Category Archives: Politics

Don't Call Him a Prophet

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NASA’s Prophet Will Give You Nightmares

Professor Hansen has been driven into a strange situation, and produced a strange book. For one-third of a century now, this cantankerous scientist has been more accurate in his predictions about global warming than anyone else alive. He saw these disastrous changes coming long before others did, and the U.S. government has tried to censor or sack him for his prescience. Now he has written a whistle-blower’s account while still at the top: a story of how our political system is so wilfully, deliberately blind to environmental realities that we have no choice now but for American citizens to take direct physical action against the polluters. It’s hardly what you expect to hear from the upper echelons of NASA: not a call to the stars, but a call to the streets. Toss a thousand scientific papers into a blender along with All the President’s Men and Mahatma Gandhi, and you’ve got this riveting, disorienting book.

Alternate Histories

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Lasers would never have shone if Mandelson had been in charge

Can’t really speak to this, as I have no familiarity with the British funding climate (other than knowing the have been cutting budgets). But this would be one strength of science funding, that many countries deem it worthwhile, and recognize that funding basic research is a necessity. Fundamental discoveries are the raw material of later applications, once the field matures.

Why, Indeed?

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Why is the news media comfortable with lying about science?

If a news organization had put words in the mouth of a political figure, there would almost certainly be a firestorm of controversy. The same would occur if one had turned to a Hollywood star or sports figure for comment on, say, a Congressional Budget Office report. When it comes to science, however, the response seems to be limited to a few outraged bloggers. It’s difficult not to think that there’s a double standard involved in the complete indifference to accuracy when it comes to scientific information.

Can Obama Stop the War on Science?

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Can Obama Stop the War on Science?

One of our two great parties — and many, if not most, of the people who support it – decided some time ago that science was an enemy, and there’s little reason to think it will change its stance any time soon. That doesn’t mean that all Republican politicians are equally hostile to science. For instance, one suspects that a Mitt Romney administration would be somewhat less vigorous in its quashing of scientific advancement than a Sarah Palin administration. But as long as the GOP retains its current form, science will remain a political issue, with the partisan lines clearly drawn.

It's No Masterpiece

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Security Theater

Here’s a little perspective: FiveThirtyEight: The Odds of Airborne Terror

Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.

There is an underlying Maginot mentality to the way the TSA implements most security measures.

New and Improved. Now with Lemon!

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Uncertainty in Science: It’s a Feature, Not a Bug

People tend to think of scientific progress as always advancing in a straight line, with new facts being added permanently to our body of knowledge as they are discovered. “They do not understand that, instead, research is an ungainly mechanism that moves in fits and starts and that its ever-expanding path of knowledge is complicated by blind alleys and fruitless detours,” writes New York Times science reporter Cordelia Dean in her book, Am I Making Myself Clear? A Scientist’s Guide to Talking to the Public (2009). As a result, Dean says, revisions to a scientific consensus make people think that scientists don’t know what they’re talking about. NECSS panelist Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, chair of the philosophy department at City University of New York-Lehman College, has a favorite example of this mindset. In response to an editorial he penned on the science of evolution, a letter to the editor replied, “I don’t understand why people want to believe in science—science changes all the time.” Yet this, of course, is its strength; science adjusts its claims in response to new information.

Santagate

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Santa’s database has been hacked. Another Leak, the worst so far

You’re probably talking about this terrible security disaster already: the largest database leak ever. Arweena, a spokes-elf for Santa Claus, admitted a few hours ago that the database posted at WikiLeaks yesterday is indeed the comprehensive 2009 list of which kids have been naughty, and which were nice. The source of the leak is unclear. It may have come from a renegade reindeer, or it could be the work of a clever programmer in the Ukraine. Either way, it’s a terrible black eye for Santa. Arweena promised that in the future, access to this database would be restricted on a “need to know” basis. And you know who that means!