Builder Blames Navy as Brand-New Warship
Disintegrates

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 23 June 2011 04:25:53 PM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

From Gizmodo: The Navy's newest warship is slowly disappearing, one molecule at a time. Read the whole article

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p-Disintegrates?from_rss=1

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Nevada Prepares Itself for the Imminent Rise of
Driverless Cars

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 23 June 2011 03:54:40 PM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

From Engadget: Driverless cars are still a way's away from hitting the mainstream, but when they do, the glorious state of Nevada will be ready for 'em. This week, the state passed a new law that will require its Department of Transportation to "adopt regulations authorizing the operatio

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-Rise-of-Driverless-Cars?from_rss=1

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Alps lapse

post from Bad Astronomy on 23 June 2011 03:30:54 PM. © Bad Astronomy

I’ve had a turbulent couple of days, so watching this time lapse of laminar flow of clouds over the Swiss Alps was just what I needed:Very pretty! There’s some astronomy in there as well; in several of the clips as the Milky Way passes by you[...]

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Strange New Glass Proves Twice as Durable as
Steel

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 23 June 2011 03:22:40 PM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

From Discover Technology: Engineers have long sought a material with the strength of glass and the toughness of metal. But the two properties are virtually mutually exclusive. Strong, rigid materials tend to be brittle (think glass), while tough ones that resist shattering are often mall

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le-as-Steel?from_rss=1

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Vesta looks pretty battered

post from Planetary Society Weblog on 23 June 2011 02:53:57 PM. © Planetary Society Weblog

There was a press briefing on Dawn today at NASA Headquarters, and there are new pictures! Here's what Vesta looked like as of three days ago, when Dawn was only 189,000 kilometers away:Vesta rotates below DawnAs Dawn continued its approach to Vesta on June 20, 2011, it occasionally quit thrusting and turned to the spinning asteroid to perform a "rotation characterization," seeing all longitudes as Vesta rotated beneath the spacecraft. Credit: ....

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The 100 Longest Entries On Wikipedia

post from Pharyngula on 23 June 2011 02:44:45 PM. © Pharyngula

It's true, I couldn't predict most of these entries, but I totally guessed the general subject of the #1 entry correctly, so that's got to count for something.

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gest_entries_on_wik.php

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Beware the Evil Scientists

post from Physics Buzz on 23 June 2011 02:16:06 PM. © Physics Buzz

There are plenty of evil scientists in the movies, but Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano are examples of at least two scientists who have gone bad in real life.

I've worked in science and with scientists my whole adult life. Most scientists are normal folk - some are smart and some stupid, some are lazy and some diligent, many are tall and many are short. Few, however, are evil. At least, I've never met an evil scientist as far as I know. Sadly, there a definitely some out there who I feel truly deserve the evil scientist label.

The worst of the recent evil scientists is probably Andrew Wakefield. The former doctor, who has since been stripped of his medical license, fraudulently claimed that he had found a link between early childhood vaccinations and autism. As a result, thousands of people have chosen not to have their children vaccinated, and many children have died unnecessarily or suffered life-long disabilities. Why would Wakefield do such a thing? It's hard to say, but a CNN article about him implies it was for money - a little over half a million dollars actually. (I wonder if it's enough to ease his conscience.)

The latest example of scientists turned evil that I know of may not be as sinisterly successful as Wakefield was. Although, depending on their agenda, they're actions could lead to pretty bad outcomes. Medical doctor Janette Sherman and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano are claiming that publicly available data show that babies in the US Northwest are dying at an alarming rate as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In fact, the data show no such thing, as Michael Moyer makes abundantly clear in his Scientific American article.

You don't have to take Moyer's word for it. You can go and look at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data yourself to see that Sherman and Mangano have picked data points to make a completely false argument. They weren't even very clever about it. Not only are they evil, they're apparently also none too bright. At least Wakefield's autism analyses looked superficially believable.

Why is their deception bad? Here are a few reasons that come to mind

1. Scientists should seek the truth. When people like Sherman and Mangano seek to mislead the public under the guise of science they erode the general confidence in science and scientists. The worst thing a scientist can do is use the language and methods of science to lie.

2. It harms the parents and family of the children who died in the Pacific Northwest, whatever the cause. As if those poor people haven't suffered enough, now they're told they should blame the wrong people and technology for one of the greatest losses anyone can bear. They deserve better.

3. It harms the people of Japan, piling more onto the national burden they already carry.

4. Lying to people about the outcome of the Fukushima disaster distorts the risk of nuclear power, making it difficult to make decisions about future energy technologies. Yes, people died at Fukushima. Yes, more people will have their lives cut short from radiation exposure. On the other hand, non-nuclear power also carries risks, and many more people die every day from oil and coal pollution than from nuclear power plant accidents. There are no easy answers, but we need accurate, truthful research to find the best solutions.

I'm at a loss to understand why Sherman and Mangano would publish such a pathetic, cruel and flagrantly false analysis. Whatever their reason, it simply seems evil to me.

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Sometimes, we make progress

post from Pharyngula on 23 June 2011 01:42:18 PM. © Pharyngula

It takes decades, though. When did you last hear anyone seriously advocate a flat earth? How many Republican presidential candidates would raise their hands if asked if they believed the earth was flat? Sure, you can find a few far out fringe cranks who babble about it, just as there are a few geocentrists around, but it's a dead idea — not even Ken Ham pushes it, although I am wondering, since the Bible does support it literally, whether he doesn't secretly suspect the astronomers have been lying to him for all these years.

But there used to be more noisy flat-earthers around. complete copy of a map by Orlando Ferguson from 1893 showing his flat earth model has been found, and it's gorgeous and hilarious. Here's his Biblical interpretation of the shape of the earth:

Spectacular! Unfortunately, the book that justifies this is lost, and all we have left for support are the notes on the map: Four Hundred Passages in the Bible that Condemn the Glob Theory, or the Flying Earth, and None Sustain It. This Map is the Bible Map of the World." Just like creationists, though, he does emphasize negative evidence: he ridicules physicists with their absurd proposition that the earth is zooming through space.

Let's hope that a century from now people will look back on the quaint artifacts from the age of Creationism and Intelligent Design as amusing curios that only a lunatic would find plausible.

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The Poplar River Precedent

A few weeks ago I had the honor of being part of a tour of the proposed Pimachiowin Aki World Heritage Site. There is no doubt that the region and the people there are incredible and I will write more about the trip in an upcoming blog entry. In the[...]

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http://www.borealbirds.org/blog/?p=820

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