What reader could resist clicking on a headline about a mad scientist trying to find women to carry Neanderthal clones? It sounds like something from the old supermarket tabloid the Weekly World News, but this latest whopper is loosely based on a real statement by a real scientist.
In his book,...
What reader could resist clicking on a headline about a mad scientist trying to find women to carry Neanderthal clones? It sounds like something from the old supermarket tabloid the Weekly World News, but this latest whopper is loosely based on a real statement by a real scientist.
In his book, Regenesis, written with Ed Regis, Harvard researcher George Church really did say that it might be possible to clone Neanderthal babies using the Neanderthal genome sequence reconstructed with synthetic biology. And the kicker: A cloned embryo of our extinct cousin could be gestated by an “adventurous” woman. (On the plus side, the first volunteer would be shoe-in to get her own reality show.)
There wasn’t much reaction at first. The statement was buried pretty deep in the book, which was something of a slog to read.
But then the German magazine...
On Jan. 4, I posted on an article in Science by Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele of the University of Wisconsin in which they prepared a...
On Jan. 4, I posted on an article in Science by Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele of the University of Wisconsin in which they prepared a balanced news report about nanotechnology and showed it to two groups of readers. One group saw civil comments; the other saw uncivil comments and name-calling. "Disturbingly, readers' interpretations of potential risks associated with the technology described in the news article differed significantly depending only on the tone of the manipulated reader comments posted with the story," they wrote.
The story did not get much pickup initially, but it has since ricocheted around the web, generating a lot of discussion that Gary Schwitzer has collected in a post...
What's the best way to give someone a raise? A $1,000 boost in salary, or an immediate $2,000 bonus?
Does coaching managers make them better? What's the best way to encourage employees to contribute to an IRA? How long should the line be at the cafeteria, and why? How much maternity leave is enough?...
What's the best way to give someone a raise? A $1,000 boost in salary, or an immediate $2,000 bonus?
Does coaching managers make them better? What's the best way to encourage employees to contribute to an IRA? How long should the line be at the cafeteria, and why? How much maternity leave is enough? What is the best way to maximize an employee's happiness?
And why is Google regularly ranked as the best place to work?
The answer: Because it pursues scientific answers to all of these questions.
In a piece entitled "The Happiness Machine" at Slate, Farhad Manjoo gets a good look inside Google to see how it works its magic with employees and their managers. He interviews the head of Google's People Operations, or POPS, a part of the...
Today's Science Times in The New York Times carries a new column of briefs, a recap of some of the past week's science news. The Week, as it's called, is...
Today's Science Times in The New York Times carries a new column of briefs, a recap of some of the past week's science news. The Week, as it's called, is written by Jennifer A. Kingson, whose Twitter account identifies her as a science editor at the Times.
In a brief intro, Kingson hints that she will skip the major stories of the week in favor of the "developments, from the quirky to the abstruse, [that] often make their way into the daily news cycle, depending on the strength of the research behind them. (Well, that’s how we judge them, anyway.)"
She quotes an anonymous colleague (why anonymous?) who said, "In a way, science is antithetical to everything that has to do with a newspaper...
A few things I chanced to spot this week:
--I've been arguing for more coverage of guns and gun control by science writers, and so I'm happy to see that Tom Avril at The Philadelphia Inquirer...
A few things I chanced to spot this week:
--I've been arguing for more coverage of guns and gun control by science writers, and so I'm happy to see that Tom Avril at The Philadelphia Inquirer has taken a look at the evidence for and against gun-control laws. In one sense, it's an easy story to write--because there isn't much evidence one way or the other, Avril reports. He explains why.
--The New York Times has at times seemed either confused or obsessed--or both--about yoga, as I've mentioned here and here. At the end of December, I finally gave the Times a thumbs-up for what I thought, for a change,...
When the Sunday New York Times ran a misleading headline followed by a superficial piece about evolutionary psychology, the Wall Street Journal responded by publishing a misleading headline followed by a superficial piece about evolutionary psychology.
The Times story ran under the headline...
