Interesting piece by Sid Perkins (sub. req.) in the Oct. 29 Science News on the discovery of fossil sloths in Haiti and Cuba 4,000 years ago. In the longstanding debate between climate change and human hunting in the extinction of the big mammals in the Americas 10,000 years ago, score one for the humans with …
Having thrashed around quite about over the last year in the issues raised by Dan Sarewitz’s scientization paper, I’m at a bit of a loss on something. Perhaps y’all can help. There have been a couple of discussions this week on RealClimate (here and here) about the “false balance” problem – the allegation that journalists …
Continue reading ‘The Effect of Media Coverage on Public Understanding’ »
I’m in the midst of Chris Mooney’s book, and I must admit that while I think he has assembled a masterful catalog of science misuse, the discomfort I’ve felt about his thesis remains – that the Right is not alone in its misuse of science and any useful discussion of the issue needs to recognize …
Geez, conspiracies are complicated. Turns out that tin foil hat I’ve been wearing may actually enhance those evil government radio transmissions. (hat tips The Register and Dave)
Albuquerque scientist Mark Boslough’s famous pi hoax resurfaces, this time morphed on OhmyNews: Crawford Texas – Mathematicians and educators across the nation were stunned and infuriated after President signed a bill into law yesterday redefining pi, a mathematical constant used around the world. The bill to change the value of pi to exactly three was …
I know precious little about monetary policy. But I am inclined to enthusiasm about Ben Bernanke’s nomination to replace Alan Greenspan after hearing this on NPR about what might be called the “Bernanke-Jaffee Theory” on baseball’s hallowed “earned run average.” The ERA is a measure of the average number of runs a baseball pitcher would …
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