I’m having the sort of morning where I feel like lobbing a grenade at somebody, and the predictable outrage over yesterday’s story about a creationist paleontologist is as good a target as any. The issue here is whether it’s appropriate for Marcus Ross to receive a Ph.D. for work in paleontology, given that he’s a… Continue reading Stealth Creationists and Illinois Nazis
Category: Science
Scientist Cleared, Process Unclear
The New York Times reports that Purdue has officially cleared Rusi Taleyarkhan of charges of scientific wrongdoing over his claim to have produced nuclear fusion on a tabletop through the magic of sonoluminescence. You might recall that these claims were made a couple of years ago, but nobody else has been able to replicate them.… Continue reading Scientist Cleared, Process Unclear
Beware the Professor’s Negation Field
Piled Higher and Deepr nails it this week: A Pofessor’s Negation Field is the unexplained phenomenon whereby mere spatial proximity to an experimental set-up causes all working demonstrations to fail, despite the apparent laws of Physics or how many times it worked right before he/she walked in the room. I haven’t been on the faculty… Continue reading Beware the Professor’s Negation Field
Archeological Biomechanics
Union is opening a new Center for Bioengineering and Computational Biology this week, and the keynote speech was given last night by Steven Vogel of Duke, on “Power from the People: Life When Muscle Was Our Main Motor.” Basically, this was an hour-long survey of some speculative ideas on what biomechanics can tell us about… Continue reading Archeological Biomechanics
Dorky Poll: Worst Job in Science
Another Thursday, another early lab section. Which means it’s time for another audience participation entry… I think something like this went around ScienceBlogs once before, but if so, it was a while ago, and it’s a fun question: What’s the worst job in science? What’s the nastiest, most unpleasant task facing anyone in science? Cleaning… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Worst Job in Science
Pound Foolish
President Bush’s budget request for next year has been released. Surprising approximately no-one who has followed current events over the last seven years, it’s a mixed bag for science: President Bush rolled out a 2008 spending plan Monday that disappointed advocates for scientific research, even as it called for hefty increases for several key programs… Continue reading Pound Foolish
Dorky Poll: Least Favorite Textbook
It’s going to be a very busy day, in ways that will keep me away from the Internet for most of the day, so you’ll need to entertain yourselves. Here’s a question for the science-minded: What’s your least favorite science textbook of all time? It could be a book that you loathed when you were… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Least Favorite Textbook
Dorky Poll: Favorite Textbook
It’s going to be a very busy day, in ways that will keep me away from the Internet for most of the day, so you’ll need to entertain yourselves. Here’s a question for the science-minded: What’s your favorite science textbook of all time? It could be your favorite book from when you were a student,… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Favorite Textbook
Extraordinary Claims and Universality
“Thoreau,” guest-posting at Unqualified Offerings, has a nice post commenting on a Physics Today article about the use of language in science, by Helen Quinn. The article is pretty standard stuff for anyone following the “culture wars” debates here– use of the word “belief” to describe scientific conclusions causes confusion, and attempts to put science… Continue reading Extraordinary Claims and Universality
Basic Concepts
In a back-channel discussion among ScienceBloggers, John Wilkins suggested that it might be interesting to do occasional posts on really basic concepts in our fields– the sort of jargon terms that become so ingrained that we toss them around without realizing it, and end up confusing people. A lot of these terms often have a… Continue reading Basic Concepts