Article: Readiness of America's biology teachers questioned

Data spanning 1987 to 2007 show changing demographics among public high school biology teachers. The workforce has become less experienced and has been destabilized by turnover, and biology teachers are more likely than other science teachers to work outside of their discipline.

I do not have enough personal knowledge about this. However, I do know that of the 6 people who teach biology at my high school, none teach all biology all the time. Four of the 6 teach biology related courses, while 2 teach other sciences. 

Bold-faced is mine. 

The authors support alternatives to the typical calls for more stringent certification and targeted professional development. In their view, it would be better to match curricula to existing expertise. They propose a model in which "instead of offering a static, predetermined slate of science courses at each school, district, or county, the curriculum is chosen largely as a function of the expertise of those teachers who they employ." 

Currently, curriculum is "top down" and controlled at the state and federal levels.

Actually having biology teachers teach their areas of expertise is a throw back to a previous, and long gone era.

Article: Is the Science Ever Settled? Theories, Hypotheses, and What Science Really Does

Exploring what the theory of evolution really says gives us a good example of what science really does.

The article sticks pretty close to evolution, although it is applicable to thinking about the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, as well.

As a believing Christian, I accept that God created the heavens and the earth. However, I recognize that the theory evolution, as described in this article and elaborated over the last 160 years, is a powerful and elegant explanation for the diversity and genetic relatedness of life on earth. (Other than, "That is how God made it; deal with it," that is.)

Article: Why Science is Never Settled

Article: Why Science is Never Settled – Part One

Article: Why Science is Never Settled – Part Two

These are apparently in the running for a nomination for the Hugo Award's "Best Related Work" category (that is, for non-fiction, science writing).

Article: Here's A Beautiful Visualization Of Nobel Prizes By Country Since 1901

To complement my earlier posting on this year's Prizes.

Article: Teacher fired after lab accident at school burns 4

A chemistry teacher has been fired after four students were burned, one seriously, when a fire erupted in a Denver high school chemistry laboratory while the teacher was conducting a demonstration with methanol, a school spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Some links about the demonstration:

A warning

Flynn Scientific video about doing it safely.

Given what the demonstrator says, it is obvious what can go wrong.

And finally, one version of the demonstration

Article: WARNING: wild extrapolation (a classification system for science news)

The Guardian (UK) has a great science section with articles, commentaries, and blogs. The science articles are generally well-written, informative, and unbiased. On the other hand, the paper is a very left-wing, British newspaper and web site. As such, some topics are very much biased. For example global warming is a fact, and anthropogenic climate change must be dealt with now (and dealt with by increasing government regulation, taxation, and subsidies).

This article is a fun read for people generally interested in the increasing flood of science articles.

Article: Where science is concerned, I must part company with some of our economists:
To transform our nation, we need to facilitate innovation in science on a scale we’ve never achieved. That’s too important to be left to chance, or to ‘market signals’

Ian Chubb is the "Chief Scientist" for Australia, a position he was appointed to by a Labor Party Prime Minister

It was fun to skim his editorial/commentary. He is obviously a socialist. The article itself is mostly bureaucratic waffle from a leftist point of view. What I am going to do is pull the "socialist-isms" out of article.

Let us start with the title:

"Transform." What? Is something so appalling wrong with Australia that it needs to be transformed? Tell us what it is. That might make a more interesting article than this one.

And why do you want to disparage your own country? What is so awful about it? Even that would make a more interesting read than this.

"Too important to left to chance or market forces." This is a slam on free-market or capitalist economies (not the same thing). Why is it "too important"? Because the enormous innovation that we have seen from the capitalist world, but not the socialist world, over the last century did not happen or was too puny?

I want an Australia that is more than just what is left after the economic trimmings work their way through the community’s digestive system. I want an Australia in which our economy is organised to support our aspiration and not to limit it.

"I want an Australia in which our economy is organized." The Marxist/Fascist/Communist/Fabian Society/Labor Party/Socialist dream of an "organized economy."  Every time the more extreme versions of it have been tried (the USSR and Maoist China), they have failed. Half-measures, such as in England and the EU, are failing.

