The idea that science is a “value-free” enterprise is deeply entrenched. “Under standard conditions, water boils at 100°C.” This and countless other facts about nature are mind-independent; that is, they do not depend on what you or I think or feel. And the procedures by which we discover such facts are available to and respected by a diverse public, man or woman, black or white, rich or poor. It may seem, then, that the activities and results of science are inherently insulated from racism, sexism, political agendas, financial interests, and other value-laden biases that permeate the larger social context. Some even vigorously insist on keeping values out of science.
Image copyright: GETTY IMAGESImage caption: Countries that have limited resources to monitor their volcanoes will benefit most
A UK-led team of scientists is rolling out a project to monitor every land volcano on Earth from space. Two satellites will routinely map the planet’s surface, looking for signs that might hint at a future eruption. They will watch for changes in the shape of the ground below them, enabling scientists to issue an early alert if a volcano appears restless.
In real science, numbers speak, and they talk through what is called a regression. Most people are familiar with the 2nd-grade bean plant experiment where you shine different amounts of light on different bean plants and measure the rate of growth. Y, the dependent variable, is the bean plant height, X, the independent variable, is the amount of sunlight allowed to reach the bean plant, m is the slope or rate of change of the bean plant per unit of light, and b is the constant, which in this case would be the starting height of the plants.
Top climate experts are admitting the science behind man-made global warming isn’t what has been claimed. We examine the astonishing new evidence getting scientists talking – serious numerical errors in the supposed ‘settled science’ of the greenhouse gas theory.
For this article we put under the microscope two key players from British meteorology, W. H. Dines & Lewis Fry Richardson. These are the men responsible for creating the mathematical algorithms that turned the greenhouse gas theory into the number form fed into modern computer models.
Many non-government organizations aim to inform the public, policymakers and scientists about a wide range of complex and important issues. But there are times when science takes a backseat to ideology. Perhaps nowhere is this more common than in the volatile landscape surrounding genetically modified foods and modern agriculture. Criticism of GMOs, and everything connected to them, has given rise to a host of organizations pushing messages that often lack scientific support. Here are 10 NGOs that often abandon the science behind genetic modification of food in favor of such ideology.
The Dutch toilet cleaner ‘WC-EEND’ (literally: ‘Toilet Duck’) aired a famous commercial in 1989 that had the slogan ‘We from WC-EEND advise… WC-EEND’. It is now a common saying in The Netherlands whenever someone gives an opinion that is clearly aligned with their self-interest. In this blog, I will examine the hypothesis that blogs are, on average, of higher quality than journal articles. Below, I present 5 arguments in favor of this hypothesis. [EDIT: I’m an experimental psychologist. Mileage of what you’ll read below may vary in other disciplines].
Whenever I visit scientists to discuss their research, there comes a moment when they say, with barely concealed pride: ‘Do you want a tour of the lab?’ It is invariably slightly touching — like Willy Wonka dying to show off his chocolate factory. I’m glad to accept, knowing what lies in store: shelves lined with bottles or reagents; gleaming, quartz-windowed cryogenic chambers; slabs of perforated steel holding lasers and lenses.
Bandages which can detect how a wound is healing and send messages back to doctors could be trialled within the next 12 months, scientists have said. The bandages would use real-time 5G technology to monitor what treatment is needed and also keep track of a patient’s activity levels. The work is being led by Swansea University’s Institute of Life Science.
In the latest in radical climate doomsaying, a new report warns that fossil fuel consumption will need to be reduced “below a quarter of primary energy supply by 2100” to avoid possibly disastrous effects on global temperatures.
Image copyright: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYImage caption: Bose-Einstein condensates are used to explore a wide range of fundamental questions in physics (not the apparatus used in the latest research)
Physicists have created a fluid with “negative mass”, which accelerates towards you when pushed. In the everyday world, when an object is pushed, it accelerates in the same direction as the force applied to it; this relationship is described by Isaac Newton’s Second Law of Motion.
The faint young Sun paradox describes the apparent contradiction between observations of liquid water early in the Earth’s history and the astrophysical expectation that the Sun‘s output would be only 70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} as intense during that epoch as it is during the modern epoch. The issue was raised by astronomers Carl Sagan and George Mullen in 1972.
The Science & Environmental Policy Project is an outstanding resource for those unwilling to bury their heads in the sand and blindly accept the notion that human-caused catastrophic global warming is settled science and must be the highest priority in allocating the world’s limited economic resources.
Some years ago German warmist climatologist Mojib Latif complained over our changing climate, reminding us how in Germany we used to get snow sometimes for Easter.
Well this year, in mid April, Easter is relatively late, and the forecast is now calling for snow to hit large parts of Europe as a low pressure system (OTTO) centered over the Baltic sea will pump polar air across the continent — thus ushering in a nasty and possibly protracted spell of winter.
Ageing in humans (and animals) can be seen as either an inevitable process of wear and tear or as an inherent biological programme by which the lifespan of each species is more or less predetermined. Recent research has shown that DNA methylation, an epigenetic modification which alters how DNA is read and expressed without altering the underlying sequence, can show age-related changes.
When humans begin to colonize the moon and Mars, they will need to be able to make everything from small tools to large buildings using the limited surrounding resources. Northwestern University’s Ramille Shah and her Tissue Engineering and Additive Manufacturing (TEAM) Laboratory have demonstrated the ability to 3D-print structures with simulants of Martian and lunar dust.
Two veteran NASA missions are providing new details about icy, ocean-bearing moons of Jupiter and Saturn, further heightening the scientific interest of these and other “ocean worlds” in our solar system and beyond. The findings are presented in papers published Thursday by researchers with NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn and Hubble Space Telescope.
