Media
pharyngula | December 9, 2009Richard Cohen is one of those profit-making advocates of gay deconversion, whose work has been used in Uganda to justify laws that promote killing gay people; Rachel Maddow, of course, is the fabulous, intelligent interviewer who ought to be the model for responsible television journalism.
She politely rips him to pieces and most decorously picks her teeth with his splintered bones. I like it.
clock | December 4, 2009If you follow @ScienceBlogs on Twitter, you may have seen a cryptic tweet yesterday, just saying:
ScienceBlogs will soon be making a very exciting announcement - so stay tuned!
SciBlings (who by then knew what the news was going to be, but were asked to keep it under the wraps until the official announcement) had some fun teasing everyone else - here are some examples:
RT @ScienceBlogs: ScienceBlogs will soon be making a very exciting announcement - so stay tuned! (We are ALL Belle de Jour)
RT @ScienceBlogs: ScienceBlogs will soon be making a very exciting announcement - stay tuned! (We plan…
revere | December 1, 2009I don't know what happened in the Ukraine regarding swine flu (or some other illness) and without any hard facts we refrained from speculating on it (we did post once on the lack of clarity and WHO's reponse). We still don't know what to say about what did or didn't happen, although it appears others are now talking:
The global swine flu outbreak has become something of a political football in every country where the pandemic has spread, but Ukraine's response to the virus has achieved a new level of blatant politicization. According to a campaign advisor to Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian…
pharyngula | November 5, 2009This is fast becoming the theme of news stories about atheists this year: that there are differences in tactics in the atheist community, with some people being more in-your-face about it (yours truly takes a bow), and others wanting to be more conciliatory towards religion. Well, how surprising that a movement of diverse freethinkers who value critical thinking, skepticism, and open argument, and which lacks either a charismatic central leader or a hierarchy of control, might have members with diverse views…
Here's another example of journalists jumping on the bandwagon: a story about the…
revere | October 29, 2009One of the by-products of the brouhaha (here, here) over The Atlantic article on vaccines was some interesting issues raised by the way the Knight Science Journalism Tracker handled it (here, here). If you aren't familiar with KSJ Tracker, it's a site that does "peer review" of science journalism. It's goal "is to provide a broad sampling of the past day’s science news and, where possible, of news releases or other news tips related to publication of science news in the general circulation news media, mainly of the U.S." I don't get a chance to read it as often as I'd like, but when I do I…
pharyngula | October 25, 2009A few weeks ago, Nicholas Wade wrote a terrible review of Dawkins' latest book (it wasn't a negative review, but it just weirdly spun off into some half-baked philosophy of science).
Now the poor guy has been publicly spanked. The NY Times published short letters of rebuttal from Dan Dennett and Philip Kitcher, and then published online another dozen letters. That last link is more of a mixed bag, with some good replies and some strangely skewed ones…but it's all fun anyway.
Unfortunately, all the letters are necessarily short. This kind of corrective actually needs some longer discussion.
pharyngula | October 13, 2009Perhaps you are a scientist. And perhaps you have wondered how badly the popular press could possibly mangle your research. Wonder no more: we have discovered a new maximum.
Behold this research summary in The Daily Galaxy, and be amazed!
It's about a paper in the ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry B. It's straightforward physical chemistry using some cool tools to image the formation of double helices of DNA: it's simply addressing the question of how complementary strands align themselves in solution. It's physical chemistry, OK? It's about tiny molecular interactions…until the Daily Galaxy…
scientificactivist | October 12, 2009I recently had the pleasure of writing an op-ed piece about health care reform for my hometown newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and it ran in the paper today. You can check it out online here. I grew up reading the Star-Telegram, so this was an exciting opportunity.
My article discusses the need for robust health care reform in the form of a strong public option, comparing and contrasting my health care experiences in the US and the UK to build my case. For regular readers of my blog, you will note that this is a theme I have often explored.
I would have preferred that the Star-…
revere | October 12, 2009I agree with one thing that Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst of The Global Language Monitor says:
“At this point it is becoming increasingly difficult to engage in any form of public dialogue without offending someone’s sensitivities, whether right, left or center.” (Paul Payack, Global Language Monitor site)
Well, not complete agreement. I'm not offended by what he says. I just think it's dumb.
Although I had never heard of Mr. Payack's site, apparently he has taken it upon himself to compile, for the last six years, a list of what he deems the ten most politically incorrect…
pharyngula | October 9, 2009The dishonor goes to ABC News, which put together an appalling mess of an article that gives credibility to creationist denialists. Right from the beginning, you know this article is bunk.
