John Timmer, over at ars technica, has posted a great article about explaining science to the polarized US public. It is a summary of a few talks given at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Here are a few excerpts:
“most of the presenters advocated some sort of framing of scientific communications. The frames proposed, however, often seemed to run the risk of excluding some part of the large and diverse scientific community from the frame. The two that struck me as the most powerful, however, were the most inclusive. The first came from Barbara King, who advocated separating the communication of science completely from the communication of a belief system, so that discussion could focus on scientific models and their supportive data. The other was Steve Case’s presentation of scientific exploration as giving us a reason to feel optimistic for the future. ”
“Perhaps the best way to communicate science is simply to remind people about some basics of the scientific endeavor.”
At the end of my last entry, I started to ramble about the popularization of science. This article explores a few routes for delivering science to the public.
I couldn’t agree more with the last quote above, which also happens to be the last sentence of the article. The sole thing that bugs me about public knowledge of science, is that they don’t understand the scientific method. I don’t expect people to be able to draw out a flowchart with hypotheses and theories, but it is valuable to know a little bit about it. The most important thing about science is viewing it as a method as opposed to a body of knowledge.
I think that the media should use scientific notation. First of all, scientific notation should ditch the scientific tag. This just scares people away. Instead of using a “trillion”, 1012 is much clearer and is the best method we have for visualizing large numbers. Our minds aren’t good at this anyways, so we need all the help we can get.
Which notation would you prefer?
a) one billion
b) 1000000000
c) 109
The word ‘billion’ is too interchangeable with the other illions. Writing out all of the zeros is just tedious. Scientific notation clearly identifies the size of the number.
The media tosses millions, billions and trillion around like they are equal. They are far from it. To put it in perspective, a million seconds takes 11 days; a billion takes 32 years; and a trillion takes 317 centuries. The cost of the war in Iraq has passed the trillion dollar mark. If you made $10,000/sec, you would be a millionaire within 2 minutes, but it would take you over 3 years to make a trillion dollars. There is a big difference!
Nikon has produced a great site which helps visualize very small and very big numbers. Check it out.
Ok, I’m not actually getting a tattoo, but I’m pretty tempted after seeing the science tattoos flickr set. These are tattoos from the readers of The Loom. It’s always good to see people dedicated to science.
As a spicy food addict, the capsaicin tattoo is my favorite:
The most useful science tattoo was this human ruler:
Besides giving Hockey Canada a wake-up call, the Turino Olympics was also the public debut for a promising technology. The substance, d3o, is similar to silly puddy at rest, but instantly hardens on impact, thus creating flexible body armour. This material was incorporated into the ski suits of Canadian and American racers. It is created by the British based d3o labs.
There was a lot of hype about this product during the last Olympics, but news has died down. The wikipedia entry is lacking and is still considered a stub. I am guessing that this is because the product is still under heavy development and d3o labs does not want to release details until all of their patents are secured.
The best application of d3o that I can think of is a flexible laptop sleeve that hardens on impact (patent pending). It would be awesome!
d30 labs, where is my d3o laptop sleeve?????
Here is a video demonstrating the awesomeness of d30:
I have been aware of creationist museums existing in the states, which is scary but it doesn’t surprise me. Before today, I did not know that 28 exist worldwide, including 2 in Canada. Wikipedia has a list of them here.
In Alberta, the Texas of Canada, The Big Valley Creation Science Museum has recently opened its doors. They have displays set up just like a real museum and offer scientific evidence for creationism. I suggest you check their site out; it’s worth it for a good laugh.
Here is a selection of their evidence displays:
Ian Juby, an associate of the museum, says “Basically, we are pointing out that scientifically speaking, there is a lot of good evidence putting to a supernatural creation.” Yes, you did read that correctly. He used scientifically and supernatural in the same sentence.
Another quote, from a creationist museum display (via JacksRealm) says “According to God’s word, thorns came after Adam’s sin, about 6000 years ago, not millions of years ago. Since we have discovered thorns in the fossil record, along with dinosaurs and other plants and animals, they all must have lived at the same time as humans, after Adam’s sin.”
I think that I need to plan a road trip here just to see it for myself.
PS check out John Scalzi’s Creationist Museum Report. The laughs never end.
The mystery of Dr. Seuss’s green eggs and ham has now been debunked. The eggs weren’t rotten or coloured with food colouring; they just contained red cabbage juice. The pigment in red cabbage, an anthocyanin, has long been used as a simple pH detector much like litmus paper. Egg whites have a pH of around 9-10 and therefore change the color of the cabbage juice to green. Check out the video below of this being done.
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