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Weiye Loh

Politics and self-confidence trump education on climate change - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...ucation-for-climate-change.ars

Politics Climate Science Education Climate Change

shared by Weiye Loh on 20 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • One set of polls, conducted by the University of New Hampshire, focused on a set of rural areas, including Alaska, the Gulf Coast, and Appalachia. These probably don't reflect the US as a whole, but the pollsters had about 9,500 respondents. The second, published in the The Sociological Quarterly, took advantage of a decade's worth of Earth Day polls conducted by Gallup.
  • Both surveys asked similar questions, however, including whether climate change has occurred and whether humans were likely to be the primary cause. The scientific community, including all the major scientific organizations that have issued statements on the matter, has said yes to both of these questions, and the authors interpret their findings in light of that.
  • The UNH poll shows that a strong majority—in the 80-90 percent range—accepts that climate change is happening. The Gallup polls explicitly asked about global warming and got lower percentages, although it still found that a majority of the US thinks the climate is changing. Those who label themselves conservatives, however, are notably less likely to even accept that basic point; less than half of them do, while the majority of liberals and independents do.
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  • Although there was widespread acceptance that climate change was occurring, Democrats were much more likely to ascribe it to human causes (margins ranged from 20 to 50 percent). Independents were somewhere in the middle. Among those who claimed to understand the topic well, the gap actually increased.
  • Republicans with a high degree of confidence in their knowledge of the climate were more likely to dismiss the scientific community's opinion; the highly confident Democrats were more likely to embrace it. The authors caution, however, that "The survey answers thus reflect self-confidence, which has an untested relation to knowledge."
  • The people working with Gallup data performed the same analysis, and found precisely the same thing: the more registered Republicans and those who describe themselves as conservatives thought they knew about anthropogenic climate change, the less likely they were to accept the evidence for it. For Democrats and independents, the opposite was true (same for self-styled moderates and liberals). This group also did a slightly different check, and broke out opinions on global warming based on education and political leanings. For Democrats and independents, increased education boosted their readiness to accept the scientific community's conclusions. For self-styled conservatives, education had almost no effect (it gave a slight boost in registered Republicans).
  • Because this group had temporal data, they could track the progression of this liberal/conservative gap. It existed back in the first year they had data, 2001, but the gap was relatively stable until about 2008. At that point, acceptance among conservatives plunged, leading to the current gap of over 40 percentage points (up from less than 20) between these groups.
  • Both groups also come to similar conclusions about why this gap has developed. The piece in The Sociological Quarterly is appropriately sociological, suggesting that modernizing forces have compelled most societies to deal with the "negative consequences of industrial capitalism," such as pollution. Climate change, for these authors, is a case where the elites of conservative politics have convinced their followers to protect capitalism from any negative associations.
  • The UNH group takes a more nuanced, psychological view of matters. "'Biased assimilation' has been demonstrated in experiments that find people reject information about the existence of a problem if they object to its possible solutions," they note, before later stating that many appear to be "basing their beliefs about science and physical reality on what they thought would be the political implications if human-caused climate change were true."
  • neither group offers a satisfying solution. The sociologists simply warn that the culture wars have reached potentially dangerous proportions when it comes to climate science, while the group from New Hampshire suggests we might have to wait until an unambiguous consequence, like the loss of Arctic ice in the summer, for some segments of society to come around.
  • Weiye Loh on 20 Apr 11
     
    when it comes to climate change, politics dominates, eclipsing self-assessed knowledge and general education. In fact, it appears that your political persuasion might determine whether an education will make you more or less likely to believe the scientific community.
Weiye Loh

Effective media reporting of sea level rise projections: 1989-2009 - 0 views

iopscience.iop.org/...014004

Journalism Climate Science Sea Level

shared by Weiye Loh on 26 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 26 Feb 11
     
