The Homely Scientist

Okay, this bugs me.  Like, as I learned in the South, it really chaps my butt. Tom Evslin is on the "global warming doesn’t exist because the earth has been warming up for the last 12,000 years" (AlwaysOn, Fractals of Change)—actually it’s more like 10, but hey.  Umm, Tom, it’s been warming up because at the last glacial maximum the Northern Hemisphere was covered with freakin’ ice!

This where a little information is a bad thing.  Okay, one more time.  The earth does go through cycles of ice ages (glacials) and warmth (interglacials).  It gets colder and warmer on a semi-regular cycle.  But here’s the thing about what’s going on, we’re supposed to be cooling down now.  Also the rate of warming is unprecedented.  So it’s not that the Earth is getting warmer it’s how much and how fast.  It’s not that it’s a natural process, the greenhouse effect, it’s our contribution to it.  It’s not that we’re not certain, scientifically, of all the factors, it’s that we are certain about the effects.  The arctic ice sheets are melting extremely quickly, sea level is rising.

Science is a tough thing.  We like to be sure.  We don’t like guessing, but the rest of the world does.  I think regardless of what you actually think, we need to conserve and try to change things.  Or, frankly, we’re all going to be sorry.

Tags: global warming

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Hsien Hsien Lei (The Sci-Health Channel Editor here at b5) comments on a C|Net article talking about how our DNA is still mutating and evolving (this is a good thing, BTW) with a catchy headline about becoming X-Men (nice tie-in with X3 coming out in a couple weeks).

Sigh.  As a commenter left on Hsien’s blog:

river2sea72 Says:
May 6th, 2006 at 10:18 am

Well, what else can you expect of media that has to pander to a science-illiterate readership?

And this is what the Sci-Health blogs are all about, especially this one.   Unfortunately the media isn’t about promoting good science or education as much as getting more readers with catchy headlines.

Hsien discusses the article much better than I could, so go visit her blog and read the whole scoop.

Tags: genetics, mutations, x-men

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I was catching up on Tara Smith’s Aetiology blog and caught the headline "New study shows HIV isn’t sexually transmitted?" (note question mark, please … Tara and I are on the same side of this issue).  While I can’t delve into her excellent rebuttal of the study, way out of my league and scientific comfort zone, what I can say is that this is one of the problems science and scientists face.  Here is a study that looks to most people and journalists to be pretty good.  The conclusion is pretty startling … wait HIV isn’t transmitted by sex?  Yahoo!  No.  That’s the problem.  Tara sets out why the study was flawed.  Why the conclusions aren’t accurate.  HIV is an STD.  Period.  This is where good science bloggers come in.  Can you imagine hearing this on the evening news?  Can you imagine how it might be reported?  I can and it scares me.

My mom and dad both have taught sex ed.  My mom still does.  Chesterfield County public schools.  Middle School through High School.  She’s on the front lines and something like this, boy it could undo a lot of hard work and teaching. (No, I wasn’t in school when my mom was teaching, but my siblings were … yes it was less than fun for them when her rotation brought her to their school).

I think you can see the problem here.  I am grateful to Tara for writing this up.  Flawed studies that reach these kinds of conclusions, boy they can really cause problems.  I hope that if this is reported, the journalist does their homework.

Tags: HIV, STDs, Aetiology, Tara Smith, science news

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It is common knowledge that G.W. Bush isn’t in the Global Warming camp.  His environmental record is less than stellar to say the least.  All of this pales in comparison to this article I found on IPS News: When Science Inconveniences Bush.

The Bush administration seems to be following a plan to intimidate, silence, etc scientists whose results run counter to what the administration would like to do.

Just one example cited in the article is Mike Kelly of Fisheries.  He found that lowering water levels in the Klamath River would threaten protected salmon species.  The Bush administration wanted to divert more water from the river for irrigation.  Kelly wouldn’t alter his results or change his conclusions so he chose to resign over lying (kudos to him!).  Karl Rove filled the open space with someone who would agree and …

Political interference in science is nothing new, but it’s time that we started to make more noise about it.

Put another item in the science bloggers’ to do/to post list.

Tags: Bush, science, political interference in science

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From the Discovery Channel news this morning, geneticists think they may have found the gene that determines cognitive ability (like intelligence, but not quite).  Here is the intro from the article:

When considering your intelligence, it’s hard to say how much you should praise or blame your parents. But recently, a group of U.S. psychiatric scientists pinpointed a gene that may play a role in determining just how bright you are.

Experts from The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Glen Oaks, N.Y., along with partners at the Harvard Center for Genetics and Genomics in Boston found that the gene known as dysbindin-1 - which plays a role in your susceptibility to schizophrenia - may also influence general cognitive abilities.

While this is good news for the process of understanding the human genetic code (or genome), this raises troubling questions.  Like our channel editor discussed in her post, can genetics be used as an excuse?  If you were tested for this gene and it was determined to be "damaged" could you be tracked into something for people with "lesser intelligence"?  Speaking as someone with a learning disability, and who has worked extremely hard to manage it, I faced being tracked into classes that wouldn’t have me on the honours university track.  It took my parents’ intervention at school to get me into honours classes.

This is the double-edged sword of learning the keys to our genetic makeup.  The information isn’t bad or good, it’s how it’s used.  Whether it is grouping and classifying people or denying them insurance (if you have markers for being susceptible to cancer), both of these applications have serious implications for us an society.

Tags: genetics, genetics ethics

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