1. What is the decline being hidden? What is the trick? I ask because I know, let's see if you do.
2. Peer review hasn't been redefined. Perhaps you never knew what it was in the first place. Peer review is not equivalent to supplying open, raw data nor supplying random "skeptics" with data they want. Look up Lenski's dealing with Schlafly for an example of how silly this is.
3&4: Haven't heard of the FOIA request stuff, but given the track record so far I don't doubt that when looking into it, the picture is different than you imply. The first two may not count as a smear campaign, but they do imply outright falsehoods, so who cares? Lazy, ignorant, knee-jerk responses to out-of-context quotes used against climate scientists and global warming proponents only undermine your "skepticism".
John Q. Public isn't an idiot. If John Q. Public wants to know what the numbers mean, wants to know how to deal with actual raw data or acronyms, learning is *not* hard. There are thousands of websites devoted to these topics and plenty of textbooks for anyone interested to teach themselves rather than relying on a blog (!) to educate them. It's very, very similar to evolution denial: while a blog dealing with the topic will often go into wonkish topics and explanations (just like RealClimate), expecting them to educate you on every last detail, particularly related to raw data, is ridiculous. Perhaps if you *paid them* to spend their time teaching you how p values work (or whatever), you'd have a case. Otherwise, it's just a lazy demand to be educated, for free, from your armchair.
I have assumed for the sake of argument that your general story about RealClimate is true and that they did not address the topics you wanted them to.
You touched on a key point: selection is contingent on environmental pressures, which need not be constant. The researchers are extrapolating 400 years into the future based on 50 years of data in a single town in Massachussets. Have they even pinpointed the selective pressure(s) doing this, assuming their results are significant? How do they know they'll continue and weren't random (random as in non-predictable)?
One word: bullshit. Your utter lack of insight into the medical industry is so laughable that it deserves only this response: you have no idea what you're talking about.
Scientists already have to be good communicators, or at least a lot of them do, in order to do their jobs. They need to write those grants, converse with their colleagues/employees/students, teach students (in the case of college professors), etc.
I don't see a lot of airline pilots, software engineers, surgeons, and bus drivers dealing with the suggestion that they make public outreach an intrinsic part of their jobs as opposed to simply being a pilot, being a software engineer, being a surgeon, or a bus driver, as that's what they desire to do. A large number of scientists already make the time to to outreach - they tend to be those people focused on teaching or they're even busier (65+ hour weeks), which is not something you can reasonably expect everyone to do particularly given the complete lack of evidence that this will address the core problems with the public understanding, appreciation, and acceptance of science.
I agree, it's quite possible to be a Christian (go to church, believe in the holiness of scripture, in various things about Jesus, etc) and appreciate science, even be a scientist. The same goes for other religions. The grandparent is wrong that you have to be a young earth creationist if you're Christian, but there is a slight truth to the sentiment: religion and science are opposing viewpoints by nature, it's only the *exception* when they are not conflicting in spirit. Science demands reason, empirical data, the testing of hypotheses, the burn of peer review. Religion has analogs, but there's always an extra (and usually ridiculous) premise that everyone accepts, either the notion of a somewhat magical creator, a prophet, miracles, etc, all of which lack reasonable evidence yet are *intrinsic* to the faith (at least one of them). It's possible to be a full appreciator of reason and science and still be religious. It's just not terribly common and for good reason.
Mod parent up. Teaching by applications is an excellent way to involve students for their entire lives in the beauty and reality of science. When you see how science and engineering are applied in everyday life, it stops being an intimidating topic where you know you haven't really learned much. You know that thermite has been used to weld the railroads through your state and that it proceeds through an oxidation-reduction reaction. You know that bridges are designed to maximize carrying capacity and safety vs. material cost and bulk and how you can do that. You know that the doppler effect applies in all kinds of situations and can allow you to locate objects and their relative velocities.
At the very least, it gives legitimacy to engineering and crafting, both of which are extremely valuable to our future economy and the latter of which is treated as a blue-collar job beneath the college-educated, which it shouldn't be.