    In the mass media, sea level rise is commonly associated with the impacts of climate change due to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases. As this issue garners ongoing international policy attention, segments of the scientific community have expressed unease about how this has been covered by mass media. Therefore, this study examines how sea level rise projections-in IPCC Assessment Reports and a sample of the scientific literature-have been represented in seven prominent United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) newspapers over the past two decades. The research found that-with few exceptions-journalists have accurately portrayed scientific research on sea level rise projections to 2100. Moreover, while coverage has predictably increased in the past 20 years, journalists have paid particular attention to the issue in years when an IPCC report is released or when major international negotiations take place, rather than when direct research is completed and specific projections are published. We reason that the combination of these factors has contributed to a perceived problem in the sea level rise reporting by the scientific community, although systematic empirical research shows none. In this contemporary high-stakes, high-profile and highly politicized arena of climate science and policy interactions, such results mark a particular bright spot in media representations of climate change. These findings can also contribute to more measured considerations of climate impacts and policy action at a critical juncture of international negotiations and everyday decision-making associated with the causes and consequences of climate change.
Weiye Loh

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Full Comments to the Guardian - 0 views

rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/...full-comments-to-guardian.html

Libel Climate Science Academic Journal Academic Research Politics

shared by Weiye Loh on 25 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • The Guardian has an good article today on a threatened libel suit under UK law against Gavin Schmidt, a NASA researcher who blogs at Real Climate, by the publishers of the journal Energy and Environment. 
  • Here are my full comments to the reporter for the Guardian, who was following up on Gavin's reference to comments I had made a while back about my experiences with E&E:
  • In 2000, we published a really excellent paper (in my opinion) in E&E in that has stood the test of time: Pielke, Jr., R. A., R. Klein, and D. Sarewitz (2000), Turning the big knob: An evaluation of the use of energy policy to modulate future climate impacts. Energy and Environment 2:255-276. http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-250-2000.07.pdf You'll see that paper was in only the second year of the journal, and we were obviously invited to submit a year or so before that. It was our expectation at the time that the journal would soon be ISI listed and it would become like any other academic journal. So why not publish in E&E?
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  • That paper, like a lot of research, required a lot of effort.  So it was very disappointing to E&E in the years that followed identify itself as an outlet for alternative perspectives on the climate issue. It has published a number of low-quality papers and a high number of opinion pieces, and as far as I know it never did get ISI listed.
  • Boehmer-Christiansen's quote about following her political agenda in running the journal is one that I also have cited on numerous occasions as an example of the pathological politicization of science. In this case the editor's political agenda has clearly undermined the legitimacy of the outlet.  So if I had a time machine I'd go back and submit our paper elsewhere!
  • A consequence of the politicization of E&E is that any paper published there is subsequently ignored by the broader scientific community. In some cases perhaps that is justified, but I would argue that it provided a convenient excuse to ignore our paper on that basis alone, and not on the merits of its analysis. So the politicization of E&E enables a like response from its critics, which many have taken full advantage of. For outside observers of climate science this action and response together give the impression that scientific studies can be evaluated simply according to non-scientific criteria, which ironically undermines all of science, not just E&E.  The politicization of the peer review process is problematic regardless of who is doing the politicization because it more readily allows for political judgments to substitute for judgments of the scientific merit of specific arguments.  An irony here of course is that the East Anglia emails revealed a desire to (and some would say success in) politicize the peer review process, which I discuss in The Climate Fix.
  • For my part, in 2007 I published a follow on paper to the 2000 E&E paper that applied and extended a similar methodology.  This paper passed peer review in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Pielke, Jr., R. A. (2007), Future economic damage from tropical cyclones: sensitivities to societal and climate changes. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 365 (1860) 2717-2729 http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2517-2007.14.pdf
  • Over the long run I am confident that good ideas will win out over bad ideas, but without care to the legitimacy of our science institutions -- including journals and peer review -- that long run will be a little longer.
Weiye Loh

Skepticblog » Kirsten Sanford - 0 views

skepticblog.org/sanford

Science News Newspaper objectivity Bias Representation Fairness

shared by Weiye Loh on 24 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • This Sunday before game-time you might want to set your Tivos to record Dateline. This week, supposedly, Matt Lauer interviews Dr. Andrew Wakefield and several other affiliates of the Thoughtful House Center for Children, along with Dr. Paul Offit and journalist Brian Deer.
  • Please, Matt… don’t go Jenny McCarthy on us. Don’t do the usual journalistic job of being “fair-and-balanced”. This is not a “he said, she said” issue. This is science. Do tell the world what the science supports.
  • Depending on how this major media outlet writes the script, it could either be a major affirmation of what many within the science community already know, or it could increase the divide between anti-vax’ers and science.
Weiye Loh

