Tonight on Studio 360, they presented the next in a series on presenting science. Their piece was about “an exhibition on Darwin”:http://www.studio360.org/stream/ram.py?file=/studio/studio060206g.mp3 and the environment and conditions in which he did his groundbreaking research. This piece really brought the sense of humanity and discovery that is often missing in portrayal […]
Science
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The issue of energy, energy dependence, and the economy has been on my mind for some time. As a research scientist interested in the investment by the public in high-risk, high-payoff basic science, the framing of the conversation about energy, its sources and uses, is of great concern. It is […]
I am a fundamentalist when it comes to open access to scientific information. In graduate school, when I learned that many disciplines give paid access to journals can run thousands of dollars, I nearly fell over. I had grown up in the era of the internet. To boot, I was […]
My favorite Sunday program is a radio show called “On the Media” (“www.onthemedia.org”:http://onthemedia.org/). It’s a week-by-week look at the media and its behavior. “This week’s show takes a look at media and global warming”:http://onthemedia.org/stream/ram.py?file=otm/otm051906d.mp3. My favorite quote from this piece is a look at a media spot put together by […]
I checked my usual news sources, the Google and Yahoo! news aggregators, after the release of the EPP2010 report. Nothing. I was shocked. Plenty of bad news about this or that, but nothing about a diverse panel of scientists and non-scientists, chaired by an economist, calling on the nation to […]
For twenty years, the United States has invested less and less in basic research in the physical sciences as a fraction of GDP. The U.S. spends about $8-$8.5 billion per year on basic research in the physical sciences (that represents the combined DOE science, NSF, and NIST budgets). Today, “it […]
The EPP2010 is released at 11:30 today. Here are my notes and thoughts. “EPP2010 Homepage”:http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bpa/EPP2010.html *11:30* Prompt beginning. Appearing: Harold Shapiro (chair), Sally Dawson (vice-chair), John Bagger, Takaaki Kajita. *11:31*: Opening remarks by Shapiro. This report lays otu the future of U.S. particle physics. The committee is 1/3 particle physicists, […]
Science is a tough business. Experiments rise and fall based on their scientific merit, judged through a peer review process that is meant to weed the well-planned projects from the rest. Last week, that time-honored system of peer review was apparently thrown to the side of the road as the […]
Science is, like all human endeavors, full of competition. As in all competition, friendly or otherwise, there has to be somebody who gets disappointed. Today, I am pleased to announce that I am a little disappointed. My competitors in the “Belle Collaboration”:http://belle.kek.jp have announced at a major conference they have […]
This week offered America a rare but important lesson in statistics. What worried me was that the venue most people get the information from – the news media – widely seems to flub the lesson. I’d give agencies like NBC and CNN a D- in their ability to report accurately […]
As I mentioned a few hours ago, this week has seen one great result in the understanding of nature using evolution. The Wall Street Journal also reports on a second discovery: the resurrection, by studying dozens of genes from a variety of species, of an ancient hormone receptor that last […]
“Gaps”. That’s the buzzword that opponents of science like to use to try to indicate a flaw in a theory, such as the theory of evolution. They argue that a gap is fatal to a theory, and that invalidates the theory. In truth, a gap – a region that cannot […]