Politics
oracknows | August 12, 2012One issue that keeps coming up time and time again for me is the issue of screening for cancer. Because I'm primarily a breast cancer surgeon in my clinical life, that means mammography, although many of the same issues come up time and time again in discussions of using prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening for prostate cancer. Over time, my position regarding how to screen and when to screen has vacillated—er, um, evolved, yeah, that's it—in response to new evidence, although the core, including my conclusion that women should definitely be screened beginning at age 50 and that it's…
gregladen | August 11, 2012Romney's choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate does little more than changing one aspect of the election dynamic for the Presidency. But it an important change.
Have you been to an even any time over the last several months at which a Federal level Democratic candidate gave a speech? Unless you were not paying attention or sleeping through part of it, there is a good chance that you heard the candidate, or perhaps someone speaking on behalf of a candidate, mention Paul Ryan. Of all the Republicans who are not famous for being perennial losers (such as Newt Gingrich) or batshit crazy…
jdupuis | August 10, 2012This is the third and hopefully final summary post on the controversy at the University of Virginia surrounding the forced resignation of President Teresa Sullivan. The previous two are here and here.
Trouble With Transparency
A Much Higher Education: UVA has its president back. But the fight to save our universities has only just begun.
Being the innovation shield
After Leadership Crisis Fueled by Distance-Ed Debate, UVa Will Put Free Classes Online
Going Public the UVa Way
U-Va. parent: Online learning is an oxymoron
University of Virginia’s peaceful revolution grew strength online
Most…
esiegel | August 7, 2012"I am looking at the future with concern, but with good hope." -Albert Schweitzer
As you all know, the most ambitious interplanetary mission ever attempted -- Mars Science Laboratory -- successfully landed its Curiosity rover on Mars earlier this week. Last night, I had the opportunity to go on my local news and speak a bit about it, and as always, it was an absolute pleasure.
(Video credit: KGW / Ben Lacy / Carey Higgins / Steph Stricklen.)
Of course we got to talk about the rover itself and its science potential, and exactly how much more sophisticated it is than any of its martian…
choofnagle | August 3, 2012BNA reports on the formation of the Internet Association, a new trade group that will represent Google, Facebook, eBay, and Amazon. The group introduces itself as, "the unified voice of the Internet economy, representing the interests of America's leading Internet companies and their global community of users. The Internet Association is dedicated to advancing public policy solutions to strengthen and protect an open, innovative and free Internet. "
I do not know what the Internet Association will do nor do I discuss its merits here (as it has no track record yet). I wish to use this as an…
choofnagle | July 31, 2012When one spouts disinformation about disinformation, does it make it information? No, it's L. Gordon Crovitz's "Information Age," the weekly poorly informed and poorly reasoned blather about information policy in the Wall Street Journal.
Recall that Crovitz recently wrote about the invention of the Internet and online privacy. I wrote about these last two columns, and this week in the Journal Crovitz tries to backpedal, with the standard trope that his "Who Really Invented the Internet?" article was controversial—"It [became] for a time the most read, emailed and commented upon article on…
pharyngula | July 30, 2012I would have thought that it was a relief, a minor bit of unconcern, that Mitt Romney nominally supports evolution (he's one of those waffly theistic evolutionists, so he doesn't really…but at least he wouldn't be brazenly contradicting all of the evidence). But there's a potential problem looming: who will he pick for vice president? Who does he turn to advice on education? Ken Miller discusses the situation, and points out that his key advisor on education reform and potential VP pick is…
Bobby Jindal, creationist governor of Louisiana.
Jindal has an elite résumé. He was a biology major at…
choofnagle | July 29, 2012Imagine a newspaper oped with half a dozen fallacies. Such a thing could appear in any newspaper in the US. But now imagine that the author is a Rhodes Scholar and you’re left with the Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz.
For years I’ve followed the bizarre arguments of L. Gordon Crovitz, who has a weekly column on information policy in the Wall Street Journal. It’s part of my daily routine of reading the Journal, which is great for business news but something else for everything else.
Last week, Crovitz wrote a real howler, arguing that the Internet was really created by Xerox, not…
oracknows | July 29, 2012And now for something completely different...
Well, not really, but kind of different.
I realize that my niche here has become discussing science-based medicine, evidence-based medicine, and the atrocities committed against both by proponents of so-called "complementary and alternative" medicine, but every so often I need a change of pace. Unfortunately, that change of pace was something I came across in the New York Times on Sunday in the form of a commentary so bad that I seriously wondered if it was a parody or a practical joke. Alas, it wasn't. I'm referring to an article by Andrew Hacker…
illconsidered | July 27, 2012The UCS is having a cartoon contest, go here to vote for your favorite. Please feel free to vote for any of my favorites, below ;-)
(This last one is confirmed by many of the past discussions around here!)
sa smith | July 22, 2012The polite way to describe my opinion of the Humane Society of the United states is 'Im not a fan'.