Climate Researchers Urged To Use 'Plain Language' - Science News - redOrbit - 0 views

www.redorbit.com/...rs_urged_to_use_plain_language

Climate Science Science Communication

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 May 11 - No Cached
  • James White of the University of Colorado at Boulder told fellow researchers to use plain language when describing their research to a general audience. Focusing on the reports technical details could obscure the basic science. To put it bluntly, “if you put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it will get warmer,” he said. US climate scientist Robert Corell said it was pertinent to try to reach out to all members of society to spread awareness of Arctic melt and the impact it has on the whole world. “Stop speaking in code. Rather than 'anthropogenic,' you could say 'human caused,” Corell said at the conference of nearly 400 scientists.
Weiye Loh

Climate change communication: "It's a symphony, not a solo!" | Climate Reality - 0 views

climaterealityproject.org/...tion-its-a-symphony-not-a-solo

Climate Science Science Communication

shared by Weiye Loh on 26 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Climate change has become such a polarizing issue (at least in some areas of the world) that it’s not always just the cold hard facts that count. In fact, research shows that many of us formulate our opinions on climate change not based on scientific evidence but based on our values. We take whatever position is most in line with and least threatening to our identity. Then — once we’ve firmly planted our feet — we look for arguments to help us defend whatever stance we’ve already taken.
  • we’ll have to show that there is no such thing as a stereotypical climate crusader. We need more people like Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian climate scientist, and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral David Titley to speak up. They show us that caring about climate change doesn’t have to be threatening to those with certain religious or political beliefs. It’s important, of course, for all of us concerned about climate change to be prepared to push back on the misleading claims of climate change deniers (or, to “win the conversation”). But generally speaking, we should attempt to approach our conversations on climate change in depolarizing, inviting and inclusive ways.
  • Weiye Loh on 26 Sep 11
     
    Those who study climate change communication say a multiplicity of voices is exactly what we need. The more cacophonous the symphony, the better! And here's why …
Weiye Loh

Times Higher Education - Unconventional thinkers or recklessly dangerous minds? - 0 views

