Category: Media
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A Force for Greatness: Science Policy Links for the Week of April 16-22, 2017
Given how much the past few months have been largely about “eating the seed” corn by threatening to pillage the nation’s scientific capabilities, this week was comparably more uplifted. Having reached a tipping point with the rhetoric of the current president, scientists and science advocacy organizations started planning a “March for Science” back in late […]
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Bad science reporting on Mayo Clinic Proceedings “Prescription Drug Use” paper
I saw on Facebook today some repeats of a CBS article from Atlanta entitled “Study: 70 Percent Of Americans On Prescription Drugs” [1]. The news article cites this actual scientific article from the Mayo Clinic’s “Mayo Clinic Proceedings,” entitled “Age and Sex Patterns of Drug Prescribing in a Defined American Population” [2]. The CBS article claims right […]
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Scalise and Sekula demonstrate logical fallacies
In which we are literally straw men.
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Splitsville for Ernie
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NPR Science Fail: diet disclaimer
During my listening to NPR over the past 4 days, I have heard some major science reporting fails. I reported on one the other day: the way in which a study of organic food nutrition was reported. Today, while working out in the early hours of the morning, I heard a second. NPR’s “Morning Edition” […]
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Reporting on the health benefits of organic food
When Michael Pollan described in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” some of the impacts of industrial scale nitrogen-fertilizer farming, he wrote passionately about the Des Moines river in Iowa: But what happens to the one hundred pounds of synthetic nitrogen that Naylor’s corn plants don’t take up? Some of it evaporates into the air, where it acidifies […]
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Triggering the Social Chain
Social media is frustrating, but not for the reasons you are probably thinking. It’s frustrating because it’s disconnected. What happens on Facebook doesn’t seamlessly make it to Twitter; conversations on Twitter don’t seamlessly appear as conversations on Facebook. Twitter friends cannot talk to Facebook friends when discussing the same topic. Statusnet and Diaspora attempted to […]
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An Analysis of Attacks on Science
Preface: Many thanks to Profs. John Cotton, Randy Scalise, Ron Wetherington, and John Wise for their tireless efforts to promote science. Their perspectives on the scientific method, and the issues I outline below, have been a tremendous influence on my thinking and writing about this subject. I also thank Profs. John Cotton and Randy Scalise […]
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The demons begin to stir
Peter Gleick’s unethical subterfuge to obtain internal documents from the Heartland Institute has begun to give some interesting insights into this anti-science institution. While not all of the documents have been confirmed, enough has been confirmed from independent sources (including those named in the documents) to begin shedding light on the dancing shadows of anti-science. […]
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Books without Borders
The closure of all Borders Bookstores and the liquidation of their inventory has gotten people talking about how electronic books are beginning to erode brick and mortar stores. In my own life, I have embraced a mix of electronic and paper books. I still purchase paper books and I use my Kindle to get books […]