Scientists are no different in their level of objectivity than are other professionals. They are careful in the analysis of evidence and in the procedures applied to arrive at conclusions. With this admission, it may seem that this myth is valid, but contributions from both the philosophy of science and psychology reveal that there are…
Abortion, legalised throughout the United States by the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade ruling in 1973, prevents unwanted pregnancies from becoming unwanted children. Higher abortion rates from the 1970s onwards thus help to explain why crime rates fell in America about two decades later. That’s the theory. But a paper published last week? by Christopher…
If you read newspaper headlines last week you would have thought that planetary warming meant an arid apocalypse was inevitable for Western Canada. After a new review of what is projected to happen to the hydrology of snowy places like Canada was published in Nature magazine, the Globe and Mail thundered: “Drought threat looms over…
For decades, the debate was very much focused on UFOs, sightings and abduction stories. Alien visitors turned into a modern myth. In an age when our other beliefs and ideologies were fading away, we could at least believe in UFOs. Most scientists, annoyed as they were, simply chose to ignore it. Then some bright people,…
A computer-generated reconstruction of the man’s face bears a strong enough resemblance to portraits of Copernicus to convince the scientists. —‘Body of Copernicus’ identified (BBC) See Wikipedia for more about Copernicus , the 16th-century priest whose astronomical hobby provided evidence to support the theory that the sun was at the center of the solar system. This…
Serious Games Summit DC 2005, Day 2Derek Wischusen: Expanding Teachable Moments in Serious Games using AI (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Began with a useful grid that recognizes that realism is not the only way to evaluate a game, and that realistic games are not the only kind of training games out there. Wischusen presented two binary pairs:…
Serious Games Summit DC 2005Perla and Whatley’s Keynote Address: What’s So Serious about Game Design? The Art or the Science? (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Quick Take: I thought both speakers did a fair job contextualizing serious games, but as a humanist I am used to attending conferences in which speakers are meticulous about plugging their individual observations…
The uncanny valley itself is where dwell monsters, in the classic sense of the word. Frankenstein’s creation, the undead, the ingeniously twisted demons of animé and their inspirations from legend and myth, and indeed all the walking terrors and horrors of man’s imagining belong here. In essence, they tend to be warped funhouse-mirror images of…
We show the news consumer how the magic trick, as it were, was done: how the lighting was placed, wehere were the mirrors, wires, and sturts, what sleight-of-hand was employed. Yet our purpose in demystifying the news is not cynical dismissal. Rather, we appreciate news as a manufactured, even theatrical, artifact, as much as it…
Astronomers at the Palo Alto Observatory are citing “lunar error” as the cause of the three-moon pileup that totalled Ganymede and severely dented Callisto and Europa Monday, causing an estimated $700 quadrillion in damage. —Ganymede Totalled In Three-Moon Pileup (The Onion (Satire)) An oldie. Similar:Where Silence Has Lease (TNG Rewatch: Season 2, Episode 2)Rewatching Star Trek:…
The shuttle has cost the lives of 14 astronauts since the first flight in 1982. Roger Pielke Jr., a space policy expert at the University of Colorado, estimates that NASA has spent about $150 billion on the program since its inception in 1971. The total cost of the space station by the time it’s finished…
Clutching the shredded tatters of my pride and dignity, I trudged to the office hours of my math instructor every week, seeking an explanation for the increasingly mysterious problems in the textbook. My instructor welcomed my presence as she would welcome the Angel of Death. Irritated? She was terrified. Explain…the problems? Articulate…the steps? Relate…the concepts?…
Ambiguous word choices are the source of some misunderstandings. Scientists often employ colloquial terminology, which they then assign a specific meaning that is impossible to fathom without proper training. The term “relativity,” for example, is intrinsically misleading. Many interpret the theory to mean that everything is relative and there are no absolutes. Yet although the…
Proof by clever variable choice “Let A be the number such that this proof works. . ” Proof by tessellation “This proof is the same as the last.” Proof by divine word “And the Lord said, ‘Let it be true,’ and it was true.” Proof by stubbornness “I don’t care what you say-it is true!”…
Beside the fact that math professors in the movie wear ties — “never,” said Kontorovich — and “there are no blackboards,” noted Stechmann – who laughed when Hal called a proof “hip,” – the aspect of the movie the students found strangest was that it centered on an argument over whether Catherine could have done…
An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building. Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woolen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was…
Infidelity is genetic, say scientists. Electricity allergy real, says researcher. I’ve been collecting “scientists have found the formula for” stories since last summer, carefully pinning them into glass specimen cases, in preparation for my debut paper on the subject. So far I have captured the formulae for: the perfect way to eat ice cream (AxTpxTm/FtxAt…
The statistical tests for uncovering job discrimination assume that men are not innately different from women, blacks from whites, older people from younger people, homosexuals from heterosexuals, Latinos from Anglos, in ways that can legitimately affect employment decisions. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 assumes that women are no different from men in…
Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true. […] Surprisingly, [epidemiologist John] Ioannidis says another predictor of…
“Hyperbole researchers have arrived at, without possibility of argument or refutation, the single greatest moment in all of creation, now and forevermore,” said the project’s lead scientist, Dr. Lloyd Gustaveson, activating the hyperbolic chamber’s gazillion-ultra-watt semantic resonator at a gala launch party Monday. “The divine flame kindled by our new hyperbolic chamber will cast its…