SevenUpping, Episode I

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I’m still in recovery mode from my recent trip to ScienceOnline2012. It didn’t help at all that I had a nasty cold the week prior to it, except that having that cold during the conference would have been much worse, because I couldn’t have gone. The residual congestion and wrecked voice weren’t the biggest problem — it was not being at full strength and stamina, which made being “up” for the conference and after-conference activities that much harder.

And being “up” is a requirement. This is the Un-Conference, so unlike traditional gatherings where speaker after speaker drones on for 12 (or 15 or whatever minutes), delving deeper into material you may or may not understand very well, this gathering is very interactive. Even though I was tired, I was rarely in danger of falling asleep.

I find the ScienceOnline series to be an elevating experience. It had better be, because for me this is a vacation and all expenses are out-of-pocket, so I truly appreciate how far the organizers (Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker and Karyn Traphagen, and many other volunteers — thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou) stretch my conference dollar to provide such an event. You have several hundred people whose passion is science communication (either by job or by hobby), many of whom are either well-reknowned science journalists or practicing scientists. Anyone you walk up to is going to be good at talking about some aspect of science at a level you (especially being scientifically literate) are going to be able to understand. As I did last year, I met a lot of people by simply sitting down at breakfast or lunch with some people I didn’t know, do the introductions and ask them what they did (also on the bus for one-on-one conversations). The other strategy was hanging out with DrSkyskull, because he knows everyone.

The un-conference style meant that most sessions were basically a large conversation on the topic at hand, albeit with only one person talking at a time. The session moderators contribute and keep the conversation moving and although they might have an outline of how the hour is supposed to go, they have to react to whatever comes up; some sessions are structured more than others.

Another aspect of this was that the break are — the café — was always open during the conference hours. There were scheduled breaks between sessions, which gave you an opportunity to follow up on a discussion if you wanted to, but the availability of beverages and food was not limited — there was no “you will mingle NOW and only now” structure imposed on us.

I’ll continue with the conference sessions I attended soon; I’ve already posted about the art and the eternal struggle between scientists and journalists, and won’t talk more about the session on history of science.

Let's Play Blackmail!

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Radical Theory Explains the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life, Challenges Conventional Wisdom
(update: link no worky now. Here is the Google cached page)

In addition to resolving long-standing paradoxes and puzzles in chemistry and biology, Dr. Andrulis’ theory unifies quantum and celestial mechanics. His unorthodox solution to this quintessential problem in physics differs from mainstream approaches, like string theory, as it is simple, non-mathematical, and experimentally and experientially verifiable. As such, the new portrait of quantum gravity is radical.

All I can think is someone has compromising pictures of the PAO or Dean, etc. That’s the only way this gets released on university letterhead.

I found the article online, in case you don’t want to download the pdf.

Thus, as modeled by the ohiogyre, quantized macrophoton influx induces macroelectrogyre oscillation between excited and ground states, explaining both the periodicity of planetary orbit and why a planet does not gravitationally collapse into a star. Finally, as with atomic orbitals, in planetary orbits, the attractorepulsive effects diminish the further away from the macrophoton singularity. The macroelectrogyre predicts that increased size and slower orbit of distal planets relative to proximalones (as in the Solar System) corresponds to the composition, length, and stability of macroelectronexuses.

That’s some tasty word salad.

Finding a Common Enemy

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Still going with my general trend of reporting on ScienceOnline 2012 by working backwards, I’m going to quasi-summarize the panel discussion, The Sticky Wicket of the Scientist-Journalist Relationship, which closed out the conference. The panel members were David Kroll, Bora Zivkovic, Maggie Koerth-Baker and Seth Mnookin, which means it was slanted toward the journalist point of view, but it was indeed interesting to get that perspective.

Out of the gate, Maggie Koerth-Baker set the tone about the journalist perspective: I am not your goddam stenographer. I don’t trust you implicitly and I don’t want to be a fanboy. (That’s a paraphrase, but pretty close to a direct quote). And that’s fair, I think, especially with the recent and laughable query about being fact-vigilantes, one shouldn’t expect any journalists to simply repeat what they are told.

We were also cautioned that the journalist’s motivation for writing an article may not coincide with the scientist’s agenda — don’t assume it is and find out those details. This ties in to the concern of some about being misquoted; even though the journalist probably isn’t out to “get” a scientist, you won’t have a chance to backtrack on your comments. So you should correct yourself immediately if you mis-speak. There was also the suggestion that it’s OK to speak to a reporter off the record, and then agree afterward to allow some comments to be on the record. That gives the scientist some control over the issue.

