Getting The Public To Listen To Good Science 419
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "We all know that false or misleading science headlines are all too common these days and that misleading media combined with an apathetic and undereducated public lead to widespread ignorance. But the real question is, how can this trend be reversed? At a session at the recent AAAS meeting, a study was discussed indicating that what matters most is how the information is portrayed. While people are willing to defer to experts on matters of low concern, for things that affect them directly, such as breast cancer or childhood diseases, expertise only counts for as much as giving off a 'sense of honesty and openness,' and that it matters far less than creating a sense of empathy in deciding who people will listen to. In other words, it's not enough to merely report on it as an expert. You need to make sure your report exudes a sense of honesty, openness, empathy, and maybe even a hint of humor."
Fuck em! (Score:3, Informative)
The idiots at The Star ran the story with a straight face, including the financial backing that the "inventor" has raised. Now, I don't know if the "inventor" is an honest kook or a fraudster, but the sad fact is that a major newspaper has no one on staff who ever took a physics course or has any scientific knowledge. YOU CAN'T GET ENERGY OUT OF NOTHING!!!
Sadly, the idiocy at The Star is not limited to science. And this "inventor" is going to bilk quite a few idiots out of their savings and/or venture capital.
At some point you have to say there's one born every minute.
Re:Just do what Global Warming Advocates Do (Score:1, Informative)
Anyone who claims "the debate is over" about global warming is not a scientist. The debate on global warming is certainly not over. Weather is a very poorly understood phenomena. To declare "the debate is over" is arrogant.
Re:Just do what Global Warming Advocates Do (Score:4, Informative)
Wow, I rarely get to see so many strawman arguments in one post.
Anyway, this does raise an interesting question: is it ok to use such sensationalism even though it's based on good science? It seems to be the only way to get people to listen.
Article: Most scientific papers probably wrong (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cloning. (Score:3, Informative)
Making a baby twin of yourself, WHAT is the big deal? It's like an offspring, or a younger orphaned sibling in your legal guardianship. The media talk about it like it's some kind of proven heresy or something. I'm not worried about clones at all.
Re:Yeah, but can you 'prove' it? (Score:3, Informative)
I rolled my eyes, and then went to look it up on Wiki [wikipedia.org]....
Bull. People want "Truth". (Score:2, Informative)
There are other examples that are not political - a lot of the "safety reminders" on products come to mind. For an amusing view on this, I'd recommend 2 the Ranting Gryphon's rant on America. [youtube.com] He's a knucklehead, but he's not an idiot and he's funny.
I read somewhere recently that a recent study determined that 25% of the American public sincerely doesn't want to think. They sincerely want to be told what to do and what to think. That they tend to be religious only makes sense. The problem is these people don't want SCIENTIFIC truth, which is always tentative and only true until proven otherwise. This is especially so with the larger questions - where did life start, how did the universe come to be, etc. Sure, we have scientific ideas, but they tend to change over time, and that is something these dunderheads can't cope with. They need UNCHANGING ABSOLUTE TRUTH (tm), and if it comes from some nonsensical piece of crap written by obscure semiliterate Israeli goatherders 3000 years ago, all the better.
Seriously - people don't want science. They want TRUTH, and scientific truth just doesn't cut it - it requires a sense of doubt, and that is something their 1/2 watt brains can't seem to muster. Things are VERY VERY bad, and they are not getting better, and odly, science isn't doing it for them.
Why? Because for every bible thumping retard, there's a dozen who go along with it because it works. How?
1. day care
2. community
3. elder care
4. entertainment
5. The Club
thee are more than that - many more - but churches provide things in the USA that secular society doesn't, and it's the "glue" type things that are not only valuable, but REQUIRED to keep a society together. Example: if you don't have much family in the area (and given the mobile nature of the USA, who does...) you need a baby sitter. Well, so and so from church has a teenager... You need to get some food to granny, but aren't goign to be able to do it. Call so and so from church who lives near her. They owe you a favour anyway... And ten there are the church picnics where people get together and the kids play and it's a nice way to blow a sunday afternoon. And then there's the church youth groups where the kids learn abstinence and practice giving blow jobs. It goes on and on. Yes, it is horrible, yes it is stupid, but in its own stumpy retarded way, it WORKS as long as people don't think too much or often about what the fuck it's all really about or for. THAT requires DOUBT, and that leads to SCIENCE.
So, I don't think tarting up science is going to amount to a hill of beans as long as American society spends half its wealth on the military industrial complex, a quarter on the infrastructure, and some tiny amount on culture and the things that make culture work. Other societies don't have this problem. The USA does, and as long as secular society refuses to step up to the plate and provide the REQUIRED social services for a functioning society, religion will be there to fill in the gap and own the minds and hearts of the retarded half of America.
RS
Re:Entertainment value (Score:5, Informative)
Re:immunization (Score:5, Informative)
Take mumps for example (probably the least dangerous of the group). In that outbreak I mentioned, with the tainted vaccine, there were three people who had mild allergic reactions. No long term damage. The nasty side effects from mumps are fairly rare, but without a vaccine the disease used to be VERY common, so those rare complications affected a good number of people. Far more than are hurt (even in minor ways) by the vaccine itself.
I realise I'm probably wasting my time replying, but you never know.
Re:Don't let facts get in the way of good fun (Score:1, Informative)
> If anything, I believe that what has been lost is a generation of physicists and biologists to the siren's song of computer science.
Then the siren song of the 60s was NASA, rocketry and the space race. At least with Computer Science, we're increasing productivity and solving real business problems (e.g. getting richer), rather than furthering the process of destroying ourselves with nukes (e.g. rocketry) or creating junk food like Tang. I know that real advances have come from the space programs, but only at great expense, and with very little effect on Joe taxpayer, who foots the bill. Taxpayers reap a benefit from the past 50 years worth of developments in Computer Science.
> There is no other field today where the barriers to entry are so low that almost anyone can make a real contribution.
I suggest you work out a tidy proof of P = NP then. If thats too much trouble, perhaps just finding a polynomial time algorithm for factoring? Of course, a proof that that doesn't exist would work as well. Yes, the two problems are different, and the second should be easier than the first.
> There are too many people attending college today simply looking for any degree.
80% of graduates don't use their degrees. I am one of the ones who uses mine - Computer Science. I'll bet you that a whole lot more than 20% of us CompSci's are using our degrees.
In any case, having an Education is a Good Thing. Regardless of whether you use it professionally.
> You don't see nearly as many foreign students in those programs because, for them, the job market back home requires real knowledge, not just a piece of paper.
The so called easy majors aren't of interest to foreign students because most don't have the cultural context to take English, History, etc. Would you want to take History in a foreign language and cultural context? In Chinese? Korean? Swahili? How about even in French or German?
And if you really think that those 'easy' courses are easy, you should try a few of the upper level courses in a subject you don't like. Then you'll see what 'easy' really is...
Re:Entertainment value (Score:4, Informative)
There is actually good and strong science behind such inferences.
Imagine felines are a completely unknown family
Say you have only a tooth fragment of a bobcat. That piece of information alone isn't much to go on, but if you also have a more or less complete skeleton of a house cat, and a skull and left hind foot of a lion skeleton, these three pieces of information together now tell you a lot about the likely size and general shape of the bobcat, and from the size relative to the lion and the house cat, you can probably draw general conclusions about the kind of prey the bobcat could hunt.