Science: March 2008 Archive Page

The Australian publishes an interesting detail about coverage of climate change:

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth still warming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not whethat you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

The other day I was listening to NPR and heard someone (a scientist? activist? somewhere in between?) discussing differences in satellite photos taken in about 1997 and 2004 (or something like that -- I didn't catch the details), and using the differences in these photos to illustrate the effects of global warming. I didn't keep listening long enough to find out whether the reporter asked the guest whether it made good scientific sense to make draw conclusions from two isloated data points. It would be a very different thing if you looked at photos taken every year on the same date over a period of 10 years, and the photos showed a consistent change (with some variation for the typical random fluctuation one expects from the climate).

I've been following climate change politics for some time, mostly because it's a good example of a meta-narrative that all news stories seem to have to fit -- along with "your children are in danger from strangers they meet on the internet" (when the vast majority of perpetrators are family members).

Sky News:

The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote more than 100 books including 2001: A Space Odyssey, has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90, according to an aide.

According to Bloomberg, the Vatican has announced a new list of "social sins." Consistent with much of the church's social teachings in the modern age, the list is an interesting mix of traditionally conservative and traditionally liberal ideas.  It seems to me that 6 and 7 are already contained in 5, but the Bloomberg article didn't link to any further readings  in English.

1. ``Bioethical' violations such as birth control

2. ``Morally dubious'' experiments such as stem cell research

3. Drug abuse

4. Polluting the environment

5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor

6. Excessive wealth

7. Creating poverty

From Michael White, of Adaptive Complexity:

There is a particular narrative about science that science journalists love to write about, and Americans love to hear. I call it the 'oppressed underdog' narrative, and it would be great except for the fact that it's usually wrong.

The narrative goes like this:

1. The famous, brilliant scientist So-and-so hypothesized that X was true.

2. X, forever after, became dogma among scientists, simply by virtue of the brilliance and fame of Dr. So-and-so.

3. This dogmatic assent continues unchallenged until an intrepid, underdog scientist comes forward with a dramatic new theory, completely overturning X, in spite of sustained, hostile opposition by the dogmatic scientific establishment.

We love stories like this; in our culture we love the underdog, who sticks to his or her guns, in spite of heavy opposition. In this narrative, we have heroes, villains, and a famous, brilliant scientist proven wrong.

I'm sure you could pick out instances in science history where this story is true, but more often it is not.

The general public prefers to get its science, or indeed information on any advanced subject, in the form of narrative, while scientists themselves (who already know how to interpret scientific data) often find the narrative a distraction. Everyone can identify with people, so the thinking goes, so it makes sense to emphasize the narrative so that non-specialist audiences will keep reading for long enough to absorb a few facts.  The nitpicky details that are exciting to specialists are too abstract for the casual reader, just as the narrative that appeals to the intelligent general reader (a rare breed in today's culture, to be sure) bores specialists to tears.  White hits the nail on the head when he explains why our culture perpetuates these myths.

I don't mean to suggest that oversimplification is the only way to report on science, but scientists themselves can help the process along by recognizing that journalists thrive on conflict, character, and emotion. There are of course straight news stories that might present the scientific background to an timely issue, but unless there's a direct economic or political impact, or a tie-in with a movie or some other event from popular culture, chance are that a writer will have to pitch a story about a scientist as a feature or profile -- hence the focus on personality over science.

Times Online:

In December 2005 a study in the journal Nature offered the observation that the circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean, which sustains the Gulf Stream, had weakened by up to 30 per cent over the previous few decades. This figure and its juxtapositioning alongside the melodrama of films such as The Day after Tomorrow were amplified through the cooperation of scientists and media to result in headlines such as "Alarm over dramatic weakening of Gulf Stream" ( The Guardian, Dec 1, 2005). The urban myth that emerged from this episode was that we were closer to a mini Ice Age in the UK than had previously been thought. Eighteen months later, however, and unremarked by the media, two studies in equally reputable journals pointed out that such a trend was within the range of natural variability and may signify nothing at all.

A second example concerns the claim that, "by the end of this century, climate change will have killed around 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa" (Christian Aid, May 2006). This number - 180 million African dead - has become one of the most widely cited numbers in the litany of doom that accompanies talk of climate change. In this case, however, the number 180 million was sexed-up science. Christian Aid took the worst-case climate scenario, the highest population scenario and the scenario with the least public health intervention and conjured the number into being. And here it has stayed, a number detached from its receding scientific origins in which assumptions were overlain on scenarios that captured uncertainties.

So... according to the headline, we should only *sometimes* accept exaggerated and bogus numbers as scientific fact?

Toronto Star:

Avenir said he joined the Facebook group last fall to get help with some of the questions the professor would give students to do online. As the network grew, he took over as its administrator, which is why he believes he alone has been charged.

"So we each would be given chemistry questions and if we were having trouble, we'd post the question and say: `Does anyone get how to do this one? I didn't get it right and I don't know what I'm doing wrong.' Exactly what we would say to each other if we were sitting in the Dungeon," said Avenir yesterday.

He is still attending classes pending his hearing but admits the stress of the accusations is affecting his midterm exam results.

"But if this kind of help is cheating, then so is tutoring and all the mentoring programs the university runs and the discussions we do in tutorials," he said.

This is silly. The university should instead invest its resources on educating faculty about the collaborative learning strategies of today's students, who live in a a very different environment and have different strengths and weaknesses than undergraduates of previous generations. Does Avenir's university have an online tutoring center staffed by grad students who are available to answer questions on weekends and evenings, when undergraduates are likely to be doing their work?

I am regularly amazed at the hive culture students create for themselves, but I've been impressed at the extent to which students will slug away at an exercise if they clearly understand how it will benefit them.