Heros

As you know from my earlier posts, one of my pet peeves is the lack of critical scientific thinking on the part of the vast majority of those that report in the media. They frequently report on the most sensational claims without comment or criticism and thereby either intentionally or out of ignorance give them credibility.

There are exceptions to this and for the record I would like to mention three people who are valiantly fighting the battle for truth and rational thinking.

The first is Steve Milloy. Steve writes the Junk Science column for Fox news and is always working to expose hypocrisy and inaccuracy in the mainstream science reporting and agenda driven "scientists" that misrepresent facts in support of their political or policy objectives.

Second hats off to John Stossel of ABC News. I love the way he debunks commonly held beliefs by simply reporting the facts and creating the proper context for them to be understood.

My third hero in my quest for truth and justice in science reporting is Michael Shermer who writes the Skeptic column in Scientific American.

I recommend them all and only wish we had many more.

About Me Photo

Just a quick note re the photo of yours truly that appears on this page. This was taken in 2005 on the back veranda of a restaurant on Santorini. For those of you that may not know the Greek island of Santorini is really what is left of the rim of a volcanic caldera that was formed after the last major eruption about 3600 years ago. The center of the caldera is still active and two newer smaller islands have been built in the center of the caldera since then. For anyone considering a visit the next major eruption is not expected for another 16,000 years or so.

Psuedo-scientific Scaremongering

Have you heard the latest! Get this. Two guys that live in Hawaii have sued in Federal court to slow down the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project pending further review of "safety" concerns that they have. The interesting thing is that the LHC is being built in Europe on the Swiss-French border. Apparently because the LHC's magnets were built by Fermilab in the US, these pseudo-scientific scaremongers are able to get a hearing on their suit in a US court.

The LHC is a major international science project that will allow physicists to expand their knowledge of the first moments of the universe, why some particles have mass and others don't, and perhaps provide supporting or contradictory evidence for the current standard model of elementary particles.

These two clowns in Hawaii are using the same tactic that the anti-nuclear nuts have used for many years in the US of raising red-herring safety concerns to delay projects indefinitely. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository is a classic example.

The sad part is that even though there is absolutely no evidence that these "safety concerns" are legit, our legal system seems unable or unwilling to cut these tactics off at the pass as frivolous and without merit. This seems to be a uniquely US problem. In no other industrialized nation can dopey doomsayers stand in the way of a project like the LHC that will have enormous value to the international scientific community.

The "Theory" of Evolution

I am always astounded at the scientific illiteracy of the general print and TV media. A case in point is that whenever one reads or hears about evolution it is always referred to as a theory. The implication being that perhaps there are other explanations - i.e. intelligent design and other creationist claptrap ideas - that may explain the flora and fauna of the Earth. Perhaps this is merely a sop to certain religious groups for whom anything other than a literal interpretation of the Bible is a threat to their faith, (in which case their faith must be pretty weak), but I suspect it has more to do with ignorance rather than any active promotion of alternative views.

Let me be perfectly clear. Evolution is not a theory. It is a scientific fact (facts are by the way the grist of science) well established in the biochemical (read DNA), fossil and anthropological record of the plant and animal species - up to and including homo sapiens - that have existed on this planet.

The reference to a "Theory" comes from a misunderstanding of Darwin's seminal work titled
"On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." The theory that Darwin postulates is not that evolution occurred, but rather that it occurred as a result of natural selection. The confusion comes from the tendency by those in the media and elsewhere to conflate the theory of how it happened with the fact of evolution.

No serious scientist questions the fact of evolution, but the reference to the "Theory" of Evolution continues to be quoted today.