The case against them.
I’ve been thinking about getting a standing desk.
Category Archives: Science And Society
The Left’s War On Science
Jonah Goldberg takes on Chris Mooney.
A Beautiful Mind
The human brain really is an amazing machine. And on a related note, how did Edgar Allen Poe anticipate Phineas Gage?
The Crucifier
…has resigned. But the damage has been done:
EPA was finally persuaded to drop its action against Range, probably out of concern that a federal court might strike down its statutory authority to crucify oil-and-gas companies altogether. That was wise, because EPA already got what it wanted from persecuting Range. The company had to spend $4.2 million defending itself against a totally arbitrary action that could have come down on virtually any oil or gas company. And the industry has taken note.
In fact, as a demonstration meant to instill fear in the oil-and-gas industry, the crucifixion of Range Resources worked precisely as Armendariz intended.
There has to be some kind of legal recourse against this kind of arbitrary action.
Unintended Consequences
(Local) global warming caused by wind farms?
I’ve always thought it was crazy to think that pulling that much energy out of the atmosphere would have no effect. But it’s a politically correct energy source, at least for now.
Climate Changing
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Seventeen Equations
…that changed the world. One of the signs of the disaster that is modern academia is that it is not only acceptable, but for many a point of pride, that they don’t understand math.
[Via Geek Press]
The Asymmetry Of Ideology
Over at PJMedia this morning, I have some thoughts on why “liberals” are unable to understand conservatives, but not the reverse. I like the one comment over there that a simple explanation is that everyone remembers being a teenager, but that the leftists don’t know what it’s like to be grown up.
An Inconvenient Recanting
James Lovelock doesn’t think that we’re quite as doomed as he used to. So Gaia’s OK for now.
Open Access
…and its importance to the integrity and public trust in scientific institutions:
If scientists are reluctant to share their data with other scientists it’s very difficult to believe they will be happy to put it all in the public domain. But I think they should. And I don’t mean just chucking terabytes of uncalibrated raw data onto a website in such a way that it’s impossible to use for any practical purpose. I mean fully documented, carefully maintained databases containing raw data, analysis tools and processed data products.
You might think this is all a bit Utopian, but the practice of sharing data is already widespread in my own field, astrophysics, and there are already many public databases of the type I’ve described. An exemplar is the excellent LAMBDA site which is a repository for data arising from research into the cosmic microwave background. Most astrophysical research publications from all around the world are also available, free of charge, at the arXiv.
So astrophysics is already much more open than most other fields, to the extent that it has already made the traditional model of publication and dissemination virtually redundant. I hope other disciplines follow this lead, because if researchers can’t find a way to break free from the shackles placed on them by the current system, the fragile relationship between science and society – already frayed by episodes like the University of East Anglia email scandal – may disintegrate entirely.
The problem is that astrophysics, unlike climate “science,” doesn’t have a political agenda, so he’s obviously making an unreasonable request.