www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp

HIV_AIDS Science Academic Freedom

shared by Weiye Loh on 06 May 10 - Cached
  • The origin of Aids denialism lies with one man. Peter Duesberg has spent the whole of his academic career at the University of California, Berkeley. In the 1970s he performed groundbreaking work that helped show how mutated genes cause cancer, an insight that earned him a well-deserved international reputation.
  • in the early 1980s, something changed. Duesberg attempted to refute his own theories, claiming that it was not mutated genes but rather environmental toxins that are cancer's true cause. He dismissed the studies of other researchers who had furthered his original work. Then, in 1987, he published a paper that extended his new train of thought to Aids.
  • Initially many scientists were open to Duesberg's ideas. But as evidence linking HIV to Aids mounted - crucially the observation that ARVs brought Aids sufferers who were on the brink of death back to life - the vast majority concluded that the debate was over. Nonetheless, Duesberg persisted with his arguments, and in doing so attracted a cabal of supporters
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  • In 1999, denialism secured its highest-profile advocate: Thabo Mbeki, who was then president of South Africa. Having studied denialist literature, Mbeki decided that the consensus on Aids sounded too much like a "biblical absolute truth" that couldn't be questioned. The following year he set up a panel of advisers, nearly half of whom were Aids denialists, including Duesberg. The resultant health policies cut funding for clinics distributing ARVs, withheld donor medication and blocked international aid grants. Meanwhile, Mbeki's health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, promoted the use of alternative Aids remedies, such as beetroot and garlic.
  • In 2007, Nicoli Nattrass, an economist and director of the Aids and Society Research Unit at the University of Cape Town, estimated that, between 1999 and 2007, Mbeki's Aids denialist policies led to more than 340,000 premature deaths. Later, scientists Max Essex, Pride Chigwedere and other colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health arrived at a similar figure.
  • "I don't think it's hyperbole to say the (Mbeki regime's) Aids policies do not fall short of a crime against humanity," says Kalichman. "The science behind these medications was irrefutable, and yet they chose to buy into pseudoscience and withhold life-prolonging, if not life-saving, medications from the population. I just don't think there's any question that it should be looked into and investigated."
  • In fairness, there was a reason to have faint doubts about HIV treatment in the early days of Mbeki's rule.
  • some individual cases had raised questions about their reliability on mass rollout. In 2002, for example, Sarah Hlalele, a South African HIV patient and activist from a settlement background, died from "lactic acidosis", a side-effect of her drugs combination. Today doctors know enough about mixing ARVs not to make the same mistake, but at the time her death terrified the medical community.
  • any trial would be futile because of the uncertainties over ARVs that existed during Mbeki's tenure and the fact that others in Mbeki's government went along with his views (although they have since renounced them). "Mbeki was wrong, but propositions we had established then weren't as incontestably established as they are now ... So I think these calls (for genocide charges or criminal trials) are misguided, and I think they're a sideshow, and I don't support them."
  • Regardless of the culpability of politicians, the question remains whether scientists themselves should be allowed to promote views that go wildly against the mainstream consensus. The history of science is littered with offbeat ideas that were ridiculed by the scientific communities of the time. Most of these ideas missed the textbooks and went straight into the waste-paper basket, but a few - continental drift, the germ basis of disease or the Earth's orbit around the Sun, for instance - ultimately proved to be worth more than the paper they were written on. In science, many would argue, freedom of expression is too important to throw away.
  • Such an issue is engulfing the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses. Last year the journal, which is not peer reviewed, published a paper by Duesberg and others claiming that the South African Aids death-toll estimates were inflated, while reiterating the argument that there is "no proof that HIV causes Aids". That prompted several Aids scientists to complain to Elsevier, which responded by retracting the paper and asking the journal's editor, Bruce Charlton, to implement a system of peer review. Having refused to change the editorial policy, Charlton faces the sack
  • There are people who would like the journal to keep its current format and continue accepting controversial papers, but for Aids scientists, Duesberg's paper was a step too far. Although it was deleted from both the journal's website and the Medline database, its existence elsewhere on the internet drove Chigwedere and Essex to publish a peer-reviewed rebuttal earlier this year in AIDS and Behavior, lest any readers be "hoodwinked" into thinking there was genuine debate about the causes of Aids.
  • Duesberg believes he is being "censored", although he has found other outlets. In 1991, he helped form "The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/Aids Hypothesis" - now called Rethinking Aids, or simply The Group - to publicise denialist information. Backed by his Berkeley credentials, he regularly promotes his views in media articles and films. Meanwhile, his closest collaborator, David Rasnick, tells "anyone who asks" that "HIV drugs do more harm than good".
  • "Is academic freedom such a precious concept that scientists can hide behind it while betraying the public so blatantly?" asked John Moore, an Aids scientist at Cornell University, on a South African health news website last year. Moore suggested that universities could put in place a "post-tenure review" system to ensure that their researchers act within accepted bounds of scientific practice. "When the facts are so solidly against views that kill people, there must be a price to pay," he added.
  • Now it seems Duesberg may have to pay that price since it emerged last month that his withdrawn paper has led to an investigation at Berkeley for misconduct. Yet for many in the field, chasing fellow scientists comes second to dealing with the Aids pandemic.
  • Weiye Loh on 06 May 10
     
    6 May 2010 Aids denialism is estimated to have killed many thousands. Jon Cartwright asks if scientists should be held accountable, while overleaf Bruce Charlton defends his decision to publish the work of an Aids sceptic, which sparked a row that has led to his being sacked and his journal abandoning its raison d'etre: presenting controversial ideas for scientific debate
Weiye Loh

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: ClimateWire Correction Request - 0 views

rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/...tewire-correction-request.html