I am happy to agree that our children would welcome a budget in decent shape.

I loathe being manipulated by a "for the children" appeal. If that is one of your best arguments, then you have lost.

I don’t think all our debts will be measured in dollar terms, however. 

Fiscal debt, a budget deficit, is not real debt. Real debt is something else. It appears to be air pollution.

There are other things our children should expect. 

Breathable air, for one. Oceans to swim in. Food that’s good to eat. The chance to raise a family and grow old. I seem to recall saying that a few times, too.

Ah, those you oppose are for bad air, bad oceans, bad food, forced celibacy and childlessness, and killing older people before they can "grow old."

I would be an idiot if I could not see science’s centrality to every challenge Australians face. 

No, you are an idiot because you claim to see something that is not there. How do want to apply "science" to the various challenges involving the Aborigines? Eugenics? DNA testing to determine who is a "real" Aborigine?

On one point, it strikes me that we can all agree. Science builds industries, boosts productivity and drives human progress. It is critical to national growth.

No, traditionally, industry paid for the science that gave them technology to build new things. Then the government got involved.

So science is awesome. So far, so good. Then we come to where the debate really lies today: the role of government in building science capability. It is here that I part company with some – although by no means all – of the economic commentariat.

Socialists see a government role for everything. Why not science? We have had 50 years of increasingly heavy-handed government intervention and we are in the state you are complaining about. The policies you have advocated have caused the problems you want your policies to fix.

And about those policies. Why do you think that 19th century, Marxist, "scientific socialism" (or even Labor Party, socialism-lite) will solve 21st century problems? You are an old-fashioned, backward-thinking, "apres-garde" reactionary.

There is a view in this country that too much thinking about the sort of Australia we want gets in the way of the “market signals” – the invisible rays that persuade 15 year olds to study physics, or not, that attract graduates into science teaching, or not; and convince the market to wear the risk of bold new ideas, or not.

OOOOH! "Invisible rays!" Your contempt for a free-market economy is obvious. The idea that "the invisible rays… persuade 15 year olds to study physics" is a straw dog logical fallacy. Only a socialist is stupid enough to argue that position.

Do you want to "convince the market to wear the risk of bold new ideas?" Cut taxes, if not across the board, then specifically for R&D budgets. But you would not be a socialist if you could abide reducing taxes for any purpose.

It adds up to the message that she’ll be right. And it would be an easy message for a chief scientist to sell – if it wasn’t contradicted by the evidence.

OK, do you have any evidence? Because if you do not, you just made a "proof by assertion" fallacy.

Yes, logic says Australian businesses have an incentive to innovate. 

"Logic says." Yes, but what does the Australian government say? Does it pursue policies freeing business from red-tape so that new companies can be created to force innovation in the older ones?

Red-tape protects existing companies. Cut it and innovation will happen, or the non-innovative companies will die. But you would  not be a socialist if you could abide reducing government regulations.

Three in five of them still say they don’t, while just one in five say that they have introduced new or significantly improved goods or services. 

Yes, it sounds like red-tape to me. A company that say it does not have to innovate is a company that is being protected by government regulation.

Yes, it makes sense to study a science at senior levels. Australian schools show a decline in the rates of participation in “science” subjects to close to the lowest level in 20 years.

OK, but why? Generally, people do what they are rewarded for doing. Over the last 20 years, what has changed about Australian government, society and schools to make STEM less rewarding? The Left has mostly taken over education at all levels (at least, this is true in the US). Maybe this has something to do with the problem.

We throw programme after policy into the mix, with no sense of how it all adds together to make a stronger Australia. 

Maybe that is the problem: "throw[ing] program after policy into the mix." If it was less of a problem before all that throwing, why do you think that MORE polices are going to help?

By-and-large, governments have found that rather than seeking to mandate conditions, they can and do help to create environments in which business, researchers and educators are able to perform at their best—in a cooperative and coordinated way.

