General
loom | September 17, 2007I just took a survey about blogs about science, and you should too. Here's the description:
This survey attempts to access the opinions of bloggers, blog-readers, and non-blog folk in regards to the impact of blogs on the outside world. The authors of the survey are completing an academic manuscript on the impact of science blogging and this survey will provide invaluable data to answer the following questions:
Who reads or writes blogs?
What are the perceptions of blogging, and what are the views of those who read blogs?
How do academics and others perceive science blogging?
What, if any,…
loom | September 16, 2007You may be familiar with Pulse of the Planet as a radio show about nature, but Jim Metzner, its producer, just let me know that it now sports a pretty extensive web site, including a selection of diaries from scientists studying everything from lightning to sea turtles. Check it out.
ianhart | August 31, 2007This is the last post for the Pacific Institute's Integrity of Science blog. We've really enjoyed our time at ScienceBlogs and think this is a great community. To quote a walrus, "You're such a lovely audience, we'd like to take you home with us, we'd love to take you home."
At this time, the Pacific Institute is going to be refocusing its blogging effort to go beyond the work of our Science Integrity program and incorporate all the work we do: from securing safe drinking water in Africa to cleaning up diesel truck traffic in Oakland to making sure that international corporate social…
loom | August 23, 2007As I've mentioned before, my brother Ben also blogs. An editor at Oxford American Dictionaries, he writes about words over at "From A to Zimmer." Not surprisingly, our blogs usually don't overlap. But Ben's latest entry--on very, very long words, has prompted me to pose a question of my own here.
In his post, "Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism!", Ben points out that a lot of the longest words are, as he puts it, "stunt words." They're cobbled together from prefixes and suffixes, but never actually used in real life. Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism is a case in point--a word that is used to…
loom | August 6, 2007Who says scientists can't write? Moselio Schaechter finds a lovely passage about a lowly fungus from 1884.
Small Things Considered: The Victorian Way With Words
loom | August 3, 2007My mid-year resolution is to become a more sociable blogger--to point out good posts elsewhere that might otherwise be missed. Today's link: Philip Ball casts a steely gaze at the latest round of papers about the so-called "memory of water" over at homunculus
ianhart | July 24, 2007A number of voices have weighed in following this months revelation that Surgeon General Richard Cormona had been subject to widespread political restrictions from the White House during his 2002-2006 tenure. Many have held up the story as another example of politics and bias getting in the way of reality-based problem solving -- the Kaiser Family Foundation has even collected some of the editorials, and provides summaries.
Of course, the Washington Machine being what it is, we now have the inevitable backlash. Accordingly, Fox News is attacking the messenger.
It may, indeed, be a fair…
ianhart | July 23, 2007The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby had an interesting thought-piece in yesterday's paper.
Did you hear about the religious fundamentalist who wanted to teach physics at Cambridge University? This would-be instructor wasn't simply a Christian; he was so preoccupied with biblical prophecy that he wrote a book titled "Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John." Based on his reading of Daniel, in fact, he forecast the date of the Apocalypse: no earlier than 2060. He also calculated the year the world was created. When Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning," he determined,…
loom | June 30, 2007For the past few days I've been rushing around, first to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to talk to some people at the Marine Biological Laboratory about the E. coli book, and then on an infinite chain of connecting flights to come out to Aspen to participate in a science-media summit. It's a relief to be finally sitting down in one place, and the view of the mountains from here making blogging very fine. But until my blood thickens up a little, I probably won't be writing much.
As I've been driving and flying and driving again, I've gotten some emails from readers, pointing me to new papers that…
loom | June 28, 2007If you want to know how a new word gets into Oxford dictionaries, or are interested more generally in the bubbling cauldron of modern English, check out the the first post of new blog from Oxford University Press, From A to Zimmer. That's Zimmer as in Ben Zimmer, lexicographer, editor at Oxford University Press, and brother.
loom | June 22, 2007If you sometimes look around and ask yourself, "So what is life, anyway?"--even if you haven't ingested some illegal substance--you may be interested in a story I've written for Seed magazine. "The Meaning of Life" is the cover story for the August issue, which just turned up at my doorstep. The story isn't online yet, but when it does pop up, I'll make a note of it.