Science Communication Journalism

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Dear Debra- Your article today contains several major errors in its reporting of the WSJ conference last week. 1. I did not say that the IPCC Himalayan glacier error was "egregious".  I used that term to refer to the IPCC inclusion of a graph on disaster costs and climate change. 2. I did not say or imply (nor do I believe) that the glacier error or UEA emails "cast a shadow on the entire body of research showing evidence of anthropogenic climate change." I did say that the institutions of climate science were poorly prepared for dealing with the allegations of error. 3. Chris Field and I are not "frequent sparring partners."  We have discussed climate issues together publicly only once before. I spent the bulk of the time on the panel discussing the IPCC's treatment of the science of disasters and climate change and the institutional maturity of the climate science community.  I find it remarkable that you ignored those issues. That said, I am requesting that you correct the two serious misquotations of my remarks and the mischaracterization of my relationship with Chris Field. If you choose to contest this I am sure that the WSJ tape from the event can set the record straight. Many thanks, Roger
  • Weiye Loh on 08 Mar 11
     
    I talk to people in the media a lot, and occasionally I am quoted, almost always correctly.  ClimateWire has a story today from a reporter who I did not talk to and whose reporting is not so good. 
Weiye Loh

Skepticblog » The Reasonableness of Weird Things - 0 views

skepticblog.org/...reasonableness-of-weird-things

Communication Diplomacy Science

shared by Weiye Loh on 27 Jul 10 - Cached
  • people have been talking about Phil Plait’s powerful talk, now known to the blogosphere as the “Don’t be a dick” speech (after Wheaton’s Law, an internet maxim that provided the theme of Phil’s presentation). In his talk, Phil argued that skeptics who have outreach goals should get serious about communication: In times of war, we need warriors. But this isn’t a war. You might try to say it is, but it’s not a war. We aren’t trying to kill an enemy. We’re trying to persuade other humans. And at times like that, we don’t need warriors. What we need are diplomats.
  • there many excellent reasons to tend toward treating people with respect and courtesy. It’s morally bad to be cruel (and usually unnecessary); it’s contrary to scientific and journalistic ethics (and the search for truth) to shout down legitimate alternate views; it blinds us to flaws in our own reasoning if we fail to seriously consider viewpoints we don’t like. Most importantly (this was the theme of Phil’s talk) science communication is more effective when it starts with warmth and respect.
  • a few skeptics are tempted to think there must be something special about those who don’t believe. That conceit hardly seems worthy of dwelling upon, and yet people have actually tried to convince me on this basis that it’s not worth teaching critical thinking. “The smart people already get it,” I’ve been told, “and the stupid people never will. Don’t waste your time.” I suppose it’s human to want to draw these lines through the world: on this side, the good smart people; on the other side, the bad dumb people. But the world is not nearly so simple.
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  • One of the interesting things Phil Plait did during his challenging TAM8 speech was to ask the 1300 skeptics in the room this question: How many of you here today used to believe in something — used to, past tense — whether it was flying saucers, psychic powers, religion, anything like that? You can raise your hand if you want to.
  • most pseudoscientific beliefs are not stupid. They’re just wrong.
  • the top reasons people believe weird things are not only understandable, but identical to the reasons most skeptics believe things: they are persuaded by personal experiences (or by the experiences of a loved one); or, they are persuaded by the sources they have consulted.
  • reasoning from visceral experience is a recipe for false belief.
  • I’m not suggesting that personal experience is an adequate basis for accepting paranormal claims (it isn’t) or that these claims are true (so far as science can tell, they’re not). I’m saying that, given their information and tools, many paranormalists have understandable reasons for belief.
  • However we label ourselves or others, we come up against the fact that people are complicated. Generalizations are doomed to inadequacy. But, I will suggest that the differences between skeptics and paranormal believers have less to do with innate credulity, and more to do with training and resources.
  • Weiye Loh on 27 Jul 10
     
    THE REASONABLENESS OF WEIRD THINGS by DANIEL LOXTON, Jul 26 2010
Weiye Loh

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Bringing it Home - 0 views

rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/...bringing-it-home.html

Journalism Science Climate Science Disaster

shared by Weiye Loh on 26 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Writing at MIT's Knight Science Journalism Tracker, Charles Petit breathlessly announces to journalists that the scientific community has now given a green light to blaming contemporary disasters on the emissions of greenhouse gases
  • We recently published a paper showing that the media overall has done an excellent job on its reporting of scientific projections of sea level rise. I suspect that a similar analysis of the issue of disasters and climate change would not result in such favorable results. Of course, looking at the cover of Nature above, it might be understandable why this would be the case.
  • Weiye Loh on 26 Feb 11
     