For those of you who are unaware, HSUS has absolutely nothing to do with 'the Humane Society' that rescues animals in your community. HSUS has nothing to do with rescuing animals at all-- they give less than 1% of their income to shelters. Technically, against rescuing animals-- they wanted Michael Vicks dogs killed (while they became BFFs with Vick), but thankfully, some people know better than to listen to HSUS and the dogs are okay.
HSUS is functionally a political group with a habit of…
jrosenhouse | July 20, 2012Here's Texas Republican representative Louie Gohmert explaining the cause of the killings at that Colorado movie theater:
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Friday that the shootings that took place in an Aurora, Colo. movie theater hours earlier were a result of “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs” and questioned why nobody else in the theater had a gun to take down the shooter.
During a radio interview on The Heritage Foundation's “Istook Live!” show, Gohmert was asked why he believes such senseless acts of violence take place. Gohmert responded by talking about the weakening of…
illconsidered | July 20, 2012This is not my opinion! But forget about damning with faint praise, given the source this is damning with high praise.
Obama’s negotiator, Todd Stern, will be here today. They have kept the exact same principles and negotiating stance as President George Bush did for eight years. Obama has carried on Bush’s legacy. So, as skeptics, we tip our hat to President Obama in helping crush and continue to defeat the United Nations process. Obama has been a great friend of global warming skeptics at these conferences. Obama has problems, you know, for us, because he’s going through the EPA regulatory…
oracknows | July 18, 2012During this year's TAM, I had the distinct pleasure of accompanying Steve Novella and Michael Shermer to debate an antivaccinationist at FreedomFest, a conservative/libertarian confab that was going on in Las Vegas at the same time as TAM. That antivaccinationist turned out to be Dr. Julian Whitaker, a man who champions Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski and is one of Suzanne Somer's doctors. There's no polite way to put this, Steve Novella wiped the floor with Dr. Whitaker, mercilessly pummeling him with facts, analysis, and logic to the point where even the audience appeared to be grumbling. Even…
jrosenhouse | July 18, 2012Via Andrew Sullivan, we have this interesting essay, by Jacob Weisberg, discussing why Mitt Romney is struggling to defend his history at Bain Capital. The whole essay is worth reading, but I especially liked this part:
Romney’s Bain career is a story about rising inequality. It’s telling that George Romney, Mitt’s father, made around $200,000 through most of the years he ran American Motors Corporation. Doing work that clearly created jobs, the elder Romney paid an effective tax rate that averaged 37 percent. His son made vastly more running a corporate chop shop in an industry that does…
illconsidered | July 18, 2012"Show me the code!" This is the rallying cry of climate "skeptics" everywhere and the foundation of the numerous climate conspiracy insinuations hurled around the blogosphere.
Well, apparently what is good for the goose, the infamous Hockeystick, is not so good for the gander, the Wegman Report.
Please see John Mashey's article on Desmog Blog.
Where is the code promised to Waxman almost 6 years ago? Dr. Mann's code was written for a research paper in 1999. Wegman's was used for a high-profile Congressional report widely publicized by Reps. Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield, announced in the Wall…
oracknows | July 15, 2012Like so many other skeptics, I just returned from TAM, which, despite all the conflict and drama surrounding it this year, actually turned out to be a highly enjoyable experience for myself and most people I talked to. As I've been doing the last few years, I joined up with Steve Novella and other proponents of science-based medicine to do a workshop about how difficult it is to find decent health information on the Internet, and how the "University of Google" all too frequently puts quackery on the same level as reliable sources of medical information because all that matters for most search…
stoat | July 13, 2012 Continuing with your alas-all-too-regular diet of not-science here. But there is so little real going on. Anyway, Eli is pushing Machiavelli, and a while ago PK asked "How would Hobbes organize society to avert climate change?". I had no answer, so I ignored the question, but now return to it.
Hobbes has little to say directly about policy: his focus is on the justification and structure of government. Read Leviathan. He is a great believer in a strong central authority, and the meaningless of contracts made without a power to enforce them. So stuff like Kyoto would be out. Hobbes view is…
catdynamics | July 9, 2012time for all new linkedy links here at the new digs
Quantum Frontiers - a new blog from the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, with kickoff by John Preskill hisself.
Question of the day: explain quantum mechanics in five words
My attempt: Probability Amplitudes, Observables don't Commute
Good to know John still does khakis and chalk, but we gots to know: does he still have the diet pepsi?
Took me years to break the habit... not that I was overly impressionable as a tender young grad turkey taking QFT or anything.
Subtleties of the Crappy Job Market - for Scientists, that is.…
jtoney | July 2, 2012
Ko Olina Beach (author's photograph)
Could Donald Trump and the Obama "birther" conspiracists be right? Some claim that President Obama is not an American because he was born outside of the U.S. Some begrudgingly acknowledge that he was born in Hawaii less than two years after becoming our 50th state but still characterize the President as somehow distinct from "real" Americans. Having just returned from my first visit to the President's jewel of a birthplace (or is it?), I see how the state of Hawaii - putting aside Kenya - could be viewed by some Americans as foreign for a host of…