The Mad Biologist, like 80% of ScienceBlogs, is mad at Chris Mooney: Here’s the problem: you keep coming to evolutionary biologists with a problem (the perception of evolutionary biology), and you don’t have a solution. Do you think there’s a single evolutionary biologist who is happy with public opinion regarding evolution and creationism? But you’re […]
Category: War On Science
A Flock of Dodos
Randy Olson’s movie A Flock of Dodos comes up again and again in the course of arguments about public communication of science, but I had never gotten around to seeing it. I finally put it on the Netflix queue, and ended up watching it last night. For those who have been living in caves and […]
A Pro-Science Film Festival: Why Not?
Over at Shifting Baselines, Randy Olson posts a comment suggesting how to combat anti-science movies like Expelled: You want to know how to start — why doesn’t somebody run a film festival for pro-evolution films? THAT is how you reach out to tap into new voices, new blood, new perspectives. THAT is what is desperately […]
Non-Dorky Poll: Political Documentaries
The release of Expelled has generated all sorts of chatter, almost certainly more than it deserves on its merits as a film. It’s also produced repeated mentions of the fact that it’s the eight highest-grossing political documentary of all time– most recently, Tara Smith writing at Correlations. That claim reminds me of a long-ago student […]
The Cost of Not Framing
In the comments to yesterday’s post about framing, Damian offers a long comment that doesn’t actually contradict anything I said, but re-frames it in terms more complimentary to the Dawkins/ Myers side of things. I may deal with some of what he says over there (probably not today, though, as I have a class to […]
The Framing Fracas
I really had intended for Tuesday’s dog pictures to be my only comment on the recent framing debacle (well, Monday’s expertise post was an oblique commentary on it, but nobody got that, which you can tell because the comments were civil and intelligent and interesting to read). But Chris Mooney is making a good-faith effort […]
Evolution of the Best
I’m sitting at the computer, reading blogs, when the dog comes up to me. “Hey, can I ask a question?” she says. “Sure, go ahead.” “What’s the deal with evolution?” “Evolution, huh? Well, I’m not a biologist, you understand, but the basic idea is that every creature we see today originated from simple creatures of […]
Colling: Not Crazy Enough
I have a good deal more synmpathy for the plight of religious scientists than most of my fellow ScienceBlogs bloggers. For example, I’m willing to believe that people can both have sincere religious faith and be practicing scientists, without assuming that they’re either brainwashed or evil. I really find myself feeling sorry for Richard Colling, […]
A Call for a Science Debate
Following on an article in Seed and an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, ScienceBloggers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum (of
Simple Answers to Complicated Questions
Dave Bacon watched “Judgement Day” last night, and has a question: It’s not like, you know, there aren’t people who think quantum theory is wrong or that quantum theory is somehow related to the Vedic teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. So why is it that quantum theory (which after all is “just a theory” wink, […]