Yes, by reducing taxes and regulations. By getting out of the way.

"Creating environments" certainly sounds better than "mandating." But again, the "mandating" was usually a policy of the left in the first place, how much are actually going to differ?

There is the lesson for us: top-performing stem economies are united not by their size or geography but by their capacity to organise then grasp their opportunities.

Dr. Scientist, how about data? Which countries? Which policies have been successful? Name one. And don't say things like "alternate energy sources." Anything can be "successful" if subsidized by enough government monies.

The US has been one of the "top-performing stem economies" and we don't do much organization.

Israel is, for it's size, the top-performing stem economy in the world. Why don't you look at they are doing and announce to the world that you are going to emulate them?

Oh, right, the loud-mouth Left/Labor Party in Australia hates Israel and would rather commit scientific suicide that emulate them.

I am old enough to remember when Japan was held up as a powerhouse economy that would over-take the US economy shortly, blah, blah, blah. They had great partnerships between their (near-monopoly) industries and government.

Nice, cozy, crony partnerships that kept the money flowing into politics. And for some reason, they are stagnate now.

The country that gave us the Sony Walkman now gives us "Hello Kitty."

13 Scientific Terms You Might Be Using Wrong

Article: 13 Scientific Terms You Might Be Using Wrong

Good article.

Meteor vs asteroid, theory, fossil, etc.

I do have one objection: the "birds are really dinosaurs" meme. No, they are not. It is cool to be able to say that birds are descended from dinosaurs. It has the "shiver" of being amazingly counter-intuitive.

On the other hand, it is like saying humans are really reptiles or amphibians or segmented worms or bacteria because, in theory, humans are descended from extinct organisms that were reptiles or amphibians or segmented worms or bacteria. We aren't. They aren't. Case closed.

Besides which, this has nothing to do with the rest of the article. It is like the author had a cool fact that he needed to say. 

Yellowstone, volcanoes, and fear

Article: Yellowstone National Park addresses rumors of earthquakes, eruptions, and evacuations

Bad news is more fun that good news.

Panic sells more than peace.

People are hard-wired to pay attention of danger.

People like being scared, when that which is feared is obviously not really dangerous: roller coaster rides, slightly too fast driving, spicy foods dares, etc.

On the other hand, when that which is feared is actually dangerous, people often switch from the truly fearful thing, and place the fear on something that is not likely to happen. This is a psychological defense mechanism. It is helpful for a short period of time. Longer, and it becomes maladaptive.

This same mechanism also explains why we, in the midst of a crisis, tend to blame our failures on others. In the short run, it is adaptive. In the long run, we have to take responsibility for our failures.

Islamic fundamentalism and it associated terrorism are truly fearful. However, many people went crazy about George W Bush instead (even the sufferers called it "Bush derangement syndrome') or about Christians ("The coming Christianist Theocracy!!!11!" They are going to outlaw tampons!!1!). [Both are actual outbursts of hysteria that occurred during the Bush Presidency.]

Global warming exploded as an issue in the aftermath of 9/11. Displacing fear from a real horror to an imagined, or at least a distant one, certainly explains some of the intense emotional reaction that surrounded global warming.

Yellowstone is an active caldera (so is the Bay of Naples, of which Vesuvius is a part). It is expected to "breath;" to go through times of expansion and contractions, swarms of earthquakes, etc.

And, for the time being, that is all that Yellowstone is doing.

Article: Stop the deluge of science research. The increasing pace of human discovery is a curse – we need to rethink what it means to publish the results of research

The Guardian is a UK newspaper with a hard-left viewpoint. Generally, they do "science" well. That is, their reporting is well-written, balanced, and clear on scientific breakthroughs, controversies, etc. I read their work on global warming/climate change knowing that they will be thoroughly in the "climate change" camp.

On the other hand, some of their opinion pieces are hilarious examples of whingeing (for Americans, that's whining), special interest pleading, misinformation peddling, inadequate research, and other specimens of lunacy. I have talked about two of the previously. This is not real goofy, but it has its moments.

