Physical Sciences

This post dates from all the way back in July of 2002, and contains a bunch of thoughts on the preparation of different types of scientific presentations. I've re-covered some of this ground in the previous post, but there's enough different material to justify a separate Classic Edition post. Since posting this, I've given several more Public Lectures, and they're a lot of fun. I've also gotten a lot better at ad-libbing physics lectures with minimal notes, which may or may not be a Bad Thing. The text of my 2002 post is below the fold. Having been tiresomely political for the past few days…

Alright, I'll come right out and admit it up front. There was no part one to this piece. Well, there was, but it wasn't on this blog, and I didn't write it. PZ did in response to some really idiotic arguments from ignorance that Deepak Chopra (or, less pleasing to Dr. C, here) displayed as part of an "argument" (and I use the term loosely) that there is some mystical other quality that explains life other than genes. He paraded a litany of arguments that so conclusively demonstrated that he had no clue about even the basics of molecular biology that I as a physician cringed and hid my head in…

My original post on the (possible) limits of science generated lots of thought-provoking feedback. On the one hand, some people argued that I was conflating the persistence of statistical uncertainty with genuine mystery: Of course, there are built in uncertianties in science especially with the study of those messy organic things. However, this doesn't mean that we won't be able to trim those uncertianties till they are so miniscule as to be meaningless. Others accused me of the opposite mistake. They said I forgot that "we don't know what we don't know": Dawkins says science can make God…

Benjamin over at The World's Fair and Chad over at Uncertain Principles have already blogged this, but neither acheves the proper level of indignation in my opinion. In this post from September 15, I discussed an astonishingly poor discussion of string theory, written by Gregg Easterbrook and published in Slate. Now, in an apparent effort to cement its reputation for unreliable commentary on science, they have run this silly essay. The subject is a recent experiment by sociologist Henry Collins. He posed seven questions about gravitational waves to a professional physicist. Both Collins…

An article yesterday in Slate discusses Sociologist Harry Collins's recent experiment with credibility and authority: "The Amateur's Revenge: Posing as a physicist--and getting away with it." He did this: In a recent experiment of his design, British sociologist Harry Collins asked a scientist who specializes in gravitational waves to answer seven questions about the physics of these waves. Collins, who has made an amateur study of this field for more than 30 years but has never actually practiced it, also answered the questions himself. Then he submitted both sets of answers to a panel of…

My colleague, Coturnix, just raised the question of whether the awarding of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Roger D. Kornberg of Stanford University is really an award for biology. A surprise to some of us "youngsters," Kornberg was recongized as the sole winner for elucidating the basic mechanism of eukaryotic transcription. Not a surprise that the winner was Kornberg, son of the Arthur Kornberg, who shared the 1959 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine with Severo Ochoa for elucidating the process of DNA replication; but, rather, that Kornberg was the sole winner. I'll leave that to…

Repost from the old blog: One of the problems in having a philosophy related blog is that ideas are hard things to generate on demand, so often you need someone to raise the problems for you to think about. Being naturally (and preternaturally!) lazy, I don't go out looking for problems (of a philosophical nature; the ordinary kind seem to find me like flies find rotting garbage). Hence, this blog is sporadic. Well, I just tripped over an interesting question raised by Certain Doubts: can we reconcile the Platonic value of truth with an evolutionary view of epistemology? That is, if we think…

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of the Teaching Carnival where we discuss all things academic, from teaching to college life, from HigherEd policy to graduate school research. Last time, I separated the Two Cultures in a way. This time I want to keep them mixed - both sides of campus often deal with the same issues anyway. There are tons of links, so let's start right away... SATs and getting into college Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles commented on the top SAT essays published by the NYTimes. He argued that writing a decent essay in 25 minutes with a prompt not known in advance is…

Have a look at this article from the current New Yorker. It focuses on the recent anti-string theory books from Lee Smolin and Peter Woit. The article provides a decent summary of Smolin's and Woit's views, but it is seriously marred by the lack of any contrary views of the matter. The views expressed by Smolin and Woit appear to be in the minority among physicists generally. From reading this article you would have no idea why that is. For example, the article includes paragraphs like this: The usual excuse offered for sticking with what increasingly looks like a failed program is that…

One of the bloggers quoted in Simon Owens's demographics post states flat-out that "I basically don't give a crap about the non-political blogosphere." I found this interesting, because I used to read almost exclusively political blogs, but my opinion has shifted to be almost exactly the opposite of this: I really find it hard to give a crap about most political blogging these days. Some of this is just outrage fatigue, but I've been at least ambivalent about the whole blog punditry thing for years. This is a Classic Edition post originally from July 2002, barely a month after I started the…

