Category Archives: Science
Unclear science
Scientific papers frequently have a line to this effect, often in the same syntax: “While we know X, why Y happens is unclear.” The papers then proceed to elucidate Y. Sometimes a paper comes along that makes you ask, “Unclear … Continue reading
Posted in Science
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A well-meaning manel is not a good panel
It’s time the good intentions of the organisers cease to matter. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science
Tagged history of science, manel, Meera Nanda, women in science, women in STEM
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What ‘The Kerala Story’ and ‘The Old Guard’ share
I was rewatching The Old Guard last week; the film is a bit of a favourite because a) Charlize Theron and b) it explores, even if in passing, the sometimes horrific terms on which science feels free to progress. But … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Culture, Science
Tagged Charlize Theron, Enthiran 2.0, fantasy films, Mersal, Mission Mangal, pseudoscience, science fiction, telomere extension, The Kerala Story, The Old Guard
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Can we ‘redistribute’ prestige?
Pudding.cool has a good visual essay on the yard-sale model of economics, which shows that wealth has a tendency to accumulate more in the hands of people who are already wealthier. This is because a richer person has more opportunities … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged affirmative action, Brian Skinner, econophysics, prestige bias, wealth redistribution, yard-sale model
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Gender equity in retractions
From the abstract of a fascinating study published in PLoS ONE on May 3, 2023: … this study investigated gender differences in authorship of retracted papers in biomedical sciences available on RetractionWatch. Among 35,635 biomedical articles retracted between 1970 and … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged ETH Zurich, Marcella Carollo, PLoS ONE, research misconduct, research papers, retraction, Retraction Watch, women in science, women in STEM
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Another reason to point lights down
‘Skyward light, wayward light’, this blog, December 14, 2022: One of the simplest ways [to prevent light pollution] is in fact to have no public lighting installation that casts light upward, into the sky, but keeps it all facing down. … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged light pollution, phototaxis
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Where do scientists communicate their work?
A group of Spanish researchers analysed the mentions of scientific papers authored by scientists (affiliated with Spain) on the social media, on Wikipedia, and on news outlets, blogs and policy documents to understand where the consumers of such scientific information … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm, Science
Tagged blogs, clinical medicine, Facebook, mathematics, science communication, scientific communication, social media, Twitter
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Who’s to blame for the American right’s distrust of science?
This study unambiguously suggests that scientific journals do the institution of science no favor when they insert themselves so directly in the political debate, especially at a time when trust in the scientific community continues to decline on the right … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged Ashis Nandy, burden of proof, Donald Trump, Laurie Penny, Nature Human Behaviour, political right, Politico, pseudoscience, reason of state, science and society, Scientific American, scientific debates
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AI v. our ability to build AI
A lot of this article, by Sean Ekins, Filippa Lentzos, Max Brackmann, and Cédric Invernizzi, published by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on March 24, makes good sense – except the following two sentences: Nature took millions of years to … Continue reading
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Tagged artificial intelligence, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, large language models, synthetic proteins
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Nature paper says bad news is good news
‘Negativity drives online news consumption’, Claire E. Robertson et al., Nature Human Behaviour, March 16, 2023: Here we analyse the effect of negative words on news consumption using a massive online dataset of viral news stories from Upworthy.com—a website that … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Scicomm, Science
Tagged bad news, disinformation, echo chambers, journalism, misinformation, Nature Human Behaviour, negative emotions, news consumption, Upworthy
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