Insecure enough to lie, but too secure to fire?

A common claim by science deniers is that scientists lie to keep their jobs. There’s a premise in that claim: that scientists are working in conditions where they can be easily dismissed. But a lot of scientists are tenured academics, which is supposed to remove the fear of arbitrary dismissals.

I wonder what the overlap is with people who would claim that the tenure system makes it far too hard for a scientist to get fired. I bet the overlap is large, and that they don’t see any contradiction between holding those two positions simultaneously.

The denial manual

Yesterday, my productivity was way down, because I was watching the Science Writing in the Age of Denial and the Experimental Biology conferences unfold on Twitter. Thanks to all who have been tweeting from them!

I was particularly interested in this “denial manual,” discussed by Sean B. Carroll in the former conference. It was taken from chiropractic attacks on vaccines, but you can see the exact same playbook at work in evolution, global warming, and so on.

1. Doubt the science.
2. Question scientists’ motives and integrity.
3. Emphasize disagreements.
4. Exaggerate potential harm of a position. For example, blame Nazis and WWII on acceptance of evolution.
5. Appeal to personal freedom. For example, use phrases like, “Nothing should be compulsory,” “teach balace,” “allow opt-out.
6. Argue that accepting the conclusions this would invalidate some key personal philosophy.

And that last one is the biggie. Evidence will only matter to someone who hasn’t dug in on that last point.

And, as if to demonstrate, a few climate change denialists found the #sciencedenial and #denialconf hashtags on Twitter. Among the first words they typed were accusations of some of those at the conference being liars and idiots – neatly showing how Point #2 above works.

Similarly, one hashtag got flooded with automated porn spambots. The switch to a second hashtag was seen as evidence of those at the conference not wanting to listen to arguments and “paranoia,” rather than not wanting to wade through irrelevant, automated tweets linking to pornography.

To get a glimpse of Point #5 in action, have a listen to Marc Morano on The Science Show. Morano says to Anna Rose (co-founder of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition):

You are the face of one of the greatest threats of our liberty, and that is intellectual, international bean-counters trying to control average people's lives because they think they know better how people should live, because people left to their own devices will somehow destroy the planet.

If you don't want to listen to Morano, you should listen to Ben Goldacre later in the clip, who has a memorable description of how frustrated he is with the climate debate.

A Storify of the first part of the Science Denial meeting can be found here and here.

Additional: Interesting. The Twitter stream for #denialconf was subject to another attack by porn bots today, at about the same time of day as yesterday. It certainly looks like a deliberate attack on the conference stream, not just happenstance.

As for whether yesterday’s switch to a new hashtag was refusal to engage, here’s a screen grab from today to give an idea of the level of tweets that led to the switch. Click to enlarge.

More additional: A nice blog post about where credibility comes from.

Flight of the dodo

Contrary to popular belief, dodos can fly.

They just have spectacularly bad luck in their flights suffering from looooooooong delays.

Yesterday, Randy Olson (blue shirt, above) was on our campus, talking about science, filmmaking, evolution and much more. He was here as part of a program by the Office of Graduate Studies.

We had hoped he would arrive on Tuesday to make the screening of Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, but he got stuck in Houston for almost an entire day. Ironically, he had been in San Antonio before that, and could have driven here faster than his flight turned out to be!

The audience reaction to Sizzle was very positive, and myself and my colleagues did a bit of discussion afterwards.

Randy and I finally met at a screening at Cine El Ray, where we saw a screening of Innocent Voices. There was a bit of discussion about both the movie and Randy’s work afterwards.

Wednesday was the big day, with a workshop with our Teaching Academy on communication, followed by viewing some student and university videos, an informal session, and finally a screening of Flock of Dodos.

In the Q&A after the screening, Randy talked a little bit about his next film project, which will feature what many people say is their favourite part of both Flock of Dodos and Sizzle:

Randy’s mom, Muffy Moose, now 87.

If you saw Flock of Dodos, you saw a little bit of the life history of Randy’s parents near the end of the movie. Muffy was born in the Philippines, met Randy’s father there, and was shipped out on the eve of the war, where she became a model. His father was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. The film will be about the history of the Philippines in World War II, viewed in part through Muffy’s experiences.

The working title is Muffy’s War.

The day for me ended with a geeky fanboy moment. I got my copies of Don’t Be Such A Scientist and Flock of Dodos signed.

Cosmic coincidence department: We learned that his cameraman on the highly-viewed Science Cheerleaders video (which I wrote about here), Brandon Garcia, was one of our students! He friends with several of the grad school staff, including Denisse Cantu (far left in top picture).

