Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

San Francisco legislators clearly have irradiated brains

rabbitpirate

Thu Jun 17, 2010 3:23 pm by rabbitpirate

This is a completely unintentional follow on of sorts from my previous post about how non-scientists and the general public are most definitely not the right people to be making decisions of a scientific nature. Now while the subject has nothing to do with synthetic biology this time round I think the underlying feeling of this story is pretty much the same.

Legislators in San Francisco are set to introduce new laws requiring all mobile phone retailers to post radiation emission level notices next to all the handsets they sell. Tony Winnicker, spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, claims that this “is a modest commonsense measure to provide greater transparency and information to consumers” and the proposal, which passed with a vote of 10-1, is likely to get its final approval next week despite the fact that there is NO EVIDENCE that mobile phones cause any harm to humans.

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Discussion (10) • Add Comment Posted in News, Reason, Science

There’s A Reason The Metro Is Free

Th1sWasATriumph

Tue Jun 01, 2010 5:55 pm by Th1sWasATriumph

Most of you will have realised that I get the vast majority of my newsing from free London rag The Metro, distributed around the Underground every morning in order to allow bleary-eyed businessmen to further realise that the world is falling gracelessly towards the sun. I don’t think the Metro is a bad little paper, really; the quality of writing is generally good, and it catches stories earlier than other papers you might come across in the day. And you’ll find articles of comparable quality on the same subjects in “real” newspapers.

However, you develop an unfair bias of a newspaper when you peruse it mainly to find new nonsense to write about in your blog. You ignore all rational articles about politics\current affairs\crossbows to the face and concentrate only on articles that guarantee a spout of vitriol frothy enough to incur a transparent sense of self-righteousness. And as a result, your perception is that the chosen paper exists only to print stories about religion, druids and the supernatural. Unfair, since the Metro regularly dishes out reasonably informative articles about modern science and astronomy.

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Discussion (7) • Add Comment Tags: astronomer, bad, crater, god, horseballs, lunar, metro, moon, phil, Plait
Posted in Astronomy, Entertainment, Events, News, Random, Reason, Science

Could you patent the sun?

Aught3

Fri May 28, 2010 7:47 am by Aught3

One of the biggest enemies facing critical thinking and scepticism is that of personal bias. Bias is extremely easy to spot in other people, but notoriously difficult to spot in yourself. No one likes to think that they may be biased but everyone is, in one way or another. Bias often appears in science denialism where someone may be religiously biased towards a Biblical interpretation of the fossil evidence (for example) rather than towards the scientific explanation. The best we can do about our biases is recognise them and be extra vigilant when we come across evidence that conforms to our biased pre-judgements. Because bias has such an affect on our interpretation of evidence, scientists especially should try to limit the influence of such outside factors on their impartial research. Yet we see precisely the opposite occurring. As research and industry snuggle into a cosy relationship, scientists have become enamoured with their commercial partners.

The commercialisation of research has exploded in the fields of biomedical science and biotechnology, with industry poised to make millions, scientists are all too happy to take a cut of the action. However, money is a powerful motivator and researchers now have an added incentive to find certain result. The result which favours whatever corporation provides the funding. If scientists are being influenced by their source of funding, then it should be apparent in their results. Industry funded projects should find positive results more often than non-profit funding. Indeed, taking the example of pharmaceutical research, that is what we find.

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Discussion (7) • Add Comment Tags: Aught3, Bias, Biology, Science
Posted in Reason, Science

Lisa, I Would Like To Buy Your Rock

Th1sWasATriumph

Tue May 25, 2010 5:35 pm by Th1sWasATriumph

It goes like this:

[Item] or [practice] nullifies or negates the effects, presence, activity or consequences of [entity], [energy], or [phenomenon]. How can you tell? Because absolutely nothing is happening, and so the [item] or [practice] is a legitimate success. This stone keeps away bears. You can tell because you don’t see any bears around here . . . yes, this stone IS for sale. How expensive? Completely. (more…)

Discussion (7) • Add Comment Posted in Culture, Events, News, Random, Reason, Science

Science vs. religion: are they incompatible?

Aught3

Sat May 22, 2010 10:03 am by Aught3

One question that frequently confronts the New Atheists (especially those with a science background) is whether a religion and science are incompatible. The stock answer is that many religious leaders accept science as a good way to understand the natural world and conversely, many scientists have a religious faith (Ken Miller and Francis Collins come to mind). In a previous blog post I talked about how sociological research had revealed that about half of American scientists are able to both perform cutting-edge science and maintain a religious identity. An even larger proportion is still interested in matters of spirituality despite daily engaging in rational, empirical inquiry.

These facts show there is, at least, a kind of ‘brute compatibility’ between science and religion; a single person can hold both ideas simultaneously. However, the obvious counter to ‘brute compatibility’ is to point out that in certain cases the findings of science conflict with specific religious claims about the nature of the world. For example, if you claim that the world is 6,000 years old, science says you are wrong. According to empirical data, the world is more like 4.5 billion years old and anyone who says the scientific evidence shows otherwise is simply mistaken. Because science can only conflict with specifically defined religious claims, I call this ‘specific incompatibility’. Although this type of incompatibility is important, and probably accounts for a large proportion of science’s moderating impact on religion, it does not completely contradict all types of religious claims. Again, this answer is too superficial; the original question is asking something more fundamental – are religion and science incompatible at the deeper, philosophical level?

