Environmental Issues
A TED Presentation Gone Haywire?
Or and intentional “stunt”? You be the judge. (My money is on intentional.) For another fun take on presentations see my post about the “typical” presentation.
On Fracking, the Science is Clear
Unfortunately, while the science on natural gas fracking is clear, the public debate does not reflect this fact. Why? Here is a take from an op-ed piece in the NY Post by Jon Entine: The academic face of the anti-fracking movement — Cornell marine ecologist Robert Howarth — increasingly looks like he’s willing to turn science […]
The Future of Energy?
An interesting technology that may someday soon begin to revolutionize the energy discussion. (HT: Cody Wanner)
TMQ: Where Did that Quote Come From?
Interesting thoughts from Gregg Easterbrook on the world of unnamed sources to quotes: Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, and Anonymous People Don’t Complain About Quotes: In an era plagued by what Stephen Colbert memorably called “truthiness,” increasingly, public speakers quote people or sources who mysteriously lack names. In Barack Obama’s speech on the Afghan war, the president […]
Thoughts from (Last Week’s) TMQ
Running a week behind again on my reading of Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on ESPN.com, so just getting to the entirety of last week’s TMQ. The football pieces are old news now, but here are my favorite non-NFL pieces (find the whole thing here): ———————————- On Christmas Creep: Christmas Creep: Reader Jill Andvik […]
Pop Medicine versus Real Science
Trevor Butterworth hits another topic on target, this time on Forbes.com. He tackles the recent hub-bub over Dr. Oz’s dire warnings about apple juice and arsenic. Here is the intro: If the reaction in the news media to Dr. Oz’s absurd claims about the dangers of arsenic in apple juice has been enormously heartening (essentially […]
Climate Change Consensus?
From FoxNews.com yesterday comes a story about a Nobel Prize winning physicist withdrawing from his professional organization over the politics of climate change. Dr.Ivar Giaever resigned due to the American Physical Society‘s official statement of policy on the subject. Giaever was cooled to the statement on warming theory by a line claiming that “the evidence […]
Who Needs Science?
Apparently, this describes well the view of some lobbyists and lawmakers in our culture. Who needs to check science, or trust experts when we have already made up our minds from a few badly run studies that have since been refuted by many bigger, better run studies.? They’ve made up their minds, and want to […]
The Research Monopoly
There is an interesting feature of life in academia. Research is often funded with public funds via grants from the NIH, NSF, and other sources. The results often make headlines in the popular press. The press cites a scholarly journal in which the full results are published, and offers a take (often neglecting numerous provisos […]
No Longer Normal 