Current Events
jstemwedel | August 31, 2007On Stranger Fruit, there's a response by historian of science Naomi Oreskes to recent criticisms of her 2004 paper in Science discussing the consensus position regarding anthropogenic climate change. While the whole trajectory of these sorts of "engagements" is interesting in its way -- attacks on claims that weren't made, critiques of methodologies that weren't used, and so forth -- the part of Oreskes' response that jumped out at me had to do with the kinds of issues on which scientists focus when they're talking to each other in the peer-reviewed literature:
In the original AAAS talk on…
jstemwedel | August 30, 2007Dave Munger pointed me to an article in the New York Times that claims "switching to a plant-based diet does more to curb global warming than switching from an S.U.V. to a Camry."
Dave is a critical consumer of information and notes that there is little given in this particular article (which appears in the "Media & Advertising" section) as far as numbers. As I'm not an agronomist, I don't have all the relevant numbers at my finger tips, but I'm happy to set up some equations into which reliable numbers can be plugged once they are located.
First, there's some unclarity in the sentence…
jstemwedel | August 29, 2007Even though I've been frightfully busy this week, I've been following the news about the launch of PRISM (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine). I first saw it discussed in this post by Peter Suber, after which numerous ScienceBloggers piled on. If you have some time (and a cup of coffee), read Bora's comprehensive run-down of the blogosphere's reaction.
If you're in a hurry, here are three reasons I think PRISM's plans to "save" scientists and the public from Open Access are a bad idea.
While the PRISM website claims that a consequence of more Open Access…
jstemwedel | August 24, 2007A reader made sure I saw this today. (Thank you, reader!)
From Brian May's website:
Yes. It's done, and after about 37 years, I am finally a doctor. The oral examination of my thesis, and of me, lasted about 3 hours, and then I retired with Prof Rowan-Robinson, for a few moments, for my two examiners to confer. After only a couple of minutes they called me back into the room and offered their hands in congratulations. Yes, my category was number 2. I understand pretty much nobody gets a 1st category - which is "This is perfect - here's your PhD."
Congratulations to Dr. May on a job well…
jstemwedel | August 21, 2007Perhaps you've heard the news that Leona Helmsley died yesterday. Her obituaries have noted the the "Queen of Mean" came to be viewed as the embodiment of the greed of the 1980s (at least as it played out in the world of Manhattan real estate).
The public didn't like her much.
I have no real basis for making a judgment about whether she was a nice person deep down, whether she became a nicer person after doing jail time for tax evasion, or whether she was kind to animals. But I would like to have a look at something she was widely reported to have said (but denied saying):
"Only the little…
jstemwedel | August 16, 2007On the basis of this article about emissions from laser printers, our department administrator came by this week to take my HP 1200 series LaserJet away.
I said I wanted to keep it.
The worry is that the particles of toner emitted when printing with a laser printer may be just as bad for human health as secondhand cigarette smoke.
But ... I like my laser printer! It yields a higher quality printout than the inkjet printers I've used. And it's still working really well. And it's not like I'm printing stuff on it all day, every day. There are some days when I don't print anything at all.…
jstemwedel | August 3, 2007Today the BBC reports that Queen guitarist Brian May has submitted his doctoral dissertation in astronomy (titled "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud") at Imperial College, London.
Some theses take longer to write than others. May completed his after a 36 year gap.
Granted, during that gap he was kind of busy pursuing rock and roll.
But, as May notes, handing in the thesis is not the last step in his journey to complete his Ph.D. He still needs to defend that thesis:
The guitarist is scheduled to discuss his thesis with the examining board on 23 August, his spokesman said. The…
jstemwedel | August 1, 2007The Des Moines Register reports a bit of a to-do at the University of Iowa about whether the College of Public Health will be accepting a "naming gift" from Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Some objections have been raised on the basis that a giant of the health insurance industry might have (or be seen to have) significantly different values and goals than a college of public health:
Several faculty members whose e-mails became public Monday opposed linking the college's name with Wellmark.
"While it's good to get support, selling the name of the cph to a commercial interest and all…
jstemwedel | July 31, 2007Today a number of doctors affiliated with the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed suit against the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) alleging that state funds are paying for research that violates the Animal Welfare Act. Among the big concerns raised in the suit:
Experiments that were "duplicative" -- i.e., whose outcomes were essentially known before the experiment from experiments already conducted.
Experiments where there was no documentation that the researchers had considered alternative that would minimize the animals' distress.…
jstemwedel | July 25, 2007The news today from Inside Higher Ed is that the University of Colorado Board of Regents voted to fire Ward Churchill. You may recall that in May 2006, a faculty panel at the university found that the tenured ethnic studies professor had committed repeated, intentional academic misconduct in his scholarly writings. You may also recall that the close scrutiny of his writings was sparked by an outcry at some of the political views he voiced (especially that the September 11th attacks were an instance of "chickens coming home to roost").
