One of the most interesting suggestions made by Chris and Sheril in Unscientific America is the idea that science needs to play political hardball (page 158, in the endnotes): Why not form a nonpartisan science political action committee, or PAC, devoted to funding candidates who are either scientists themselves or who make science a strong… Continue reading Scientist PACs and Judges
Category: Science
Journalists Unclear on the Concept
No, this isn’t another “How dare those journalists muddle the explanation of some scientific topic” post. The concept here is journalism itself, as seen in Ed Yong’s discussion of different modes of science journalism. Writing about the recent World Conference of Science Journalists, he talks about some controversy over what “science journalism” actually means: Certainly,… Continue reading Journalists Unclear on the Concept
Entanglement by Accident
It’s been a while since we’ve had any good, solid physics content here, and I feel a little guilty about that. So here’s some high-quality (I hope) physics blogging, dealing with two recent(ish) papers from Chris Monroe’s group at the University of Maryland. The first is titled “Bell Inequality Violation with Two Remote Atomic Qubits”… Continue reading Entanglement by Accident
Wikis Are Not the Answer
Matt Leifer had a good comment to yesterday’s post about how the editing function, in my opinion, adds considerable value to a book that you don’t get with a blog. I got distracted and didn’t reply to it, and since a day in blog-time is like a week in the real world, I’ll promote it… Continue reading Wikis Are Not the Answer
Making Materials Cool
Having repeatedly called for more popular-audience discussion of condensed matter physics (which is not my own field, but is the largest single division within the American Physical Society), I would be remiss if I failed to note a couple of really good efforts in this direction. The first is last week’s NOVA ScienceNOW segment on… Continue reading Making Materials Cool
Popularization Is Its Own Reward?
One of the major problems contributing to the dire situation described in Unscientific America is that the incentives of academia don’t align very well with the public interest. Academic scientists are rewarded– with tenure, promotion, and salary increases– for producing technical, scholarly articles, and not for writing for a general audience. There is very little… Continue reading Popularization Is Its Own Reward?
Unscientific America by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum
Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future is the new book by Chris and Sheril of The Intersection (formerly on ScienceBlogs, now at Discover), and they were kind enough to include me on the list of people getting review copies. It turned up on Friday (after I’d already started Newton and the Counterfeiter). I… Continue reading Unscientific America by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum
Death to the Un-Noted Endnote
This is a rare weekend in which I’ve completed two serious books– the aforementioned Newton and the Couterfeiter and Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum’s Unscientific America (a review copy showed up Friday, thanks guys), about which more later. They’re very different books, but both excellent in their own way. While they have very different subjects,… Continue reading Death to the Un-Noted Endnote
Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson
I’ve been enjoying Tom Levenson’s “Diary of a Trade Book” series quite a bit (the latest post is on cover art), so when I say a stack of copies of Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest Scientist at the bookstore the other day, I snapped one up. As the… Continue reading Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson
Plagiarism, Garbling, and Superluminal Motion
I no longer recall who pointed me to this current.com post titled “Scientists Make Radio Waves Travel Faster Than Light “— somebody on Facebook, I think. As it would be a pretty neat trick to make light move faster than light, I took a look. The opening is fairly standard semi-gibberish: Scientist John Singleton insists… Continue reading Plagiarism, Garbling, and Superluminal Motion