Science in Culture & Policy
bioephemera | January 13, 2009Larry Young has written a rather ambitious essay for Nature that skims over the prairie vole/AVPR1A research, breasts as erotic objects, and evidence of dopamine-based mother love on its way to a "view of love as an emergent property of a cocktail of ancient neuropeptides and neurotransmitters." Young then asks whether "recent advances in the biology of pair bonding mean it won't be long before an unscrupulous suitor could slip a pharmaceutical 'love potion' in our drink."
Unlikely? Maybe - but his point that antidepressants like Prozac influence the same neurotransmitters implicated in love…
bioephemera | January 12, 2009
I went to a party the other day wearing the shirt above. I'd seen it online, expressed covetousness, and the staffer actually tracked it down and bought it for me (thus scoring major points for A) an early Christmas present, B) listening to my incessant stream-of-consciousness babble, and C) appreciating his girlfriend's geeky streak.)
Anyway, at the party, most of my friends couldn't decipher anything past "OMG, WTF." I was surrounded by "digital immigrants." In fact, I'm a digital immigrant myself: I didn't get my first email account until college, and I never IM'd until a year or two ago…
bioephemera | January 12, 2009Something I wanted to blog this weekend during the downtime: Chris Myers Asch's pitch for a public service academy to turn out well-prepared government employees. Asch doesn't have Barack Obama's support yet, but Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, and Joe Biden are onboard, according to the NYT.
A former elementary school teacher with black belts in two martial arts, Mr. Asch, 35, has labored with such ascetic focus and cheerful earnestness that even his plan's detractors call him a "sweet" and "admirable" guy.
He argues that American culture derides government work and dissuades bright young…
bioephemera | January 8, 2009Ok - so Nancy Drew was never into string theory. But parents and teachers, take note: the Magnet Lab website at FSU mantains a list of books that incorporate painless, plot-relevant science lessons:
Take as an example the below excerpt from one of our featured books, Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster. Enterprising middle school teachers could use this story as a jumping-off point for a discussion about superconductors. "Don't you see?" said the Professor. "It's a superconductor."
"But that's incredible!" Dr. Fenster said. "At room temperature?"
"So it appears. There's no other explanation."
"…
bioephemera | January 6, 2009Neuroskeptic has written a great post evaluating the much-hyped 2008 study that showed people will more readily accept information if a neurosciency-explanation is attached - even if the neuroscience is irrelevant.
If this effect is real, it has big implications for those of us involved in science/health communication - when to use this advantage, and when to eschew it? (Especially when we're trying to explain neuroimaging studies. . ?) And what is the source of this bias - mass media's ongoing love affair with neuroscientific explanations and pretty brain pictures? Or something else entirely?
bioephemera | January 2, 2009
We spent most of last night playing a very cool board game, Pandemic. It's sort of like Risk, but instead of fighting opposing players' armies, you're cooperating against a global wave of infections.
In the game scenario, four different diseases break out in different regions of the world (they're given colors, not names, though you can guess at an ID based on the games' illustrations; one is clearly a bacillus, another is a filovirus). The players have to cooperate and pool their resources to treat and control local outbreaks, while searching for cures for all four diseases. The surprising…
bioephemera | December 28, 2008The Guardian calls out celebrities who made scientifically illiterate statements in 2008:
Kate Moss, Oprah Winfrey and Demi Moore all espoused the idea that you can detoxify your body with either diet (scientifically unsupportable) or, in the case of Moore, products such as "highly trained medical leeches" which make you bleed. Scientists point out that diet alone cannot remove toxins and that blood itself is not a toxin, and even if it did contain toxins, removing a little bit of it is not going to help.
bioephemera | December 27, 2008Dan Sarewitz, a professor of science and society at Arizona State University, said calling Obama a geek is unfair both to the president-elect and geeks. ''He's too cool to be a geek; he's a decent basketball player; he knows how to dance; he dresses well,'' Sarewitz said. ''It's too high a standard for geeks to possibly live up to.''
Hey!
From the NYT.
bioephemera | December 22, 2008At io9, Annalee Newitz asks, "can robots consent to have sex with humans?"
Do you think the blondie bot in Cherry 2000 was really capable of giving consent to have sex with her human boyfriend? Or did her programming simply force her to always have sex, whether she wanted to or not? And what about the Romeo Droid in Circuitry Man, or the Sex Mecha in AI, who live entirely to sexually please women, even when those women are abusing them or putting them in danger?
