Category: media

The difference between ten and infinity

February 12, 2015 • 2:51 pm

By Grania Spingies

Brian Cox is Stateside at the moment, and was on The Conan Show promoting the US run of BBC 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage, the science podcast brainchild of Robin Ince and Brian Cox that cannot be praised highly enough (it’s funny, it’s got science in and a whole lot of smart people who are passionate about their subject – what more could you possibly want?) and one which  our congenial host will be a guest on when the show reaches Chicago.

You can watch bits of the chat with Conan here.

oppo

 

Of course, the really important part of the discussion is Deepak Chopra’s glasses. Are they diamonds? Are they rhinestones? Will we ever really know?

Of course, it doesn’t matter because as we all know the definition of a Real Scientist is whether they take Dr Chopra seriously or not, so Brian Cox and his Ph.D. in high energy particle physics are disqualified straight out the gate.

 

h/t: Ant

Jerry on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell MSNBC tonight

February 5, 2015 • 4:08 pm

By Grania

Jerry asked me to let everyone know that he’s been asked to be on MSNBC’s The Last Word tonight with Lawrence O’Donnell. They’ll be discussing ISIL and its religion.

It airs at 10pm, and you can catch up with the show on its website if you miss it. [Note by GCM– that’s 10 PM Eastern; it’s 9 PM in Chicago, and so on.]

On being provocative

December 26, 2014 • 6:21 pm

by Grania

Neil deGrasse Tyson has at times been a little testy about the attention his atheism gets when he spends so much more time as a science educator; so when I saw this on Twitter yesterday:

nt

At first I was all like:

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But he was clearly on a roll, and now the story has gone viral being reported all  over the place.

nt2

 

My verdict: he’s funny and he’s right. So, bro fist!

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Pseudoscience roundup: Guerrilla Skeptics mock Sheldrake’s paranoia; Tedx fails to keep its videos of Sheldrake off YouTube, and BBC criticized for giving “equal time” to climate-change denialists

November 8, 2013 • 6:49 am

Rupert Sheldrake has been whining everywhere, including on the BBC, that his Wikipedia page has been doctored by a group called the Guerrilla Skeptics (or rather, a branch called the Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia (GSoW), once again suggesting there’s a conspiracy to cover up his marvelous findings on morphic resonance and telepathy in dogs.

In a post a few days ago, I gave evidence debunking Sheldrake’s claims: the GSoW has never had anything to do with his page. Rather, Sheldrake’s supporters, who loaded the original page with his loony theories, were simply displaced by more sensible editors following to Wikipedia‘s own policies, which forbid presenting pseudoscience as if it were an equally valid alternative to mainstream science.

This was supported by “Julie,” a member of GSoW, who left this humorous comment after my post on Sheldrake:

Picture 2

I love the “we didn’t touch his page, even with our minds” bit.

The Beeb has promised to give a “balanced” response to Sheldrake’s rant on its airwaves, but I’m not aware that this has yet happened.

***

Tedx, responding to criticisms of myself and others that they presented Sheldrake’s woo as “science” in one of their events, pulled the Sheldrake Tedx video off their site and put it in a separate place. They also promised me that they’d keep his Tedx video off of YouTube, as this was Tedx’s property and it was a copyright violation to repost it.  They asked me specificially to report any YouTube violations to them. For a while I did report these violations, and finally the people at Tedx started getting angry at me for doing so. Apparently they’ve taken so much flak from Sheldrake supporters (a nasty and vociferous pack, to be sure) that they just decided to let the videos go viral.  In other words, Tedx lied to me, failing to do what they promised. If you want to see the banned Sheldrake videos, just go to YouTube and search for “Rupert Sheldrake Science Delusion Tedx.”  I’ve lost considerable respect for Tedx after this, as I consider them gutless.

***

Meanwhile the “Beeb” has been criticized on another front besides giving undue airtime and credibility to pseudoscientists like Sheldrake. This time it involves climate-change denialism. An Oct. 1 article in the Guardian reports that, despite overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic global warming, the BBC continues to present climate-change skeptics as credible experts. This is one of their misguided efforts (perhaps born of an ignorance of how science is done) to “let a hundred opinions blossom.”

First a bit of background. Two years ago, British geneticist Steve Jones, collaborating with a research group at Imperial College London, produced a comprehensive report on the Beeb’s coverage of science: “BBC Trust review of impartiality and accuracy of the BBC’s coverage of science” (free pdf at link). The main problems highlighted in the report were these:

1. An at times “over-rigid” (as Professor Jones describes it) application of the Editorial Guidelines on impartiality in relation to science coverage, which fails to take into account what he regards as the “non-contentious” nature of some stories and the need to avoid giving “undue attention to marginal opinion”. Professor Jones cites past coverage of claims about the safety of the MMR vaccine and more recent coverage of claims about the safety of GM crops and the existence of man made climate change as examples on this point. He suggests that achieving “equality of voice” may be resolved by the new 2010 Editorial Guidelines which incorporate consideration of “due weight” in relation to impartiality. A more common-sense approach to “due impartiality” would also help, he believes.