Having finally read this book (despite low expectations), I can confirm that per the poor reviews it offers very little that's new. When it does forward a unique point of view, such as this suggestion that public communicator become part of the job of 'the scientist' (as in just about every scientist), it's absolutely ridiculous. Scientists usually have enough on their plates with little things like research, grant writing, internal politics, etc., without some science writers who completely lack data to back up their thesis telling them to start up and maintain a blog, column, or attend even more conventions. Those who do maintain such things tend to be either 1) incredibly busy, busier than I'd like to be, or 2) have a lighter research load than is desired by many. I'm not badmouthing option 2), it includes scientists who do try to focus more on public outreach and teaching, which is very admirable and valuable. Just don't expect every person interested in scientific research to want to devote their time to it.
All of this is a little beside the point, too. Sheril and Chris make a large part of their thesis into blaming the scientists for a lack of communication. It's why this recommendation quoted in this article is one of their only unique ones, unique in how extreme it is. While you can blame scientists for misrepresenting the importance of their research (not all research has a direct practical benefit, even if it's fantastic), blaming them for not being in the public sphere is difficult when we already have so many teaching scientists and public scientists who would love to come on television or radio and do attend conventions. The thing is, when they can even get on a show relevant to their expertise, they get a 2 minute blurb at best to dumb down their subject and try not to mess things up. They get paired with a creationist or 'holistic doctor' or just general ignoramus and have to spend their time (again, just a few minutes) attempting to debunk the inanity. That is not an environment conducive to educating the general public nor for raising appreciation for the sciences. The (partial) exception is public radio, where scientists can speak about their research for twenty minutes to an hour on something like Science Friday.
By focusing on scientists, they avoid the larger problems with the public's appreciation of science. Everyone here at slashdot knows about the fantastic solar cells that are 'just around the corner' and other tech predictions which never come to market and the same applies to science articles in general: there's a glut of misrepresented research which has been illegitimately hyped up for sensationalism, especially in medicine. Such irresponsible journalism, supported by low-level science journalists as well as their editors (either one can make a piece way too hyped), leads to a mistrust of news about scientific breakthroughs. Now, I don't have data for that (just like Sheril and Chris!), but I know that I ignore every article about a scientific breakthrough just around the corner unless I have to 1) debunk it or 2) it's related to my major and I know that other people do the same. Furthermore, journalists often simply don't understand the science they're reporting and make serious errors. Chris knows this, he's criticized shoddy science journalism in the past on his blog and made it into a theme. He knows that it hurts the reputations of scientists and the general undestanding of science. Apparently, however, rather than promoting good science reporting directly or finding a market solution to avoiding too much hype, it's time to blame the scientists for not reaching out enough.
Sorry, got on a bit of a rant there. Aside from poor journalism and a generally inhospitable media, there's also the problem of science education in school (mine was atrocious, in retrospect) and the elephant in the room: anti-intellectualism in all its forms, including a number of religious and political movements. Despite all of these forces working against the pu
Having finally read this book (despite low expectations), I can confirm that per the poor reviews it offers very little that's new. When it does forward a unique point of view, such as this suggestion that public communicator become part of the job of 'the scientist' (as in just about every scientist), it's absolutely ridiculous. Scientists usually have enough on their plates with little things like research, grant writing, internal politics, etc., without some science writers who completely lack data to back up their thesis telling them to start up and maintain a blog, column, or attend even more conventions. Those who do maintain such things tend to be either 1) incredibly busy, busier than I'd like to be, or 2) have a lighter research load than is desired by many. I'm not badmouthing option 2), it includes scientists who do try to focus more on public outreach and teaching, which is very admirable and valuable. Just don't expect every person interested in scientific research to want to devote their time to it.
All of this is a little beside the point, too. Sheril and Chris make a large part of their thesis into blaming the scientists for a lack of communication. It's why this recommendation quoted in this article is one of their only unique ones, unique in how extreme it is. While you can blame scientists for misrepresenting the importance of their research (not all research has a direct practical benefit, even if it's fantastic), blaming them for not being in the public sphere is difficult when we already have so many teaching scientists and public scientists who would love to come on television or radio and do attend conventions. The thing is, when they can even get on a show relevant to their expertise, they get a 2 minute blurb at best to dumb down their subject and try not to mess things up. They get paired with a creationist or 'holistic doctor' or just general ignoramus and have to spend their time (again, just a few minutes) attempting to debunk the inanity. That is not an environment conducive to educating the general public nor for raising appreciation for the sciences. The (partial) exception is public radio, where scientists can speak about their research for twenty minutes to an hour on something like Science Friday.