Obviously this isn't a urgent social issue. An insentient robot is just an appliance, not a person, and a truly sentient AI doesn't…
bioephemera | December 11, 2008The physicists are getting rather jubilant over the selection of Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy. Sure he's the Director of LBNL. Sure, he has a Nobel Prize in something involving lasers (ho hum - I don't know any physicists that don't work with lasers). But I'd like to point out that he also has a cross-appointment at my old stomping grounds, Berkeley's Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. And he's like the father of optical tweezers (for which he won the 1995 "Science for Art" Prize!) So we biologists should be a little smug too!
I will not exploit this opportunity…
bioephemera | December 11, 2008Last week, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that retaining DNA samples from innocent individuals in a national law enforcement databank violates human rights.
The ruling is a direct blow to Britain's DNA databank, which holds samples and data for 7% of its citizens (4.5 million people, including children and crime victims). In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, police are authorized to collect and hold samples from citizens arrested for any recordable offense, whether or not the offense leads to formal charges or conviction, and hold them for the lifetime of the…
bioephemera | December 3, 2008In the December issue of Physicsworld, Rob Goldston reviews Richard Muller's Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines. The book's not addressed to Obama, exactly; it's based on Muller's extremely popular course for non-science students at Berkeley. But it seems that in the wake of the last administration, more and more people are asking how science-savvy a president needs to be - I even tried to answer that question myself at the Apple Bloggers' Panel back in October. My top request? That a science-savvy President be comfortable with the provisional nature of truth in…
bioephemera | December 3, 2008Scibling Matt Nisbet will be giving a talk, "Communicating Science in a Changing World," this Thursday December 4 at NYAS. He spoke a couple of weeks ago at AAAS here in DC (thanks, Matt!). His talk generated excellent questions and discussion, and that was before last week's controversy about denialism! So go check it out.
bioephemera | November 30, 2008
"Please Hug Me"
artist: J. Keeler, 1987
Today is the 20th annual World AIDS Day. I can still remember when I first learned about AIDS, in the late eighties - it was an extremely scary and mysterious thing that the media seemed very uncomfortable covering. No one I knew was talking about it openly - family, friends, or teachers. That's why posters like this were so important.
AIDS awareness advertisements represent a history of creative and controversial images - largely because of their sometimes explicit* sexual content, but also because of the stigmas attached to STDs, casual sex, and…
bioephemera | November 25, 2008Andre at Biocurious responds to something PZ Myers said at a talk, with this legit criticism of the "science is beautiful" theme:
How far down the road of "science shares more with art than engineering" do you want to go? Our society supports the arts because they provide beauty and insight and enrich our lives. We support science because it is inspiring and let's us reach beyond ourselves to see and understand things that didn't seem possible and because it provides tangible advances that improve the quality of our lives. Those benefits are worth a lot to people. The National Endowment for…
bioephemera | November 22, 2008Imagine if all the incoming members of Congress were required to have "compulsory lessons in scientific literacy under a plan to strengthen evidence-based policy-making," including "classes explaining scientific method and basic concepts." Far-fetched, right?
Well, apparently Britain's doing exactly that:
The plan, drawn up by Adam Afriyie, the party's spokesman for science and innovation, is designed to address concerns about a lack of scientific expertise and understanding in the House of Commons and Whitehall. Though scientific challenges such as global warming, stem-cell research,…
bioephemera | November 20, 2008
Chesterfields ad, 1952
Today, November 20, is the American Cancer Society's 33rd Great American Smokeout. Now, be honest: did you even know?
The Smokeout doesn't seem to get as much attention as it used to, perhaps because the link between cigarette smoke and cancer is no longer surprising or controversial. After decades of anti-tobacco campaigns hammering the research home, no media-conscious American could plausibly believe that cigarettes are actually good for his or her health. Yet this is a sea change from attitudes in the first half of the 20th century, when cigarettes' health…
bioephemera | November 19, 2008According to Hill pub Roll Call, former Senator Tom Daschle will be the next HHS Secretary.
No word on the NIH Director yet.
bioephemera | November 11, 2008
This forensics van enthusiastically wields the scientific method against all threats. Watch out, criminals - Science will get ya!
bioephemera | November 7, 2008
One of the odder perks of living in DC is viewing the strange Metro ads purchased by various lobbying blocs. Here, a rosy-cheeked child sucks down pasta, while the ad proudly tells us the main ingredient is fertilizer. Yum, yum.