The War on Science
mikethemadbiologist | January 16, 2008By way of ScienceBlogling Razib, I came across this Reason article by Ronald Bailey summarizing the presidential candidates views' on evolution. Bailey highlights two reasons what lack of support for evolution says about a candidate:
The candidate probably is weak on the separation of church and state.
The candidate is unable to rationally assess evidence.
But I think this misses the point entirely: evolution matters because evolutionary biology matters.
Granted this sounds like something Yogi Berra would say, but I'm tired of the Coalition of the Sane, regardless of where individual…
mikethemadbiologist | January 4, 2008You would think after the sound thrashing Michael Egnor received due to his mangling of the basics of evolutionary biology, the Discovery Institute might want to find someone else to quote in a guide for students. Nope:
"Microbiology tells us that bacterial populations are heterogeneous. Individual bacteria differ from one another. Molecular biology tells us that some bacteria have molecular mechanisms by which they can survive antibiotics. Molecular genetics tells us how these resistance mechanisms are passed to other bacteria and through generations of bacteria. Pharmacology helps us…
mikethemadbiologist | December 17, 2007ScienceBloging Greg Laden reports that the Texas Board of Higher Education is considering accrediting The Texas Based Institute for Creation Research so it could offer an online course in Science Education.
ScienceBlogling PZ offers one solution to stop the inanity (or at least limit the damage if Texas proceeds):
I hope Texas scientists can slap that Board into wakeful reality before that meeting, because if this goes through, the trust I can give Texas-trained teachers is getting flushed right down the sewer. And if Texans can't fix this, the rest of the country has to step up and deny…
mikethemadbiologist | December 13, 2007If you visit ScienceBlogs regularly, you've probably read about ScienceBloglings Sheril Kirshenbaum's and Chris Mooney's proposal for a presidential debate about science. There's a lot I like about this proposal, but the reality of what could happen bothers me. First, what I like about the idea.
For much of the last two and half years, I worked at a non-profit organization that focused on infectious disease policy and programs. Science policy--and politics--are important. The idea that every political candidate would actually have to devise a science policy, and perhaps even be judged by…
mikethemadbiologist | November 26, 2007I've written about creationist and convicted felon Kent Hovind's idiocy. But I had forgotten another aspect of Hovind--his ties to white supremacist groups. From the archives:
By way of Orcinus, comes a whole lot of information about creationist Kent Hovind. First, a description of his ally, Michael Marcavage, who invited Hovind to speak in Dover, PA during the trial:
Michael Marcavage, whose Philadelphia-based organization Repent America is sponsoring Hovind's visit, said the accusations of anti-Semitism and extremism are unfair.
"He believes that people are from one race, the human…
retrospectacle | November 20, 2007I have a love-hate relationship with Florida. The "hate" part of the equation comes from their shameful treatment of the manatee issue, their conservative Republican politics, their wanton destruction of the Everglades, and now, giving consideration to putting intelligent design in schools. As a product of the Florida public school system, I'm intensely grateful to the excellent teachers I had who instilled in me wonder for the natural world.
Polk County is close to where my entire family lives (Highland County) and close to where I went to undergrad (New College in Sarasota). A majority of…
mikethemadbiologist | November 19, 2007Atrios wonders about William Saletan's and Andrew Sullivan's recurrent idiocy about IQ:
The thing about the perpetual attempts to claim that TEH SCIENCE proves that black people really are stupid is that there are two simple fallacies that they are based on.
The first one is that the "intelligence" tests used in the data actually measure some sort of immutable inherent or potential intelligence when in fact people can be educated to do better on the tests.
The second is that race generally or especially as understood in America bears any relationship to the concept of "population" as…
mikethemadbiologist | November 18, 2007More from the dog bites man files: political interference in a Smithsonian exhibit--about climate change. Having viewed the exhibit, I'm not entirely sure what to make of this Washington Post story (italics mine):
Some government scientists have complained that officials at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History took steps to downplay global warming in a 2006 exhibit on the Arctic to avoid a political backlash, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The museum's director, Cristián Samper, ordered last-minute changes to the exhibit's script to add "scientific…
mikethemadbiologist | November 15, 2007As a result of the veto by Bush of the the fiscal year 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill, if the veto is not overriden by Congress, the NIH will receive a de facto 3.7% funding cut:
The bill, H.R.3043, also sought to bolster the budgets of the departments of Labor and Education, and carried a request for a total of $150.7 billion. Since its introduction in July, Bush has said he would veto the bill because it overshot his own budget recommendations.