The mix of factors here -- a movement to remove a…
jstemwedel | July 24, 2007I've been getting word (via carrier pigeon, mostly) that some of your favorite ScienceBloggers are just itching to provide you with fabulous new posts. However, a series of massive power outages in San Francisco Tuesday afternoon seem to have given the interwebs some hiccups.
When the series of tubes is properly connected, they'll be back. Thanks for your patience.
jstemwedel | July 24, 2007Almost a year ago, I learned about the case of the Tripoli six, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian physician in Libya sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of children with HIV despite the fact that the best scientific evidence indicated that the children were infected due to negligence in the hospital well before these health care workers even arrived in Libya.
I asked you to write letters on behalf of the Tripoli six, in the hopes that they might get another trial in which the scientific evidence mattered to the verdict. Good people that you are, I know that lots of you did write…
jstemwedel | July 17, 2007The July 9 issue of Chemical & Engineering News (alas, behind a paywall -- but worth checking to see if your library has an institutional subscription) has an interesting piece [1] on the recently-settled trial in which the makers of Equal (an artificial sweetener based on aspartame) sued the makers of Splenda (an artificial sweetener based on sucralose) over their claim in advertisements, "Splenda is made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar." The makers of Equal (a company called Merisant) asserted that this claim was deceptive.
Most of the C&E News piece focuses on the ways the two…
jstemwedel | July 3, 2007Planting incendiary devices, whether under vehicles or on doorsteps, even if you think the people you're targeting are doing something very, very bad.
Kant grounds ethical considerations in the imperative to respect the rational capacity in yourself and in others. Among other things, I take this to mean that when we see the ethical landscape differently than others -- including when we see others engaging in activities that we take to be unethical (because they violate Kant's categorical imperative) -- we have an obligation to engage them in a discussion where we ask them for their reasons…
voltagegate | June 27, 2007PETA's prez sent Michael Moore a letter last week calling him a hypocrite for being fat while promoting his new film, SiCKO, a documentary criticizing the US healthcare system. Let the fat jokes begin!
Congratulations from PETA on the reviews for SiCKO. Although we think that your film could actually help reform America's sorely inadequate health care system, there's an elephant in the room, and it is you. With all due respect, no one can help but notice that a weighty health issue is affecting you personally. We'd like to help you fix that.
Zing! He's sure to take the request seriously now…
jstemwedel | June 25, 2007There's another piece in the New York Times today about how birth order and family dynamics might play a role in "intelligence" (as measured by IQ -- an imperfect measure at best). This is a follow up to their earlier story about research reported in Science and Intelligence that claims, based on research on male Norwegian conscripts, that "social rank" in a family accounts for a "small but significant" difference in IQ scores. (Zuska reminds us of the dangers of drawing too strong conclusions from limited data.)
Today's Times piece seems to be a round-up of anecdata of the sort that…
jstemwedel | June 22, 2007Another article from Inside Higher Ed that caught my eye:
The chancellor of the City University of New York [Matthew Goldstein] floated a unique approach this week to dealing with the long lamented problem of low enrollments in the sciences: Offer promising students conditional acceptances to top Ph.D. programs in science, technology, engineering and math (the so-called STEM fields) as they start college. ...
In a speech Monday, Goldstein envisioned a national effort in which students identified for their aptitude in middle school would subsequently benefit from academic enrichment programs…
jstemwedel | June 22, 2007Recently Inside Higher Ed had an article about a study (PDF here) coming out of the University of California on the predictive power of the SAT with respect to grades in college courses. The study, by Saul Geiser and Maria Veronica Santelices at the UC-Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, followed the performance (which is to say, grades) of students at all UC campuses for four years and found that "high school grades are consistently the strongest predictor of any factor of success through four years in college". Indeed, the study found high school grades a stronger predictor…
voltagegate | June 19, 2007For an important mission to Earth?
Their spaceship will comprise a series of interlocked modules in an research institute in Moscow, and once the doors are closed tight, the volunteers will be cut off from all contact with the outside world except by a delayed radio link.
They will face simulated emergencies, daily work routines and experiments, as well as boredom and, no doubt, personal friction from confinement in just 550 cubic metres (19,250 cubic feet), the equivalent of nine truck containers.
Communications with the simulated mission control and loved-ones will take up to 40 minutes,…
voltagegate | June 15, 2007My friend "John" is in the Army Reserves. He was scheduled to be operating a crane in Iraq right about now, but his stint was pushed back until an undisclosed time. So, he has been able to start his biology teaching master's program in person instead of distance learning, and that means staying in the area, at least for the summer.
We went to dinner with Heather last night after John showed me his new apartment and had a shave at the barber. We talked about being raised Catholic, having a hard time with the "don't ask questions, God works in mysterious ways" part of the whole thing. John was…