On how to decide whether your model is falsified:
The WSJ authors’ main point is that if the data doesn’t conform to predictions, the theory is “falsified”. They claim to show that global mean temperature data hasn’t conformed to climate model predictions, and so the models are falsified.
But let’s look at the graph… Continue reading “RealClimate schools WSJ on how to compare models to data”
If a famous novelist visited your lab, would you remember it?
Jeffrey Eugenides’ latest novel The Marriage Plot features a bipolar yeast geneticist. While writing the book, Eugenides, who lives down the road from several world-famous yeast genetics labs at Princeton, decided to do a little research. He visited David Botstein, one of the elder eminences of yeast genetics, got a tour of the lab, and nobody there seems to remember the visit. From the New York Times: Continue reading “Pulitzer-prize winning novelist visits genetics lab, scientists have no recollection of visit”
Maybe I’m suffering from observational bias because the only legislative bills that I tend to read are creationist ones, but the authors of such bills seem to have an uncommonly poor ability to write and think coherently.
From the NCSE, this creationist bill was dismissed in New Hampshire:
House Bill 1457, introduced by Gary Hopper (R-District 7) and John Burt (R-District 7), which would have charged the state board of education to “[r]equire science teachers to instruct pupils that proper scientific inquire [sic] results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established, and that scientific and technological innovations based on new evidence can challenge accepted scientific theories or modes.”
And here in Missouri we’ve got a great one this legislative session, which tosses around a flood of technical-sounding words without much regard to consistency or precise definition: Continue reading “Low levels of literacy in creationist legislation”
Document leakage in the battle over public opinion on climate change isn’t limited to hacked email accounts of climate scientists. The Heartland Institute, a deep-pocketed promoter of climate change skepticism inadvertently sent confidential fundraising materials to someone just posing as a deep-pocketed climate change skeptic, and Desmog Blog has done the document dump.
Apparently some of the documents are fake, but most have been confirmed as genuine. Ezra Klein gives a run-down of what’s there. His main conclusions: Continue reading “Behind the climate change skepticism curtain”
In 2006, one of our co-workers received a copy of MythBusters: Don’t Try This at Home as a gift. Helpfully, it included “foolproof” steps for “being a scientist”, which I found invaluable while pursuing my PhD. We also had a lot of fun modifying the steps in order to better fit the quirks of particular fields of science and pseudo-science.
The Finch and Pea 