Category Archives: Science-general

Is it Science?

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Teaching Peer Review

Teachers have been giving feedback on what has caught the imagination of the students. The interviews with “real” scientists and editors describing their experience of the peer review system “raised a few eyebrows.” The students were shocked to discover that the process existed at all, and that scientists welcomed constructive criticism from their peers about how they could improve a paper. This challenged the notion of scientists always being “right.” That most reviewers give their time for free also hit a chord.

Very importantly, they note that peer-review isn’t the same as independent confirmation — it’s simply one hurdle that screens out obviously-flawed papers with some efficiency.

The new course material points out that clearing the peer review process doesn’t make a piece of research “right,” it’s just one cog in the scientific development wheel. But it is an important cog, being the first point of distinction between what is speculation and opinion and what is scientific.

I hope this helps. At the very least some will have learned the implications of neither the op-ed page in the newspaper nor a post at some_random_schmoe.com being peer-reviewed, and that they should be assessed accordingly.

Oh Tee Yay!

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Rush Holt (physicist, congressman) on reviving the Office of Technology Assessment

Op-Ed: Reversing the Congressional Science Lobotomy

Among the 535 members of Congress, there are three physicists, one chemist, six engineers, and one microbiologist. Most members of congress avoid science at all costs, and the handful of trained scientists cannot and do not try to inject the scientific thinking on the particulars of every issue.

What Congress needs is its own science advisors. We need not look far for a model: Until 1995, Congress could rely on the Office of Technology Assessment.

While members of Congress do not suffer from a lack of information, we lack time and resources to assess the validity, credibility, and usefulness of the large amount of scientific information and advice we receive as it affects actual policy decisions. The purpose of the OTA was to assist members of Congress in this task. It both provided an important long-term perspective and alerted Congress to scientific and technological components of policy that might not be obvious.

[…]

Despite its importance, new leaders in Congress successfully defunded the OTA in 1995, which as one former member put it, was like Congress giving itself a lobotomy.

I think we (in the US, and true elsewhere, too) are all better off if our political policy is based on facts rather than ideology. IOW, on how nature actually behaves rather than how we want it to behave, or think it should behave. More goes into the policy equation, for certain, but factual information is a necessary place to start.

via

I Don't Know the Answer, but Neither Do You

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Unqualified Offerings: A lot of ignorance needn’t stop you from offering contradictory theories

I have no particular opinion on why there is a gender gap in certain fields of science. I have a lot of skepticism for various theories offered, but I have no theory of my own. And it isn’t just because it’s a hot potato issue where it would be easy to put a foot in my mouth. I really, honestly, find many explanations wanting.

The thing that gets me about this whole discussion is the unscientific nature of a lot of the analysis, or lack thereof (there’s an “if you disagree you must be a misogynist!” crowd that sometimes shows up in places and shouts down any hope of actual discussion), because bad arguments make me cringe, and these are bad arguments. Most of the explanations that are proffered have stark counterexamples, either within STEM areas or in the business world, that show the explanation to be either wrong or incomplete. One thing not mentioned in the link is the disregard for the basic math conundrum of the Garrison Keillor effect— if you have overrepresentation in some areas, it’s simply impossible to simultaneously have equity in all the rest.

Some Things About Science

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Dot Physics: Some things about science

Aristotle and the other Greeks: They started with assumed truths like heavy things fall faster than lighter things. From that they deduced ideas about motion. The problem here is that if your “assumed truths” are wrong, you are in big trouble. They did not actually test their assumed truths. If they did, they wouldn’t be assumed.

This is a common bugbear of the crackpot, too, who starts with some flawed assumption about how nature behaves and ends up concluding that his perpetual motion machine will work.

Hit or Myth

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Top 10 Ridiculously Common Science Myths

The Myth: Meteors are heated by friction when entering the atmosphere

When a meteoroid enters the atmosphere of the earth (becoming a meteor), it is actually the speed compressing the air in front of the object that causes it to heat up. It is the pressure on the air that generates a heat intense enough to make the rock so hot that is glows brilliantly for our viewing pleasure (if we are lucky enough to be looking in the sky at the right time). We should also dispel the myth about meteors being hot when they hit the earth – becoming meteorites. Meteorites are almost always cold when they hit – and in fact they are often found covered in frost. This is because they are so cold from their journey through space that the entry heat is not sufficient to do more than burn off the outer layers.

One Big Assumption

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Time-traveler cheat sheet

This basically assumes you have traveled through time because George Carlin handed you a time machine and you’re almost too stupid to breathe, or you went through a time rift, or some topologically similar scenario. Because if you invented a #@&^! time machine, you should know most of what’s there.

A moving electric field produces magnetism, and vice versa. Wrap copper around an iron core and run electricity through it, and you’ve got an electromagnet

What I’d want is an old chemistry book that included descriptions of how to obtain and purify chemicals, because that’s knowledge that’s been outsourced.