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 …read more

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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 …read more

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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!  …read more

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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 …read more

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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 …read more

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