By focusing on scientists, they avoid the larger problems with the public's appreciation of science. Everyone here at slashdot knows about the fantastic solar cells that are 'just around the corner' and other tech predictions which never come to market and the same applies to science articles in general: there's a glut of misrepresented research which has been illegitimately hyped up for sensationalism, especially in medicine. Such irresponsible journalism, supported by low-level science journalists as well as their editors (either one can make a piece way too hyped), leads to a mistrust of news about scientific breakthroughs. Now, I don't have data for that (just like Sheril and Chris!), but I know that I ignore every article about a scientific breakthrough just around the corner unless I have to 1) debunk it or 2) it's related to my major and I know that other people do the same. Furthermore, journalists often simply don't understand the science they're reporting and make serious errors. Chris knows this, he's criticized shoddy science journalism in the past on his blog and made it into a theme. He knows that it hurts the reputations of scientists and the general undestanding of science. Apparently, however, rather than promoting good science reporting directly or finding a market solution to avoiding too much hype, it's time to blame the scientists for not reaching out enough.
Sorry, got on a bit of a rant there. Aside from poor journalism and a generally inhospitable media, there's also the problem of science education in school (mine was atrocious, in retrospect) and the elephant in the room: anti-intellectualism in all its forms, including a number of religious and political movements. Despite all of these forces working against the pu
Peer reviewers at journals are commonly paid. I know this is an old issue, but I felt the urge to comment (massage that ego, yeeaaahhh). I'm all for volunteer reviewing, which also happens, but adopting as a norm by law (implied by copyright law reform in academia) is as I said: a dangerous experiment. Scientists are busy people who already sacrifice quite a bit of their science in outreach and teaching, when they're in academia. Asking that they not get paid to be reviewers may not work out to be as beneficial as pure public access, as valuable as that would be.
I'm having trouble finding the actual study (which seems to be a meta-analysis more than original research). Does it have controls? Does it actually compare a set of people who are randomly assigned organic vs. nonorganic foods? If not, it's not at all conclusive. The fact that they desire a longitudinal study implies to me that they did not have such a control...
And don't get me wrong, the 'organic' craze has a lot of BS in it. It's not healthier by default, certainly, nor is it necessarily more environmentally sound (the rules for being organic can allow environmentally worse procedures). A lot of nutritionally worthless foods get labeled 'organic' as if that makes them healthier ('organic' butter will still go straight to your thighs...).
Peer review does not end with publication, of course, but merely getting published is a substantial and important barrier, with the journal's peer reviewers being the guards. This is why citing from the peer-reviewed literature is important, for one example. It isn't perfect, but it's one extra layer of academic validity.
Does your post imply that you'd be fine with doing away with peer-reviewed journals?
What would replace the current system, exactly? Free peer review coupled with nearly-free publishing? Take a look at the PLoS, which is invaluable. However, it also does *not* have peer review because that requires maintaining a specific board of reviewers and at least one editor. This is why you can find unscientific trash like Intelligent Design 'papers' in there along with the world-class science. While I think the best situation for science would be great peer review with completely open access, I just don't see it working well without a huge amount of peer review volunteering, which could arguably switch the incentives for (peer-reviewer) performance completely around. If someone finds a solution to this, it would be great, but it's a dangerous experiment to simply throw out copyright in academia, particularly science.
Funny, as 10.6 is almost entirely about developer/system efficiency updates. The Win7 dev updates are frankly pitiful when compared to the full repertoire available in OS X, but you go right ahead and miss the point:).
4. A more powerful calculator and similarly tiny changes to apps.
10.6 has:
1. Performance enhancements of various kinds, including a massive reduction in size.
2. A new avenue of development with OpenCL.
3. Changes comparable to a more powerful calculator.
So it looks like Windows 7 has... a new, fancy taskbar and a compatibility layer compared to 10.6. WOW, that sure justifies a $200 price difference. The grandparent will be eating his shorts, but at least he'll be able to buy about 15 more pairs.
Dawkins uses 'Darwinism' as do a lot of other scientists. It's often the term used for the theory of natural selection, which is only part of evolutionary theory (of course). I get very tired of hearing it used out of context, or worse, having evolution equated with natural selection. Scientists do it, too!
I agree with the opinion piece: we need to do away with the term 'Darwinism'. It's misleading and provides way too much fodder for creationists for no good reason.
