Sexist Weather And Hermaphroditic Frogs: The Problem Of Faux Peer Review
In today's Wall Street Journal, I have an article discussing recent problems in peer review.
Is Organic Food More Nutritious And Safer Than Conventional? Reviewing A Recent Systematic Review
A recent review in the British Journal of Nutrition concluded that the nutritional quality and safety of organic food was higher than conventional food. Fruits, vegetables, and grains, organic versions were better in all ways than conventional farming, they determined.
Organic food had fewer pesticides, a much different result than other studies, and also had more important nutrients, also a much different result than other studies.
Penny Stock Peer Review
Not the JVC peer review ring, an actual
gambling ring. Credit: China Daily
It's something of a mild joke in science circles - you can figure out who is peer-reviewing your paper by looking for the common author in the citations you 'missed' in your submission.
It was only a matter of time before peer review cabals became an actual strategy somewhere.
Science 2.0: How The Math Of 10 Million Data Points Per Day Can Help
They're data mining our children, notes Politico writer Stephanie Simon. She is talking about education technology startup Knewton and their use of data analytics to find out how kids think. They want to be able to predict who will struggle with fractions next week.Exciting, right? Obviously this can be misused and the fact that its potential problems (if they can forecast it, they can manipulate it) are so obvious is why policymakers will address that. The brilliance will be what this sort of capability can do for science.
PNAS Issues Expression Of Concern About Facebook Experiment Study
PNAS has issued an expression of concern about a study it published where Facebook attempted to manipulate the emotions of members by controlling their news feed (10.1073/pnas.1320040111). But they only bothered to notice and say anything after the outrage after the fact.
Beyond Bayes: What Data-Driven Analysis Could Mean For Sports – And Science 2.0
So the USA lost to Belgium in the World Cup elimination round. I predicted a win for the US for a simple reason - Belgium, I said, does not know how good it is, whereas the US does.That's fuzzy logic, right? Well, that is what a lot of sports analysis is, because analysis at its heart relies on subjective scouting. Pundits can pretend to science it up all they want, but they are just doing a Bayes analysis based on real results after they happen. Something like a 68% chance of a victory is useless in the real world unless you are a bookie. It sounds science-y, but sports is a 0 or a 1. Anything in between is a waste of time.
IBM Wants To Manage Big Data For The Internet Of Things – What It Means For Science 2.0
IBM takes data seriously, as seriously as they took Business Machines back in their early days.They want to be the resource for the blanket concept of The Internet Of Things. Someone will have to do it, because the amount of information available today is overwhelming. When you can produce 250 gigabytes of data an hour, you have too much data.
Or you are onto something big.
Best Science Writers of 2014
How deep is science writing these days? Pretty darn deep.
Way back when Science 2.0 started there were not a lot of great science writers. There were well-known ones, but not great ones. Journalism was in flux and mainstream media didn't respect it much, and scientists respected science journalism even less than media corporations did. The best writers just didn't go into science journalism. One of the reasons that a pillar of the Science 2.0 mission was revamping science 'communication' was because the public had stopped respecting journalists and scientists felt like they got a lot of things wrong. If science journalism couldn't win Pulitzer Prizes, at least it could be accurate and that meant making scientists the journalists.
Calling Bee.S. On The Pollinator Apocalypse – Don’t Make The Perfect The Enemy Of The Good
Generally speaking, when a politician goes on television and says he is creating a special task force to look at a product, you know what happened; someone wrote about it in the New York Times and someone did a poll and someone else told him it would look presidential to be bold.Supreme Court And EPA Emissions – Sometimes You Don’t Want Them On Your Side
The Obama administration is in something of a pickle. The EPA does not report to the public and so the Obama administration had directed them to implement strict new regulations on American energy companies.
Why? America is actually doing quite well when it comes to emissions and energy has led the way. CO2 emissions from energy are back to early 1990s levels and coal, the dirtiest energy source, is back at early 1980s levels. The free market did it without pain, using natural gas.
In a bad economy where only the 1% is making money buying each other’s stocks, more regulations that risk jobs would seem to be bad economic strategy, but it’s good politics. While energy jobs are union jobs, a key base for Democrats, pushing out new regulations would satisfy the environmental base and, if the Supreme Court struck down the new laws, no union jobs would be affected. The president and Democrats get to say the didn’t lose jobs and tried to help the environment but it was out of their hands.
Imagine the shock of the administration when two conservative justices did what liberal ones rarely do – they defied their personal beliefs and read the Constitution. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Antonin Scalia created an overwhelming 7-2 vote that upholds the EPA requirement that factories and power plants use the “best available technology” to limit emissions.
It was a legally solid ruling, not because more regulations are needed, they clearly are not, but because those businesses are already required to get clean air permits under previous Supreme Court rulings. Adding CO2 to the list of pollutants that need such a permit is reasonable.
While Environmental Defense Fund attorneys are thrilled at a 30 percent cut in greenhouse gases nationwide by 2030, the Obama administration privately can’t be. Because the Supreme Court also made it plain that the EPA can’t add small businesses, including hotels and office parks, to their list.
That means the administration will now have to tell energy companies and factories that the 30 percent decrease has to be borne by them. Who do union workers in factories and energy companies vote for? Democrats. There are not a lot of manufacturing jobs left in the country and environmentalists always insist if anyone makes a profit, they must be bad, but this could have real consequences the president likely did not expect to face.
A whole lot of coal workers are going to be out of jobs – there is no technology in existence that can make coal clean enough to average 30 percent. Ironically, it may be that Democrats in the future are going to have to subsidize coal the way they do solar now.
UTILITY AIR REGULATORY GROUP v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT No. 12–1146.