framing

Chris Mooney is worried that the latest turns in the anthrax case are reinforcing the notion of the 'mad scientist' (and what, exactly, is wrong with a Mad Scientist? Just asking): The Bruce Ivins we're hearing about in the media sounds like a mad scientist straight out of Hollywood's most feverish fantasies. He had access to forbidden knowledge (anthrax spores and how to use them), and a sly, horrible plan to apply that knowledge to its worst possible end. For a public that has been repeatedly instructed not to trust the responsibility of scientists--because they don't value life and their…
Dear Chris, I don't think for a moment that you (or for that matter, Matt or Sheril) are creationist apologists. But you are successfully pissing off a lot of evolutionary biologists...like me, even though I should be incredibly receptive to your argument. I've always argued that the creationist controversy is a political, not scientific, controversy. I would go so far as to claim that among the evolutionary biologists I know, I've been one of the staunchest advocates of bare knuckles political responses to creationists (even if those bare knuckles are enclosed in a velvet glove). Likewise…
I've recently written a couple of posts about how evolution is used in medicine. Randolph Nesse and Stephen Stearns in Evolutionary Applications have written an article about evolutionary medicine. Here's one part that provides some additional examples (italics mine): Some of the most useful applications of evolution often do not use evolutionary theory directly; instead they use technologies developed by evolutionary biologists. In particular, methods for reconstructing phylogenies are being applied to genetic data with very practical results. HIV is especially susceptible to such methods…
In an attempt at calm discussion, ScienceBlogling Chris Mooney is trying to explore some of the issues around framing. With that in mind, I want to raise one unacknowledged 'axis of argument': the extent to which various sides in the debate are willing to have the ranks of science supporters filled by complete fucking moronslow information content supporters. I don't mean informed non-scientists, I mean flat-out ignoramuses. For example, consider this story about the Clinton-Obama race set in Hazelton, PA: A couple blocks east, at Jimmy's Quick Lunch, Clinton's the favorite of many…
In my entire tenure at ScienceBlogs, I've never called out other ScienceBloglings, even if I have posted responses to them. But ScienceBloglings Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet are slowly morphing into unwitting concern trolls regarding the creationist controversy. With regards to Richard Dawkins, as I've said before, I think he's a wash. On the one hand, he seems utterly ignorant of the U.S. political landscape (or worse, he just doesn't care) when fighting what is a political battle (the creationist controversy). On the other hand, he makes people like me who are not Christian and who do…
If you missed my talk, then you missed this slide I leave to give a talk for a few hours, and suddenly all hell breaks lose on ScienceBlogs over the whole PZ Myers getting expelled from the movie Expelled incident, you damn kids! So I thought I would peeplay too. First, I'm not sure the charge that this helps the movie is true: since the Great Expulsion, there have been cancellations of some pre-release showings. But this incident, and various ScienceBloglings' reactions to it, to me, appears to be functioning as a Rorschach blot for a whole host of larger issues. One of the things that…
While I wasn't put out by this article by ScienceBlogling Chris Mooney as others were, it did make me think about how evolutionary biologists are viewed. One of the things I've seen floating around the internets, and this is seems to be 'bipartisan', is the equating of evolutionary biology with evolutionary psychology. I've always been puzzled by this since many evolutionary biologists are skeptical about evolutionary psychology. If you went to a Society for the Study of Evolution meeting, many biologists, if not cautious or skeptical about evolutionary psychology, would be downright…
Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance, in an excellent post, argues that much of the opposition to evolution stems from opposition to (mis)perceived liberal elites (bold original; italics mine): What scientists tend to underestimate is the extent to which many people react viscerally against science just because it is science. Or, more generally, because it is seen as part of an effort on the part of elites to force their worldview on folks who are getting along just fine without all these fancy ideas, thank you very much. In the old-time (1980's) controversies about teaching creationism in…
I'll have a post tomorrow about the Republican opposition to S-CHIP, a federally-funded health insurance program. While writing the post, a question occurred to me: Why is private health insurance not called corporate health insurance? Private health insurance connotes an image of a small mom-and-pop business which insures a few hundred people. Of course, even the smallest health insurance corporations are much larger than what would be considered a small business. All health insurance corporations are huge (although some are gargantuan). Those of us who favor healthcare reform will find…