2. Underdeveloped links between science programme makers across the BBC’s divisions. This he recommends might in part be addressed by establishing a regular cross-division science forum and appointing a Science Editor for BBC News to work across a range of output.

3. Too narrow a range of sources for stories and a tendency to be reactive rather than proactive, particularly in news coverage. Professor Jones recommends that this might be remedied by better use of external electronic databases that draw from a wide variety of science publications. He further recommends working to improve – and share – BBC contacts with the science community.

Apparently the BBC took this report seriously and implemented several changes to deal with the report’s criticisms (n.b.: I haven’t read the full report, which is nearly 90 pages long).  But, according to the Guardian, the Beeb recently failed when it came to covering the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a consortium of the world’s leading climate scientists.  Last week the IPCC published its conclusions:

On Friday the IPCC, which represents the world’s leading climate scientists, produced a landmark report on the state of knowledge of global warming.

The IPCC said it was unequivocal that warming was occurring and that the dominant force behind it was human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels.

The report, the first from the UN-convened body since 2007, and only the fifth since 1988, was the starkest warning yet of the dangers of climate change.

Apparently the BBC decided to give undue coverage to the skeptics:

But in the BBC’s coverage of the report’s release in Stockholm, which was attended by several BBC science journalists, the voice of climate-change sceptics, who do not accept the IPCC’s core findings, got considerable airtime.

Complaints focused on the World at One programme on Radio 4 on Friday, which featured the Australian sceptic Bob Carter. A retired geologist, he leads a group called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, and is funded by US libertarians. His words also dominated several subsequent news bulletins.

Criticism immediately came from John Aston (the former top official on climate change in Britain’s Foreign Office), who said that the BBC’s coverage of the IPCC report was “a betrayal of the editorial professionalism on which the BBC’s reputation has been built over generations.” He added: “The BBC should now explain how its decision to give a platform to Carter serves the public interest. Otherwise, it will be undermining its friends when it needs them most and throwing the scavengers a piece of its own flesh.”

Jones also chimed in:

The biologist Steve Jones, who reviewed the BBC’s science output in 2011, told the Guardian he was concerned that the BBC was still wedded to an idea of “false balance” in presenting climate sceptics alongside reputable scientists.

He said: “This goes to the heart of science reporting – you wouldn’t have a homeopath speaking alongside a brain surgeon for balance, as that would be absurd. It’s just as absurd to have a climate sceptic for balance against the work of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists.”

And in this case, the BBC disregarded Jones’s recommendations. David Jordan, head of editorial standards of the BBC, told members of Parliament that Jones “made one recommendation that we did not take on board. He said we should regard climate change as settled. . . .we should not hear from dissenting voices on the science.” Jones denies this:

Jones told the Guardian that this was misquoting him; rather, he had recommended to the BBC not to show “false balance” by presenting climate sceptics as having equal scientific weight as mainstream climate researchers.

He said: “Science turns on evidence. Balance in science is not the same as balance in politics where politicians can have a voice however barmy their ideas are. They’re not taking this on board. Why, I don’t know.”

In response, the BBC defended its coverage:

The BBC responded: “[We] covered the IPCC report on climate change and its conclusions very fully on all outlets with analysis from our specialist journalists. The bulk of interviews on the subject were with climate scientists, many of whom had contributed to the IPCC report. We reject the suggestion that global warming sceptics were given too much time in our overall coverage of the IPCC report.

“As part of the BBC’s commitment to impartiality a small number of global warming sceptics were also interviewed. This is consistent with our response to the Jones report in which we said we would take care to reflect all viewpoints in the debate about the science and policy.”

But what does it mean to be “impartial”—to “reflect all viewpoints”—with respect to an overwhelming scientific consensus? When there’s a report on evolution, should the BBC present “a small number of creationists” to “reflect all viewpoints”?  The consensus on anthropogenic global warming is now so strong that it is no longer “impartiality” to pretend that they have credible alternative views. When the BBC presents an article on medical advances, should they allow homeopaths to weigh in? What about astrologers when there are programs on psychology? After all, astrologers and their followers are numerous, and have an alternative theory of human behavior—it’s guided by the configuration of stars and planets when you were born.

