Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey – The Review
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality - Carl SaganI missed the big Carl Sagan thing when it happened. I was in high school when Cosmos came out, we lived in the country and if you wanted to watch a different television network, you had to go up into the attic and turn a giant antenna with a pipe wrench. Sports and girls and D&D were more of a priority than television.
Yet even though I didn't watch it when it came out, shortly afterward I could still tell you who said "billions and billions" with that special emphasis. That and riffs on "Who Shot J.R.?" were big that year.
Iron Deficiency Does Not Cause People To Become Vegans
Statisticians have a rule of thumb for calibrating claims made in humanities and science papers alike. Andrew Gelman, for example, talks about statistical significance filter - "If an estimate is statistically significant, it’s probably an overestimate."A good thing to remember when you read weak observational studies, psychology surveys and, in modern times, a shocking number of epidemiology papers.
For health, you can use a different rule of thumb: Does Joe Mercola sell it?
If he does, it is probably suspect.
Pro-Vaccination PSAs May Do More Harm Than Good
When I have done workshops for aspiring science journalists/writers, I have three pieces of advice. The first is: Don't defend science. It doesn't need defending.But it's easier said then done. If you spend some time in science media culture, you will invariably find a person saying something pithy like "Science: It works, bitches" but then raging about some attack on science and defending it with shrill verbage and name-calling and conspiracy theories.
If science works, you don't need to defend it with claims that Big Oil is funding climate denial or that homeopaths and Big Organic fund vaccine and GMO denial.
Is Wind Turbine Syndrome A Real Thing?
Here's an intellectual puzzle; which is more real, the viability of wind power as anything more than a sustainable gimmick or Wind Turbine Syndrome?Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz Is Climate Friendly – Because He Supports Energy Science Activists Don’t
While former Energy Secretary Stephen Chu is a fine scholar, he seemed to be lost when it came to drafting a federal energy policy that was evidence-based.It's easy for an academic to postulate that $9 a gallon gas will be 'good' for us but when it comes to managing a national constituency, including a lot of people who will be ruined by expensive gasoline, there has to be some real thought before actions are taken. Government is not a sandbox.
A BitTorrent For Electricity
On a per capita electricity production basis, environmentalists are winning the war on energy
Electricity for all, which was once considered the goal of technological progress, is now treated like a giant step on the road to an ecological Apocalypse. As a result, we've increased regulation and decreased generation and the price per kilowatt-hour has gone up and supply per capita has gone down. We can thank a confluence of bad ideas, chiefly subsidies for inefficient and expensive green alternatives, penalties for coal and natural gas, and a war on nuclear science.
Weekend Science: Why You Should Always Order A Large Pizza
I understand why someone living in the city might get a slice of pizza - they don't want to carry a box of pizza back to the office, and there is something nice about sitting down and having a quick bite.But I have never understood why anyone buys a medium pizza, much less a small. If you understand what a circle is, and you understand what a dollar is, it makes no sense.
First, the dollar. The economics should be obvious; like buying any food in bulk, you can see there are fixed costs. A small pizza or a large has someone making it, it has an oven in a shop. Those costs are fixed regardless of which pizza you get. The actual ingredient differences between a small and a large are not a big cost.
If You Are Scared Of BPA, JAMA Will Make You Happy
Human exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) has recently been linked to negative health claims, like a decline in reproductive function in adults and stunted neurodevelopment in children, and so people consumed with the 'natural' fallacy have been up in arms about it. It hasn't quite become 'BPA causes autism' hysteria, like they did with vaccines, but it is getting close.
Naturally, companies have listened to the nocebo worries of the natural-obsessed and dutifully created BPA-free products and charged more money for them.
How To Put A Stop To Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Theories
Do you think pharmaceutical companies are creating problems that don't exist in order to keep selling drugs to an increasingly over-medicated population? Do you think scientists are unethical if they work at a corporation like DuPont or in nuclear science, rather than being funded by the government?
Such beliefs have become so increasingly mainstream among a particular political and cultural demographic that we can quite easily make lots of accurate determinations about them, the same way we can infer things about someone if they don't buy into global warming.
Gluten Fad Versus Science – Why We Can’t All Just Get Along
A cookbook editor in the New York Times says I am wrong on the gluten-free fad and that, if it makes people feel better to buy gluten-free, to leave them alone.Well, well, well, look at the New York Times embracing libertarianism and food choice when it comes to fads their demographic happens to embrace. Like with sugar and GMOs, they want science and reason to stay out of it, because those are weird fetishes of a large chunk of their readership, while we are constantly told how stupid people are if they don't accept global warming. Right?