I don't want "hope", I want good policies, politics, and results. Obama demonstrates exactly how not to argue against Republican militarism. From Ezra Klein: I'm sympathetic to what I think Obama was trying to say, but the point is better put more simply -- to have the best shot at winning national security arguments with John McCain, the Democrats need a candidate who didn't support the invasion of Iraq. After all, McCain won't be tarred with the specific acts of "incompetence" that are frequently (and misleadingly) alleged to have been responsible for disaster in Iraq. The Democratic…
By way of ScienceBlogling Razib, I came across this Reason article by Ronald Bailey summarizing the presidential candidates views' on evolution. Bailey highlights two reasons what lack of support for evolution says about a candidate: The candidate probably is weak on the separation of church and state. The candidate is unable to rationally assess evidence. But I think this misses the point entirely: evolution matters because evolutionary biology matters. Granted this sounds like something Yogi Berra would say, but I'm tired of the Coalition of the Sane, regardless of where individual…
Once again, someone in the traditional media is projecting their personal opinion onto millions of people without any evidence. Washington Post reporter Dan Balz in one of those hideous 'news analysis' pieces: Edwards has offended many Democrats with his candidacy. They question his authenticity and see his shift from optimism to anger as the sign of an opportunistic politician. He and his most loyal supporters argue that that's not the case, that the Edwards of 2008 is a reflection of a changed country and his and his wife's changed personal situation. We're offended, huh? I know some…
Here's one example, unintentionally brought to you by NY Times columnist Frank Rich, of how writing political narratives instead of discussing data leads to unsupported conclusions (italics mine): The continued political import of Iraq could be found in three different polls in the past six weeks -- Pew, ABC News-Washington Post and Wall Street Journal-NBC News. They all showed the same phenomenon: the percentage of Americans who believe that the war is going well has risen strikingly in tandem with the diminution of violence -- from 30 percent in February to 48 percent in November, for…
...and start doing it. Chris Bowers writes: Few things irritate me more about prominent DLC types than their tendency to preface virtually everything they propose for Democrats with how that something will help Democrats get elected. They do it all the time. I know that an election is close, and electability will be a concern for some... in addition to making Democrats look weak on national security, DLC types like Bayh end up reinforcing a second insidious conservative narrative: that Democrats are a bunch of soulless, liberal elites who think they are better than most of the backward rubes…
ScienceBloging Greg Laden reports that the Texas Board of Higher Education is considering accrediting The Texas Based Institute for Creation Research so it could offer an online course in Science Education. ScienceBlogling PZ offers one solution to stop the inanity (or at least limit the damage if Texas proceeds): I hope Texas scientists can slap that Board into wakeful reality before that meeting, because if this goes through, the trust I can give Texas-trained teachers is getting flushed right down the sewer. And if Texans can't fix this, the rest of the country has to step up and deny…
In light of recent creationist idiocy in Texas, the evolution 'controversy' will be in the news. Those of us who support science will need some talking points made for TV debate, not the classroom. Here are my suggestions: ID should always be referred to as intelligent design creationism. Not only is this accurate, but many people don't want to be linked with creationism--creationism does have a stigma attached to it. Evolutionary biology is critical to medicine and genomics--denying evolution is like watching television and denying the existence of photons. Genomics is one of those…
No, I'm not talking about voting them out of office (fat chance of that happening in some places). By now, you've probably heard about the firing of the Texas Education Agency's director of science curriculum. There's not much to add to what others have already said about how stupid this is, so, instead, I want to propose one possible way to strike back at these bozos: federalize the issue. This latest front in the Republican* War on Science illustrates how this is a political issue that revolves around power, not framing. One way pro-science citizens can influence what local and state…
You can now read the Krause et al (2007) paper from Current Biology regarding the FOXP2 variant found in Neanderthals in an open-access on-line form at Current Biology Online. Here is the summary of the article: Although many animals communicate vocally, no extant creature rivals modern humans in language ability. Therefore, knowing when and under what evolutionary pressures our capacity for language evolved is of great interest. Here, we find that our closest extinct relatives, the Neandertals, share with modern humans two evolutionary changes in FOXP2, a gene that has been implicated in…
Things to notice in this video: The scientific sounding languge. The cool 3D graphics The guy bloating up because he has not eaten his SKRMs yet. Then he eats the SKRMs and gets better.
I am in utter awe of the brilliant reframing of 'waterboarding' by the Kenosha Kid: Waterboarding = Partial Drowning Interrogation Fucking brilliant.