ethics
purepedantry | April 11, 2007TCS published an interview with Freeman Dyson about his iconoclasm and his optimism about the future of science and humanity:
Benny Peiser: One of your most influential lectures is re-published in your new book. I am talking about your Bernal Lecture which you delivered in London in 1972, one year after Desmond Bernal's death. As you point out, the lecture provided the foundation for much of your writing in later years. What strikes me about your remarkably optimistic lecture is its almost religious tone. It was delivered at a time, similar to the period after World War I, when a new age of…
purepedantry | February 5, 2007Ghost authorship is the omission of the name of someone who contributed to a scientific paper from that paper's list of authors. Sometimes this can be because what the individual contributed is not considered critical to the creation of that paper. Sometimes this can be because the inclusion of that author's name would cast suspicion on the validity of the work.
Gotzsche et al, publishing in PLoS Medicine, conducted a study of industry initiated trials conducted in Denmark in 1994 and 1995. They found that ghost authorship was incredibly widespread. In the 44 industry-initiated trials, 33…
grrlscientist | January 11, 2007Liberal media, my ass! If you believe that the majority of the mainstream media (MSM) is a bastion of "liberal" reporting, then you need to open your mind and read Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush by Eric Boehlert (New York: Free Press, 2006). In this book, the author examines the press coverage of the Bush administration during that turbulent year between September 2004 and September 2005.
Boehlert is an award-winning journalist who researches and writes extensively about media, politics and pop culture, and is a contributing editor to Rolling Stone. In Lapdogs, he unflinchingly…
grrlscientist | December 14, 2006 Apparently, facts are getting in the way of BushCo. But does everything need to be cleared by the faith-based intitiatives office?
The Bush administration is clamping down on scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the latest agency subjected to controls on research that might go against official policy.
New rules require screening of all facts and interpretations by agency scientists who study everything from caribou mating to global warming. The rules apply to all scientific papers and other public documents, even minor reports or prepared talks, according to documents obtained by The…
grrlscientist | December 10, 2006This article is so good that I just had to quote a few choice bits here for you to read, but there's more of this if you follow the link below.
If the blue states are sinkholes of moral decay, as right-wing pundits insist, how come red states lead the nation in violent crime, divorce, illegitimacy, and incarceration, among other evils? To a bus-riding innocent on Manhattan's stroller-filled Upper West Side, it looks like a case of hypocrisy meets stupidity.
In contemporary lore, the good people of the red states walk in Jesus's sandals while the rest of us are following Satan into the…
purepedantry | December 7, 2006Your gut reaction is probably that the question is irrelevant; what parent would choose for their child to have a genetic disease. That was my reaction.
Apparently, however, some parents with genetic diseases that make them lead relatively normal lives but isolate them into special social groups -- such as deafness or dwarfism -- are electing for their children to also have these genetic diseases. As reported in the NYTimes:
Wanting to have children who follow in one's footsteps is an understandable desire. But a coming article in the journal Fertility and Sterility offers a fascinating…
grrlscientist | November 20, 2006
Fox News ratings went down by 17% in October, while most cable news networks saw tremendous increases in ratings. I guess people are finally growing tired of their ridiculous bias and gossip. Basically, there is no liberal media, there only is only intelligent media and ridiculous media. Oh, and hey, Rupert, how did the OJ interview help your ratings?
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tags: politics, mainstream media, FOX news, OJ, murder, george bush
purepedantry | November 15, 2006On The Colbert Report last night, Stephen Colbert talked about an article about uterine transplants for The Word. Scientists now claim that there is nothing technically to prevent us from performing a womb transplant, even to the point that you could put a uterus in a man:
Scientists claim that the first human baby could be born from a transplanted womb within three years.
Animal experiments have dismissed many of the concerns that womb transplants could not produce healthy babies.
The Swedish expert behind the research says that one of the best candidates to be an organ donor would be the…
purepedantry | November 1, 2006There is an election coming up. Hopefully this is not a shocking revelation for most people. Frankly, it seems like everyone not in a medically-induced coma for the past three months has spent every waking moment bloviating about it.
The scientists too have come out in force. If you don't believe me, read the Policy and Politics section of this site. We certainly have opinions and have no hesitation in expressing them in the most forceful terms. (I do not exclude myself from that list either, and I plan on forcefully expressing a good bit in the run up to election day.)