Pure ignorance, not to mention idiocy. There's so much wrong with what he's saying that it would make me look ridiculous just to debunk it. PZ Myers did a good job with a number of the claims, but really the basics are just so obvious with a bit of education. Men are having kids at a younger age? By what measure? Most have pointed out that men had a tough enough time living to 35 a lot of the time for a huge amount of our species' history, let alone reproducing then. It's painfully obvious that he wants to affirm some kind of patriarchy that makes him feel comfortable - didn't he make some kind of misogynistic joke?
Absolutely! However, that duck-walker also walks like a liar, so he may not even have a truly "peer-reviewed" publication to his name. Doing a little googling, it seems ERV (SA Smith, who is awesome) already did the work for me!
Horowitz is published in a 'journal' called "Medical Hypotheses", a publication which makes it very apparent that they publish *anything* that catches their interest and that peer-review and being in concordance with observation/theory are not requirements for publication. In other words, yes Horowitz is probably lying about this one, as he does about nearly everything. It's really tough not to dislike the guy: he tries to convince people that medically-tested and effective treatments will hurt them so he can sell them his quack nonsense and get attention.
I'm happy that you were able to find out so much about him, though! I usually feel like my attempts to 'get the word out' aren't read:).
If this is a serious post about a serious topic, there's some serious delusion going on right here. Who thought it was a good idea to trust Horowitz? I can't seem to find my previous comment, but anyone interested in seeing how much smoke an antivaccinationist lunatic selling trinkets and water can blow to convince ignorant but well-meaning people into hurting themselves and their children, just go to his website. Or read what he's written and compare it to the reality of the situation, how HIV works, how vaccines work, how he distorts facts to inflate dangers and assign blame. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of HIV and statistics can see the flaws in his argumentation, but if you're still interesting there's some easy things and some hard things you can do.
Easy things would be listening to what experts on the subjects have to say about him, people who have done actual lab work and put in the time studying to understand these things. Or you could listen to the "debate" on the Infidel Guy Show between him and SA Smith where the irrational, non-sequitur anger rises up multiple times. The hard thing would be actually learning about HIV itself, but it would also give you the knowledge necessary to speak in an informed matter on the topic and not have to make the oh-so-hard decision of believing scores of scientists from various fields versus a patent medicine quack.
I suppose it's too much to ask that you read and understand the law you're citing as well? The subsection (c) referenced clearly requires informed consent for *every* one of those exceptions. So no, not "just about anytime it wants", certainly not legally. The government, however, has been exposed for doing illegal experiments without informed consent before and we must be ever watchful of their activities.
You cite Horowitz as a reliable source? Have you ever even heard the man speak? Anyone with *any* rudimentary knowledge of HIV can see through his BS, when they're not laughing at his ignorance and fearing that people will actually listen to him. Just to see what happens what happens when an undergraduate science student can do with his ignorance, when he isn't acting like a raving lunatic, check Infidel Guy's interview with him and SA Smith: http://media.libsyn.com/media/infidelguy/Show14_Origins_of_HIV.mp3
I'm not interested in the inevitable flamewar of debunking each and every one of Horowitz's unsubstantiated rants, but let's just start at some basics hints: the guy sells trinkets and water, a certified kook deluding people, quite likely away from real, effective treatments for HIV. Oh, and it doesn't stop with HIV, he's full-blown antivaccinationist. If anyone is further interested, you can easily go out there and read the many takedowns or hey, I don't know, actually read up on HIV itself and have a truly educated opinion!
That it hurts only those who buy the software is implicit in the arguments that this DRM is only for killing the resale market (gotta procure an actual copy to sell it!). It is most definitely the intent in EA's case, although tunnel vision concerning 'protecting' one's IP seems likely in many other cases, in my opinion.
My two cents: I will not buy this game until SecuROM is removed. This likely means I'll never buy this game, but from the reviews I've read I won't be missing much and Spore was way overhyped.
Here's something I haven't been able to solidly figure out: Will Wright sounded like he was going for his dream project with complete freedom this time (at the beginning), but in his latest statements he says he wanted to make more money but make a dumbed-down game. Is Wright simply wishy-washy? Was he beaten down by EA? Or something else?
Slashdot Mirror
1. What is the decline being hidden? What is the trick? I ask because I know, let's see if you do.
2. Peer review hasn't been redefined. Perhaps you never knew what it was in the first place. Peer review is not equivalent to supplying open, raw data nor supplying random "skeptics" with data they want. Look up Lenski's dealing with Schlafly for an example of how silly this is.
