article on zebrafish hair cells. I'm a recent graduate of an institutional science…
pharyngula | July 10, 2009I recently argued that to scientists, accuracy is the most important element of a story (surprising, no?) in response to a journalist trying to claim that character and plot were more important. I also tried to make the case that accuracy and an interesting narrative aren't mutually incompatible — and I should have added that accuracy ought to be the number one priority for science journalists, too.
In case you're wondering why so many scientists are distrustful of science journalists, you should take a look at this account from Ben Goldacre. A masters student in psychology gave a talk at a…
pharyngula | July 9, 2009To return to Unscientific America again, I hardly touched on chapter 8, where they express their dismay at those uppity "New Atheists". I am not going to address his personal criticisms of me — there's no point, you obviously know I think he's completely wrong, and the uncharitable will simply claim my disagreement is the result of a personal animus — so instead I'm only going to address a couple of other general points that Mooney and Kirshenbaum get completely wrong. They plainly do not understand the atheist position, and make claims that demonstrate that either they didn't read any of the…
laelaps | July 2, 2009During the past month Andy Farke of The Open Source Paleontologist has been considering the rise (and fall) of paleontology-oriented mailing lists (like the Dinosaur Mailing List and the VRTPALEO Discussion List). These lists are good for a lot of things, like quickly disseminating news to a large audience of specialists or requesting papers/information, but more and more in-depth discussions of paleontology are moving onto blogs. Andy has already covered some of the major points, but I wanted to add a few thoughts of my own.
There are advantages and disadvantages to science blogging vs.…
pharyngula | July 2, 2009I just did an interview about science blogging for An Kathab, "Al Jazeera's weekly high-tech news magazine". Look for it to be broadcast on the 8th, 9th, and 10th of July, and to appear on youtube shortly thereafter.
This is so going to confirm right-wing histrionics, isn't it?
pharyngula | June 22, 2009There exists a "Templeton Cambridge journalism fellowship programme in science and religion". I've complained often enough about the state of science journalism nowadays; I would think the last thing it needs is a further infusion of soft-headedness and religious thinking sponsored by the devious dogmatists of the Templeton Foundation, but that's what we're getting. They've got the money, and they aren't hesitant about using it to go straight to future information sources and pollute them at the wellhead. Anyway, one of these journalists in training wrote to a number of people requesting an…
pharyngula | June 21, 2009Brown has posted a reply to my angry criticisms, and as is increasingly common among the accommodationists, he gets everything backwards, upside down, and inside out. Let's start with the first paragraph.
PZ posted a tremendous rant about me and Michael Ruse last week, which concluded with a heartfelt exhortation to both of us to “fuck off” (his emphasis). The cause was a piece I did on the grauniad site about Ruse’s visit to a creation museum in which he experienced, for a moment, “a Kuhnian flash” that it might all be true. Never mind that this was a momentary feeling. It was unmistakable…
pharyngula | June 17, 2009If you've been building a site for science education, you'll want to looking into this: The Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE).
The Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) has been established to encourage innovation and excellence in education, as well as to encourage the use of high-quality on-line resources by students, teachers, and the public. In 2009, the prize will recognize outstanding projects from all regions of the world that bring freely available online resources to bear on science education.
Winning projects should reinforce one or more of…
pharyngula | June 12, 2009You can tell when the anti-intellectuals are in charge: they start throwing away investments in knowledge that took generations to build, all in the name of short-term economy. The latest instance: the state of Wyoming wants to shut down the University of Wyoming Geological Museum. It's already been starved down to a minimal (well, more like inadequate) staffing level, and now the state just wants to erase it completely.
This doesn't make sense. A museum is a repository of accumulated information — if you discard it this year because you don't want to maintain it, you never get it back. It's…
laelaps | June 11, 2009
The exceptionally preserved skeleton of Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida." From PLoS One.
Even though it has been about a month since Darwinius (or "Ida", if you like) hit the public scene there is still plenty to talk about. From uncertain evolutionary relationships to the interaction between scientists and the media, this controversy has given us plenty to discuss. One of the most worrying aspects of this entire ordeal, however, has been the prospect that media companies influenced the scientific study of Ida.
As Earle Holland wrote on the Ohio State University On Research... blog, the…
pharyngula | June 11, 2009Over the last few days, I've been reading the articles in the latest issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach. This is a fairly new journal with the mission stated in the title, and I have to say that it is very, very good — the articles are almost always easily readable, and they address significant issues in the public understanding of evolution. This particular issue focuses on transitions, and not just on transitional fossils, but all kinds of evidence for change over evolutionary time. It's been commented on by Larry Moran and Jerry Coyne, and they're entirely right that these are…
laelaps | June 8, 2009In case you haven't heard, the latest edition of the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach is almost entirely about transitional fossils. There's something for everyone, from synapsids to onychophorans, so make sure you check it out!
My only complaint, though, is that there is not a paper about early hominins or human evolution. Human evolution is often ignored or given short shrift when we talk about transitional fossils, yet the past several decades have seen an explosion in new types of extinct humans. I have no idea why such a paper does not appear in the collection (perhaps one was…