Category Archives: Technology and Society

Top 2012 (Non)Science Achievements

These are all interesting stories, but articles like this contribute to public confusion about what is science and what is not. Curiosity landing on Mars was a great technological achievement, but it wasn’t science, though it may (in fact will, and already has) produce some. Even less science are the Dragon flights to the ISS — again, this is about engineering, not science. And ending invasive research on chimps is a moral breakthrough, perhaps, but it’s not science. In some sense, in fact, it’s anti-science, if one removes ethics from the definition of science.

The Left’s War On Science, Part …

It turns out that fracking is perfectly safe, and the New York state government tried to hide the evidence:

Greens are quick to defend their climate change position with scientific evidence and have positioned themselves as a movement wedded to science. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that evidence is a flag of convenience for a movement that is rooted in emotion and passion far more than it likes to admit.

Because it doesn’t like to admit it at all, even though it’s mostly that.