Science reporting in the mass media
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Tag Archives: science
The Quiet German
Our violent cousins
Murder ‘comes naturally’ to chimpanzees
A major study suggests that killing among chimpanzees results from normal competition, not human interference.
Nature, Nurture, and Noise
Even if we can get the genes right, and somehow completely control environments, there will always be noise to make life richly unpredictable.
Changing Times
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: US need not lose its edge in science … but if things continue as they have been the last couple decades, it will. This seems quite similar to the talk that Mia McDavid, Rachel Hadley and I heard him give in May
Avoiding “Sagan Syndrome.”
Nathan Taylor, Why Astronomers and Journalists should pay heed to Biologists about ET.
Years ago I wrote something that mentioned similar issues: Extraterrestrial Intelligence: A skeptical view. This was long before the Kepler space probe. However, Taylor seems to be saying the fundamentals of the issue have not changed.
As Taylor points out, there is an ad hominem issue here. Frank Tipler, who was a forceful advocate of the no-ETs view in the early and mid 1980s, subsequently became a “crackpot” (Taylor’s word, but I agree completely). However, this does not invalidate Tipler’s earlier work.
Taylor also points out that for practical (creating life) purposes, the universe is still very young. Star formation will continue for a long time, a necessary condition for life. ETs may yet turn up, but you will need to be very patient.
Turing Test
Don’t try this at home
Americans, Politics, and Science
Most Americans reject young-earth creationism. But the share of Republicans who believe that humans evolved fell from 54% in 2009 to 43% last year. Democrats, do not look so smug: your lot are likelier to believe in UFOs, ghosts and astrology. Also, that the moon landings were faked, that the CIA introduced crack to inner cities and that America’s government conspired in the September 11th attacks. It’s enough to make an ape weep.
Also see Majority of young adults think astrology is a science
The dirty secret behind ball lightning ….
This shows the role of luck in scientific discovery:
a team of researchers serendipitously observed ball lightning at a time when they had the right equipment to study it. Jianyong Cen, Ping Yuan, and Simin Xue were in the field measuring the properties of ordinary lightning when they happened to catch ball lightning with both their high-speed cameras and their spectrographs
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 