But despite the excitement from the paleontology community, another group of researchers, many of them with advanced degrees in science, are unimpressed by Ardi, who they believe is just another ape -- an ape of indeterminate age, they add, and an ape who cannot be an ancestor of modern man for a range of reasons, including one of singular importance: God created man in one day, and evolution is a fallacy…
revere | October 9, 2009Skeptical, but Hope Springs Eternal.
The heaviest of the heavy-hitter science journals in the US is Science Magazine, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). It publishes in all aspects of science. Its main competitor is the venerable Nature magazine in the UK. I subscribe to both. They come every week. Since I am overwhelmed by work and scientific papers in general and have a journal of my own to edit (full disclosure), these weekly news and science sources more likely than not pile up unread. But because I subscribe I can easily get the latest hot…
revere | October 6, 2009Vaccines is a topic I don't like writing about so much for many reasons. Vaccination programs are important to public health but we (all the Reveres, including this one) have always interested either in basic science or programs that are applied to the whole population at once, such as clean water, air or food or safe products in the marketplace. But vaccines keep coming up so we talk about them. Since this blog has spent a lot of time on flu, most of it has related to influenza vaccine, but not always. This is a "not always" post, and it is partially about the latest news that US Army and…
pharyngula | September 29, 2009Since the mere majesty and grandeur of the natural world are insufficient to provide entertainment, perhaps science coverage in the media should become something like the Weekly World News. Arthur David Horn could be a major media star.
He now advocates the theory that modern man is not the result of a natural process of evolution, but that evolution was artificially aided by reptilian extraterrestrials. The reptilians bred mankind as servants and continue to rule the planet today, Horn said.
Reptilians have manipulated perceptions of world history and hold power over humankind through…
clock | September 27, 2009
Background
When Futurity.org, a new science news service, was launched last week, there was quite a lot of reaction online.
Some greeted it with approval, others with a "wait and see" attitude.
Some disliked the elitism, as the site is limited only to the self-proclaimed "top" universities (although it is possible that research in such places, where people are likely to be well funded, may be the least creative).
But one person - notably, a journalist - exclaimed on Twitter: "propaganda!", which led to a discussion that revealed the journalist's notion that press releases are…
revere | September 26, 2009I'm afraid I have to complain about crappy journalism again. AlterNet is an online newsmagazine I quite like. We've been linked by them numerous times and know their influence. Sometimes, though, some very smart writers write some very dumb things, even if they do it in a smart way. Alas, Joshua Holland has done it today on the front page of Alternet.org with a supremely wrongheaded story about why you don't have to be scared shitless about swine flu. We agree with that bottom line, but how he got there is the problem (that and the fact that he doesn't understand much about influenza).
Let's…
revere | September 22, 2009There are multiple trials of swine flu vaccine in different countries and involving different subpopulations. Recent news strongly suggests that -- surprisingly -- a single dose of viral antigen (i.e., one injection) may be sufficient to raise antibody against swine flu to protective levels. There are a lot of uncertainties here, but the data have been fairly consistent. But that's for adults (over 18 years old). Since children are also had high risk, there is much apprehension whether a single dose will also work for children. Now we're getting some of the first results and the news is good…
revere | September 21, 2009One of my healthier, but alas more expensive habits, is that I walk a mile or so several times a week to my neighborhood shopping area and visit one or another bookstore. I live in a college town, so my neighborhood shopping area has some of the best bookstores anywhere. Not just a university bookstore (which, like many, is part of the Barnes and Noble College Division and not independent), but also what I consider the best independent bookstore anywhere. Since the Reveres try not to reveal any of our locations, I don't get to give it a plug except to say it has the name of a prestigious…
clock | September 8, 2009I know everyone in the sci-blogosphere is swooning over Carl Sagan. But as a kid I never cared much about him - I usually fell asleep halfway through each episode of 'Cosmos'. But I would not miss for anything an episode of 'The Underwater Odyssey of Commander Cousteau' with Jacques-Yves Cousteau. That was breathtaking. And what he and the crew of Calypso did was truly ground-breaking, both in terms of scientific discoveries and in terms of under-water filming. And those discoveries and breakthroughs were shared with us, the audience, in an intimate and immediate manner.
That was a long time…
clock | August 30, 2009The New Scientist, The Open Laboratory, the journos who just don't get it....those things make me want to write something on this blog!
Slow blogging...like slow food. These days, if something cannot wait, I put it on Twitter - from which it automatically goes to FriendFeed and Facebook where I may or may not get feedback. But blog posts - those take some thinking. It may take days, or weeks (or never) for the idea to crystallize enough to deserve a blog post (and for me to find time to sit down and write it). So, I am coming back to this discussion now although all the other players have…