September 26, 2007
I have trouble believing this, but animal rights extremists have apparently stolen a kindergarten bunny.
Students at the Community Building Children's Center arrived at their downtown preschool Monday morning to discover that their pet rabbit Sugar Bunny had been kidnapped over the weekend.…
September 23, 2007
Chris Mooney has been nice enough to help promote our effort, and points us to some more helpful information about the Office of Technology Assessment. Now would be a good time to go over what the OTA did, how it was set up, and why I think it would be rather easy to set it up again as a non-…
September 21, 2007
They're fighting for our freedoms. And in order to fight for our freedoms, thousands of miles away from home, thousands of miles from their sweethearts and husbands/wives, they must be kept pure and without sin. Therefore, Christian groups demand the military not allow PX stores to sell porn (aka…
September 21, 2007
I am always amused by this statement at the bottom of the Evolution News and Views website. It says:
The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site. Unfortunately, much of the news coverage has been sloppy, inaccurate, and in some cases, overtly biased. Evolution News…
September 20, 2007
DeSmogBlog has the details. Apparently, "cut-and-paste" Schulte didn't have anything new to say, not even enough for a journal like Energy and Environment to take it. Although, Richard Littlemore's letter discussing his loose use of other researchers contributions might have helped.
Here is the…
September 20, 2007
It looks like it will be two announcements of new sciblings today. We have A Few Things Ill Considered joining us at Scienceblogs. It's a climate science/debunking blog I've been familiar with for a while, and author of the excellent Howto talk to a climate skeptic.
Welcome!
September 20, 2007
Welcome Sciencewoman to the block, as she starts up her new blog here. I'm continually impressed with our Sb overlords and their ability to acquire a diverse set of talented individuals. It seems they're doing a better job the The Scientist as some of my sciblings have pointed out.
September 20, 2007
For anyone curious about complexity, genome size, and non-coding or "junk" DNA, there are a number of good posts on the topic at Genomicron.
See in particular Junk DNA: let me say it one more time fand Function, non-function, some function: a brief history of junk DNA for a discussion of what junk…
September 19, 2007
This time it's Steve McIntyre representing for the anti-global warming cranks following the HIV/AIDS denialist lead and using John Ioannidis' study to suggest science is bunk. Never mind that this research is primarily focused on medical studies. Never mind that the study wouldn't even exist if…
September 19, 2007
Second Innocence has gone and shown me up on my own issue. They've started a petition to reinstate the OTA.
Please, show your support.
September 19, 2007
The NYT had a piece on the life and times of Ayn Rand yesterday, and I just couldn't get over these two paragraphs.
For years, Rand's message was attacked by intellectuals whom her circle labeled "do-gooders," who argued that individuals should also work in the service of others. Her book was…
September 19, 2007
Nature has a review this week on the Impact of regional climate change on human health(1) that is an interesting read.
Contrary to the previous article we discussed which suggested what I think is a non-existent link between climate change and chronic disease, this article discusses the very…
September 18, 2007
Why can't people just be bigots and not demand science reinforce their bigotry? James Dobson is promoting the Exodus Ex-Gay study (reviewed by Jim Burroway here). You remember the study? The one where they ignore all the people that dropped out? The one where success also included chastity, or…
September 18, 2007
I'm sad I missed the "Values Voters Presidential Debate", but I'm not alone. All the first-tier presidential candidates skipped it as well. The big winner was apparently Mike Huckabee according to the World Nut Daily, he apparently was the most hateful of them all. But the nuts are clearly upset…
September 17, 2007
Shelly asks us to take part in her survey on science blogging. She wants to know who is reading science blogs, what do they want, what they don't want, and how science blogs can influence awareness of science.
Help her out, and take the survey.
September 17, 2007
I knew eventually some crank would find John Ioaniddis' work and manage to misrepresent it against science, well, the first to bat are the HIV/AIDS cranks. Fresh off this bizarre declaration from Harvey Bialey that he'd won the war against HIV science and is now going home, they're back on the…
September 17, 2007
Let's keep this ball rolling. On Friday we started talking about the importance of the OTA
It used to be, for about 20 years (from 1974 to 1995), there was an office on the Hill, named the Office of Technology Assessment, which worked for the legislative branch and provided non-partisan scientific…
September 17, 2007
Box Turtle Bulletin has been tracking the latest ex-gay study that purports to show a 30-50% efficacy in making homosexuals into heterosexuals through the Exodus ex-gay ministry.
Initial problems with the study which went to a Christian publisher rather than peer review - the authors Stanton L.…
September 16, 2007
Denyse O'Leary points us to an upcoming criticism of the New York Times from the crank journal First Things. Their great sin? Allowing Dawkins, a critic of Behe, to review his latest book.
He notes the curious fact that the Times should never have given the book to Dawkins to review anyway,…
September 13, 2007
So I was thinking. It isn't really enough to merely react constantly to anti-scientific behavior which seems to permeate the media, the interwebs, and policy discussions on Capitol Hill these days.
It used to be, for about 20 years (from 1974 to 1995), there was an office on the Hill, named the…
September 13, 2007
There have been two interesting court decisions, I think both decided correctly for science this week. In the first, a federal court has decided states may regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. In particular, one statement from the judge seemed to come straight from the deck of…
September 13, 2007
I thought I'd survey the readership for some ideas on how to make Denialism Blog more interesting and accessible to an international readership. One of the goals of the Scienceblogs' mothership Seed is to expand and get the whole world interested in scientific literacy as well as our little…
September 13, 2007
At Unscrewing the Inscrutable Brent Rasmussen brings us the 69th skeptics circle with a fun, old west feel.
One of the first entries was particularly interesting to me as an example of crank magnetism. The Socratic Gadfly found Lynn Marguilis embracing 9/11 conspiracies, which shouldn't be…
September 11, 2007
An art teacher has been "removed from the classroom" for proselytizing to his students about his vegan lifestyle. Apparently after being born-again into veganism, he wouldn't stop talking to kids about living "cruelty-free" during class. The kicker? He now wants to charge the school district…
September 10, 2007
Who needs privacy concerns if RFID causes cancer. The small implantable microchips that have generated concern from privacy experts and readers of revelations alike have now been associated with sarcoma formation in animals.
A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s,…
September 9, 2007
I think most skeptical bloggers would agree that one common tactic one sees from denialists is whole-hog cut-and-paste rebuttals without attribution. For instance, on finds when arguing with evolution denialists that they'll just cut-and-paste tired creationist arguments into comment threads.
We…
September 7, 2007
The Washington Post reports on the apparent jump in suicide rates since antidepressants got a black-box warning in 2004 after some reports suggested an increased suicide rate in youths after the initial prescription.
The article here (goddamn WaPo still can't figure out how to link anyone but…
September 6, 2007
Another update on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the surprisingly devastating attack on the honeybee that occurred last year that was responsible for huge losses of bee colonies and a great deal of concern about crops pollinated by this insect.
Originally we mocked the idea that CCD was caused…
September 6, 2007
The Washington Post reports on research that correcting mythical beliefs is more difficult than you'd think. The interesting finding seems to be that if you repeat the myth in the course of correcting it, people are more likely to forget the correct information and remember the myth!
When…
September 6, 2007
I was surprised to see this article in the International Herald Tribune suggest that global warming might cause increased incidence of cardiovascular death. In particular one statement struck me as being somewhat absurd.
On the sidelines of the European Society of Cardiology's annual meeting in…
