The President’s budget proposal appeared this week, and funding for scientific research was largely protected from the budget freeze on discretionary spending [1][2]. There are losses, but primarily where it’s especially hard to justify the expenditure (e.g. returning people to the Moon). It’s remarkable when words meet actions, but the […]
Science
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In his state of the union address, President Obama said that “Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. (Applause.) Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped […]
A beautiful press release from NASA just appeared which concisely and directly summarizes the analysis of global temperature since 1880 using three data sources. Find the article here: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/temp-analysis-2009.html. I particularly like that they make a clear distinction between short-term local effects (El Nino, La Nina), short-term cyclic effects (solar […]
On this day remembering the life and contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , I performed my annual ritual of listening to his “I Have a Dream” speech. This year, I tried for focus my attention on one of the early themes of the speech: the bad check. King […]
In the last two parts of this essay, I discussed my thoughts on the veil protecting private inquiry from public scrutiny and I discussed the meaning of stolen e-mails made public. In this last part, I discuss my thoughts on the handling of conflicting data. Quotes extracted from the stolen […]
There is more to discuss about “Climate-gate.” There is the release of e-mails from the scientists. There are the choices scientists make when faced with data. While no doubt it relieves many climate science detractors that the veil was lifted on climate research, they also should stop to wonder what […]
SMU imposed a new requirement on faculty starting this year. We are now required to take and pass a multi-hour web class on research practices and ethics. Over several months, in short shots, I took the class. The first half of the material focused on things like pressure, plagiarism, gift […]
The sermon that followed the baptism of my God-daughter was a let down, a reminder of the reason I originally abandoned a religious life in favor of a spiritual one. I don’t know if these let-down sermons are at all common; I just know that I run into them a […]
Author’s forward: I wrote this not because I agree or disagree with the choice of a particular Nobel prize winner. I wrote this because I was sick to death of the tone of the discussion about why Nobel prizes, in any field, are awarded. I’ve heard a lot of horrible […]
It’s a good day to look ahead to politics and science as we enter the fall. This is not only the day that Congress went “back to school”; it was also the day many kids in the U.S. did the same. The President addressed schoolkids today. We’re about to leave […]
As part of my faculty preparations, I have been required to take a web course in research ethics. Let me begin by saying that ethics in research are the single most important thing to me in the lab, and they are things which I strive to imbue in others. I […]
As a new faculty member at SMU, I am interested in the research being done by my colleagues. In the spirit of things, I have subscribed to the SMU Research Blog [1]. I was interested to see a recent post about the discovery of a fossil supervolcano in the Italian […]