Politics and Science
sheril | March 23, 2009Today, we move to our new home at Discover Blogs: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection
While we have immensely enjoyed being a part of Scienceblogs, we've decided together that it is time to move on. Our tremendous thanks go out to Seed for hosting The Intersection since 2006 where we've been honored to share the network with such an esteemed community of bloggers--many of whom have become good friends.
While we're excited to join Carl, Phil, and Sean, it is a bittersweet decision as we will miss the Sb 'family' tremendously. Of course, we will never be far--the blogosphere has no…
cmooney | March 21, 2009As any reader of this blog knows, I was for a while very critical of the Washington Post editorial page amid the George Will affair. Now, my view has changed.
Today the Post publishes, replete with links to many scientific sources, my op-ed answering three claims Will made in his now infamous "Dark Green Doomsayers" column, and also making a broader point about why we need standards in science-centered journalism and commentary.
I'm extremely heartened that the Post ran the piece, and has at least allowed me to correct Will--or, to "debate" him. Without further ado, the oped begins like this…
sheril | March 20, 2009Several readers have emailed me to comment on Michael Steele's ummmm...imaginative explanations of both global 'cooling' and Greenland:
"We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? No very long."
You want me to respond to that gibberish? Seriously? The…
sheril | March 19, 2009'Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington.'
- Governor Bobby Jindal, February 24, 2009
If this video is any indication, both eruptions have the potential to do a lot of damage and it seems to me they're not mutually exclusive. So let's keep an eye on each.
(And spare the fruit fly funding too).
sheril | March 19, 2009..about the undersea volcano that's been erupting over the last four days in the South Pacific!
What you see is smoke, steam, and ash shooting up thousands of feet near Tonga. And while this activity poses little threat to islanders right now, the image reminds me why I'm in favor of "something called 'volcano monitoring'," even if the Louisiana governor disagrees.
sheril | March 18, 2009Last week we told you about the NYAS Two Cultures Conference coming up on May 9, 2009 in celebration of the 50 year anniversary of C.P. Snow's famous Rede lecture. Politicians, academics, writers, and the media will converge to discuss
science and society--including keynote addresses by E.O. Wilson, John
Porter, and Dean Kamen.
Today we're pleased to announce that the website for the event featuring the full schedule is now available here. Tickets are going fast so we encourage readers to take a look at the agenda and register soon. We hope to see you there!
cmooney | March 12, 2009A really great Issues in Science and Technology article by Sheril and our ScienceDebate2008 colleague (and CEO) Shawn Otto is now available online here. It is a look back at the unprecedented ScienceDebate initiative and the not inconsiderable impact it had on the campaign--despite numerous hurdles, including an uninterested media and candidates who were not exactly jumping to debate science policy. An excerpt:
Although the candidates still refused to debate, instead attending yet another faith forum at Saddleback Church in California, Science Debate 2008 was able to obtain written answers…
cmooney | March 10, 2009Amid the big stem cell news, the second half of what the president did yesterday--in essence, order his science adviser to conduct a government-wide scientific housecleaning--has gotten less attention. But it's remarkably important if we want to get over the science problems of the Bush years. In my latest Science Progress column, I explore the meaning of the president's memorandum setting forth this objective. To wit:
The whole problem with the Bush administration's responses to many allegations of political interference with science is that the answer was always the same: Nothing to see…
cmooney | March 10, 2009Over a year ago, we had an idea: We were doing a book that discusses the work of the British physicist-novelist C.P. Snow, and the 50 year anniversary of his world famous "two cultures" argument was coming up--May 7, 2009. Precisely 50 years earlier, Snow had delivered a lecture at Cambridge University lamenting the gap between scientists and humanists, or as he called them then, "literary intellectuals," and suggesting it was a grave threat to policymaking and to the future.
We believe this is still a deeply important and resonant argument, and so we got in touch with the New York Academy of…
cmooney | March 9, 2009In the looking glass world of some conservatives and contrarians, the Democratic war on science continues today....just see here for proof.
Not only has our new president reversed Bush's stem cell policy, and directed his science adviser--who really, really needs to be Senate confirmed--to "develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making" (something I and many others have called for). But in some ways better still, he has given a big speech about embryonic stem cell research that is scientifically accurate, cautious, and does not oversell its potential--…
cmooney | March 7, 2009So, I have to say I find this funny.
