Tag: Science Communication

Jello shots

Even if we assume for the moment that I have the character complexity of an extra on Two and a Half Men, am completely defined by my job, and make sure to advertise these facts whenever I host and/or attend social gatherings – this is not how I would make jello shots. I would make them in 50 milliliter conical vials* for ease of consumption, ease of transport, durability, and making it not look like I’m feeding my guests the plague. Unless it was Halloween.

*The BD Falcon 50mL Conical Centrifuge Tube available from Fisher Scientific for only $305.80 per 500. The petri dishes are far more affordable at $206.85 per 500.

Wired Fear Mongering – Body Scanners

Wired lets me down with some airport body scanner fear mongering:
TSA admits bungling of airport body scanner radiation test:

The Transportation Security Administration is reanalyzing the radiation levels of X-ray body scanners installed in airports nationwide, after testing produced dramatically higher-than-expected results.

The TSA, which has deployed at least 500 body scanners to at least 78 airports, said Tuesday the machines meet all safety standards and would remain in operation despite a “calculation error” in safety studies. The flawed results showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.

Read a little more deeply, and it turns out that the problem is not that the machines are emitting 10 times higher than expected radiation – it’s the much less hazardous (and less sensational) problem that the technicians testing the machines forgot to divide by 10. Continue reading “Wired Fear Mongering – Body Scanners”

Superb Science Times

I don’t know what the special occasion is, but today’s NY Times Science section has a star-studded lineup:

Natalie Angier, Nicolas Wade, Carl Zimmer, and Sean Carroll all have fascinating pieces up in today’s Times.

The topic:

This issue of Science Times is devoted to our many bonds with animals, and also to the distance between us and them. No other animal makes operas or nuclear weapons. How did we become so different? What made us human?

Education makes you dumber…

At least in this case:

From “Education, politics and opinions about climate change evidence for interaction effects” (PDF):

Abstract U.S. public opinion regarding climate change has become increasingly polarized in recent years, as partisan think tanks and others worked to recast an originally scientific topic into a political wedge issue. Nominally “scientific” arguments against taking anthropogenic climate change seriously have been publicized to reach informed but ideologically receptive audiences. Reflecting the success of such arguments, polls have noted that concern about climate change increased with edu- cation among Democrats, but decreased with education among Republicans. These observations lead to the hypothesis that there exist interaction (non-additive) effects between education or knowledge and political orientation, net of other background factors, in predicting public concern about climate change. Two regional telephone surveys, conducted in New Hampshire (n=541) and Michigan (n=1,008) in 2008, included identical climate-change questions that provide opportunities to test this hypothesis. Multivariate analysis of both surveys finds significant interactions. These empirical results fit with theoretical interpretations and several other recent studies. They suggest that the classically identified social bases of concern about the environment in general, and climate in particular, have shifted in recent years. Narrowcast media, including the many Web sites devoted to discrediting climate- change concerns, provide ideal conduits for channeling contrarian arguments to an audience predisposed to believe and electronically spread them further. Active- response Web sites by climate scientists could prove critical to counterbalancing contrarian arguments.

There seems to be something here that explains a lot about beliefs other than climate change: evolution and political subjects like health care and economic policy – pretty much any subject where an intellectually indefensible position is in fact defended by ideologically-driven snake oil outfits whose product is scientific-sounding doubt of some mainstream scientific consensus. See “The Merchants of Doubt”.

UPDATE: Here is some follow-up material on this issue, some of which shows that on the subject of evolution, there is still an enormous conservative/ liberal split (with reality favoring the liberals again), but education doesn’t make you dumber.

Gleick, master of science writing

The NY Times has a review of James Gleick’s new book, The Information:

“The Information” offers this point-blank characterization of its author: “James Gleick is our leading chronicler of science and modern technology.” This new book goes far beyond the earlier Gleick milestones, “Chaos” and “Genius,” to validate that claim…“The Information” is so ambitious, illuminating and sexily theoretical that it will amount to aspirational reading for many of those who have the mettle to tackle it. Don’t make the mistake of reading it quickly.

Chaos and Genius are on my list of all-time greatest science books. If The Information is in their company, then this is going to be _the_ science book to read this year. I’m not sure what “aspirational reading” means, but The Information is sitting on my desk and I’m ready to savor it.