Swans on Tea

Over at Backreaction
Current illusions such as the idea that if it’s on the internet, and especially if it’s in an oft-visited location, then it must be true (argument from popularity), if it can’t be explained in a short presentation, it must be false (argument from incredulity), if it’s not on the internet then it [...]

A while back I posted some links to anti-relativity sites and gg suggested that it would be fun to debunk the claims. Sometimes that’s fun, but often — and especially after doing it a number of times — I find that it’s tedious. An error is present, and one has to find it in [...]

Female Science Professor makes an observation about random scientific inquiries made to universities
In some cases, the questions are easy and quick to answer — for example, some people call with a question about something they heard on the news. In some cases, people stop by the department (with or without calling first) and expect assistance. [...]

I agree that finding that half of polled students can’t identify that “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals” is true doesn’t imply that the other half are creationists, given that other science questions also garnered less-than-spectacular results.
However, it also doesn’t mean that all of the [...]

An online colleague at my blog-host, SFN, makes the following observation:
Wouldn’t it be amusing if science groups started leading tours of the Creation Museum, lead by archeologists pointing out the flaws in their reasoning and why evolution really does answer those questions?
It would be a great response to that story out of Colorado about creationists [...]

Greg Laden on the Pioneer Anomaly
I’ll be interested to see a more detailed analysis. I can easily imagine how nonuniform heat flow and different emissivities could lead to asymmetric radiation patterns, and that would cause a small force on the craft.
[N]owhere in this story do you hear people denigrating, belittling, or even expelling scientists [...]

Expelled Exposed, because I have been commanded to do so

I ran a cross some comments over at A Quantum Diaries Survivor, in a book review, that raised my eyebrows (note that I haven’t read the book being reviewed and I’m not specifically commenting on the author in question):
However, after a first quick look, I was left wondering about the soundness of my pre-judgement. For [...]

It’s World Homeopathy Awareness Week
I wonder if it becomes more effective as less attention is paid to it, even to the point where less than one blog advocates it.

Don’t worry. Physics has its own version of the EXPELLED! garbage. Well, sort of: Einstein Wrong - The Miracle Year
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Four and a half minutes of dreck, if you’re at rest with respect to your computer monitor.

Over at Cosmic Variance, a discussion about getting the message of science out, in the context of the recent EXPELLED! brouhaha.
To the Framers, what’s going on is an essentially political battle; a public-relations contest, pitting pro-science vs. anti-science, where the goal is to sway more people to your side. And there is no doubt [...]

OK, already, I’ll become the millionth blogger to note the delicious irony of PZ Myers being, well, expelled from a screening of the upcoming movie, “EXPELLED!” Ironic not only because of being expelled, but also because, if those that are advancing evolutionary science and tearing down creationism/ID are beetles (as something with which a [...]