It’s been warm in these parts lately. In weather like this, by evening the indoors is stiflingly hot, while the outdoors is just staring to cool down. So, it makes sense that we’d be driven outdoors. Perhaps it makes less sense that, after escaping the heat indoors, I’d build a blazing hot fire over which to cook.
Life is full of mysteries.
Anyway, while I’m working on the promised post about what non-scientists can do to improve commuications with scientists, I’m curious to find out who else runs to the grill, and how you do it. If you want to consider this a meme, you should also consider yourself tagged!
Are we going to keep pretending women who want to do science and math aren’t treated differently?
Here is the U.S., especially, we love to think the ivory tower is a meritocracy, and that the tribe of science is objective in all things — including how it treats its members. A nice little pile of data runs counter to this picture, however. A quick roundup:
Friday Sprog Blogging: gross stuff makes learning fun!
Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, can you get your slime lizard [a plastic lizard embedded in slimy goo] off the table before dinner?
Elder offspring: Sure.
Dr. Free-Ride: Why do you two like gross stuff so much?
Younger offspring: I don’t know.
Elder offspring: We just do.
Boredom, sensationalism, and toxic idiocy: Is there any good way to talk about science with non-scientists?
Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon put up a post about gender essentialism that starts by citing this post at Mixing Memory on how people’s representations of homosexuality affect their attitudes toward homosexuality. Because Chris’s post cited my two posts (initially sparked by Jessica’s post at Feministing), I came in for some criticism from Greensmile in this comment at Pandagon. As I believed these criticisms to be based on a misunderstanding of my position, I responded. Greensmile then was kind enough to read my posts and to respond that we seem to be having “the most violent agreement”, given that Greensmile has also mused on the the science on sexual orientation (in two thoughtful and detailed posts that you really should read) and has come to substantially the same conclusion I have, that “how we treat gays should not depend on what science eventually understands about that collection of behavior paterns”.
Can I tell you, before we go any further, that I really like how these new technologies make it possible for us to track down what other people are actually saying in order that we may discover where we are in agreement? When people gnash their teeth and say that cyberspace is hosting the world’s largest shouting match, this is just the sort of counter-example I like to have handy.
Anyhow, I do think there is one smallish point of disagreement between me and Greensmile that ought to be noted. But then, I want to turn my attention to a larger issue Greensmile raises in another comment at Pandagon:
Research is not conducted in public. And in fact, publicly funded research can be jeopardized by dimwitted popular misconceptions about the subject of the research…ultimately to the disservice of all. So discussion of research in public may be a matter where discretion is advised. Chris commented that to do otherwise is naive. That may be so. But as this little tempest of unrecognized agreeing has demonstrated, discussion travels far and fast nowdays. So I stick by my guns: scientists and people who follow and defend that way of knowing the world are going to have to deal with toxic idiocy anyway, lets just get good at it as well as, or instead of, trying to avoid it. As I commented back to Chris:
“naive”: Thats me all right. But I do not go back and forth much: dissemination of ideas is virtually impossible to control in this day and age…unless you can make it sound boring [which was Jessica Vallenti’s original faux pas: she sensationalized a routine scientific paper] If senationalism and instant dissemination are here to stay, then we just have to keep learning and calmly explaining what we have learned…and calmly refuting from our facts the distortions others reach from their assumptions and fears.
To boil down the larger issue to a question: What is the best way for scientists (and others) to talk about scientific ideas and findings with non-scientists?
Free to a good home: science books!
Loyal ScienceBlogs reader Dr. Kim D. Gainer is moving to a newly-renovated office (Yay!) that is smaller than her current office — which means that some of the goodies on her bookshelves are in need of new homes.
That’s where you come in.
She writes:
If folks would like any of these books, they should e-mail me at kgainer@radford.edu, and I will ship them out to them, no strings attached. There is no fine print to this offer! I will cover the postage (media rate, of course, so people shouldn’t expect the books to appear via next day FedEx). I simply want these books to do the most good.
Here are the books she’s hoping to relocate:
The “magical thinking” brain parade.
This is going to look like I’m tooting my own horn again, but actually I’m tooting for Concerned Scientist Daniel Rhoads on this one. Meme Therapy has another installment in their “brain parade” series. In this one, they ask:
We’re seeing renewed attacks on evolution, certain branches of scientitic research and conspiracy theories involving climatologists and Global Warming. At the same time supernatural thinking (new age, crystals, ID, deified interpretations of the Gaia hypothesis) are thriving. Should we be concerned by the level of magical thinking in our society? And if so what, if anything can be done about it?
In addition to answers from Daniel and yours truly, you’ll find answers from authors Tim Pratt, Sean Williams and Jason Stoddard.
The duties that come with knowledge and uncertainty.
While I hope this hurricane season is a lot less eventful than the last one, it’s always good to be ready. To that end, I’m brushing off (and bringing together here) two “classic” posts from the 2005 hurricane season.
As we look to the scientists to tell us what nature may have in store for us, we need to remember how scientists think about uncertainties — and especially, how important it is to a scientist to avoid going with predictions that have a decent chance of being false. Being wrong may seem almost as bad to the scientist as being under 10 feet of water.
Meanwhile, the scientists need to remember that non-scientists ask the scientists for predictions so they can act on these predictions to make prudent decisions. (Except, of course, in the cases where the people who control the resources find it convenient to ignore the relevant scientific information.)
Journalism, advocacy, and distrust of scientists.
The other day I was chatting with one of my contacts within the world of journalism, who told me about attending a conference aimed at getting reporters more access to scientists. The conference actually collected a good number of working scientists who came to speak with the reporters (not just to present them information, but to answer questions at length). And, the reporters got the opportunity to see research as it was being conducted (e.g., to be in the field with scientists to watch their data collection, rather than just to hear the conclusions drawn at the end of the process). It all sounded promising to me.
“But,” said my informant, “lots of the reporters who were there would listen to the scientists with this reflexive attitude of ‘You’re lying to us.’”
What’s going on here?
The effect of science fiction on one’s world view.
How is our vision of the world affected by the possibilities we see explored in science fiction? Meme Therapy asked a bunch of science fiction writers (and some philosopher of science), and got some interesting answers about reading and writing, grappling with conflicting messages, questioning authority, and being worried. Go read it.
Most of the ethical questions raised by cloning were already with us.
The Ask a ScienceBlogger question of the week is:
On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Ten years on, has cloning developed the way you expected it to?
On the technical end of things, I suppose I’m a bit surprised at how challenging it has been to clone certain mammals successfully, but getting things to work in the lab is almost always harder than figuring out whether they’re possible in theory. I expected, of course, that some would want to try cloning humans and that others would declare that cloning of humans should be completely off limits.
But as far as the discussions of the ethics of cloning go, I expected that more people would recognize that many of the ethical worries that flow from cloning were already with us.