November 2012
Image: Scientific American
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Gravity's Engines
We’ve long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end. Often billions of times more massive than the Sun, they...
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ANTISCIENCE ORIGINS
If Shawn Lawrence Otto wants to stop the antiscience movement in the U.S., as he describes in “America's Science Problem,” he needs to blame the people who are actually leading the movement. Otto's article makes the ludicrous claim that Democrats ignore science as well as Republicans. Yet while Otto cites numerous examples of Republican legislatures enacting antiscience laws and major Republican leaders pushing policies attacking established scientific facts, he can only counterbalance that with the weak assertion that a few unnamed Democrats fear cell phones and vaccines. (Indeed, the only politician he refers to publically making false statements about the dangers of vaccines is Republican Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.)
Incorrect claims that both parties are antiscience make the problem worse because they make people who want science-based policies feel like they have nowhere to turn. There is no doubt as to which is the only major American party advancing an agenda that rejects science.
Michael Campbell
Eudora, Kan.
Otto's critique of postmodernism as an antiscience philosophy suffers from some of the same ignorance that he attributes to it. It is not a unified ideology that preaches that truth is relative, as he describes, but a descriptive analysis of society since the 1960s (give or take) that can help us understand the antiscience forces Otto fears.
In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge in 1979, Jean-François Lyotard predicted that as information became more central to the economy, control and manipulation of that information would become more common. He specifically pointed to science as a force to prevent these self-reinforcing feedback loops and the control of information.
James D. Hastings
Berkeley, Calif.
I am appalled by Scientific American's editors' obvious bias toward President Barack Obama in their scoring of his and Governor Mitt Romney's answers to the ScienceDebate.org questions in the “Science in an Election Year” section of the article. On the space question alone, President Obama should have been marked much lower than the score of 3 he was given, considering that his stated goals for nasa are contradicted by his slashing of funding for the program. When I went to the Web page of the candidates' full responses. Governor Romney gave much more of an answer than President Obama.
Joshua McDonald
via e-mail
ADDING PREONS
“The Inner Life of Quarks,” by Don Lincoln, describes possible building blocks of quarks and leptons called preons. Lincoln summarizes Haim Harari and Michael A. Shupe's prescription for composing known particles from preons in the box “A Particle Cookbook,” which gives the preon content for a positron as three preons of a certain type (+ + +), for an electron as three of its antimatter companions (− − −) and for a photon as one of each (+ −).
There is a well-known, experimentally verified and reversible reaction in which an electron-positron pair annihilates into two photons. Yet according to the box, in terms of preons, this would mean there would be an extra photon. What gives?
Bill Karsh
via e-mail
LINCOLN REPLIES: On the face of it, the preon count doesn't seem to balance. Matter and antimatter preons, however, can annihilate each other. Thus, one of the + preons annihilates along with one of the − preons and returns to the vacuum. This leaves the correct number of preons to make the two observed photons.
QUANTUM DILEMMA
In “A New Enlightenment,” George Musser interprets research on the subject of quantum mechanics and the Prisoner's Dilemma scenario (in which two caught thieves will go to jail if both snitch or will go free if both stay mum, but if only one snitches, she will receive a reward, and the other will receive a maximum sentence). Musser indicates that quantum methods may help solve the dilemma if the prisoners can take particles entangled with each other into the interrogation.
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12 Comments
Add Comment99.9% of science is non-political. Also, science doesn't recognize borders...it's largely irrelevent what any Demo or Rep says about science...it doesn't effect what's happening in a lab in Shanghai.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRelativity is relativity..a carbon atom a carbon atom, etc. The social or political influence of that's happening in the USA is a thinning veneer.
Re 'which party'...guess which party advocates spending the most on an advanced military...the bulk of the USA's sciencific spending from chemistry to metallurgy to aeronautics to satelite technology to radiation to ....hint, it's not the Democrats.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReason and logic, the basis of the Scientific Method, are most at home in a republican form of government which is, inherently, based upon the same. Religious, political, social, and cultural movements which are inimical to the principles of a true republican form of government (for example Fascism, Nazism, Communism)reject both the principles of the Scientific Method and those of a true republican political state as inimical to their unjust means and ends.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs these authoritarian dogmas become politically dominant in any nation, including the USA, science,the scientific method, and republican principles will diminish in authority and prevalence.
Sounds like some people in
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds like some people in Washington are sailing perilously close to the edge of the Earth.
Guess what party believes in intelligent design? Hint its not the Democrats.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is about politics, not science. People who do not favor cap&trade even though they believe in AGW would not have much of a problem voting for a candidate who denies it. Likewise people who want equality in every single way between men and women no matter what science says wouldn't have much a problem voting for a candidate who denies the reality of biology and gender.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is all this talk about "the antiscience movement?" Where does such a movement exist that has any power whatsoever?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder if antiscience behavior is considered a hate crime.......
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat Is It?” by Ann Chin [Advances], asserted that “about 97 percent of Greenland's ice sheet melted” last summer. It should have stated that 97 percent of the surface of the ice sheet melted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt was not even that. 97 percent of the surface of the ice sheet had some surface melting. It did not all melt.
George Smith...great points. People over rate any suppresion of science. I tend to be a 'liberal' but am amused by most liberal denial of how socio biology excludes humans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArchimedes...true to an extent. However dogma didn't stop the Nazis from developing rocket technology or the Soviets being ion the cutting edge in my niche of geology. The Chinese are probably going to zoom ahead in human genetic engineering. Anti-democratic regimes stifle some science but also can clear away obstacles to fast track others.
It is not really an "Anti-Science' issue as much as it is an "Lazy Science" issue. I doubt that the vast majority of people in the US could accurately define what defines, comprises and constitutes real science. They are plainly ignorant of the type of mental discipline it takes to get to the bottom of something.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example:
1. If you think that consensus is relevant to science: FAIL
2. If you think that correlation proves causation: FAIL
3. If you think that a person or groups reputation, education, or qualifications decides whether something is scientifically valid: FAIL
4. If you think that politics, morality or values determine scientific validity: FAIL
5. If you think that computer models are scientific evidence: FAIL
6. If you believe that two totally contradictory outcomes provide solid evidence of your theory: FAIL
I'm sure there are many more examples, but I think I've made my point.
If the Pro-CAGWer's could develop and present arguments that didn't trip over any or all of the six points I've listed, I may take them seriously. Until then, I view them as nothing more than science wanna-be's who are too lazy to do their homework.
Science and truth are not the same thing.Science is the method by which you you collect the data the reviles facts that lead you to the truth of what you are researching.It isn't truth until someone replicates the outcome of the experiment.Even then the truth can remain elusive,as technology advances,what is truth today can be proven otherwise at a later date.This is why science must not be trapped by the dogma of truth.We must be able to change our view of the truth as the ability to collect data improves and thus not be trapped in the dogma of past beliefs.Change is hard and sometimes it is scientist's themselves that refuse to move forward and accept the facts that what they thought was true isn't.
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