The Benshi, southern edition

He’s the man behind A Flock of Dodos, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, Don’t Be Such a Scientist, and my personal favourite, “The Consequences of Short-Distance Larval Dispersal in a Sessile Marine Invertebrate.” *

I’ve blogged about scientist / filmmaker / author Randy Olson quite a bit (see related links, below). Now, I'm pleased to say that Randy Olson, formerly known as Doctor Richard Randolph Olson, will be visiting The University of Texas-Pan American in April.

(I think the image here is supposed to tie into his film Sizzle. You know... hot.)

In addition to screening both his films and doing several workshops, he will be judging a video contest.

P.S.—Randy has a Bacon number of 2. I’ll get back to you on his Erdős–Bacon number.

Related posts

Promises versus trust
This blog don't have a video
Captain Green Mom Saves The Day!
Science Cheerleaders
Do you like me? Or any scientist?
Review: Don't Be Such a Scientist
Turning up the heat
SICB, day 2

* Although I also like, “Potential vs. realized larval dispersal: fish predation on larvae of the ascidian Lissoclinum patella (Gottschaldt)”.

Abusing scientists

The Guardian reports on just how much abuse is being thrown at climate scientists. It’s frightening. Here’s a small selection of things climate scientists have been told:

I was hoping I would see the news that you’d committed suicide. Do it, freak.

Go gargle razor blades.

Dear Communists, know that you will fail.

I think these sort of directed threats is going to have long-term knock-on effects on climate science, and maybe in other fields. A lot of students could look at this and think, “This is not what I want to sign up for.”

Preemptive strikes

I had a quick peek at Chris Mooney's paper, "Do scientist understand the public?" Worryingly, examples where he holds out where the relationship between the two seem to be working out reasonably were all cases were engagement occurred right at the start when the scientific information was just starting to trickle out.

In at least one of those cases (vaccination), there may have been no way for scientists to get out an engage in advance. Indeed, science had won. Vaccination was accepted as routine for decades. Then, panic emerged in the 1990s or so in various forms. And again, there's little discussion of how to deal with such flare-ups: "crisis communication" gets about half a paragraph.

Maybe those are good models. But it's still incredibly frustrating that they provide no insight on how to resolve issues where the science is as clear as it ever gets, and large numbers of nonscientists simply discount it. You know the issues: evolution, vaccination, climate change, etc. On subjects like these, Mooney all but throws in the towel:

Battle lines have hardened... and it may be far too late to “fix” the situation.

The word "fix" didn't need scare quotes in that sentence. The disconnect is a problem, and it does need to be fixed.

Additional: I rather like some of the commentary made by Evil Monkey here.

Why science loses in the short term (but usually wins in the long term)

Over the last few months, there has been much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about strategy and tactics over how to communicate with non-scientists, and how to regain public trust over issues like climate change. A good example of this was a recent email exchange between Matt Nisbet and Randy Olson.

Nisbet:

When scientists... take action by responding with tit-for-tat attacks on climate skeptics, it... feeds a downward spiral of “war” and conflict rhetoric that appears as just more ideological rancor to the wider public.

Olson:

There comes a point where the public DOES want to see the science community stand up for themselves.

People arguing that scientists are losing to denialists in areas like climate science because they have taken a poor approach to communication are perhaps mischaracterizing the problem. The problem of what approach scientists use to communicate with non-scientists is a real problem, but it is minuscule in these cases.

Scientists have to, you know, do science in addition to communication with non-scientists. Denialists, as far as I can tell, can devote 100% of their time to communication.

If scientists want to win, we need to find a way to support a dedicated crew of people whose job is to do nothing else but do public relations. Why don’t national academies and organizations for the advancement of science have full-time, professional communicators?

The only organization that I can think of that is even close to the sort of “think tank” person who seems to be so routinely called for media interviews is the National Center for Science Education. They do a heroic job, but there’s only sixteen people listed on staff, including some whose job is in no way related to science.

Allocation of resources is a major problem, and time is a 100% non-renewable resource. People who can devote time to that will, in the short term, win.

The good news may be that because scientists are responsible for generating new knowledge, that can help in the long term. Ultimately, denialists cannot create anything new.

Image from here.

A bad defense of two-sided science journalism

CBC journalist Stephen Strauss writes about a common complain from scientists: that when covering a science related story, journalists feel compelled to present “two sides” to an argument, even if one is crap, from a scientific point of view. Strauss writes:

I have a somewhat different take on the "other side" controversy. Part of the reason the media went looking for an opposite view on climate change was because two-sidedness was easy to convey.