When the Sunday New York Times ran a misleading headline followed by a superficial piece about evolutionary psychology, the Wall Street Journal responded by publishing a misleading headline followed by a superficial piece about evolutionary psychology.
The Times story ran under the headline, Darwin was Wrong About Dating and was the subject of an earlier Tracker post this week. The story, as I noted, wasn’t really about Darwin but was instead a poorly-supported, illogical attack on evolutionary psychology.
The WSJ headline, Grey Lady Dumps Darwin implies that the Times was supporting creationism. That’s just plain wrong. Some well-known...
Two billows of space travel news with one common thread - new partnership projects that should help cash-strapped NASA to keep generating headlines - kept space writers busy over the last two days or so. In one case an old partner, the European Space Agency, has agreed to help put together a mission around the moon...
Two billows of space travel news with one common thread - new partnership projects that should help cash-strapped NASA to keep generating headlines - kept space writers busy over the last two days or so. In one case an old partner, the European Space Agency, has agreed to help put together a mission around the moon and eventually perhaps beyond that with the Orion capsule and launcher that NASA has been nursing for several years. Second, a new collaboration with Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace may mean that an inflatable module originally designed as a free-orbiting rent-a-room may be hooked to the Int'l Space Station for extra lab quarters. Hotel man Robert Bigelow bought the basic idea off NASA's discard pile years ago. Maybe it'll go full circle.
Neither has the grandeur of an expedition to an asteroid or a laboratory on the Moon's far side, and has scant scientific promise, but each does give space junkies a diverting story to read. Neither...
Last week, about 40 members of the CNET.com editorial staff met at the CES trade show in Las Vegas to select the website's official Best of CES product. They chose the Dish Network's Hopper with Sling "because of innovative...
Last week, about 40 members of the CNET.com editorial staff met at the CES trade show in Las Vegas to select the website's official Best of CES product. They chose the Dish Network's Hopper with Sling "because of innovative features that push shows recorded on DVR to iPads," according to a post by CNET Reviews editor-in-chief Lindsey Turrentine.
When CNET's parent company, CBS, learned of the choice, it ordered CNET to withdraw the Dish Hopper from consideration, according to Turrentine. She reprinted the CBS statement, which read, in part, "The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp."
Was this a case of censorship by CBS to protect its...
The headline “Darwin was wrong about Dating” was an ill-conceived choice for the centerpiece story in the New York Times SundayReview section this week. The piece only...
The headline “Darwin was wrong about Dating” was an ill-conceived choice for the centerpiece story in the New York Times SundayReview section this week. The piece only includes a single Darwin quote and it’s not about dating. It’s the old line from The Descent of Man, often trotted out by creationists, in which Darwin says men are more “inventive” and women more “nurturing”.
The piece itself isn’t really about Darwin, who reportedly wasn’t much into the 19th century version of the dating scene. (He devoted his youth to his work and in his 30s decided to marry his cousin.)
Instead, the piece is about sex differences and a batch of newer studies suggesting men and women are more alike than scientists had assumed – especially when it comes to promiscuity and...
This week's gleanings:
--At On Science Blogs, Tabitha M. Powledge wraps 2012 with lists and lists of lists of top stories, medical developments, cardiology highlights, and neuroscience news. She looks...
This week's gleanings:
--At On Science Blogs, Tabitha M. Powledge wraps 2012 with lists and lists of lists of top stories, medical developments, cardiology highlights, and neuroscience news. She looks forward to the 2013 comet that might or might not be a once-in-a-civilization event, and she joins the rest of us in exhaling now that we know that even though the Mayans were cool, they were wrong about that end-of-the-world thing.
--Media Matters recaps Fox News reporting on what Fox commentators say were efforts by the government to manipulate climate data to arrive at the conclusion that 2012 was the hottest year on record. The data, one skeptic told Fox, was "meaningless garbage," a phrase meant to...
The whistleblower website Science Fraud has shut down under the threat of numerous legal actions.
The news was reported by Ivan Oransky at Retraction Watch...
The whistleblower website Science Fraud has shut down under the threat of numerous legal actions.
