Social Sciences
jstemwedel | July 26, 2008Today Chad has an interesting post about attitudes among academics toward math and science versus the humanities and arts. The general attitude Chad sees on display in his academic milieu is that a gappy knowledge of art history or music or literature is something to be embarrassed about, but when it comes to innumeracy or scientific ignorance, intellectuals have no shame.
Chad writes:
Intellectuals and academics are just assumed to have some background knowledge of the arts, and not knowing those things can count against you. Ignorance of math and science is no obstacle, though. I have…
drorzel | July 26, 2008I know nothing about art or music.
OK, that's not entirely true-- I know a little bit here and there. I just have no systematic knowledge of art or music (by which I mean fine art and classical music). I don't know Beethoven from Bach, Renaissance from Romantics. I'm not even sure those are both art terms.
Despite the sterling reputation of the department, I never took an Art History class when I was at Williams, nor did I take any music classes. They weren't specifically required, and I was a physics major-- my schedule was full of math and science classes, and between that and the boozing,…
tlambert | July 25, 2008Catherine Brahic, at the New Scientist enviromental blog has more on Monkcton and the APS:
[Al Saperstein, an editor of Physics and Society,] stressed that that the article was not sent to anyone for peer-reviewing. Saperstein himself edited it. "I'm a little ticked off that some people have claimed that this was peer-reviewed," he said. "It was not." ...
In April, the newsletter ran an article by retired nuclear physicist Gerald Marsh. Marsh argued that solar variations play a major role in the Earth's climate, one which overrides human emissions of greenhouse gases. ...
The editors put out…
illconsidered | July 24, 2008A new study from University of Southern California was just released, appearing in PNAS Early Edition the week of July 21, showing that run-off from the Amazon River powers a large carbon sink in the tropical North Atlantic ocean. New Scientist talks about it here.
According to the press realease, which I will quote at the end of the post, this overturns the previously held view that this area of the ocean was a net emmitter of carbon.
The river delivers iron and phosphorous to small organizims called diazotrophs which then fix nitrogen and carbon from the air and ultimately sink it to the…
illconsidered | July 23, 2008The background for this post is The Great Global Warming Swindle and the recent judgement [PDF] by the British media regulator OFCOM regarding complaints of misleading the public and misrepresenting the science. Tim Lambert has a detailed look at the ruling here.
All in all it looks like the ruling was a mixed bag and will provide fodder for both sides of the climate disruption PR battle.
So on to the subject of the post.
Roger Pielke Jr. over at Prometheus rather predictably rises to the defense of Martin Durkin's socially destructive and cleary deceitful propoganda. His point is all about…
ejohnson | July 22, 2008In this post: the large versions of the Environment and Humanities & Social Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Environment. Drilling for oil in the Deep For Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma. From Flickr, by FreeWine
Humanities & Social Science. Traffic lights at dusk in Portland, Oregon. From Flickr, by frozenchipmunk
Reader comments of the week:
In Proposed Oil Legislation: Brilliant and Pointless, the Corpus Callosum debunks a White House statement which alleges that a piece of legislation up for House debate will raise gas prices. The bill…
evolgen | July 22, 2008
All good medicine is evidence based -- that is, diagnoses and treatments are developed via the scientific method. Oftentimes, evolutionary biology is employed to understand human health and diseases. This is known as evolutionary medicine.
Evolutionary medicine is a growing field that takes an interdisciplinary approach toward studying human disease. Tools from population ecology, molecular evolution, comparative anatomy, and many other fields are all integrated with clinical medicine to improve our understanding of human disease and develop new treatments. This approach can be applied to…
drorzel | July 21, 2008
Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal - Religion and World-Building
Notes for people thinking about inventing a religion for a fantasy story.
(tags: SF religion writing history humanities culture)
How to blog, get tenure and prosper: Starting the blog | john hawks weblog
Part one of four, from a recently-tenured academic who knows.
(tags: blogs academia jobs internet culture society)
Bloggasm » The ethics of hate mail: Should bloggers post email correspondence without permission?
The connection between "Crackergate" and William "Sheethead" Sanders. You…
oracknows | July 21, 2008Well, I won't back down
No, I won't back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won't back down
Gonna stand my ground
Won't be turned around
And I'll keep this world from draggin' me down
Gonna stand my ground
And I won't back down
From I Won't Back Down by Tom Petty, 1989
On Friday, I wrote a rather long post about the whole issue of "framing" science and the issue of anti-vaccine activism. In essence, I tweaked Matt Nisbett and Chris Mooney to give those of us in the trenches fighting the antiscientific belief that drives antivaccinationism some tools, some "frames," to use to…
tlambert | July 20, 2008Duae Quartunciae has been more patient than me, and found even more problems with Monckton's paper.
