Richard Dawkins writes convincingly about the improbability of, well everything.
science
Entries tagged with “science”.
Richard Feynman once gave a fine commencement address referred to as “Cargo Cult Science” (named for the anecdote about unfortunately deluded people in the South Pacific building runways out of straw and coconuts in the hope they would attract loaded cargo planes to land, long after the war had ended). In it he argues through example against any sort of fudging of numbers or spoofing of scientific results, pointing to their poisoning the pools of real, honest science. “Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Recent bookmarks tagged with “science”.
- scrazzl.com | simply connecting science
- Minister withdraws from launch of anti-evolution book - The Irish Times - Tue, Sep 14, 2010
- Books of The Times - Many Universes in Stephen Hawking’s ‘Grand Design’ - NYTimes.com
- I Hate Your Paper - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences
- Bone Wars - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Minister withdraws from launch of anti-evolution book - The Irish Times - Tue, Sep 14, 2010
The Bone Wars, also known as the "Great Dinosaur Rush",[1] refers to a period of intense fossil speculation and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope (of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia) and Othniel Charles Marsh (of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale). Each of the two paleontologists used underhanded methods to try to out-compete the other in the field, resorting to bribery, theft, and destruction of bones. Each scientist also attacked the other in scientific publications, seeking to ruin his credibility and have his funding cut off.
- BBC - BBC Two Programmes - The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion
- Charlie Brooker's Screen burn: Science Of The Movies | Television & radio | The Guardian
I chose to preview this under false pretences, glancing at the title and figuring it would be a myth-busting exercise in which scientific experts pooh-poohed Hollywood's lax grasp of physics, grumpily pointing out that if a sheet of glass hit David Warner's neck at 50mph, his head wouldn't really be sliced off as cleanly as it was in The Omen. I was looking forward to being told that you can't actually see laser beams in space for the 500th time. Instead, I was confronted by a 60-minute show about programmable motion-control cameras. And being a geek, I sat through it, only getting truly restless when they started discussing the frequency-hopping spread spectrum wireless communication system they were using. That's how nerdy this is.
- Expert: ‘Lazy researchers to blame for declining EU science optimism’ | EurActiv
The ESF boss blamed the EU research community for this, arguing that scientists are "often too scared of the public" to undertake the necessary promotion of their work that would make science and tech feature more prominently in mainstream society. She scathingly went on to claim that many members of the research community are too "lazy and self-contented" to provide this important service. "Talking to the public requires a certain talent that not many scientists have," she said. The solution from the policymakers' perspective, argued Makarow, is to gear EU strategies for "lifelong learning" towards feeding the public desire for more training and knowledge in this area.
- The power of comics - simondobson.org
The goal of PhD Comics is to act as an encouragement to graduate students. For anyone who’s been through it — as I have — it’s overall an extremely rewarding, liberating intellectual, social and life experience; it’s also a lonely, frustrating, depressing, isolating and self-critical one. It takes an effort of will to believe that you’re making a contribution, making discoveries that others will find interesting and worthwhile. Even those with unbounded self-confidence — which most certainly does not include me, not now and certainly not then — will find themselves questioning their motivations and capabilities over the course of their PhD.
- Symphony of Science
The Symphony of Science is a musical project headed by John Boswell designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form. Here you can watch music videos, download songs, read lyrics and find links relating to the messages conveyed by the music.