7 posts tagged “science”
Dr Ben Goldacre who blogs at Badscience.net posted the following on 5th Feb: Er, “help”. Legal Chill from LBC 97.3 and “Global Radio” over Jeni Barnett’s MMR scaremongering
LBC have instructed their lawyers to contact me.
Two days ago I posted about a broadcast in which their presenter Jeni Barnett exemplified some of the most irresponsible, ill-informed, and ignorant anti-vaccination campaigning that I have ever heard on the public airwaves. This is important because it can cost lives, and you can read about the media’s MMR hoax here.
To illustrate my grave concerns, I posted the relevant segment about MMR from her show, 44 minutes, which a reader kindly excerpted for me from the rest of the three hour programme. It is my view that Jeni Barnett torpedoes her reputation in that audio excerpt so effectively that little explanation is needed.
LBC’s lawyers say that the clip I posted is a clear infringement of their copyright, that I must take it down immediately, that I must inform them when I have done so, and that they “reserve their rights”.
~Click on the link I posted to read more.
The issue seems to be that the people who are backing the bad science are being legal bullies. Legal in that they are likely to be legally correct in applying the law. Bullies in that they are really trying to suppress a particular opinion. I don't know lots about the issues (I do know a bit about the MMR issue, that is different) and invite people to check it out for themselvs.
Explosions. Bunsen burners. Adoring crowds in evening dress - or school uniform - eyes wide with wonderment. Can we recapture the excitement of science, asks historian Lisa Jardine.
"The occasion was one of the Institution's celebrated Friday evening discourses, a fashionable event for which those who attended were expected to don full evening dress, and which caused such congestion on Piccadilly that Albemarle Street, on which the Institution stands, had to be designated the first one-way street in London, to cope with the crush of carriages.
The Curies were the scientific stars of the moment: everyone in London wanted to meet them. In the packed theatre, eminent scientists rubbed shoulders with leading members of London's high society, craning their necks in anticipation."
I love science, the magic and mystery that logic seems to explain yet, yet, the veil still lingers over so much. Modern quantum science closer to alchemy than many would like to know, biology still with so many questions to answer, so many questions to seek.
*sigh* Of course, I hated Chemistry but loved both Physics & Biology: the former hampered by my very poor maths and the latter my Uni subject.
To recapture the fascination would be wonderful :)
Bookmarked. Courtesy of Jay
Given some recent discussions about equality, differences and gender roles I found this article interesting:
What's keeping women out of the labs? I have clipped a few quotes below, mostly from the end of the article, specifically from one person:
Dr Helena Cronin, who studies evolutionary theory and sex difference at the London School of Economics, argues that past statistics give no indication of what might happen in the future.
According to Dr Cronin, it's the numbers of men at the extremes of ability that are most telling: "For males, the difference between the worst and the best is far, far greater. This is a very important aspect of male-female differences. One way of looking at this is that among males there are more dumbbells, but there are also more Nobels."
She says: "I've never subscribed to the view that it's the correct feminist line to say there are no differences. But let's not forget that historically, evolutionary arguments have often been used to justify what seemed to be some normal aspect of life at the time - for example, the extreme racism of the late 19th century."
She says those who are striving for 50/50 sex ratios across the sciences should look at the scientific evidence first.
And the one I like best is the last:
"If you want to change the world, first you have to understand it."
"Technonerds go to movies strictly for entertainment, and of course, the most entertaining part comes after the movie when they can dissect, criticize, and argue the merits of every detail. However, when supposedly serious scenes totally disregard the laws of physics in blatantly obvious ways it's enough to make us retch. The motion picture industry has failed to police itself against the evils of bad physics. This page is provided as a public service in hopes of improving this deplorable matter. The minds of our children and their ability to master vectors are (shudder) at stake."
Wonderful!
Iron enough to make a nail,
Lime enough to paint a wall,
Water enough to drown a dog,
Sulfur enough to stop the fleas,
Poison enough to kill a cow,
Potash enough to wash a shirt,
Gold enough to buy a bean,
Silver enough to coat a pin,
Lead enough to ballast a bird,
Phosphor enough to light the town,
Strength enough to build a home,
Time enough to hold a child,
Love enough to break a heart.
I found this poem on the L(J) Space community with an extra link to this article about Biological uptake (HTML Cached version rather than pdf which screws my computer) which includes the poem, quoting Wintersmith, but without the last 3 lines which in turn contains a link to Actual composition.