Monckton has struck back at the APS. Check out this press release from the SPPI
Said, Monckton elsewhere, "Trying to duck the usual process of scientific discourse by arguments about peer-review procedures is an ad-hominem approach which is not worthy of the name of science. What has happened is that the usual suspects, instead of ploughing through the (not particularly difficult) math and saying what I got wrong and why (which is what Popper calls the EE or "error-elimination" step in the…
tlambert | July 19, 2008Thanks to Drudge, all the right-wing blogs have been touting a story alleging the American Physical Society has reversed its stance on global warming. Joe Romm has the sordid details. The basis for the story is an article published in an APS newsletter (not jornal) by our old friend Christoper Monckton. Monckton's article now carries a disclaimer saying:
The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article…
hrynyshyn | July 19, 2008The Internet makes it waaaay to easy to be stupid. Over at my other blog, a collective effort assembled by the Weather Channel, I write exclusively about climate issues. Each of my posts and just about all my colleague's posts dealing with the subject assume that climate change is real and that humans are largely responsible. It's easier that way to keep things short. It also happens to be a reflection of what climatologists think. But almost every post attracts comments from those who beg to differ and last week was no different. Except that some of the comments were more inane than usual.…
oracknows | July 18, 2008Three days ago, ScienceBlogs did something it hasn't done before. ScienceBloggers were given screener DVDs of a new movie by one of our own, Randy Olson of Shifting Baselines. The movie was Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, and the idea was to get as many of us as possible to review the movie and post our reviews on the same day. The reviews were pretty mixed, ranging from panning the movie to really, really liking it, with the majority from my reading tending towards negative.
Of course, as regular readers know, life intervened for me in a truly depressing way, which is why I was not part of…
clock | July 16, 2008Birds Have A Good Sense Of Smell:
Sight and hearing are the most important senses for birds - this is at least the received wisdom. By studying bird DNA, however, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, along with a colleague at the Cawthron Institute in New Zealand, have now provided genetic evidence that many bird species have a well-developed sense of smell (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 16.07.2008).
Europe's Ancestors: Cro-Magnon 28,000 Years Old Had DNA Like Modern Humans:
Some 40,000 years ago, Cro-Magnons -- the first people who had a skeleton that looked…
mikethemadbiologist | July 16, 2008...I think he's right (don't tell driftglass). From the NY Times:
For a time, it seemed as if we were about to use the bright beam of science to illuminate the murky world of human action. Instead, as Turkheimer writes in his chapter in the book, "Wrestling With Behavioral Genetics," science finds itself enmeshed with social science and the humanities in what researchers call the Gloomy Prospect, the ineffable mystery of why people do what they do.
The prospect may be gloomy for those who seek to understand human behavior, but the flip side is the reminder that each of us is a Luxurious…
oracknows | July 16, 2008I was contemplating how to get back into the swing of things as far as getting the blogging juices flowing again after the unfortunate events of the last few days, given how much my last post drained me. I suppose I could have dived into the infamous PZ versus the cracker incident, but, quite frankly, the utter ridiculousness and childishness of the whole affair bored and disgusted me too much, although I don't rule out a brief post about it later today or tomorrow (that is, if anyone even still cares). If I do, I guarantee that my take on the whole kerfluffle will make no one happy, but it…
jstemwedel | July 15, 2008I have misgivings about wading into Crackergate -- indeed, even about dipping my toe into the edge of the pool (which is all I'm promising here) -- but here goes.
First, let me commend the thoughtful posts by Mark Chu-Carroll and John Wilkins on the issue. If you haven't read them yet, read them now. (If you've already read them, read them again.)
Next, let me set forth the disclaimers that I'd hope would be obvious:
Issuing death threats (or threats to do bodily harm to a person, or to his family) is wrong. It's inexcusable (and I suspect in many jurisdictions it's also illegal).…
razib | July 15, 2008There's a fair amount of evidence for greater social pathology among whites of Southern origin. One of the major issues that Blue State liberals like to point out that is that on metrics of moral turpitude Southern whites stand out; those who promote a narrow and strident conception of ethical behavior are the most likely to transgress those very norms. Logically one might contend that in a society where there is no murder there need be no laws against it. Similarly, in our society we don't have specific laws against consumption of one's own children for food because it is such a rare…
drorzel | July 14, 2008
FemaleScienceProfessor: No Man's Land
Why, as much as I gripe about our finance department, dealing with them is infinitely better than dealing with their research university counterparts.
(tags: academia science economics)
Thought For The Day -- Words Words Words -- The Dream Cafe Weblog
Also, things.
(tags: writing language silly)
Good Math, Bad Math : The PZ Cracker Mess
What Mark said.
(tags: blogs religion politics stupid)
Bubbles, Booms, and Busts: The Art Market in 2008 - July 10, 2008 - The New York Sun
"If you think that one inanimate shark is as good as another, your…
purepedantry | July 14, 2008Happy Sizzle Day!
Today numerous bloggers from ScienceBlogs and elsewhere will be reviewing a new movie Sizzle directed by Randy Olson of Flock of Dodos fame. Sizzle is a documentary/mockumentary/comedy partly about the science of global warming, but more in my opinion about the nature of the global warming debate.
I was fortunate enough to receive a pre-release copy of the film for review, and I can summarize in one sentence what I thought about it: Randy Olson gets it.
By gets it, I mean that he understands that there are two levels to the global warming debate. The first level is a…