3&4: Haven't heard of the FOIA request stuff, but given the track record so far I don't doubt that when looking into it, the picture is different than you imply. The first two may not count as a smear campaign, but they do imply outright falsehoods, so who cares? Lazy, ignorant, knee-jerk responses to out-of-context quotes used against climate scientists and global warming proponents only undermine your "skepticism".
John Q. Public isn't an idiot. If John Q. Public wants to know what the numbers mean, wants to know how to deal with actual raw data or acronyms, learning is *not* hard. There are thousands of websites devoted to these topics and plenty of textbooks for anyone interested to teach themselves rather than relying on a blog (!) to educate them. It's very, very similar to evolution denial: while a blog dealing with the topic will often go into wonkish topics and explanations (just like RealClimate), expecting them to educate you on every last detail, particularly related to raw data, is ridiculous. Perhaps if you *paid them* to spend their time teaching you how p values work (or whatever), you'd have a case. Otherwise, it's just a lazy demand to be educated, for free, from your armchair.
I have assumed for the sake of argument that your general story about RealClimate is true and that they did not address the topics you wanted them to.
It's both, as just about any biologist will tell you. Its framework is that of a scientific theory, it's been established so well that it's a fact...
You touched on a key point: selection is contingent on environmental pressures, which need not be constant. The researchers are extrapolating 400 years into the future based on 50 years of data in a single town in Massachussets. Have they even pinpointed the selective pressure(s) doing this, assuming their results are significant? How do they know they'll continue and weren't random (random as in non-predictable)?
One word: bullshit. Your utter lack of insight into the medical industry is so laughable that it deserves only this response: you have no idea what you're talking about.
Scientists already have to be good communicators, or at least a lot of them do, in order to do their jobs. They need to write those grants, converse with their colleagues/employees/students, teach students (in the case of college professors), etc.
I don't see a lot of airline pilots, software engineers, surgeons, and bus drivers dealing with the suggestion that they make public outreach an intrinsic part of their jobs as opposed to simply being a pilot, being a software engineer, being a surgeon, or a bus driver, as that's what they desire to do. A large number of scientists already make the time to to outreach - they tend to be those people focused on teaching or they're even busier (65+ hour weeks), which is not something you can reasonably expect everyone to do particularly given the complete lack of evidence that this will address the core problems with the public understanding, appreciation, and acceptance of science.
I agree, it's quite possible to be a Christian (go to church, believe in the holiness of scripture, in various things about Jesus, etc) and appreciate science, even be a scientist. The same goes for other religions. The grandparent is wrong that you have to be a young earth creationist if you're Christian, but there is a slight truth to the sentiment: religion and science are opposing viewpoints by nature, it's only the *exception* when they are not conflicting in spirit. Science demands reason, empirical data, the testing of hypotheses, the burn of peer review. Religion has analogs, but there's always an extra (and usually ridiculous) premise that everyone accepts, either the notion of a somewhat magical creator, a prophet, miracles, etc, all of which lack reasonable evidence yet are *intrinsic* to the faith (at least one of them). It's possible to be a full appreciator of reason and science and still be religious. It's just not terribly common and for good reason.
Mod parent up. Teaching by applications is an excellent way to involve students for their entire lives in the beauty and reality of science. When you see how science and engineering are applied in everyday life, it stops being an intimidating topic where you know you haven't really learned much. You know that thermite has been used to weld the railroads through your state and that it proceeds through an oxidation-reduction reaction. You know that bridges are designed to maximize carrying capacity and safety vs. material cost and bulk and how you can do that. You know that the doppler effect applies in all kinds of situations and can allow you to locate objects and their relative velocities.
At the very least, it gives legitimacy to engineering and crafting, both of which are extremely valuable to our future economy and the latter of which is treated as a blue-collar job beneath the college-educated, which it shouldn't be.
Having finally read this book (despite low expectations), I can confirm that per the poor reviews it offers very little that's new. When it does forward a unique point of view, such as this suggestion that public communicator become part of the job of 'the scientist' (as in just about every scientist), it's absolutely ridiculous. Scientists usually have enough on their plates with little things like research, grant writing, internal politics, etc., without some science writers who completely lack data to back up their thesis telling them to start up and maintain a blog, column, or attend even more conventions. Those who do maintain such things tend to be either 1) incredibly busy, busier than I'd like to be, or 2) have a lighter research load than is desired by many. I'm not badmouthing option 2), it includes scientists who do try to focus more on public outreach and teaching, which is very admirable and valuable. Just don't expect every person interested in scientific research to want to devote their time to it.