What was interesting to me was a comment by Seth Mnookin about how scientists are surprised that journalists often don’t check back with the scientist they’ve interviewed and show them the story before it’s published. Some of this is motivated by not wanting to edit quotes, but from my perspective it’s about a concern to get the facts right. My own experience on this is mixed — I’ve been interviewed or involved in email exchanges, and been offered differing levels of opportunity to provide feedback. But I completely understand the scientist position — I think it’s a general desire in the science community that the science be understood correctly, and anyone who has taught knows how often it happens that complex concepts are misunderstood, especially without the feedback. So it is a surprise to me that a journalist would not double-check their story to make sure they got it right. Getting it wrong undermines the credibility of everyone involved, though my personal bias is that when I see obvious errors I am going to assume the scientist knows what s/he is talking about and the journalist screwed it up. That might not always be true, but it’s probably the way to bet.

One the other side of the coin, journalists can get burned by scientists pushing bad science and treating it like peer review, in that they figure a newer story can come along and correct any mistakes. I don’t think much of that approach — scientists have an obligation to make clear what is sound and what is speculation.

Having said all that, I have to agree with what Ed Yong has posted a few days back: Every scientists-versus-journalists debate ever, in one diagram

Basically, good journalists are going to complain about bad scientists and good scientists are going to complain about bad journalists. I know I do. And I don’t praise good science journalism often enough.

Which brings me to the point that I wish I has thought of before the panel discussion ended. Perhaps we have some common ground after all. Maybe we can agree on a problem we have in common: crap story titles. There’s something uniquely frustrating in reading the title of an article and then find out that the article itself doesn’t support the title, or (in some cases) completely contradicts it. It’s usually an editor that did it. I hope that journalists find this as annoying as this scientist does.

Rewriting History

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I won’t have to rewrite this history; over at Skulls in the Stars there is a summary of one of the sessions I attended — Science Online 2012: Weird and Wonderful Stories in the History of Science

When I was starting out as a student of physics, most of the stories I heard about the history of physics were anecdotes about the eccentric behaviors of various famous figures. There is so much more that we can learn from the history of science, however, and at the same time that we entertain people with stories from the past we can educate them about how science works.

I Wonder if it Sang 'Moon River'

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This is an endoscope video from inside a Fukushima nuclear reactor. Clearly, it has some health issues.

via boingboing, where I saw this observation

The view is obscured by steam, the effects of radiation, and (are you sitting down) actual goddam gamma rays just whizzing by.

(Pssst. Maggie (whom I met at ScienceOnline2012): Goddam gammas are radiation. Perhaps the “and” should be “including”. Just sayin’) Anyway, the gammas (damned or otherwise) show up as the little sparkly flashes on the screen. The fat white streaks are water droplets reflecting the light.

There's Art in Science

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I promised to write up my trip to ScienceOnline 2012, and I’m going to start at (or near) the end. There was an art exhibit and a film festival at the conference; the art was displayed in a slideshow and the awards were announced at the closing, and the second-to-last session was the film festival.

Physics Sweeps the Online-scars

Winners of the Cyberscreen Science Film Festival at Science Online 2012

I watched the whole film festival and there were so many nice videos, to the point that I am intimidated by the thought of doing a video and entering it into competition (though I would most likely be saved by a screening process). But I still do well by association, because the three winners were all physics-related, showing how talented and good-looking we all are. I know Brian Malow from last year’s conference and got to meet Henry Reich of “Minute Physics” (even if I initially mistook him for someone else. Oops).

Smart Art. Not Schmart Art.

There were number of art entries, and winners in the categories of Most Innovative, Best able to convey complex ideas, and Best science art having to do with daily life, along with some special awards. (I had submitted two cartoons, one of which was accepted, but neither “snarkiest” nor “best cartoon” were on the judging list, so I was forced to compete on artistic merit, which doesn’t end well for me, prize-wise. Maybe next year.)

Here are the winners, and the slideshow of all the entries (my cartoon is at the 9:55 mark)
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There was also the work of Perrin Ireland, who not only had entries in the contest, but was live-scribing some of the sessions. There’s a Flickr page of the works and at least one other blog post that has pictures.

 

To finish this off, here are some pictures I took at the JC Raulston Arboretum on Friday afternoon, giving my camera more of a workout in macro-mode than I normally do. I hope that the other photographers and artists who made the trip put their work online. I saw some of the work the tablet-sketchers did, and they were really good.