science

NY Times opinionator Steven Strogatz shows an incomplete comprehension of negative numbers.  He does include this insightful quote The eminent linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin of Oxford once gave a lecture in which he asserted that there are many languages in which a double negative makes a positive, but none in which a double positive… Read more

No, not Groucho, but Henk Tennekes does a passable imitation resigning from the Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Read the entire post, because the real treat is Tennekes’ essay on Hermetic Jargon. Read more

Move over, Thomas Kuhn, here comes Jerome Ravetz with post-normal science. There is an important philosophical dimension to Climategate, a question of the relation of personal scientific ethics to objective scientific facts.  The problem is created by the traditional image of science (as transmitted in scientific education) as ‘value-free’.  The personal commitments to integrity, that… Read more

Here’s an interesting finding about deciduous forests in the eastern US: they appear to be growing faster.  However, the explanation seems a bit facile.  How about backing up the conclusion with some plausible links, like maybe a regression model.  Otherwise, the claim that Global Warming (and by extension George Bush) Made the Trees Grow Faster… Read more

Here’s a great discussion of why you shouldn’t get your science news from the mass media. Or, are blonde women really “born to be warrior princesses”? Read more

Bioinformatics just got a lot more interesting, with the Mathematica Solution for Bioinformatics website. Tip from the Wolfram Blog. Read more

Seems Al Gore has been telling lies about mosquitos and malaria, and all his buddies have been swearing to the lie. A commenter points us to Michael Chrichton’s underappreciated Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well.… Read more

Everything you wanted to know about Hayek’s theory of spontaneous social order, right here. Tip from the Knowledge Problem. Read more

Tip from Planet Gore. Update (2 December). A NASA climate scientist steered no-bid contracts to his wife’s firm.  "You seem to regard science as some kind of dodge… or hustle."  Tip from the Instapundit. Read more

Here’s a great Flash visualization from the biologists at the University of Utah that puts sizes and scales into perspective. Tips from Flowing Data and Andrew Gelman. Read more