All of this is a little beside the point, too. Sheril and Chris make a large part of their thesis into blaming the scientists for a lack of communication. It's why this recommendation quoted in this article is one of their only unique ones, unique in how extreme it is. While you can blame scientists for misrepresenting the importance of their research (not all research has a direct practical benefit, even if it's fantastic), blaming them for not being in the public sphere is difficult when we already have so many teaching scientists and public scientists who would love to come on television or radio and do attend conventions. The thing is, when they can even get on a show relevant to their expertise, they get a 2 minute blurb at best to dumb down their subject and try not to mess things up. They get paired with a creationist or 'holistic doctor' or just general ignoramus and have to spend their time (again, just a few minutes) attempting to debunk the inanity. That is not an environment conducive to educating the general public nor for raising appreciation for the sciences. The (partial) exception is public radio, where scientists can speak about their research for twenty minutes to an hour on something like Science Friday.
By focusing on scientists, they avoid the larger problems with the public's appreciation of science. Everyone here at slashdot knows about the fantastic solar cells that are 'just around the corner' and other tech predictions which never come to market and the same applies to science articles in general: there's a glut of misrepresented research which has been illegitimately hyped up for sensationalism, especially in medicine. Such irresponsible journalism, supported by low-level science journalists as well as their editors (either one can make a piece way too hyped), leads to a mistrust of news about scientific breakthroughs. Now, I don't have data for that (just like Sheril and Chris!), but I know that I ignore every article about a scientific breakthrough just around the corner unless I have to 1) debunk it or 2) it's related to my major and I know that other people do the same. Furthermore, journalists often simply don't understand the science they're reporting and make serious errors. Chris knows this, he's criticized shoddy science journalism in the past on his blog and made it into a theme. He knows that it hurts the reputations of scientists and the general undestanding of science. Apparently, however, rather than promoting good science reporting directly or finding a market solution to avoiding too much hype, it's time to blame the scientists for not reaching out enough.
Sorry, got on a bit of a rant there. Aside from poor journalism and a generally inhospitable media, there's also the problem of science education in school (mine was atrocious, in retrospect) and the elephant in the room: anti-intellectualism in all its forms, including a number of religious and political movements. Despite all of these forces working against the pu
Having finally read this book (despite low expectations), I can confirm that per the poor reviews it offers very little that's new. When it does forward a unique point of view, such as this suggestion that public communicator become part of the job of 'the scientist' (as in just about every scientist), it's absolutely ridiculous. Scientists usually have enough on their plates with little things like research, grant writing, internal politics, etc., without some science writers who completely lack data to back up their thesis telling them to start up and maintain a blog, column, or attend even more conventions. Those who do maintain such things tend to be either 1) incredibly busy, busier than I'd like to be, or 2) have a lighter research load than is desired by many. I'm not badmouthing option 2), it includes scientists who do try to focus more on public outreach and teaching, which is very admirable and valuable. Just don't expect every person interested in scientific research to want to devote their time to it.
All of this is a little beside the point, too. Sheril and Chris make a large part of their thesis into blaming the scientists for a lack of communication. It's why this recommendation quoted in this article is one of their only unique ones, unique in how extreme it is. While you can blame scientists for misrepresenting the importance of their research (not all research has a direct practical benefit, even if it's fantastic), blaming them for not being in the public sphere is difficult when we already have so many teaching scientists and public scientists who would love to come on television or radio and do attend conventions. The thing is, when they can even get on a show relevant to their expertise, they get a 2 minute blurb at best to dumb down their subject and try not to mess things up. They get paired with a creationist or 'holistic doctor' or just general ignoramus and have to spend their time (again, just a few minutes) attempting to debunk the inanity. That is not an environment conducive to educating the general public nor for raising appreciation for the sciences. The (partial) exception is public radio, where scientists can speak about their research for twenty minutes to an hour on something like Science Friday.
