Social Sciences
oracknows | July 17, 2006Many of the bloggers here at ScienceBlogs lament about the woeful state of science knowledge among the U.S. public. This ignorance about the basics of science and the scientific method has been blamed on many things, whether it be the poor quality of science education in the public schools, an all-too-prevalent view of science as not being "sexy" or "interesting," and the rise of a distinct antiscience bias, particularly in the present administration. Many of us have also lamented at one time or another about how this ignorance allows pseudoscientific belief systems like "intelligent design"…
stcynic | July 16, 2006Or three, perhaps, since I already wrote one lengthy reply in the comments of the first post. How he's back with a second comment, which is little improved from the first one.
Yes, Ed, I understand that your blog enjoys more traffic, but if you'd like to challenge me in the future, at least notify me with a link in my comments section. Otherwise, all you're doing is whispering behind someone's back in a room full of your friends and pretending you've somehow won the debate.
The trackback gets sent, and Jay obviously reads this page when it happens. You somehow managed to find your way back…
neurotopia | July 14, 2006Last weekend there was an article in the Wichita Eagle on the situation with the Kansas BoE. Since creationists can't get their tripe published in real science journals, but instead have to rely on popularity contests elections in order to pass their shit off as reality to our kids, I thought I'd dig up one of my old posts.
Here's the a grand example of why science is not determined by consensus.
If you live in Kansas, The TruthTM which your children are taught in school is decided based upon the ideology of the current Board of Elections. This coming year, for example, Intelligent Design…
stcynic | July 14, 2006Over at PseudoPolymath, Mark Olson has what I regard as a very oddly reasoned post about the meaning of liberty in the Declaration of Independence. He has been reading a book called Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Fischer, which according to his recounting, details 4 different waves of immigration to America in 4 different areas of the country and how their views on various things differed. In particular, he notes that they had different conceptions of what the word "liberty" meant. Based upon this, he makes a rather odd argument that concludes that the word "liberty…
stcynic | July 14, 2006John Derbyshire, the National Review's token evolution advocate, has written a response to George Gilder's pro-ID article in that same magazine last week. Gilder is the founder of the Discovery Institute. In his response, Derbyshire uses a perfect metaphor for dealing with creationists:
It's a wearying business, arguing with Creationists. Basically, it is a game of Whack-a-Mole. They make an argument, you whack it down. They make a second, you whack it down. They make a third, you whack it down. So they make the first argument again. This is why most biologists just can't be bothered with…
cmooney | July 13, 2006Turns out he had a big article on this subject in the neoconservative New Atlantis fairly recently. As we've done before--very successfully--I'm going to pull out three numbered quotes and invite you to respond:
1. "It is true that Alzheimer's is not a promising candidate for stem cell therapies," says Dr. Stephen Minger of King's College London, "but it was not scientists who suggested it was--that was all politics in the U.S. driven by Nancy Reagan." But in the United States, Mrs. Reagan was backed by myriad scientific and patient advocacy groups who want public funding of ESC research,…
jstemwedel | July 13, 2006Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon put up a post about gender essentialism that starts by citing this post at Mixing Memory on how people's representations of homosexuality affect their attitudes toward homosexuality. Because Chris's post cited my two posts (initially sparked by Jessica's post at Feministing), I came in for some criticism from Greensmile in this comment at Pandagon. As I believed these criticisms to be based on a misunderstanding of my position, I responded. Greensmile then was kind enough to read my posts and to respond that we seem to be having "the most violent agreement",…
scientificactivist | July 13, 2006This week's Nature features a news article and editorial about Francis Collins--director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute--whose new book The Language of God advocates reconciliation between science and religion. Although the status of science in America could be improved by lessening religious anti-science hostility, and we're generally much better off in general when we all get along, the argument advanced by Collins is less than compelling.
To his credit, Collins' religious views are relatively progressive, and he disagrees strongly with creationism and intelligent…
pharyngula | July 12, 2006Ho hum, I'm quoted in Nature again this week (do I sound convincingly blasé?) It's a short news article on Francis Collins' new book, The Language of God, which I find dreadfully dreary and unconvincing, and I find his argument that "The moral law is a signpost to a God who cares about us as individuals. God used a mechanism of evolution to create human beings with whom he could have that kind of fellowship" to be ridiculously unscientific garbage.
Many scientists disagree strongly with such arguments. Some suggest that science is on the defensive today — not just in the United States — and…
neurotopia | July 12, 2006Over at Aetiology, Tara is confused. She somehow thinks that Focus on the Family is actually anti-life.
She says:
Indeed. I'd love to see them mount a campaign against a foundation that fights horribly painful guinea worm infections, AIDS in monogamous, married relationships; and funds scientific breakthroughs for a number of underfunded illnesses. Go ahead and show us again, FoF and ALL, just how "pro-life" you really are.