For a start, not every publication is equal. When the author Theodore Sturgeon first invoked his famous law ("90% of everything is crap") he was talking about science fiction, but he could equally well have been talking about science. Estimates vary wildly, but probably between a quarter and a third of all research papers in the natural sciences go uncited. A much larger proportion is cited only by their own authors or by one or two others.

I, and many of my fellow MS students, had to "publish" our masters' research. Most of us also published at least the abstract to our master's degree research paper in another publication. Many science publications will publish the "proceedings" of a large-scale science meeting (we took over the Virginia Tech campus for a week one summer). The issue is filled with short summaries (or "abstracts") of all the papers presented, even if the "presentation" is one poster board in a room of them.

[And I hope, to God, mine is never cited.]

But, so what? Why is this a problem?

People have to start somewhere. And part of the purpose of publishing is to let people know what has been done.

How does anyone know which publication is a piece of "crap" beforehand? Or even for years afterwards? Gregor Mendel's foundational work on genetics was "lost" for over 20 years. Up until the moment someone recognized its worth, it was "a piece of crap." Nobel Prize winner, Barbara McClintock, was ignored for over 30 years before her work was recognized.

In general I am a supporter of open access, but subscription business models at least help to concentrate the minds of publishers on the poor souls trying to keep up with their journals.

This is a classic gatekeeper problem. The author supposes, or fantasizes, that an all-knowing gatekeeper will be able to weed out the useless and find the diamonds. There is a similar problem going on in science fiction right now. The SF gatekeepers are despairing that SF is a dying genre, while those who publishing independently are finding readers, and, for some, success. (As a side note, one of the largest boosters of SF gatekeeping publishes with the Guardian.)

As if this were not enough, proponents of open science (including me) are proposing that researchers should start publishing all of their work – complete with full data sets, comprehensive methods, negative results and "failed" experiments.

Agreed.

The only practical solution is to take a more differentiated approach to publishing the results of research. On one hand funders and employers should encourage scientists to issue smaller numbers of more significant research papers. This could be achieved by placing even greater emphasis on the impact of a researcher's very best work and less on their aggregate activity.

"Significant;" but again, who determines this?

...Less significant work should be a issued in a form that is simple, standardised and easy for computers to index, retrieve, merge and analyse. Humans would interact with them only when looking for aggregated information on very specific topics.

What would such a publication look like? I don't know exactly, but we can see signs in born-digital data publishing platforms...

I worked for a "biological information service" in the 1970's and 80's. We read abstracts and indexed the articles. Our work was both published in a bound form and also was digitized and available for computer retrieval even in that early and benighted period.

Article: We’re heading into a jobless future, no matter what the government does

Any article that presumes to predict the future always has to cherry pick trends and assume that they continue. The problem is that no trend continues forever. It is called the "fallacy of extrapolation." Examples are here and here.

This had been the basis for the global warming scare: The earth is warming. IF this trend continues, all life on earth will be destroyed (and, yes, that argument has been made, although not usually by a climate scientist.)

In his debate with me [the author], [futurist Ray] Kurzweil said: “Automation always eliminates more jobs than it creates if you only look at the circumstances narrowly surrounding the automation. That’s what the Luddites saw in the early 19th century in the textile industry in England. The new jobs came from increased prosperity and new industries that were not seen.” Kurzweil’s key argument was that just as we could not predict that types of jobs that were created, we can’t predict what is to come.

My feeling is that we will not have a jobless future. People who want to work will find work. The old and disabled will have their safety net. Drones who want to live off the gainful employment of others will do so.

The only solution that I see is a shrinking work week. We may perhaps be working for 10 to 20 hours a week instead of the 40 for which we do today. And with the prices of necessities and of what we today consider luxury goods dropping exponentially, we may not need the entire population to be working.

Currently, the price of necessities are going up. There is a massive amount of food inflation that is not being tracked because food was dropped from the cost-of-living index during the Bush administration.