"We were hoping that [Bush's veto] wouldn't be the case," Carrie Wolinetz, Federation of American…
mikethemadbiologist | November 14, 2007ScienceBlogling Razib comments on Republican rising star Bobby Jindal's "very weak understanding of evolution, or, a purposeful misrepresentation" (bold Razib's):
...the whole article [by Jindal] is an illustration of the reality that extremely intelligent people can also be very ignorant. I have no doubt that Bobby Jindal has a world class mind; and he certainly succeeds and excels at any task which catches his attention. It seems clear to me that when it comes to science & religion he is out of his depth. His characterization of those who disagree with his own religious views is…
mikethemadbiologist | November 1, 2007Tim Watkin thinks so (italics mine):
In the half-century following the second world war US universities were magnets for students and academics from around the world. Crucially, many foreign graduate students studying the physical sciences, biological sciences, IT and engineering stayed after graduation. As the Gathering Storm report notes: "Government spending on R&D soared after World War II, and ... as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) reached a peak of 1.9% in 1964." In the last six or seven years, however, that tide has turned. Overseas institutions and companies are…
mikethemadbiologist | October 31, 2007I have a week off, so I've been going to the gym in the morning later than usual. I'm still recovering from the near-lobotomization of morning radio, so I wasn't prepared for a report on the "superbug" on Fox's The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet--think of it as a cheap knockoff of Regis and Kelly. Since the sound wasn't turned on for the television, I should have just left it alone, but no, I had to check out the video on the interwubs when I came home.
First, anyone who says that evolutionary biologists suck at communicating should watch this bozo. It's a classic example of how not to…
mikethemadbiologist | October 29, 2007Onward Glorious Conservatives! Don't retreat from the librul modelers!!!
By now, you might have heard about the Bush Administration's massive 'editing' of the CDC testimony about the health consequences of global warming. Over at Science Progress, there is a copy of the unedited, original CDC text. At this point, no one in the Coalition of the Sane should be surprised that every single one of the specifics about what global warming would actually do was expunged--we wouldn't want the public to worry their purdy lil' heads about all of that scary stuff. What did interest me was the...…
mikethemadbiologist | October 26, 2007I know: who could possibly think that the Bush administration would censor a report on the effects of global warming? From the Washington Post:
Testimony that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention planned to give yesterday to a Senate committee about the impact of climate change on health was significantly edited by the White House, according to two sources familiar with the documents.
Specific scientific references to potential health risks were removed after Julie L. Gerberding submitted a draft of her prepared remarks to the White House Office of Management and…
mikethemadbiologist | October 18, 2007Over at Karmatics, Rob Brown thinks the counter-intuitiveness of natural selection is a big reason why people find evolution difficult to comprehend. In that way, natural selection is similar to prediction markets, where people bet on the chances of future events, such as the outcomes of sports events or political elections:
Prediction markets turn out to be remarkably accurate, typically more accurate than any individual expert can predict, as non-intuitive as it may seem. Like Wikipedia, prediction markets also tap into the power of selection, but the most dramatic similarity they share…
mikethemadbiologist | October 16, 2007Once again, the science framing wars have flared up. While I'm not allergic to the concept of framing as some are, one of the major reasons why I'm not a big fan of dwelling on the topic is that obsessing over language reminds me of the late 80s and 90s when the Left won the battle of words, and the fundamentalist Uruk-hai took over the damn country.
I've been doing some thinking about the 'progressive' concern with media communication (including my own)--and it is important, no doubt about it. But, as the 2006 elections have shown, if words aren't turned into the exercise of power, there…
mikethemadbiologist | October 14, 2007Knute Berger relays the following email from Ed Lazowska, the former co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (italics mine):
The years of the [George W.] Bush administration have been a black time for science in this nation. I speak with the experience of having co-chaired the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee for Bush, and having chaired the Defense Department's DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] Information Science and Technology Study Group during his presidency. Funds for research, the seed corn of our future competitiveness…
mikethemadbiologist | October 5, 2007I guess we should be glad that Senator Clinton has a plan to end the Republican War on Science. It needs to be done and she is right to do this, but it's sort of like getting excited that someone boldly supports the notion that 2 + 2 = 4. Clinton announced yesterday that:
Hillary will restore the federal government's commitment to science by:
* Signing an Executive Order that:
o Rescinds President Bush's ban on ethical embryonic stem cell research and promotes stem cell research that complies with the highest ethical standards.
o Bans political appointees from altering or removing…
mikethemadbiologist | October 4, 2007Driftglass, in a post about Janice Shaw Crouse of the Beverly LaHaye Institute (yes, of the "Left Behind" tract series):
Regardless of motive (and we have long since moved past the point where I care much about why the lunatics have a knife to the throat of the Enlightenment, and on to the part where we have to get the knife away from these people and make sure they are never, ever allowed to play with sharp objects again), denying people honest and accurate information about disease and pregnancy prevention because Jebus said they shouldna oughtna is the moral equivalent of....
...designing…
mikethemadbiologist | October 2, 2007One of the major fallacies of intelligent design creationism is that so many structures appear to be haphazardly designed. Case in point: polyadenylation in Giardia lamblia. ScienceBlogling Carl Zimmer, in an excellent post about the recently published Giardia genome, describes the system:
There's all sorts of fascinating stuff lurking in Giardia's genome. As they surveyed its 6470 genes, the genome team was struck by how simple Giardia is, compared to other eukaryotes. I think this diagram in particular does a nice job of illustrating Giardia's simplicity. The top drawing shows what…