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 […]
science
62 posts
I haven’t posted in a while. The current global Ebola panic, spread mostly by social media and the media and not so much by the actual global threat of Ebola, has spurred me from complacency. Specifically, a WHO ethics panel today unanimously authorized the use of unproven, untested, experimental Ebola […]
I am Stephen Sekula, an Assistant Professor of Physics at SMU conducting research on the ATLAS Experiment. These comments will be my own, and I will try to take a broad view. Let me begin by thanking the members of the Panel for this opportunity to speak, and let me […]
When I think back to my youth, I recognize a series of key moments that happened that led to my becoming a physicist. I often speak of one of those moments when I discuss physics with students or the general public. My father once recorded a documentary about physics entitled […]
Recently, a two new studies of multivitamins and their efficacy for purposes other than vitamin deficiency were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine [1][2]. One study looks at using multivitamins to improve outcomes after myocardial infarction, and finds no evidence of a benefit. The second study looks at measurable […]
I have a subscription to “The Economist,” but I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve neglected the last few issues. So it was with great interest that I found from an acquaintance of mine that they recently printed an article entitled “How Science Goes Wrong: Scientific Research Has Changed the […]
The Daily Mail claims in their science section that the 60% increase in arctic ice extent comparing August of 2012 to August of 2013 means “global cooling” is happening. But is this bad science reporting? Yes. This claim cherry-picks data, comparing only August of 2012 to August of 2013. The […]
What is science and why should I care about it? Science is a reliable, reproducible, and verifiable process by which facts, and explanations of those facts, are established. The outcome of the scientific method is a useful and universally applicable framework of knowledge about the natural world. Knowledge gleaned […]
This morning, I was sent a direct notice on Twitter indicating that something called “FoodIDTheft” had aggregated one of my tweets into some automated news feed. I was intrigued – since “FoodIDTheft” sounded like an inflammatory name intended to convey that this site helps people keep their food’s identity from […]
The Discovery Institute posted a long and painful defense of Intelligent Design as a “scientific idea” today [1]. It was painful because it seemed based on a pre-college level of understanding of the scientific method. Their primary defense was founded on shoe-horning intelligent design into a scientific method-looking structure, but […]
I’ve been engaged in a small conversation on a social network regarding the labeling of food as “genetically modified.” I’ve written specific thoughts about the scientific problems with that labeling recently in this blog [1]. I thought it might be useful to explain here how I got engaged in this […]
Editorial Note (9/1/13): The program “Marketplace” recently looked into Mr. Mills’ claim. They found it to be nonsense. See: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/no-your-phone-doesnt-use-much-electricity-refrigerator. I like that they put the answer right in their headline: NO. Editorial Note (8/23/13): since originally posting the article, a commenter (“Jay”) pointed out that the number I pulled from […]