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Discussion (24) • Add Comment Tags: Aught3, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Religion, Science
Posted in Philosophy, Reason, Religion, Science

What would you say?

rabbitpirate

Fri May 14, 2010 1:59 pm by rabbitpirate

Following on from AndromedasWake’s excellent post the other day and my own recent research/thinking on the issue of teaching skepticism I have found myself thinking a lot about science knowledge and the general public. As I am sure you are all way too painfully aware when it comes to good scientific understanding the general public have something of an antagonistic relationship with reality.

For every person who applies good skeptical thinking and basic scientific understanding in their everyday lives there are at least three people who religiously check their horoscopes on the way to visit their local homeopath. In the recent election for example I discovered that my local MP supported making homeopathy available on the NHS and one of the smaller parties had climate change denialism as part of its manifesto. Something is seriously wrong with that.

So what can we, as hardened and, if I may say so, devilishly attractive skeptics, do about it? How can we help to make the general public more skeptical and more science literate? Well I am sorry to say that I don’t have an answer. I’ve been trying to do my small part by working on a “beginners guide” style book about skepticism but it is not as though that has never been done before. As such my thoughts have recently turned to smaller things, which brings me to the point of this post. I have a question for you.

If you could give one bit of advice, drop one bit of knowledge or just make one suggestion to the general public or someone new to skepticism then what would it be?*

Maybe we can’t influence the world as a whole, but perhaps we can start sowing little seeds of logical and rational thinking. I like to think of this as bulletpoint skepticism. Little catchy easy to remember pieces of information that can change the way people thing. For example simply knowing about something like pareidolia makes it less likely that you will be convinced that you’re really are seeing the virgin Mary in your breakfast cereal.

Anyway it is just an idea that I had, not sure if it is a good one or not or even if I have explained it at all well, but I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with. Plus I haven’t posted anything in ages and felt that I really should put something up. All these newbies are starting to make me look bad.

* Be warned, if you come up with something great I am so stealing it for my book.

Discussion (11) • Add Comment Posted in Culture, Reason, Science

Don’t forget ‘Climategate’

AndromedasWake

Tue May 11, 2010 10:05 pm by AndromedasWake

So, that damn volcano is at it again, David Cameron has been elected Britain’s smuggest man, and the World Cup is only one month away. Does anyone remember what was going on before all this highly distracting news materialised?

When travelling from Heathrow to central London last week upon my return to the UK, I picked up a couple of papers to catch up on the happenings of the prior six weeks. Amongst everything, the article that interested me most was actually in the Metro (for all you non-Londoners, it’s hardly a diamond mine of current affairs commentary, sort of the written version of MSN News). It was about the call of 255 National Academy of Science members (including 11 Nobel laureates) to end the media persecution of climate science. Remember how countless news organisations (…and Fox) reported the deliberate distortion of data, supposedly revealed in private emails leaked from the Climate Research Unit? Remember how a modicum of actual research revealed that the entire controversy boiled down to nothing but misunderstandings and desperate lies by deniers of anthropogenic global warming? Well, 255 scientists recently signed a letter to Science expressing their concern at how these lies damage the reputation of science in the public eye. The letter, which can be read here, should in my opinion be propagated far and wide, and I am somewhat disappointed that many papers only quoted the odd word from it, rather than reproducing it in full. As such, I am placing a copy in this post to display my support.

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Discussion (5) • Add Comment Tags: climate change, Climate Research Unit, climategate, CRU, Johann Hari, NAS, National Academy of Sciences, Science
Posted in Science

Science vs. Religion

Aught3

Tue May 11, 2010 11:13 am by Aught3

A sociological survey by Prof. Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice University has asked a sample of 1,700 scientists from top tier American universities about their view on religion. Perhaps surprisingly, a large proportion (50%) did claim a religious identity. The scientists in this survey were less religious than the general population, 52% said they had no religious affiliation compared with only 14% of the American population. A greater majority (65%) say they are interested in matters of spirituality. Ecklund has recently published a book discussing her research called, Science vs Religion: What Scientists Really Think.

Around 300 of these scientists (both religious and non-religious) were followed up in more in-depth interviews. Many scientists had the view that religion was not a topic for discussion amongst their colleagues and chose to keep their faith hidden. Others had unorthodox views of religion – not believing in God while still identifying as a catholic, for example. Only 2% identified their beliefs as ‘fundamental’ or ‘evangelical’. The best news was that none of the interviewees though intelligent design (creationism) should be taught in classrooms.

Interestingly, the results of this survey indicate that learning about science does not seem to cause people to lose their religious beliefs. Most of these scientists had already come to their religious point of view before engaging into higher education. The biggest predictor of a scientist’s religion (or lack thereof) was still the religion of their parents.

I think this survey has revealed some heartening information about the scientific community (at least in USA). Scientists that are also religious already understand the tensions between science and faith, and how to resolve them. These religious scientists are also more likely to be accepted into faith-based communities and have the best chance of imparting good scientific information. As long as they are not to scared to ‘come out’ to their colleagues, there is a great opportunity for some useful dialogue in the science vs. religion debate.

Ecklund, Elaine and Christopher Scheitle 2007. ‘Religion Among Academic Scientists: Distinctions, Disciplines, and Demographics.’ Social Problems 54: 289–307.

Discussion (5) • Add Comment Tags: Aught3, Religion, Science, Sociology
Posted in Religion, Science