On one side are most of the world's atmospheric scientists, who say that human-initiated emissions of greenhouse gases have started to seriously change the world's climate. On the other is a much smaller number of scientists who are saying that there is no evidence yet that humans are responsible for any of the slight warming we seem to have seen, and that future effects might not be so dire.

Participants in the debate can bring forward different amounts and examples of evidence, but there are definitely two sides to the issue.

Instead of defending this thread, though, Strauss then goes into a discussion of “wicked problems,” using cattle as an example. His example boils down to, “We know cattle produce greenhouse gasses, and there’s a lot of disagreement over how to manage that.”

And thus, Strauss misses the point entirely.

He confuses the small scale where the science is in progress with the large scale where the science is much more... emphatic, shall we say. (For I know I’ll get dog-piled, rightfully, if I say anything like “settled” or “certain.” Science doesn’t deal in certainties, and we must always admit when we could be wrong. Bring your evidence.)

The whole cattle story is something where I think it’s fair to say, the science is not settled. There are real difficulties in knowing what to do. I don’t think you’ll find scientists who are going to call such reporting “two sides” on a small scale issue a problem.

What irritates scientists so profoundly is the insistence on “two sides” on the big picture issues. In the case of climate change, the big picture are that climate is warming due to burning fossil fuels. Strauss does not appear to contend this point.

But it’s on reporting of this big picture where scientists get mad – where the expertise of people actually doing real science (collecting and analyzing data) is always sharing space with flat-out denialists: people from “think tanks” who either deny climate change is happening, or deny that fossil fuel burning is causing it, or deny that it’s a problem. Strauss need look no further than the comments to his article, where commenters have tossed around accusations of fraud and conspiracy by scientists.

By way of analogy, scientists contending that the earth is round get annoyed when the media brings in a flat-earther to show there are “two sides” to the story. Strauss would seem to justify the flat-earther presence by pointing out the difficulty in measuring exactly how much wider the Earth is around the equator than the poles.

Gentlemen scientists

Much has been written about the theft of emails from climate scientists and how bad they look when taken out of context. And oh yes, I agree that they look bad. Bad enough to provide fodder for The Daily Show.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Scientists Hide Global Warming Data
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Why these emails look so bad is that they play right into what is right at the heart of every anti-science campaign, whether it’s anti-evolution, anti-vaccine, anti-global warming, whatever: the conspiracy theory. Every time these groups attack a well-established scientific consensus, each of them fails miserably on the evidence, so each posits a conspiracy to explain their failure. Denialists are always trying to make claims about researchers’ motives, not evidence about nature.

I was reminded of this bit from a recent Ockham’s Razor.

For the previous 200 years, science had been the exclusive concern of wealthy gentlemen, who would have scorned payment for their work; gentlemen, by definition, did not work for money, so any form of compensation would have compromised their social standing. And the fact that they didn't need the money was part of the reason they were considered reliable and honest investigators of nature – they were disinterested. By contrast, those who sought to profit from their discoveries, like the alchemists of earlier times, had every incentive to falsify their results, conceal their knowledge and exaggerate their achievements. The gentlemen who formed Britain’s Royal Society in 1660, took pride in the fact that they received no funding from the state; their wealth and social status guaranteed the accuracy of their observations and the truthfulness of their claims.

There’s little doubt that as science has become a profession, where researchers are facing ever higher stakes to publish, there have been more incentives that people can use to question the motives of scientists. Not sure if there is any way that we as a profession can recreate some of that “gentlemanly disinterest” that characterized our predecessors?

External links

Ockham’s Razor: A Gunn and two Hookers

Being inconvenienced

In my more cynical moments, I’ve often thought that people will do anything to combat climate change... as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them.

To make a point about climate change, Lewis Pugh did something that must have been mighty inconvenient. He swam across the North Pole. Making that point cost him the feeling in his hands for four months.



As a scientist, I think a fair amount about climate change, even though my research isn’t about that. I’ve mostly discussed it here as an example of how it is that people can end up buying into bad science, the psychology of belief, skepticism and denialism, and so on.

But besides trying to convince people that climate change is true, how many scientists have actually changed their research or their lab to reduce carbon emissions? I haven’t. I’m not proud of that, but it’s true. I wish I knew how to lead on this issue, and have a “green” lab, but I’m not sure how that would be possible. Science is a very energy intensive endeavor. We constantly have administration fretting about the energy costs of our science building compared to other buildings on campus. Then there are the hundreds, if not thousands of miles researchers travel to go to conferences.