I'm sorry to say that Tara just doesn't get it. The answer to the conundrum is glaringly obvious. FoF and other assorted "values" groups are most definitely pro-life…
mixingmemory | July 12, 2006A couple weeks ago, a couple Science Bloggers, sparked by Jessica of Feministing, discussed the potential dangers of discovering the biological causes of homosexuality. Jessica expressed a common attitude in her post, writing:
And naturally the larger question with all these why-are-you-gay studies is why do we have to know? I'm terrified that once someone targets a "reason" they're just going to try and find a way to do away with it.
To which fellow Science Blogger Janet added:
Pinning homosexuality on something (abnormal) from genetics or development comes dangerously close to making it a…
jrosenhouse | July 11, 2006Michael Kinsley has an excellent column up at Slate about the inconsistency of the anti stem-cell crowd:
Against this, you have the fact that embryonic stem cells are extracted from human embryos, killing them in the process. If you believe that embryos a few days after conception have the same human rights as you or me, killing innocent embryos is obviously intolerable. But do opponents of stem-cell research really believe that? Stem cells test that belief, and sharpen the basic right-to-life question, in a way abortion never has.
And later:
In short, if embryos are human beings with full…
tsmith | July 11, 2006 Longtime readers know of my fascination with Ebola. Much of it is fueled not by the fact that it's a major killer of humanity, because it's not: in 30 years, it's been responsible for a bit less than 2,000 human infections, and ~1,200 deaths. Bats have long been suspected to be a reservoir of the virus, and recent studies have confirmed that they can carry the virus.
With at least one strain of Ebola (Ebola Reston), we know that our primate cousins are more severely affected than we are. This strain has been found to infect captured primates brought into the United States from the…
retrospectacle | July 11, 2006While reading the June issue of Nature, I saw an editorial piece called Last Rites which touched on a subject which interests me: humane euthanization of lab animals. Our lab does research on guinea pigs (we must be the last lab to *actually* use guinea pigs), and its of the utmost concern to all of us that they feel no pain when they are sacrificed (or "sacked" as we say). There exists two main ways of euthanization: inhaling carbon dioxide gas or by "cervical dislocation" (euphamism for breaking the animal's neck). The former require little to no researcher interaction, but may be a slow…
clock | July 10, 2006I often ask you to read several posts in succession and make your own connections. Here's a line up of some old and some new posts about the history, current state (and cultural battle) and possible future of the institution of marriage:
First off, Lance Mannion wrote a couple of days ago on Polygamy, voyeurism, and other fun things to do on the weekend:
"...a lot of Right Wing America lives on the frontier between civilization and Trailer Park choas. The reason they are so terrrified by change and the prospect of sexual and personal freedom is that where they come from all those things are…
stcynic | July 10, 2006Eugene Volokh has written an excellent series of posts about the use of the One True Purpose fallacy by opponents of gay marriage. The argument takes one of two forms, one against gay marriage and one against homosexuality itself, but both have the same flawed premise: the notion that either marriage or our genitals have only One True Purpose. They argue that marriage exists only for the raising of children and since gays can't have children, gay marriage goes against the One True Purpose of marriage. This is all nonsense, of course. Gays can and do have children - hundreds of thousands of…
loom | July 10, 2006I just want to make one thing clear. When Ann Coulter talks about her Giant Raccoon Flatulence Theory, she's talking about me. Don't let anyone else tell you that they are a giant flatulent raccoon. They're all just a bunch of wannabes. For I am the One True Giant Flatulent Raccoon.
Allow me to explain...
Coulter dedicates the last four chapers of her new book Godless to evolution. She claims that it is nothing more than the religion of liberalism (as opposed to the foundation of modern biology, as 92 national scientific academies and dozens of scientific societies attest.)
When I first…
revere | July 9, 2006Less than a week ago we posted on an impending public health emergency in the embattled Gaza strip region of Palestine, where a relentless Israeli assault had cut off much of the population from water and power at the height of summer heat. The warning came from our friend, Palestinian doctor and social justice activist, Dr. Moustafa Barghouti (this is not the Barghouti currently being held in an Israeli jail). Things have deteriorated further and UN aid agencies have joined in the urgent warnings. From Reuters:
U.N. aid agencies said on Saturday that Gaza was on the brink of a public health…
jlynch | July 6, 2006Back in January I discussed a review of Rodney Stark's triumphalist The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Lead to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Alan Wolfe who describes the book as "the worst book by a social scientist that I have ever read." The current issue of Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society offers three similar indictments of Stark's foray into history.
Jack Goldstone (George Mason School of Public Policy:
It pains me to say that the results [of Stark's investigations] are a tissue of gross historical errors and illogical conclusions. It is…
mikethemadbiologist | July 6, 2006Matt Stoller at MyDD.com comments on Andrew Sullivan's and Robert Samuelson's apologetics for global warming:
This is rich. The rush to war was premised on the assumption that the judgment of the Bush administration (and Sullivan) was superior to that of professional weapons inspectors like Hans Blix. This turned out to be false. Now, the foot-dragging on global warming is premised on the assumption that the judgment of the Bush administration (and Sullivan) is superior to that of the global scientific community.
As usual, this is an issue of judgment and trust. Put Sullivan and Samuelson…