It’s been a while since I felt it necessary to comment on the people who profess that things like “intelligent design” are science. However, tonight on Twitter the Discovery Institute mixed their usual nonsense – their fundamental distortion of biological science – with physics. Since they took it upon themselves […]
Science
449 posts
Scientific American recently published the responses they received from many US President Candidates regarding questions on science and scientific matters. In this post, I apply the skills we expect from the practice of good argument and scientific thinking to assess the questions and the responses. Let’s focus on the “Research” […]
Scientific American recently published the responses they received from many US President Candidates regarding questions on science and scientific matters. In this post, I apply the skills we expect from the practice of good argument and scientific thinking to assess the questions and the responses. Let’s focus on the “Innovation” […]
The first “debate” [1] between US Presidential candidates is coming up soon, on September 26. Recently, Scientific American published some of the candidates’ answers to a series of questions grounded in scientific issues and the policies that could be associated with those issues. In a series of posts on this […]
I just spent two weeks at CERN. Due to limited travel funds this year, I had to keep my summer time here limited to save money for other trips and my research leave in the spring of 2017. Nonetheless, this was an incredibly productive pair of weeks. I’ll reflect a […]
As a physicist, I am fascinated by trying to quantify the world – to find the numbers that can represent what is going on in nature. People are hard to quantify most of the time, but trying to do so can be informative. Organizations like PolitiFact [1] offer a set […]
Donald Trump wrote, in response to statistics reported in a Washington Post article [1], that “I will defeat Hillary Clinton…”. But his claim is based on a total misreading of what the data used in the Post article, taken from Real Clear Politics (RCP) [2], actually say.
The following is the underlying text I wrote as the basis for a talk at the TEDxSMU-sponsored event, “Loyd on the Lawn.” It was held at Loyd Residential Commons at SMU, where I was invited to give a short (~10-minute) talk last Sunday night. Enjoy!
Writers are born young. Good writers learn their craft through practice, trial, and error. Failure is the best teacher. Given my view of writing, there is much my own University’s weekly campus paper, the SMU Campus Weekly, can learn from this recent article that claims to assess the “Paleo diet.” […]
Every year, Jodi and I run a local Halloween-themed 5K race together. Recently, the race became a charity for an organization that tries to help children and their families deal with particular cancers. It’s nice that the race goes to support a good cause; to be honest, I don’t run […]
“Some scientists say…” “Several studies have shown…” These are weasel phrases indicative of poor science journalism, especially if the studies are not linked to, or referenced in, the story. No journalistic body is immune to this fallacy, including NPR. In a recent story about acupuncture and allergies on their blog, […]
One of my most popular posts in the last few years was a critical, scientific look at Zicam. I wanted to revisit a few things in this short update to the article, and based on information gathered by a commenter revisit the question: by how much is Zicam overcharging for […]