At some point, we scientists are not only going to have to talk the talk on climate change, we’re going to have to walk the walk. And I’m afraid it could be mighty inconvenient.

Related links: A Nature editorial about the importance of universities building energy efficient buildings; a letter to Nature about how applying for a job typically requires eleven (!) paper copies of records.

Review: Don’t Be Such a Scientist

Let me try to apply one of the suggestions in Don’t Be Such a Scientist and practice a little concision:

I love this book. I devoured it in one evening.

Whew. Now, I can go back to my normal science mode.

Randy Olson has been working in Hollywood for over a decade, but he’s still one of us. He gets what being an academic scientist does to you: you become literal, critical, and absolutely focused on destroying error – and it never goes away. He gets us. But he also gets how other people see us, and Olson has a message for us, his former colleagues: For other people, it’s not just about the data, guys.

Olson isn’t the first person to say that persuading non-scientists about the truth of things requires more persuasion than just evidence. This has not been a popular message, particularly among a lot of my fellow science bloggers.^* These kinds of messages get characterized as weak-kneed capitulation, compromising the truth.

For that reason, Olson will probably face his strongest criticism for suggesting that scientists not be unlikeable. It sounds a lot like admonitions of other writers never to offend, which has generated a growling response that there are some people that we scientists want to offend: the people who deal out lies, errors, and untruths.

Olson has not cracked that hard problem: how to communicate with those nice people who are just like you and me, except for a few beliefs that are divorced from reality. You know the ones: the creationists, the climate change deniers, the anti-vaccine campaigners, the moon landing conspiracy theorists, the birthers, and so on. Olson’s tips and suggestions won’t matter when dealing with those people, but that’s not Olson’s book. It’s a book that somebody needs to write – badly – but Olson’s approach shouldn’t be dismissed because of that. He’s pointing out that when you launch a full out assault on your enemies, you risk inflicting a lot of casualties on people who might have been on side.

Part of what convinced that Olson is on the right track were uncomfortable moments reading this book when you recognize yourself, and think, “Oh, damn, he’s right.”

For instance, Olson talks about how being an academic means being critical. We academics forget that even honest and correct criticism can be very deflating.

Have you ever walked out of a movie that you loved, and you’re replaying some of those favourite moments and lines in your head... and one of the people you’re with points out something that’s completely illogical? Do you happily respond to that honest and correct criticism, “Wow, I’m so glad you pointed that out!” If so, you’re a better person than me, because my response was an irritated, “That’s not the point.” ^**

And yet, we scientists are routinely praised for pointing out those annoying little untruths. On the very day I received my copy of Olson’s book, one of my blog posts was picked as an editor’s choice specifically because it was critical.

On that note, I don’t think it’s any accident that the words highlighted in the blurbs on the back are the ones that say how critical this book is. After all, this book is aimed at scientists and academics, so if you want their respect, you’ve got to show them that you’re criticizing! In fact, the tone here is very amiable and affable. The most critical sections of the book seem more exasperated than stinging.

On a similar note, Olson also talks about how scientists are extremely literal. Here again, you don’t have to look further than recent stuff on the blogosphere. The new film Creation is starting to get reviews, and here’s Eugenie Scott’s review on Panda’s Thumb.

As someone with a stake in how the public understands evolution and it’s most famous proponent, the bottom line for me was that the science be presented accurately. The second was that the story of Darwin’s life be presented accurately.

Her bottom line is not whether the movie has a good story, is emotionally powerful, well acted, or any of the other dozens of things that most people look for in a movie. Her bottom line is accuracy. Such a scientist. For many, looking for that first is missing the point of why they watch a movie.

Finally, Olson has something in common with Adam Savage. It’s not just that they do science-y stuff on film. MythBusters host Savage was quoted as saying recently:

I realized that my humiliation and good TV go hand in hand.

Olson is not afraid to make a point at his own expense. Don’t Be Such a Scientist starts with Olson on the receiving end of a truly terrifying bawling out by an acting teacher. Those four pages alone are near worth the price of admission, but it’s not the lowest or most embarrassing moment for Olson in the book. This is self deprecation taken to a new high, and it’s an illustration of one of Olson’s key tactics for communication: don’t “rise above,” as he puts it. In other words, don’t be high and mighty. Audiences tend not to like such people.^*** I’ve tried to avoid righteous indignation on this blog, there are occasions where I bet someone reading it thought, “Boy, is he full of himself.”