However, every…
chaoticutopia | October 31, 2006I've kept this research paper in the archives for too long. Converging topics as diverse as bioethics and Gothic literature, it was one of the most enjoyable papers I've ever had to write. What better day could there be to bring it out of the shadows, than Halloween? Even though I wrote it over a year ago, it seems as relevant as ever. It summarizes a warning that we all must heed: If we prevent legitimate, honest scientists from studying stem cell usage or cloning, we may be leaving the irresponsible and dishonest to continue the work. Is biotechnology really something we should force into a…
grrlscientist | October 15, 2006Wealth accumulated by First World countries is largely based on riches taken from Third World countries. For example, the destruction of India's textile industry, the takeover of the spice trade, the genocide of native American tribes, and African slavery all served to fuel the Industrial Revolution. Below the fold is an interesting article that discusses the links between the accumulation of wealth concomitant with the over-exploitation of nature and how they cause poverty.
I am interested to read your reactions to this article, dear readers.
Two of the great economic myths of our time…
purepedantry | October 4, 2006Some scientists have decided to form a 527 -- a political action committee that is not tax deductible under election law -- to combat what they feel is a rising anti-science sentiment:
Several prominent scientists said yesterday that they had formed an organization dedicated to electing politicians "who respect evidence and understand the importance of using scientific and engineering advice in making public policy."
Organizers of the group, Scientists and Engineers for America, said it would be nonpartisan, but in interviews several said Bush administration science policies had led them to…
chaoticutopia | August 21, 2006If there were ever a post to elude a specific category here on ScienceBlogs, this would be it. If it were simply a "hey, I'm back from the mountains" post, I could stick it under "Chatter". But sometimes, visiting remote regions, like mist shrouded mountains or vast, dry swaths of blowing sand can cause one to reflect on many things.... including the big picture, the synthesis of it all. I did quite a bit of that this past week, including when I saw the comments on my Schrodinger's Apple post. When I set it to repost, I didn't expect such thoughtful response. I'd like to address those…
grrlscientist | August 3, 2006This streaming video shows an interview with ex-muslim, secular humanist and feminist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali Wafa Sultan, discussing her beliefs about the clash between Islam and "the West": essentially she argues this is a clash between the Middle Ages and all it represents and the 21st Century, and all it represents. I would like to expand her ideas to include all religious fundamentalism, such as what is happening in America today with our own homegrown religious wingnuts.
Okay, thanks to a reader, I now know that I mixed up Wafa Sultan with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is the author of a book, The…
grrlscientist | August 2, 2006The Bush administration proves once again that they hate your Constitutional rights as much as Al Qaeda does.
U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.
A 32-page draft measure is intended to authorize the Pentagon's tribunal system, established shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks to detain and prosecute detainees captured in the war on terror. The tribunal system was thrown out last month by the Supreme…
grrlscientist | July 29, 2006
This poll is not scientific, but it's still quite interesting, especially when one realizes that, according to any poll results from the past 18 months, Bush's approval rating are astonishingly low, particularly for a second-term war-time prez.
[Added 1945 in response to blog SiBling, James]
Since blog SiBling, James, is being cranky, I will also cite some information from the linked MSNBC explanation as to why this poll is not scientific.
First, the linked document points out that;
While a poll of 100 people will be more accurate than a poll of 10, studies have shown that accuracy…
grrlscientist | July 27, 2006Throughout the years, I have read quite a bit about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but because I do not claim to be an expert on the situation, I rarely comment about it. Despite this, I have long been convinced that there is a much better way to deal with that tragic situation than what is being done right now, a way to deal with it that will take into account the best interests of both sides. Recently, I found a streaming video that addresses this situation that you might also find to be quite thought-provoking.
Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land is a truly interesting streaming…
purepedantry | July 25, 2006The entry that I posted on research challenging the idea that Hummers are worse for the environment than hybrids has sparked a great deal of contreversy and criticism. I cannot say that I find this entirely surprising.
There have been several very reasonable criticisms related their failure to publish their methods and their assumption that hybrids will have a significantly shorter operating life than Hummers. (They assert that the average operating life of a Hummer is 300,000 miles while the average operating life of a Prius is 100,000 miles.) Specifically with respect to the operating…
chaoticutopia | July 10, 2006...or at least they would be if someone had cloned a person by now.
I've missed the last few "Ask a Science Blogger" questions, which I now regret. I can easily describe the qualities of an excellent science teacher, or discuss how the new science behind chaos and complexity has affected policy... but in order to answer this week's question, I need to pull out my views from the past. Ten years ago, to be specific:
On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Ten years on, has cloning developed the way you expected it to?
Ten years ago, I was rather shy about…
purepedantry | June 26, 2006Keith Burgess-Jackson questions in his TCS column whether we should listen to people like Noam Chomsky's opinions on politics -- a realm notably outside their stated occupational expertise. I must admit that I haven't read what Noam Chomsky's opinions are lately -- although it is my suspicion that with respect to the present administration, they are hardly complimentary. To whit:
Noam Chomsky is, by all accounts, a brilliant linguist. Let me stipulate that this is the case, since I'm not a linguist myself. Let me also stipulate that he is a competent philosopher of language, although he has…