The news was reported by Ivan Oransky at Retraction Watch last week, and a day later the author of the anonymous site identified himself--he's Paul Brookes of the University of Rochester. In a post that has since been removed--but is quoted by Oransky--Brookes wrote, "Over the course of 6 months, we documented over 500 problematic images in over 300 publications, amounting to tens of millions of dollars in misappropriated research funds."
...
The New York Times is dismantling its environment desk and will assign its two editors and seven reporters to other departments, Katherine Bagley...
The New York Times is dismantling its environment desk and will assign its two editors and seven reporters to other departments, Katherine Bagley reports on InsideClimate News.
Andrew Revkin, the author of the Dot Earth blog at the Times, said on his Facebook page that he thought the paper was making a mistake:
I was never [a] fan of [a] standalone environment desk even when I worked for it. Creates a ghetto for the subject and reporters. Environment is not a beat. Environmental impacts are a result of human decisions and actions. I do think it's a mistake, however, to end position of environment EDITOR. More than ever, the paper...
Never one to miss a chance to suggest everything is all about me ... last week a writer and editor playing partner of mine and I hit a court near campus and came across old pal Geoff Marcy, whose Cal-professor hobby is astronomy and planet-finding, pursuing his heart's true calling. A tall guy named Robert,...
Never one to miss a chance to suggest everything is all about me ... last week a writer and editor playing partner of mine and I hit a court near campus and came across old pal Geoff Marcy, whose Cal-professor hobby is astronomy and planet-finding, pursuing his heart's true calling. A tall guy named Robert, from the law school, was running him from baseline to alley and back while blasting serves like bolides screaming in from the Oort cloud. Whenever I play Geoff he kills me. This was good theatre. Hey Geoff, I said, I hear you and the Kepler gang got baskets of other Earths almost ready to deliver. You just waiting on that third orbit to confirm full Goldilocks zone? Not enough sigmas yet? Or are they all huddled around little red dwarfs?
My wise guy exo-jargon exhausted I shut up. He said we already have them. Just wait.
Boy howdy. That didn't take long. A passel of papers this week at the American Astronomical Ass'n meeting in...
Let me be among the last to wonder how a national network okayed a program that manages to interview oceanographer Robert Ballard, no slacker when it comes to self-promotion and grandiosity, and jobs him. It takes his verbiage out of context and ratchets the bloviating right into cloud cuckoo land. And this by one...
Let me be among the last to wonder how a national network okayed a program that manages to interview oceanographer Robert Ballard, no slacker when it comes to self-promotion and grandiosity, and jobs him. It takes his verbiage out of context and ratchets the bloviating right into cloud cuckoo land. And this by one of the most distinguished foreign correspondents in broadcasting, Christianne Amanpour.
The program ran in December as Christmas loomed with the modest title Mysteries of the Bible: Proof of Noah's Ark? ;
My goodness. This was a terrible bait and switch. Many watchers surely never got past the bait to recognize the switch. Selective editing and overdrawn overlines lead one to think that the biblical flood, you know a flood that is like the one in Genesis that covered all the world and...
One suspects that within the lifetimes of most everybody under age 45 or so, a human being will orbit and perhaps set foot on Mars. My money is on private voyages for the restless, brave, and hyper-wealthy who might remain on our roasting planet 20 years or so from now and want to visit somewhere...
One suspects that within the lifetimes of most everybody under age 45 or so, a human being will orbit and perhaps set foot on Mars. My money is on private voyages for the restless, brave, and hyper-wealthy who might remain on our roasting planet 20 years or so from now and want to visit somewhere that's really cold. But, as measured by the behavior of news people paid to guess the public's interest in things, the very idea of such a trip strikes a deep and broadly shared chord.
The latest example is the broad covereage given to reports from a recent simulated Mars mission. The six 'crew' members, all men, spent 17 months confined in an interlocked barracks in Moscow, built in tubular fashion to evoke the shape that best holds pressurized air. Their two-way communications were subject to long delays, due to the transmission time lapse from real Earth to real Mars. They had to throw their trash out via space-lock type ports. They...
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