By focusing on scientists, they avoid the larger problems with the public's appreciation of science. Everyone here at slashdot knows about the fantastic solar cells that are 'just around the corner' and other tech predictions which never come to market and the same applies to science articles in general: there's a glut of misrepresented research which has been illegitimately hyped up for sensationalism, especially in medicine. Such irresponsible journalism, supported by low-level science journalists as well as their editors (either one can make a piece way too hyped), leads to a mistrust of news about scientific breakthroughs. Now, I don't have data for that (just like Sheril and Chris!), but I know that I ignore every article about a scientific breakthrough just around the corner unless I have to 1) debunk it or 2) it's related to my major and I know that other people do the same. Furthermore, journalists often simply don't understand the science they're reporting and make serious errors. Chris knows this, he's criticized shoddy science journalism in the past on his blog and made it into a theme. He knows that it hurts the reputations of scientists and the general undestanding of science. Apparently, however, rather than promoting good science reporting directly or finding a market solution to avoiding too much hype, it's time to blame the scientists for not reaching out enough.
Sorry, got on a bit of a rant there. Aside from poor journalism and a generally inhospitable media, there's also the problem of science education in school (mine was atrocious, in retrospect) and the elephant in the room: anti-intellectualism in all its forms, including a number of religious and political movements. Despite all of these forces working against the pu
Peer reviewers at journals are commonly paid. I know this is an old issue, but I felt the urge to comment (massage that ego, yeeaaahhh). I'm all for volunteer reviewing, which also happens, but adopting as a norm by law (implied by copyright law reform in academia) is as I said: a dangerous experiment. Scientists are busy people who already sacrifice quite a bit of their science in outreach and teaching, when they're in academia. Asking that they not get paid to be reviewers may not work out to be as beneficial as pure public access, as valuable as that would be.
I'm having trouble finding the actual study (which seems to be a meta-analysis more than original research). Does it have controls? Does it actually compare a set of people who are randomly assigned organic vs. nonorganic foods? If not, it's not at all conclusive. The fact that they desire a longitudinal study implies to me that they did not have such a control...
And don't get me wrong, the 'organic' craze has a lot of BS in it. It's not healthier by default, certainly, nor is it necessarily more environmentally sound (the rules for being organic can allow environmentally worse procedures). A lot of nutritionally worthless foods get labeled 'organic' as if that makes them healthier ('organic' butter will still go straight to your thighs...).
Then they have significantly changed their standards or are very inconsistent, lbbros.
Peer review does not end with publication, of course, but merely getting published is a substantial and important barrier, with the journal's peer reviewers being the guards. This is why citing from the peer-reviewed literature is important, for one example. It isn't perfect, but it's one extra layer of academic validity.
Does your post imply that you'd be fine with doing away with peer-reviewed journals?
What would replace the current system, exactly? Free peer review coupled with nearly-free publishing? Take a look at the PLoS, which is invaluable. However, it also does *not* have peer review because that requires maintaining a specific board of reviewers and at least one editor. This is why you can find unscientific trash like Intelligent Design 'papers' in there along with the world-class science. While I think the best situation for science would be great peer review with completely open access, I just don't see it working well without a huge amount of peer review volunteering, which could arguably switch the incentives for (peer-reviewer) performance completely around. If someone finds a solution to this, it would be great, but it's a dangerous experiment to simply throw out copyright in academia, particularly science.
It is worth the money, yes, but it's about as big as a number of Windows 7 improvements which I put under a similar header.
Funny, as 10.6 is almost entirely about developer/system efficiency updates. The Win7 dev updates are frankly pitiful when compared to the full repertoire available in OS X, but you go right ahead and miss the point :).
So let's see... Windows 7 has:
1. Performance enhancements of various kinds.
2. XP mode
3. A new, fancy taskbar
4. A more powerful calculator and similarly tiny changes to apps.
10.6 has:
1. Performance enhancements of various kinds, including a massive reduction in size.
2. A new avenue of development with OpenCL.
3. Changes comparable to a more powerful calculator.
So it looks like Windows 7 has... a new, fancy taskbar and a compatibility layer compared to 10.6. WOW, that sure justifies a $200 price difference. The grandparent will be eating his shorts, but at least he'll be able to buy about 15 more pairs.
Dawkins uses 'Darwinism' as do a lot of other scientists. It's often the term used for the theory of natural selection, which is only part of evolutionary theory (of course). I get very tired of hearing it used out of context, or worse, having evolution equated with natural selection. Scientists do it, too! I agree with the opinion piece: we need to do away with the term 'Darwinism'. It's misleading and provides way too much fodder for creationists for no good reason.
