Hypotheses
mikethemadbiologist | May 5, 2011Part of the discussion surrounding the elimination of Osama bin Laden has taken a somewhat ghoulish turn: what does it mean for Obama's re-election chances? While I'm more of a zombies-eat-brains! type of guy, I'm certainly willing to be ghoulish, especially when it gives me the chance to discuss some interesting political science.
A couple of years ago, political scientist Douglas Hibbs published a model that describes the percentage of the vote an incumbent party will receive in a presidential election based on only two factors: disposable income and U.S. military causalities. By his…
mikethemadbiologist | March 23, 2009After reading these two posts by ScienceBlogling Sheril (and the many comments) about scientific literacy, I suppose I'm in the minority about what scientific literacy. Unlike most of the commenters, I think scientific literacy revolves primarily around a core set of knowledge, and not 'critical thinking skills.' More importantly, to combat anti-science, facts are vital.
Now, that core set of knowledge should include a basic understanding of what hypothesis testing and the scientific method are. But, in my experience, stupidity regarding science (no need to be polite about it) stems…
mikethemadbiologist | May 10, 2008Over at Angry Bear, there's a good list of suggestions, generated by one of the readers, of how non-scientists can assess claims made about global warming. I agree with most of them, except for the first one:
If you can correctly guess the basic stance that some member of the discussion will take toward a new bit of news, then that person isn't really addressing the new information. That person is merely taking the opportunity of some new event or datum to repeat a position you already know, rather than taking the event or datum as it comes and opening themselves to new implications.
There'…