I didn’t hear the BBC show, so I can’t weigh in personally.  But there are so many critics of their coverage that one wonders if the Beeb (taking into account its sympathetic and erroneous portrayal of Rupert Sheldrake) has simply decided that the scientific issues are too hard for them to fathom.

But climate-change denialism is a far greater danger to our planet than is creationism. After all, creationism threatens science education in the U.S. and some countries in the Middle East. Global warming threatens the whole planet and all its species. Here the BBC has extra responsibility to get it right. The consequences of getting it wrong, and giving people false ideas about science, are extremely serious here.

The Beeb apparently didn’t get it right.  As Ashton noted,

“In particular, the World At One on Friday provided a stunning display of false balance when it devoted less airtime to IPCC scientists than it did to Bob Carter, a sceptic who is funded by a free-market lobby group in the US, the Heartland Institute. Carter was allowed to make a number of inaccurate and misleading statements unchallenged.”

“In science, those viewpoints that are supported by robust reasoning and evidence are accorded greater weight, but the BBC does not always reflect this.

“Listeners to the World At One on Friday would not have gathered that there is overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that it is driven by greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation. More than 99% of journal papers and all major scientific organisations around the world are part of this consensus.”

As a scientist, 99% is good enough for me.  Our ancestors probably developed extra wariness about weird noises and sounds in their environment, because the cost of getting it wrong, and thinking a predator was merely rustling leaves, was too high.  The situation is identical with global warming.  While the critics stall progress with their quibbling and pseudoscience, the earth is warming beyond repair. The global fitness will, like that of too complacent hominins, drop to zero.

The perils of “balanced” reporting

May 2, 2013 • 7:06 pm

by Greg Mayer

Curtis Brainard, editor of The Observatory, the Columbia Journalism Review‘s online science journalism section, has a nice article up tracing the role of the news media in encouraging and spreading anti-vaccination pseudoscience, including the role of the disgraced British physician Andrew Wakefield, and the fear mongering of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (The latter once wrote a piece for Salon, which Salon later deleted, in doing so decrying the fraud tainted “science” of those propagating ” the debunked, and dangerous, autism-vaccine link.”) He discusses the differing reactions and developments in the UK and the US, including how  anti-vaccine pseudoscience developed later in the US, and how some journalists built their careers around promoting pseudoscience.

One thing he notes is that “balanced” reporting seems to have helped encourage the spread of the bogus claims:

[T]he study [of journalistic coverage] raises the problem of “objectivity” in stories for which a preponderance of evidence is on one side of a “debate.” In such cases, “balanced” coverage can be irresponsible, because it suggests a controversy where none really exists. (Think climate change, and how such he-said-she-said coverage helped sustain the illusion of a genuine debate within the science community.)

Although Brainard did not mention it, I’m sure that WEIT readers will immediately see the parallels to coverage of creationism and “teach the controversy” campaigns. I once parodied such he said-she said coverage here at WEIT:

You’ve all read the kind of story that will have a line like, “Dr. Smith, a paleontologist at the natural history museum, said Triceratops had been extinct for more than 60 million years before the origin of man, while Dr. Jones from the institute said Triceratops had been ridden by men like horses until the recent worldwide flood drowned them all”.

I’m glad to see that media critics like Brainard are critiquing this type of reporting, and that many journalists are becoming aware of the dangers of “balance” when one side has nothing at all. Other previous posts on vaccines at WEIT here and here. For regular coverage of medical pseudoscience, see Orac’s Respectful Insolence, and Ben Goldacres’s Bad Science.

h/t Andrew Sullivan

Steve Pinker on how to write science

November 16, 2012 • 9:10 am

I have it on reliable authority that Steve Pinker’s next book will be on modern grammar and usage: a Pinkerian update of Strunk and White’s famous The Elements of Style (a book I wore out with frequent use, but learn from the lecture below is flawed). And Steve’s already giving talks about this book to come.

I would have thought that after finishing his 832-page monster, the superb book The Better Angels of our Nature, Steve would have taken a breather, but if you know him you’ll realize that’s not on—and it makes me envious! He’s a book-writing machine, but all his books are engaging and well written.

At any rate, Steve has previewed his book in a new talk, delivered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), called “A sense of style.”  You can see the 77 minute video here.

As the MIT site describes, this is “The first annual Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering lecture about communicating complex scientific and technological subjects clearly and engagingly in the series: ‘Communicating Science and Technology in the 21st Century’.”

And it’s a very good talk.  If you have students, show it to them; if you write yourself, watch it. It’s not just about communicating science—to both the public and our colleagues—but about how to write clearly on any nonfiction topic.