Pure ignorance, not to mention idiocy. There's so much wrong with what he's saying that it would make me look ridiculous just to debunk it. PZ Myers did a good job with a number of the claims, but really the basics are just so obvious with a bit of education. Men are having kids at a younger age? By what measure? Most have pointed out that men had a tough enough time living to 35 a lot of the time for a huge amount of our species' history, let alone reproducing then. It's painfully obvious that he wants to affirm some kind of patriarchy that makes him feel comfortable - didn't he make some kind of misogynistic joke?
Absolutely! However, that duck-walker also walks like a liar, so he may not even have a truly "peer-reviewed" publication to his name. Doing a little googling, it seems ERV (SA Smith, who is awesome) already did the work for me!
:).
Horowitz is published in a 'journal' called "Medical Hypotheses", a publication which makes it very apparent that they publish *anything* that catches their interest and that peer-review and being in concordance with observation/theory are not requirements for publication. In other words, yes Horowitz is probably lying about this one, as he does about nearly everything. It's really tough not to dislike the guy: he tries to convince people that medically-tested and effective treatments will hurt them so he can sell them his quack nonsense and get attention.
I'm happy that you were able to find out so much about him, though! I usually feel like my attempts to 'get the word out' aren't read
If this is a serious post about a serious topic, there's some serious delusion going on right here. Who thought it was a good idea to trust Horowitz? I can't seem to find my previous comment, but anyone interested in seeing how much smoke an antivaccinationist lunatic selling trinkets and water can blow to convince ignorant but well-meaning people into hurting themselves and their children, just go to his website. Or read what he's written and compare it to the reality of the situation, how HIV works, how vaccines work, how he distorts facts to inflate dangers and assign blame. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of HIV and statistics can see the flaws in his argumentation, but if you're still interesting there's some easy things and some hard things you can do.
Easy things would be listening to what experts on the subjects have to say about him, people who have done actual lab work and put in the time studying to understand these things. Or you could listen to the "debate" on the Infidel Guy Show between him and SA Smith where the irrational, non-sequitur anger rises up multiple times. The hard thing would be actually learning about HIV itself, but it would also give you the knowledge necessary to speak in an informed matter on the topic and not have to make the oh-so-hard decision of believing scores of scientists from various fields versus a patent medicine quack.
I suppose it's too much to ask that you read and understand the law you're citing as well? The subsection (c) referenced clearly requires informed consent for *every* one of those exceptions. So no, not "just about anytime it wants", certainly not legally. The government, however, has been exposed for doing illegal experiments without informed consent before and we must be ever watchful of their activities.
You cite Horowitz as a reliable source? Have you ever even heard the man speak? Anyone with *any* rudimentary knowledge of HIV can see through his BS, when they're not laughing at his ignorance and fearing that people will actually listen to him. Just to see what happens what happens when an undergraduate science student can do with his ignorance, when he isn't acting like a raving lunatic, check Infidel Guy's interview with him and SA Smith: http://media.libsyn.com/media/infidelguy/Show14_Origins_of_HIV.mp3
I'm not interested in the inevitable flamewar of debunking each and every one of Horowitz's unsubstantiated rants, but let's just start at some basics hints: the guy sells trinkets and water, a certified kook deluding people, quite likely away from real, effective treatments for HIV. Oh, and it doesn't stop with HIV, he's full-blown antivaccinationist. If anyone is further interested, you can easily go out there and read the many takedowns or hey, I don't know, actually read up on HIV itself and have a truly educated opinion!
That it hurts only those who buy the software is implicit in the arguments that this DRM is only for killing the resale market (gotta procure an actual copy to sell it!). It is most definitely the intent in EA's case, although tunnel vision concerning 'protecting' one's IP seems likely in many other cases, in my opinion. My two cents: I will not buy this game until SecuROM is removed. This likely means I'll never buy this game, but from the reviews I've read I won't be missing much and Spore was way overhyped. Here's something I haven't been able to solidly figure out: Will Wright sounded like he was going for his dream project with complete freedom this time (at the beginning), but in his latest statements he says he wanted to make more money but make a dumbed-down game. Is Wright simply wishy-washy? Was he beaten down by EA? Or something else?