There is more about this book that I’d like to comment on and explore, but I’ll leave them for later. I’m teaching a class on biological writing this semester, and I hope I can bring some of the issues Olson raises into the class. Don’t Be Such a Scientist is a rich source of ideas, and I’ll be riffing off them for some time to come.

Reference

Olson, R. (2009). Don't Be Such a Scientist. Island Press, 1-216 ISBN: 9781597265638

* That Olson mentions the tenor at scienceblogs.com as something damaging rather than helpful... let’s say I’ll be interested to read the response.

** For me, the movie was Edward Scissorhands.

*** I do have to wonder what Olson makes of the success of House, a show that has a character that seems to violate almost single suggestion that Olson has. The character is unlikeable, always rising above...

Remember, she’s a science specialist

Here’s a revealing quote from Laura Clark, secondary science specialist for the Texas City public school district, quoted in the Galveston Country Daily News (emphasis added):

Global warming is more debated in Texas City classrooms than evolution, she said.

“It’s amazing how hotly it can get debated in class,” Clark said. “There are some students who believe the media and the government are trying to make it a bigger deal than it is and that they are trying to cause panic. Then there are other students who truly believe an increase in carbon dioxide in the air is breaking down the ozone layer ... We teach both sides, anyway — especially if it’s something controversial like that.”

Now, there are some ellipses in there, and it’s possible that she’s quoted out of context, but it sure looks like she’s saying that global warming is related to the ozone layer.

It isn’t.

And if she’s the instructor, indeed, a science specialist, I cringe.

The article has more to say about the recent Texas K-12 science standards and evolution, but this quote is a reminder that in many senses, the standards are less important than the teachers on the ground. And their knowledge of science and willingness to teach it is... variable.

Also this morning, an editorial in the Corpus Christi Caller:

The idea of having an elected body of citizens have a say in what is taught in public classrooms may be admirable on its face, but having that body in the hands of an ideological faction is not.

Texas Board of Eductation member speaks on science

This report on on of the members of the Texas State Board of Education doesn't deal with evolution directly, but has an interesting quote nonetheless (emphasis added):

Lowe said she guarantees she will turn down any book encouraging population removal or blaming global warming on the normal activities of everyday people.

“That’s another textbook that will be turned down by me — political agenda and not solid objective science,” she said.

What's in it for hyperskeptics?

I listen to lots of science radio on my iPod while I'm walking to work. Dr. Karl's phone in show on Triple J is an interesting case. When you listen on a regular basis, certain themes and questions emerge over the weeks. For instance, the question of "What would happen if you drilled a hole all the way through the Earth and dropped something down it?" is something that way more people are concerned about than I ever would have expected.

I'm interested that on a fairly routine basis, some listener has a go on climate change, expressing doubts about some aspect of the scientific consensus.

This puzzles me.

In understand why people dispute accepted science on medical issues. Their health or the health of loved ones are often at stake. That's a powerful motivator.

I understand why people dispute accepted science on evolution. It conflicts with some religious beliefs. That's a powerful motivator.

I understand why some people in the energy industry will dispute accepted science on climate change. They have vested interests and make their living from fossil fuels.

I don't understand why the average person on the street, so to speak, would feel compelled to dispute accepted science on climate change. What's in it for them? Which of their beliefs does man-made climate change challenge that compels them to "push back," so to speak?

Long live the scientific method

Chris Anderson provokes with an article titled, "The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete."

There's some interesting ideas, but the argument is based on a false premise.

This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear.

It's perhaps understandable that an outsider, a non-scientist would mistakenly believe this premise to be true: that there are massive amounts of data available for all scientific problems.

There are not.

There are only a few fields of science that generate large amounts of high-quality data. I'm thinking maybe some branches of physics (like nuclear physics, maybe astronomy), social sciences (demographic and census data, automatic tracking of web useage), and maybe genetic data for a select few animals (humans, mice, fruit flies, Arabidopsis).

These are the exceptions.

In most cases, scientists have to eke out by hand one experiment at a time. It's not automated, it's not massive, and it doesn't generate huge numbers. To take an example from my field, invertebrate neurobiology, there isn't really good agreement on how to describe neurons in such as way that they can be put into a searchable database (although the NeuronBank project is making an effort to at least think about that problem).

Anderson goes on to say:

There is now a better way. Petabytes allow us to say: "Correlation is enough." We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.

