Science
« Previous EntriesThe Republican War on Science, yet again
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008Kevin Drum points to this piece by Michael Gerson, denying the existence of a Republican War on Science. As Drum points out, Gerson doesn’t even mention the major battlegrounds like global warming denialism, creationism and intelligent design, and the Gingrich-era shutdown of the Office of Technology Assessment, focusing on a much narrower set of issues [...]
BrisScience tonight: animals and colour, sex and violence
Monday, April 28th, 2008Very late notice, I know, but I thought I’d put in a plug for tonight’s Bris Science lecture at City Hall, on
WHY ARE ANIMALS COLOURFUL? SEX AND VIOLENCE, SEEING AND SIGNALS - Professor Justin Marshall
Details and future events over the page
Schroedinger’s machines
Thursday, March 27th, 2008The next in the popular series of BrisScience lectures will be on Monday 31 March. As the title, Schroedinger’s machines indicates, it’s on the fascinating topic of quantum computing. More over page.
The Republican War on Science: Tierney and Bethell
Thursday, March 6th, 2008One of the big problems with talking about what Chris Mooney has called The Republican War on Science is that, on the Republican side, the case against science is rarely laid out explicitly. On a whole range of issues (evolution, passive smoking, climate change, the breast-cancer abortion link, CFCs and the ozone layer and so [...]
What I’m Reading: Stem Cell Century
Sunday, February 24th, 2008Research on human stem cells has been at the centre of one the more ferocious science policy debates in the US, only partially cooled off by recent claims that the necessary cultures can be generated from samples taking from adults, rather than from human embryos destroyed in the process.
“Stem Cell Century: Law and Policy for [...]
The monkey and the organgrinder
Thursday, January 31st, 2008At Wikipedia, the fight against pseudoscience and Republican antiscience across a range of articles from global warming to passive smoking to Intelligent design to AIDS reappraisal, is continuous and bruising.[1]. Editors have learned to detect bogus sources of information almost immediately. One of my fellow-editors at passive smoking pointed me to an interesting letter to [...]
Science and antiscience, part 2
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008All discussion threads eventually wander way off-topic if they are left to run long enough, and that’s certainly happened with my last post on the peppered moth controversy. At Crooked Timber, the debate was mainly about the role of experts and drifted into debate and meta-debate about Iraq and WMDs. On this blog, it’s got [...]
Science, and antiscience, in action
Friday, December 28th, 2007It’s a familiar story. A striking, though minor, scientific finding, is used to illustrate a well-established scientific theory, and becomes the target of those opposed to the theory, and to science in general, for political or religious reasons. Minor errors in and procedural criticisms of the work supporting the finding are conflated into accusations of [...]
Post-election Science
Friday, November 23rd, 2007The last BrisScience Lecture for 2007!
Come and hear Nobel Laureate winner Bill Phillips - featuring cutting edge physics AND liquid nitrogen!
TIME AND EINSTEIN IN THE 21ST CENTURY: THE COOLEST STUFF IN THE UNIVERSE
At the beginning of the 20th century Einstein published three revolutionary ideas that changed forever how we view Nature. At the beginning of [...]
Just so
Friday, November 9th, 2007What happens when an Evolutionary Psychology study comes up with a finding that’s the exact opposite of what the researchers obviously expected? Daniel Davies at CT reports.
Where’s Popper (or Lakatos) when you need them?
BrisScience on Water (reminder)
Monday, October 15th, 2007The BrisScience lecture series is on again (Monday 15th at City Hall, 6:30 pm), and both the topic and speaker are closer to home than usual. The topic is Water in South East Queensland. The speaker, Professor Paul Greenfield, is about to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland.
More details here and over the fold
BrisScience on Water
Monday, October 8th, 2007The BrisScience lecture series is on again (Monday 15th at City Hall, 6:30 pm), and both the topic and speaker are closer to home than usual. The topic is Water in South East Queensland. The speaker, Professor Paul Greenfield, is about to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland.
More details here and over the fold
Defending Rachel Carson
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007One of the stranger efforts of the political right over the last decade has been the effort to paint Rachel Carson as a mass murderer, on the basis of bogus claims about DDT. Starting from the lunatic fringe of the LaRouche movement and promoted primarily by current and retired hacks for the tobacco industry, this claim has become received wisdom throughout the US Republican party and its received offshoots.
Rationality and utility
Monday, September 17th, 2007Over at Cosmic Variance, physicist Sean Carroll offers some admittedly uninformed speculation about utility theory and economics, saying
Anyone who actually knows something about economics is welcome to chime in to explain why all this is crazy (very possible), or perfectly well-known to all working economists (more likely), or good stuff that they will steal for [...]
AAPG abandons delusionism
Thursday, August 30th, 2007Until recently, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists was the only significant scientific organization with an official position rejecting anthropogenic global warming. Issued in 1999, it claimed that “Recently published research results do not support the supposition of an anthropogenic cause of global climate change”. AAPG has abandoned that position and issued a new position [...]
Total eclipse of the moon
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007After a week of welcome rain (floods where we didn’t need it, much lighter where we did, but that’s the way it goes) skies should be clear here in Queensland.Also on science, last night’s Bris Science lecture on bees was fascinating. It seems bees use the apparent motion of the ground and nearby objects to perform feats like navigating through tight spots, landing smoothly and estimating distance travelled.
Bee Brains at BrisScience Reminder
Monday, August 27th, 2007Mandyam V. Srinivasan - “Small Brains, Smart Minds: Vision, Navigation, and ‘Cognition’ in Honeybees and Applications to Robotics”Ithaca Room, City HallFreeThere will be a refreshments after the talk, and Srini will be available to answer questions.Please forward on this announcement to friends and colleagues…. Looking forward to seeing you on the night!***********SMALL BRAINS, SMART MINDS: VISION, NAVIGATION, AND ‘COGNITION’ IN HONEYBEES AND APPLICATION TO ROBOTICS - Prof. Mandyam V. SrinivasanAnyone who has watched a fly make a flawless landing on the rim of a teacup, or marvelled at a honeybee speeding home after collecting nectar from a flower patch several kilometres away, would know that insects possess visual systems that are fast, reliable and accurate.
Bee Brains at BrisScience
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007Mandyam V. Srinivasan - “Small Brains, Smart Minds: Vision, Navigation, and ‘Cognition’ in Honeybees and Applications to Robotics”Ithaca Room, City HallFreeThere will be a refreshments after the talk, and Srini will be available to answer questions.Please forward on this announcement to friends and colleagues…. Looking forward to seeing you on the night!***********SMALL BRAINS, SMART MINDS: VISION, NAVIGATION, AND ‘COGNITION’ IN HONEYBEES AND APPLICATION TO ROBOTICS - Prof. Mandyam V. SrinivasanAnyone who has watched a fly make a flawless landing on the rim of a teacup, or marvelled at a honeybee speeding home after collecting nectar from a flower patch several kilometres away, would know that insects possess visual systems that are fast, reliable and accurate.
Are we alone in the universe ?
Monday, July 23rd, 2007That’s the title of tonight’s talk in the BrisScience program to be presented by # Wilson da Silva, Editor of Cosmos Magazine
# Date: Monday July 23, 2007
# Time: 6:30pm to 7:30pm
# Venue: Ithaca auditorium, City Hall
More details over the page and here
Survivor (also at CT)
Thursday, July 19th, 2007The question of disciplinary boundaries is a perennial, and Brian Weatherson’s CT post on Richard Gott’s Copernican principle provides yet another instance. Gott, an astrophysicist, is interested in the question of whether you can infer the future duration of a process from its present age, and this issue seems to received some discussion in philosophy [...]
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