The idea for the story crystallized during the course of my work on my next book. My initial idea for the book was to investigate this very question, "What is life?" There is actually a lot of new research and thinking going into…
loom | June 12, 2007Nine years ago I had the opportunity to visit southern Sudan. With a few other reporters, I flew from Nairobi to Lokichokio in northern Kenya, where we prepared to cross the border. A man took our passports and told us he'd hold onto them till we got back. We climbed into another plane loaded with medical supplies and took off again, into a land that had been at war for 15 years.
I found the place eerie in its quiet. We were far from the front lines, and so you could forget that there was a war going on, except for the occasional word of government planes in the air, potentially carrying…
loom | June 5, 2007Okay--we're moving again. I await your comments (as usual, there will be small delay for moderation.)
You'll have to make up for my appalling silence today as I work on (gasp) magazine articles. I know, I know, how very dead-tree of me....
loom | June 5, 2007Someone just emailed me to let me know she couldn't post a comment. For some reason that feature has shut itself down. I've been traveling, so it's taken me a while to start dealing with this. I'll let the Scienceblogs folks know of the problem, and let you know when it's resolved.
loom | April 25, 2007Among the many obligations keeping me away from the blog is the nearly-completed overhaul of my web site, carlzimmer.com. Along with information on my books and talks, the site also has an archive of the past few years of my articles. I've made my way back to 2001, and I am continuing to push back further. It's a strange experience to look back over many dozens of stories that all seemed rather cutting-edge at the time. In some cases, they've been outstripped so starkly by later research that they seem almost like time capsules now. In other cases, further research hasn't really pushed the…
integrityofscience | April 12, 2007For those of you in the Bay Area, look for me on TV tonight. I just taped an interview serving as a counterpoint to the AEI and Pacific Research Institute-backed documentary "An Inconvenient Truth ... or Convenient Fiction?" Tonight is its World Premeire in San Francisco.
Click here for the official line on the documentary.
Barring breaking news, look for the story on San Francisco's KGO-TV ABC 7 at 11 tonight. If it makes the web, I'll be sure to blog it tomorrow.
The documentary is presented by Dr. Steven Hayward. By reputation, it does not refute global warming, just humanity's role in…
integrityofscience | April 5, 2007With a calculator in one hand and a red pen in the other, the White House Office of Management and Budget is in an ugly light when it comes to scientific integrity and policymaking.
The calculator hit yesterday with a recess appointment that is directly related to January's OMB rule change (see "New Oversight Policy Bad for Science-based Decisionmaking"). With Congress out on Easter break, President Bush appointed Susan E. Dudley to serve as director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in OMB. Dudley is considered to be the main influence -- if not the author -- of the…
loom | April 5, 2007I've just spent part of this evening pondering a commentary in the new issue of the journal Science by fellow Sciencebloggers Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet called "Framing Science." (The paper is behind a firewall--yeck--but Matt has expounded on similar notes here.) They argue that scientists make a mistake of just trying to dump technical complexities on the public. They should be defining hot-button issues such as stem cells or global warming so as to resonate with "core values."
As a science writer who doesn't deal much in political reporting, I'm with them--but only up to a point, as far…
integrityofscience | March 26, 2007It's taking all weekend to sort through everything that happened last week, a banner one if you're concerned about scientific integrity. Thankfully, we can stream the past.
The biggest science integrity news of the week had to be the House Committee on Government and Reform's continued investigation on political interference with climate science. From Chairman Waxman's opening comments:
Since our first hearing on January 30, we have received over eight boxes of documents from the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The document production is not yet complete. But some of the…
integrityofscience | March 14, 2007From Union of Concerned Scientists:
WASHINGTON (March 14, 2007) - The House of Representatives today overwhelmingly passed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which would, for the first time, grant federal scientists and contractors the right to expose political interference in their research without fear of retribution. The bill passed by a 331 to 94 vote, with 229 Democrats and 102 Republicans voting in favor.
The House soundly rejected an amendment from Rep. Bill Sali (R-Idaho) that would have stripped all protections for scientists from the legislation. Instead, the legislators…