After the Discovery Institute's criticism of my credentials, it occurred to me that I'm hardly the only person to study the works of someone like Chuck Dickens in college, only to end up writing professionally about the works of someone like Chuck Darwin. For instance, here's physics writer Jennifer Oulette, with two books under her belt that, if we universalize the Discovery Institute's attack on me, she shouldn't have written due to her background: I'm a former English major turned science writer, through serendipitous accident: I stumbled into writing about physics, drifted further and…

I heard it from a man who, heard it from a man who, heard it from another... ok, it was an e-mail, but it confirmed the strange tale I had been told. NASA is about to do a Mad Max on its Science Missions. Five missions enter, one mission leaves. Literally. NASA has many houses. Within one is the Science Mission Directorate, which does space science, including Earth observations, Solar/Magnetosphere, Solar System Planets and "Astrophysics" (formerly known as the "Universe" division). Space Science missions are housed within the divisions, and not always where you'd think. Within Astrophysics…

In an incomprehensible display of poor editorial judgment, Slate recently published this unusually bad article on the merits of string theory, by Gregg Easterbrook. It's a familiar name to connoisseurs of bad science writing. Easterbrook has previously come out in favor of teaching ID in schools as a legitimate theory in opposition to evolution, for example. The present essay is just a series of slurs and groundless attacks against physicists, tied together with clear evidence that he hasn't the faintest idea what he is talking about. Since this essay is written in the creationist mode, it…

There is an interesting SciBlog back-and-forth going on about the "pipeline" problem and retention of underrepresented subset of physical sciencists. The discussion raises some interesting points, but I want to pick on one small item: the question of intro classes and entry into major. Does anyone see significant intake into physical science majors from the large non-major oriented intro classes? Seriously. I can not think of a single student in our major in the last decade that I know came to us through an intro class. They were either pre-committed to the major, or were in a related…

After living here for a couple of years, I'm still a stranger in the strange land of Einsteinville, and I continue to make small discoveries in this precious little community. One of these is Princeton University's predilection for the confluence of art and science. The Lost Boys over at Frink Tank posted a thoroughly hootworthy piece on the subject in June: Like alcohol and nightswimming, it's a winning combination. The temporary installation of Quark Park on a vacant lot in Princeton takes this sometimes uneasy combination a step further, and turns it into a living three-dimensional…

The development of one's conceptual world is not done in a vacuum. As Gilbert and Sullivan noted ...every boy and every gal That's born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative! but of course that isn't true. Liberals, conservatives, Christians and atheists, scientists and creationists are made, not born. When a child reaches a certain age, they learn many of their base attitudes from those around them. The space of conceptual alternatives that they encounter is restricted, but at the least each child is predisposed ordinarily to learn from trial and…

In email, David Rosenthal asks my opinion of a rant at globalresearch.ca about the stupidity of physicists: Indeed, the modern professional physicist has usually subjected himself (less often herself) to extreme specialization, to be able to handle the technical side of the profession. This training is also largely about adopting the culture of the professional physicist: Examples and examples of what are "good problems - good questions" and what are "bad (= 'unmanageable') problems"; and examples and examples of how one tames a new problem and fits it into the mould of what a physicist can…

John Allen, at National Catholic Review, has an interesting analysis of the motives behind the recent Evolution Study Day the pope held. Unsurprisingly, the issue is not whether life changed over time, or even whether natural selection works - although he indicates that as Cardinal Ratzinger, Benedict inclined to thinking that "macro-evolution" (speciation and above) was impossible by random variation and natural selection, showing that he knows very little about the actual  biology. No, it's this: Evolution has become a kind of "first philosophy" for enlightened thinkers, ruling out the…

Chad wrote a neat history of (or should we say 'evolution of') clocks, as in "timekeeping instruments". He points out the biological clocks are "...sort of messy application, from the standpoint of physics..." and he is right - for us biologists, messier the better. We wallow in mess, cherish ambiguity and relish in complexity. Anyway, he is talking about real clocks - things made by people to keep time. And he starts with a simple definition of what a clock is: In order to really discuss the physics of timekeeping, you need to strip the idea of a clock down to the absolute bare…

From quite early on in my blogging endeavor, I was interested in exploring science blogging, what it is, what it can do, and what it can become. So, check out some of my earliest thoughts on this here and here. Then, over about a month (from April 17, 2006 to May 17, 2006) I wrote a gazillion posts on this topic, and many science bloggers chimed in in the comments or on their own blogs. The repost of all of them together is under the fold. Check the originals (and comments) here: April 17, 2006: Publishing hypotheses and data on a blog - is it going to happen on science blogs? April 20,…