On the other hand, the price of luxury goods have been dropping all during my lifetime. Fifty years ago, a home movie theater existed only in the homes of the very rich. And even they did not have movies on demand the way we do. A recent "factoid" that I read said something like, more photos were taken in 2013 than in the entire history of photography. Exotic cheeses and bean coffee are available everywhere.

...[A]t best we have another 10 to 15 years in which there is a role for humans. The number of available jobs will actually increase in the U.S. and Europe before it decreases.

An observation from the Star Trek universe. The people of the Federation had unlimited energy and replicators that could make all basic needs. People who wished to work, but did not want to work for the government, became entrepreneurs, travelers, craftsmen. One character was a wine maker, another ran a restaurant, still another was a tailor. A groundskeeper was a pivotal character. Exotic religions seem to have flourished.  These occupations generate work for others. Craft work will always be in demand.

Not to mistake Star Trek for reality.

However, I do think that a lot of people are hard-wired to be busy; the "what" of the busy-ness varies.

Tech people, as the article observes, will also always be in demand. And, until we get "holodoctors," the real thing, and nurses, etc., will also always be needed.

Article: Jet Engineer Designs a Saucepan That Boils Water Ridiculously Fast

The fins work by creating channels along the exterior of the pot that guide the flames further along its surface, keeping them akimbo to the pan and heating it more thoroughly.

The fins also transfer heat to the inside of the pot. That is the reverse of fins found on electronics which are trying to get rid of excess heat. 

The pan comes out in England, in August and will cost 100 pounds.

The current model will heat water 30% faster than ordinary pans. The prototype heated water in half the time it took an ordinary pan, but was neither practical nor esthetic.

Jupiter, Shoemaker-Levy 9, and cool science

Article: Take That, Jupiter! Planet's Great Comet Crash of 1994 Recalled

I was already teaching earth science when this happened. The local PBS channel had a "talking heads" panel consisting of both Shoemakers, Levy, and several other scientists. One of them was a man who studied Jupiter's atmosphere. The show was displaying pictures from, I believe, the Hubble Space Telescope.

The impacts were on a part of Jupiter turned away from the Earth. However, Jupiter was rotating towards the earth, so that the impact sites quickly turned into view.

The moderator had lead a lot of discussion with the Shoemakers and Levy when he turned to the atmospheric scientist and asked something like, "Has this answered any of the questions you have had about Jupiter's atmosphere?"

As I remember, he jumped up and said he was not as interested in the answers, but in the new questions the data he was getting was generating. As close as I can remember, he said, "Cool science always generates more questions."

For a scientist, questions are foundational. And for this one, they were where the fun was at.

The history of “scientist”

Article: The history of “scientist”

Like a lot of science words, "scientist" is made up. "Artist" was used as a model.

Dr. Melinda Baldwin runs through the history of the word. It was coined in England in1833 because people objected to what we now call "scientists" using the traditional word, "philosopher."

English scientists prefered "man of science" modeled on the respected title, "man of letters."

Americans accepted the term a lot faster.

Commentary article: ‘Scientist’: the evolving story of a word

IQ, Belief in God, and Atheism.

Define terms: Here: theists (or "believers") are people who believe in a personal god (that is, god, God, YHWH, Allah, etc.) Athesists do not. This does not include people who believe in "a universal spirit or higher power" or agnostics.

Article: Pew Survey: Scientists and Belief
http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/

According to the 2009 Pew Research Center poll , 83% of the general population believe in God, while 33% of scientists do. [Discussion of the beliefs of scientists is based on a survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which partnered with the Pew Research Center on the survey.]

Oddly enough, these numbers appear not to have shifted much over the past 100 years.

Biggest hit: Evangelical Protestants are 28% of the general public and 4% of scientists. My guess is that Biblical literalism is the biggest hang up. However, I've known 2 geologists that are creationists (small "c").

Second biggest hit: Richard Dawkins who claims that only 4% of scientists are believers.