On the one hand we have the current, perverse attempt to forecast all the ways in which Democrats and scientists are going to fall into big conflicts soon, now that the Dems have so much power. The idea here is to construct a false equivalence between the egregious abuses of the Bush administration and a few potential conflicts of a very different nature that could maybe happen sometime in the future under this administration.
Meanwhile, we have Obama about to stand up and, you know, liberate embryonic stem cell research. Jeez, Mr. President, didn't you…
cmooney | March 6, 2009A lot of people right now are striving desperately to establish this notion. Neil Munro's big story in the latest National Journal (here, subscription) is the latest example. In essence, it postulates a bunch of new rifts that are going to open between scientists and Democrats now that the latter are in power. I'm quoted in there with this comment:
"There is not going to be enough money to go around, so there will be a lot of scientific priorities that will be hard to meet," Mooney said. But, "I don't think it's going to be the same adversarial situation [seen in the Bush years]. Very few or…
cmooney | March 5, 2009I realize I am a little bit late to this party. But recently (here, there, and everywhere) all of ScienceBlogs was abuzz about Sen. Tom Harkin's complaint that various complementary and alternative remedies are not being validated by the NIH office supposedly designed to do so--namely, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM).
I haven't written about alternative medicine in many years, though I used to follow it fairly closely. But here's what I don't understand. Whatever its suspicious origins, if NCCAM is now doing rigorous studies on the efficicacy of…
cmooney | March 4, 2009
My latest Science Progress column sets Bobby Jindal's latest comments mocking volcano monitoring in the context of longstanding attacks on individual scientific grants--which goes all the way back to Senator William Proxmire's "Golden Fleece" awards, if not further. While this tradition is to some extent bipartisan, it has certainly been more honored of late by conservatives, as the examples of John McCain's and Sarah Palin's sneering at grizzly bear and fruit fly research during the campaign show. Or as I put it:
In each case--as with Jindal--experts patiently explained that this research…
sheril | March 4, 2009Guest post by Brian Hare, Evolutionary Anthropologist at Duke University
Last month, a 200 pound male chimpanzee named Travis mauled a woman outside the home where he has been living with his owner Sandra Herold. Charla Nash was nearly killed by Travis and now has life changing wounds to her face while Travis was stabbed by his owner with a butcher knife and shot dead by the police.
Was this incidence preventable or just a freak accident? Should chimpanzees and other primates be kept as pets? What is the effect of the primate pet trade not only on the welfare of these "pets" but on their…
cmooney | March 4, 2009Mike Dunford has the details, based on Congressional Quarterly's reporting. There are apparently multiple senators blocking two of Obama's key science appointees from taking their posts. This is outrageous--a totally new kind of "war on science"--and we need a full court press. Details here.
cmooney | March 3, 2009We can if we're Fox News. Or Matt Drudge.
These people use any snowstorm as reason to cast doubt on global warming. It's as predictable as...well, no, it's a lot more predictable than the weather.
I really regret that important global warming protests and actions always seem to be timed so that they coincide with winter weather. Mostly, the activists can't help it; it's just rotten luck. But I'll say it again: Having the U.N. Copenhagen meeting in Denmark in December is just asking for this kind of stuff.
That doesn't, of course, excuse the dishonesty from right-wingers who continually try to…
cmooney | March 3, 2009The Washington Post (the news part) reports that the man who is now one of my senators, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, has placed a hold on the nominations of John Holdren and Jane Lubchencho, and won't allow them to be voted on. Reportedly, "Menendez is using the holds as leverage to get Senate leaders' attention for a matter related to Cuba rather than questioning the nominees' credentials."
What a complete outrage. These nominees need to work on climate change, science advising, and much else; they have no role in Cuba policy. Obama named them back in December--they should be in their…
cmooney | February 24, 2009I kinda suspected--but didn't bother to prove--that George Will was recycling parts of his anti-global warming balderdashery, particularly his strained paragraph about global cooling in the 1970s, replete with misleading references.
Well, Brad Johnson has done the work: It appears Will has a rotating (and very limited) set of global warming talking points that date back to 1992. Once in a while, he simply rejiggers the column. Wow.
The George Will scandal grows larger now. Not only is he not constrained by, or answerable to, facts; but for a national columnist, such recycling is pretty…
sheril | February 23, 2009
According to CNN, former Governor Gary Locke (D-WA) is likely to be nominated by President Obama as our next Secretary of Commerce.
Given NOAA accounts for up to 65% of the Commerce Department budget, you bet I'm eager to learn more. Among many duties, the incoming Secretary of Commerce faces enormous ocean related challenges so I will be following this story with interest.