Politics and Science
sheril | February 19, 2009
Listen to NPR's News & Notes today for our friend Al Teich--the Director of Science and Policy Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science--will discuss science under the Obama Administration, the stimulus package, and more.
Find your local station or listen to the podcast here.
cmooney | February 18, 2009I've been thrilled at the comments I'm getting in response to my posts on Nicholaus Copernicus. See for example here. So I've thought of a plan to invite blog readers to join me throughout the next several months as I push through a large number of other texts like De revolutionibus.
For the remainder of this week, the primary reading will be Copernicus. (I still have a ways to go to finish.) Secondary readings will be Owen Gingerich's The Book Nobody Read and Thomas Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution.
After that, here's the schedule I'm working from, and will strive to keep to--with Amazon…
cmooney | February 13, 2009Science Debate has done a great analysis of the science funding that has emerged from the House-Senate reconciliation process on the stimulus bill. For the most part, science funding was restored through the reconciliation process: $ 3 billion for NSF; $ 2 billion for DOE Science; $ 5.4 million for DOE research on efficiency and renewable energy; and 10.4 billion for NIH.
You can check out the full analysis here. Assuming this bill gets to the president's desk and is signed--which seems a fairly safe assumption at this point--then this is great news for science and American innovation.…
cmooney | February 12, 2009Over at Science Progress, I've been involved in putting together not one but two items timed for Darwin Day.
The first is an op-ed coauthored with my prof here at Princeton, D. Graham Burnett, who teaches Darwin. We argue for historical nuance, which leads one to reject the idea that Darwin should be considered an icon of conflict between science and religion. In fact, we call that idea "a hackneyed story, lacking in historical nuance and ultimately running counter to the project of drawing helpful lessons from the life of one of history's greatest scientists." A brief excerpt:
...Science-…
cmooney | February 11, 2009We're pleased to repost the latest email from ScienceDebate:
Dear Friend,
Last Friday you and others in the science community took action and helped to restore $3.1 billion in cuts to science that had been planned in the Senate compromise version of the stimulus bill. That was a good victory for U.S. Science, but it was just the warm-up act. Now we all need to come together as a community for the real show.
Even after the $3.1 billion restoration, the final approved Senate version of the stimulus bill falls far short of the House version when it comes to science and technology. You can…
cmooney | February 10, 2009In the last post, I introduced Francis Bacon--chiefly via the New Atlantis--and described a very interesting, if ultimately perhaps too strong, feminist reaction. But it's as though some feminists are Bacon's only enemies.
Neoconservative bioethicists, for example, see Bacon as the place where it all started to go wrong. Leon Kass, the great granddaddy of this school, and first head of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, took Bacon to task in his 1985 book Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs, a polemic against many new reproductive and biomedical technologies. As Kass…
cmooney | February 10, 2009
Male chauvinist pig? Or worse?
I haven't even read Copernicus yet, and probably won't at least until this weekend. As far as my reading goes, the scientific revolution hasn't yet started and I'm still stuck with Ptolemaic glasses on.
History 293, though, is churning away, and yesterday we did our section on Francis Bacon and The New Atlantis. (Not satisfied with the course packet excerpt, this is the version I ordered from Amazon.) Man, here was a dude who, although writing in the early 1600s, sounds stunningly "modern"--a term I must now put in quotes due to the fact that I'm studying…
sheril | February 8, 2009Follow up reposted from ScienceDebate:
Several people have emailed asking about the cuts to the proposed
increases to DOE/Office of Science, and what about NIH, USGS and other
agencies we didn't mention. Some clarifications are in order.
1. These are NOT agencies' existing budgets - this is about new money in addition to existing funding levels.
2. Science Debate only focused yesterday on the proposed CUTS to the
INCREASES proposed in the original SENATE bill. So we didn't mention
NIH funding increases, for example, which the amendment left alone.
Nor did we mention a $330M increase…
sheril | February 7, 2009Reposted from ScienceDebate:
(February 6, 2009) - Well
it's been a long, long day with thousands of emails and phone calls, but we are happy to
report that your efforts, and those of the rest of the U.S. science and
technology community, have paid off in a big way - for the time being.