Article: Of 10 highest IQ's on earth, at least 8 are Theists, at least 6 are Christians

These are people who have both publicly known high IQ's and who have made some statement about whether or not they are atheists. Because it is a somewhat self-selected group, it hard to tell how representative it is.

The list does not include Marilyn vos Savant. She was, at one point, considered to have the highest IQ at about 228. I was unable to find anything about her views except in a roundabout way. And from what little that indicates, I would hesitate to draw a conclusion about her beliefs.

Article: Mailvox: the distribution of atheist intelligence

Vox provides several charts derived from the 2012 General Social Survey. The distribution in IQ for theists follows a bell curve. That is, believers are found at all IQ's. Or, another way of putting it, for believers, IQ has no effect on belief.

On the other hand, atheism has a very different curve. Atheism is correlated with both high and low intelligence. That is, atheists tend to be concentrated at the extremes of intelligence. There are relatively few atheists in the normal range (IQ of 85-115).

Even still, because so many more people in the US are believers, there are 10X as many belivers at the high end of IQ than atheists. 

This amused me while playing around with the GSS. Of the dumbest strata of college graduates, nearly half, 46 percent, are atheists. That's twice as many as all types of theists combined. We finally have an explanation for the Richard Dawkins fans.

I used Google to try to find statistics about Mensa and religious affiliation. My Google-fu is poor, although I did find two sources, of unknown trustworthiness, each saying that about 45-50% of Mensa members are Christian and 2-3% are Jews. [Qualifications for Mensa include being in the top 2% of standardized intelligence tests.]

Students prefer jolt of pain than being made to sit and think

Article: Shocking but true: students prefer jolt of pain than being made to sit and think

This is interesting on all kinds of levels.

They did not explore what was motivating the people who shocked themselves, but did throw out some ideas: sensation/novelty seeking, boredom, curiosity, etc.

The self-shocking was spun as preferring punishment rather than boredom, but the shocks were so small as to be hardly called pain.

I teach. This is obviously true.

People do not know how to be silent or why. This is a general issue. However, I think the younger generation has very little experience with silence. I grew up in a time and place without constant music or TV or radio. I was "alone with my thoughts" a lot. It was and remains a very comfortable place for me.

Practicing silence and being alone with oneself is a disciple.

Additionally, I have learned a couple of different types of Christian meditation. Mostly, they involve being quiet before the Lord, letting my mind loose on a scripture verse or about Jesus.

CS Lewis, quoting George MacDonald in Screwtape Letter #22.

Heaven: 'the region where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence'. Lewis goes on to add that Hell is the kingdom of noise.

And the winner of Wikipedia's influence list is … an 18th century botanist. Hear hear

Article: And the winner of Wikipedia's influence list is … an 18th century botanist. Hear hear

I really admire Linnaeus; definitely a "personal hero." Binomial nomenclature isn't even obvious today as the answer to the question, "How do we name organisms in such a way that all scientists find useful?" And yet it was a simple, elegant, and powerful solution to the complicated naming schemes that pre-existed his.

His second, world-class accomplish was to invent the classification scheme, grouping like species together (Kingdom, phylum (or division for plants), class, etc.) The system was used successfully for over a century. Then Darwin came along and Linnaeus's groupings of "like species" became Darwin's "related species." "Like species" were alike because they were all related; that is, descended from a common ancestor. It was a powerful confirmation of Darwin's ideas. (And, yes, I am a Christian.)

As side notes: Google's algorithm has to be suspect. It misses both Jesus and Mohammed. Either one rates higher for "top influence." The previous version of the algorithm had Hitler, Madonna, and Michael Jackson on top. So it needs some work to reflect reality. Unless, of course, you define reality as a "21st century encyclopedia."

It is especially ironic because the word, "algorithm," is derived from an Arabic word, al-khuwarizmi, after an Islamic mathematician.

And the article gets his name wrong, calling him Carl Linnaeus. His original name was Karl von Linne. He gave himself a latinized, binomial name (just like he gave to plants), Carolus Linnaeus. I am not certain why Wikipedia gives his name as "Carl".