His emphasis is on the “classic style,” a style I’ve tried to achieve (without copying its adherents), and of which I first became aware (do not end sentences with prepositions!) by reading Richard Dawkins. Note how Steve compares Dawkins favorably with the world’s most opaque and infuriating academic writer, the postmodernist Judith Butler (see Martha Nussbaum’s magnificant takedown of Butler in The New Republic).

In that style, one paints tangible pictures for the reader but never condescends, and writes as if the text should be read aloud (the “conversational style”); those are valuable tips. Steve’s examples of good and bad prose are enlightening, and his delivery instantiates his own clear but personal style. But watch the video yourself; you won’t regret it.

A screenshot of one of his slides:

h/t: Chris

Big response to Bill Nye’s attack on creationism

August 29, 2012 • 10:13 am

Yesterday I posted Bill Nye’s anti-creationist “Big Think” video, and I didn’t expect it to be so controversial, particularly because it was on CNN and because I had supposed (without any evidence) that The Science Guy had dealt with evolution on his own show. And I didn’t realize that its location at the “religion” section of CNN would make it even more of a lightning rod.

Well, there were over 10.000 comments and tons of media attention. I didn’t realize just how big a deal The Science Guy really was. So CNN has just published an analysis of the comments, with blog co-editor Eric Marrapodi breaking them down into five groups. He gives an example of most of them, but I’ll let you go to the site see some of the lunacy. The indented parts are quotes from CNN.

1. Those using this controversy to bash religion. Atheists love the Internet, as we’ve chronicled on the Belief Blog. While they may be a small portion of the population, they seem to make up about half our commenters.  It was their chance to join with Nye and cheer him on.

I hope Marrapodi doesn’t include here those who say that creationism shouldn’t be fed to children because it’s nonsense based on an erroneous religious view. That’s not “religion-bashing”!  Were all of those “cheering Nye on” in this category? I’ve added a sixth category at the bottom.

2. Those who say wait a minute, being a creationist isn’t necessarily being anti-evolution. Lots of folks from the theistic evolution camp came out to say that believing God was involved doesn’t automatically make you anti-evolution.

Theistic evolutionists are creationists, pure and simple; they differ from straight fundamentalist creationists only in how much of life God was involved in creating, ranging from those who think God set the whole plan in motion, knowing it would culminate in that most awesome of species, US, to those who think that God tinkered with mutations to create the right species (see the philosophical work of Elliott Sober), to those who think that humans are set apart from other species because God inserted a soul in our lineage (that’s the official view of the Vatican).  That is being anti-evolution as scientists understand it, since we see evolution as a naturalistic process that has nothing to do with deities. Sadly, far more Americans are theistic evolutionists than naturalistic evolutionists: the proportions among all Americans are 38% to 16% respectively (40% are straight creationists, 6% are unsure). We have a long way to go.

3. Those who say that science is stupid and that young Earth creationism rules. Young Earth creationists, who believe the Earth is about 6,000 years old, appeared to be out in force in the comments.

Have a look at some of the comments supporting this view. Or rather, don’t. You already know what they say.

4. Those who say Nye should stick to his area of expertise.

This tweet was the most polite remark we could find on this subject. Other comments and tweets, not so much.

Greg: “Thanks Bill … but leave the teaching of my children to me. …”

Sorry, but Nye is an expert at teaching science, and parents aren’t.  And of course they’re teaching their kids fairy tales as well.

5. Those who say CNN is cooking up controversy where none exists. Lots of people suggested we were generating a story instead of covering one.

Yeah, right.  When The Science Guy speaks out against creationism when he hasn’t before, and in such strong terms, that is a story.  Not to mention that there is a continuing controversy in America about evolution, and a famous spokesman for science decided to take a stand.

But there’s one category missing, which I’ll add here:

6.  Those who say that Nye is right, and that creationism should not be taught in the schools, or to children at all!

It’s a measure of how strong Americans feel about evolution that even CNN’s postmortem report has 2,112 comments as I post this!  Have a look at some of them: many, like this one, make me weep for my country:

Doom

I feel it is everyone’s right to believe what they want. Free will. [JAC: LOL!] I believe in God. Regardless as to whether you believe in him or believe in evolution, I think that it is very arrogant for anyone to believe that they have all of the answers. On the one hand, evolutionists believe that it we came about by evolution, period. There is so much to this world that we are still discovering, to think that evolution is it, period, to me is assuming quite a bit. If you believe in God and the bible, it states that after Jesus comes again, there will be new scrolls opened, which also would mean we don’t know all of what God has in store for us. We might be amazed at the answers still to come if that is what you believe. Regardless, to act arrogant and to call those who believe in God as those believing in a myth is, to me, insulting and uneducated. You do not know for sure.