Science 2.0

We've had any number of discussions about the changing face of academic research given the fact that we keep being told America doesn't do enough science education but there aren't enough jobs in research to go around.With success in an ever-more competitive post-doctoral environment requiring more excellent science than ever to achieve the next step, it's not a surprise some will boost their standing by holding others back.

"So did you watch "Big Trouble In Little China?"  I asked Patrick.   He did, he replied, while coding away."So you saw what I mean.  Chinese people got a lot of Hells, which is bad, but at least they're apparently easy to find.   Western religion has just one, but good luck locating it.   In that movie they just go under some old guy's house and there it is and they get to fight Raiden(1) and stuff and save the world.   If I want to find Hell, I am stuck going into "Revelations" and that isn't much help at all."

In the wake of the Pepsigate scandal at Scienceblogs.com and the departure of some two dozen bloggers, a variety of companies decided to capitalize on the disarray and start their own blogging networks - PLoS started a blog network for outside contributors, as did Wired and soon Nature Publishing Group will tackle it one more time at Scientific American.

Climate science is in a difficult position.   On the one side, climate scientists like James Hansen say that the data behind IPCC media talking points is too easy to misinterpret so people shouldn't have it, but to hard science people, climate science accuracy, in the science data sense, is far too inaccurate for claims that its people make.    No one in physics could get away with the accuracy levels climate scientists regard as settled.

I am something of a historical repository for my family.   So I have some cool stuff from way back, like a photograph of my great-great-great grandfather, and then also more recent items, like one of my mother's 'ration' books (coupons still attached!) from World War 2 and a wax record my grandfather made for her at a USO(1) before he left to occupy Japan at the war's conclusion.

I occasionally get questions about usage of Science 2.0 that go beyond the FAQ so I decided I would write up a short article on using the site for non-beginners.   The FAQ covers the basics - what Science 2.0® is, the experimental nature of this open writing site for science, etc. along with the basic functionality, like the dashboard - but due to the way the site has grown some other features may not be evident for newer members.How to find good stuff to write about?

There was a time a few years ago when the music industry was in the doldrums.   They blamed MP3 piracy, though it made no sense unless you were the kind of person who believes 'jobs saved or created' is also a valid metric for beneficial impact of government stimulus plans - basically, claiming that every pirated piece of music was a lost sale was unrealistically hopeful.   Most pirates may download something, but they weren't going to buy it anyway.Yet capitalism began to reshape the music industry even when they couldn't figure out how themselves.  iTunes made it elegant for people to buy songs, and so they did, and now capitalism is at work in the music itself.    

It's been a mantra that more money has to be spent on outreach for women in academia, or even quotas implemented.  Why?   Women PhDs are now the majority, at least in the US.   This was an obvious trend since there were more underclass and graduate program females (60%).But like any sort of cultural agenda, it is perpetual, so now it will be the case that not enough department heads are female.  This was the same in the NBA, where after it became 70% black there were no calls to recruit more whites or latinos, but rather calls to have 70% of the coaches be black.

Does expertise make the difference?   It depends.   When it comes to climate change, having a Ph.D. and a faculty position does not mean as much to the public as it does for researchers in other fields.The difference?  Climate change researchers are perceived as being part of the cultural discourse rather than part of the objective science one, so if the scientist is taking a position different from yours, he is not an expert, he is just in the mud with politicians and environmental or industrial corporations trying to get money. Unfortunately, the same is true for both sides in the global warming discussion, and that is bad for science all the way around.

Even though Halley's Comet has a regular orbit it's not an easy task to map its appearances throughout history - and it may be that one of those appearances matches an ancient Greek testimony and has only now been realized, write Daniel W. Graham and Eric Hintz in the Journal of Cosmology, which would make it the first scientific claim about the famous extraterrestrial event.In 1705, Edmond Halley used Newtonian theory and predicted the return of a comet seen in 1682.  It did return as predicted, in 1758, putting Halley on the stellar map and driving a stake into the evil hearts of competing theories to Newton.  

In case you do not easily panic, you may have missed the story that two asteroids were passing close to Earth yesterday.  Not to worry, it happens all of the time, but because their existence was only discovered Sunday by the Catalina Sky Survey, people were concerned.The 50-foot 2010 RX30 came within 154,000 miles of Earth, just over halfway from here to the moon (0.6 lunar distances if you want to impress your friends), yesterday morning and then 2010 RF12, about 30 feet in size, came within 50,000 miles of Earth yesterday afternoon.

I have long told my more progressive brethren who have been happy about overarching judicial decisions they happened to like that activism is a double-edged sword.   Certainly it's reasonable to 'cross that bridge' when society gets to it, but until then the repercussions are substantial.In the instance of an injunction on embryonic stem cell research being upheld, it's not evil Republicans sticking it to stem cell research, though I have long contended they never did by simply restricting the human embryonic stem cell kind anyway - that law was signed by Clinton.  Instead, it is a court and we have 50 solid years of aggressive judicial good works that has gone well beyond interpreting the Constitution, making it the most powerful branch of government.