Can be reduced with Vitamin D?
News I can’t use, but perhaps some of my younger female readers can.
Category Archives: Science And Society
Hal Lewis
Seems to have very publicly resigned from the American Physical Society:
The global warming scam…is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.
Come on, Prof. Don’t hold back. Tell us what you really think. Watch out for the lawsuits, though.
Chuck Hagel And Global Warming
Add this to the extensive annals of stupid things he’s said.
Bias In Academia
…is destroying scientific integrity:
OK, it’s not exactly a “Sopranos” plot. But it’s pretty shady for the world of higher education. Chen went to great lengths to make up fake email addresses and even assume the names of other scientists to write approvingly of his own research.
In a sense, though, he was just exploiting the deep flaws of the peer review system. The academy has become a kind of club where friends give friends flattering assessments of research, which essentially guarantees promotions and tenure.
Here’s how the former editor of the British Medical Journal explained peer review:
“The editor looks at the title of the paper and sends it to two friends whom the editor thinks know something about the subject. If both advise publication the editor sends it to the printers. If both advise against publication the editor rejects the paper. If the reviewers disagree the editor sends it to a third reviewer and does whatever he or she advises. This … is little better than tossing a coin.”
But it’s not just the clubbiness of academia that is to blame. There is such ideological uniformity in the ivory tower that no one ever questions the important assumptions behind anyone else’s research.
Gee, where have we seen that sort of thing before?
I’d note, though, that contra the headline, it’s not a “liberal” bias. It’s a leftist bias.
Of Machines And Men
An interesting interview with Robin Hanson on brain emulation, AI, and the flaws of humanity.
The Keystone Pipeline
“The best way to get it built is to make it irrelevant.”
This would be a smart thing for Canada to do though, as the article notes, there will be more nutty opposition from some Canadians.
Social Media And Friendship
Some interesting sociological results. I find the word “friend” for Facebook acquaintances annoying.
Global Warming
The statistical meltdown:
The sensitivity of the climate to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide is a central question in the debate on the appropriate policy response to increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Climate sensitivity and estimates of its uncertainty are key inputs into the economic models that drive cost-benefit analyses and estimates of the social cost of carbon.
Continuing to rely on climate-model warming projections based on high, model-derived values of climate sensitivity skews the cost-benefit analyses and estimates of the social cost of carbon. This can bias policy decisions. The implications of the lower values of climate sensitivity in our paper, as well as similar other recent studies, is that human-caused warming near the end of the 21st century should be less than the 2-degrees-Celsius “danger” level for all but the IPCC’s most extreme emission scenario.
That’s the wrong answer. It doesn’t justify ending capitalism.
Twelve Technologies We Need To Get Going On
A list, at io9.
Not sure about either the space elevator or space solar. And he leaves off a gravity lab, which we need to understand if or how we can properly conceive and gestate in partial gravity.
The Ebola Outbreak
Here’s an excellent story at the WaPo, from Joel Achenbach and others, about how it happened.