Senators
Nelson, Collins, Lieberman and Specter held a press conference earlier
this evening, also crediting Senator Snowe, and followed up by Senate
Majority Leader Reid, declaring a compromise bill has been reached on
the stimulus package. You can read the exact line items of the bill here in an xls…
cmooney | February 3, 2009If the president is going to restore science to its "rightful place," he's going to have to do something serious about the Food and Drug Administration. Not only was it the site of many Bush-era science related scandals, over matters like the over-the-counter availability of emergency contraception, but it has also broken down repeatedly on the job. The most recent screwup involves peanut butter, but my God, how many others have there been? Remember Vioxx?
The president says he's going to be conducting "a complete review of FDA operations." Good. Moreover, the naming of a new commissioner is…
cmooney | January 30, 2009I know, the Bush administration is history. So, I've argued, is the "Republican war on science."
But if you never yet got a copy of the book of the same name, now's the time--Amazon is selling the paperback, new, for $ 4.99.
I don't usually hawk my wares like this, but that's damn cheap.
cmooney | January 29, 2009My latest Science Progress column is up: It makes the case that Stephen Colbert is the heir to Johnny Carson in terms of talk show promotion of science.
It also includes various lame and stupid talking points that I made up and didn't use on the show, such as the following hypothetical Q&A responses:
Didn't scientists start the "war" in the first place? Didn't they commit acts of aggression?
Yes, if you mean by learning things.
Why should I care about science?
Because America is really good at it--much better than France.
Is there really a "war" on science? Where are the bodies?
Well,…
cmooney | January 28, 2009Here it is:
*/
The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Obama's New Science Policy - Chris Mooney
Colbert Report Full EpisodesColbert Report Tickets
Paul McCartney AppearanceMore Funny Videos
I'll have more to say about the whole experience in my next column....thanks to everyone who wrote in with positive words about the segment.
cmooney | January 27, 2009You can watch it here. Tons of funny stuff in Colbert's segment on science, which starts roughly at 6:15 and runs to roughly 10:45. I was on for about three minutes, and was instructed: "No monkey business. No evolution."
Of course, even though Colbert plays a rightwinger who thinks with his gut rather than his head and doesn't trust book learning, the truth is that his show features a ton of science content and, indeed, is doing vastly more than most other parts of the media to improve the role of science in our culture.
I was thrilled to be on.
sheril | January 22, 2009Today the House Committee on Ways and Means passed H.R. 598 by vote 24 to 13. The legislation includes:
Investment Tax Credit Refundability. For alternative energy property put into service in 2009 and 2010, companies may apply for a cash grant equal to the value of the investment tax credit from the Department of Energy. DOE must make these grant payments within 60 days of receipt of the application and may not in its discretion deny any such applications that qualify for the credit. Companies may apply for the payments through September 30, 2011. The amount of the ITCs equal 30% of the…
cmooney | January 21, 2009My latest Science Progress column is a response to Seed's interview with the outgoing science adviser. All I can say is wow, Dr. Marburger, you really don't get it, and maybe you never will.
Either way, we Bush administration science critics remain entirely unimpressed with your inability to even properly characterize (much less answer) our arguments. And that wind of change that you might feel around you right now--we're part of it. You're not.
You can read the full column here.
sheril | January 20, 2009
With inauguration day in mind, there is no doubt President Obama has made excellent choices for his science and energy team, but as I wrote over at DeSmog, do not declare victory quite yet... There are also signs that the administration could falter when it comes to dealing with global warming in the strongest possible fashion. In particular, other high level picks suggest there may be serious impending battles in the White House over climate policy. Here is an excerpt:
While global warming may be the world's greatest threat, the climate in Washington, DC is probably tepid at best…
cmooney | January 17, 2009You can watch here, and here's the embedded video:
Topics discussed:
Chris's optimism vs. Carl's skepticism on Obama's science policy
Weighing the costs of environmental regulation
Stop the presses! Did NASA just discover life on Mars?
The Sanjay Gupta controversy
Carl predicts artificial life in 2009
The future for science writing
Again, the whole thing is here.