Scientific theories have three traditional virtues. Predict, control, explain. Massive datasets may indeed give us pretty good predictive power -- correlations often do. It may not give us control. And it certainly doesn't explain. We really need causal mechanisms to explain.

For instance, let's take climate change. If it were the case that massive data is all you need, there would seem to be no need for the ongoing debates about climate change. We have massive datasets there. And indeed, the scientific questions are supported by a large consensus. But people don't care that there's a correlation between carbon output and temperature change, they want to know if one is caused by the other. The policy decisions are very different depending on what your thinking of causal mechanisms are. Cause is king.

Make no mistake, automation changes things. But it doesn't change everything.

Get ready to sizzle

Way back in January after the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting, I mentioned Randy Olson had a film coming out called Sizzle. A website for the film is live now.

When in doubt, which is most of the time

I'd never heard about Miller-McCune magazine until just now, but they have an important article about how "doubt" is abused in public debates. It focuses on the well-documented strategy of the tobacco industry to pick at research findings that were bad for business: that is, smoking was bad for you.

"Eventually, the science wins," Michaels says. "But at what cost?"

Party of the jerks

There's a new talk by Al Gore on TED today. I found it very interesting, particularly the analyses of where climate change sits on the food chain of the media.

Then my eyes strayed down to the comments.

Wow.

You hear about terms like "culture war" bandied about, and sometimes you wonder, "How bad is it really?" And then you see the absolute opposition, catcalling, insults, and appeals to conspiracy and cultism in something like this. Which, I have to point out, is about a topic that isn't scientifically controversial.

I think maybe Jimmy Wales got it right. The real culture war isn't over politics: "It's between the party of the thoughtful and the party of the jerks."

In this age of comments, reviews, and all of that which is supposed to be part of Web 2.0, the maddening thing is how easy it is to be a jerk. To hop onto a site and give a one start review with a one line dismissal to a book you've never read. And it creates such a caustic environment. Who wants to stand in the middle of a yelling contest?

And as much as I want to be one of the people reaching out to talk about science and education and my profession, seeing the jerks in action make me worry of getting burned.

Additional: And this is why comments here are moderated, incidentally.

Hurt feelings? Are you kidding me?

This story is weird.

The Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council funded research on biofuels.

The research resulting from this came out in Science, about as high-profile and as prestigious as scientific research gets, indicating that biofuels made the carbon emission situation worse rather than better.

The organizations pull their funding.

Why?

"The university hurt the farmers' feelings, OK? That's probably the best way to say it," said Jim Palmer, executive director of the two groups.

Wow. Just... wow. "Kill the messenger," anyone?

There seems to be a misunderstanding about the difference between giving money to researchers and giving money to, say, PR firms. Researchers have the obligation to publish their results regardless who paid the money.

Can the people in these agencies not see how this kind of action would tempt researchers to do bad science? To withhold information? How taking this action makes them look even worse?

I'm totally gobsmacked. Again, just... wow.

New namesake?

I am in the process of buying a new car. I wanted to get something as fuel efficient as possible. So I'll be getting one of the first Smart fortwo cars released in the U.S. (pictured). These have been in Europe for a decade. I first became aware of Smart when I saw one on Top Gear. They described the Smart cars as being marketed as a "fashion accessory," but then road tested in Birtish back roads, and gave it a positive review as a sports car. I used to have an MG Midget, and it seemed to me that the Smart was sort of a spiritual descendant of the Midget.

How I wish I could go further. But I can't. The sad fact is, I can't afford a hybrid. I tried to buy one when I first moved to the U.S., and the bank wouldn't loan me the money, and I'm not in a much better position to buy one now.

The Zenn (left) is a fully electric car made in Canada, and its name means "zero emissions, no noise." Weirdly, it's very difficult to buy in Canada, as Rick Mercer discovered. It actually can be bought in many places in the U.S. -- but Texas isn't one of them. Sigh. But even if it was sold in Texas, I still couldn't buy one. Because I'm an apartment owner, I would have no place to plug it in.

Two things occurred to me about this. One is how dependent our choices are on available infrastructure. The second is how Canada -- and the northern states -- might have a huge advantage in moving to electric cars faster than someplace like the U.S. Canadians have been plugging in their cars forever. This amused people from more southern climes, who laughed at the electric plugs dangling from the radiator grille. because it gets so cold in winters that engine need block heaters to prevent them from freezing. Since Canada has at least some infrastructure that provides electricity for cars (at least places where people would park them for long period during winter), it might facilitate the influx of electric cars.

If politicians would just wise up and let them sell some.