    An official shift may just have occurred not only in news coverage of climate change, but the way that careful scientists  talk about it. Till now blaming specific storms on climate change has been frowned upon. And it still is, if one is speaking of an isolated event. But something very much like blaming global warming for what is happening today, right now, outside the window has just gotten endorsement on the cover of Nature. Its photo of a flooded European village has splashed across it, "THE HUMAN FACTOR." Extreme rains in many regions, it tells the scientific community, is not merely consistent with what to expect from global warming,  but herald its arrival. This is a good deal more immediate than saying, as people have for some time, that glaciers are shrinking and seas are rising due to the effects of greenhouse gases. This brings it home.
Weiye Loh

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Mike Daisey and Higher Truths - 0 views

rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/...-daisey-and-higher-truths.html

Politics Truth Journalism Objectivity News Climate Climate Change Climate Science Balance

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Real life is messy. And as a general rule, the more theatrical the story you hear, and the more it divides the world into goodies vs baddies, the less reliable that story is going to be.
  • some people do feel that certain issues are so important that there should be cause in political debates to overlook lies or misrepresentations in service of a "larger truth" (Yellow cake, anyone?). I have seen this attitude for years in the climate change debate (hey look, just today), and often condoned by scientists and journalists alike.
  • the "global warming: yes or no?" debate has become an obstacle to effective policy action related to climate. Several of these colleagues suggested that I should downplay the policy implications of my work showing that for a range of phenomena and places, future climate impacts depend much more on growing human vulnerability to climate than on projected changes in climate itself (under the assumptions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). One colleague wrote, "I think we have a professional (or moral?) obligation to be very careful what we say and how we say it when the stakes are so high." In effect, some of these colleagues were intimating that ends justify means or, in other words, doing the "right thing" for the wrong reasons is OK.
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  • When science is used (and misused) in political advocacy, there are frequent opportunities for such situations to arise.
  • I don't think you're being fair to Mike Lemonick. In the article by him that you cite, MIke's provocative question was framed in the context of an analogy he was making to the risks of smoking. For example, in that article, he also says: "So should the overall message be that nobody knows anything? I don’t think so. We would never want to pretend the uncertainty isn’t there, since that would be dishonest. But featuring it prominently is dishonest ,too, just as trumpeting uncertainty in the smoking-cancer connection would have been."Thus, I think you're reading way too much into Mike's piece. That said, I do agree with you that there are implications of the Daisey case for climate communicators and climate journalism. My own related post is here: http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2012/03/19/the-seduction-of-narrative/"
  • I don't want journalists shading the truth in a desire to be "effective" in some way. That is Daisey's tradeoff too.
  • Weiye Loh on 19 Mar 12
     
    Recall that in the aftermath of initial revelations about Peter Gleick's phishing of the Heartland Institute, we heard defenses of his action that included claims that he was only doing the same thing that journalists do to the importance of looking beyond Gleick's misdeeds at the "larger truth." Consider also what was described in the UEA emails as "pressure to present a nice tidy story" related to climate science as well as the IPCC's outright falsification related to disasters and climate change. Such shenanigans so endemic in the climate change debate that when a journalist openly asks whether the media should tell the whole truth about climate change, no one even bats an eye. 
Weiye Loh

The Real Hoax Was Climategate | Media Matters Action Network - 0 views

politicalcorrection.org/...201007020005

Climate Science ClimateGate

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Sen. Jim Inhofe's (R-OK) biggest claim to fame has been his oft-repeated line that global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
  • In 2003, he conceded that the earth was warming, but denied it was caused by human activity and suggested that "increases in global temperatures may have a beneficial effect on how we live our lives."
  • In 2009, however, he appeared on Fox News to declare that the earth was actually cooling, claiming "everyone understands that's the case" (they don't, because it isn't).
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • nhofe's battle against climate science kicked into overdrive when a series of illegally obtained emails surfaced from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University. 
  • When the dubious reports surfaced about flawed science, manipulated data, and unsubstantiated studies, Inhofe was ecstatic.  In March, he viciously attacked former Vice President Al Gore for defending the science behind climate change
  • Unfortunately for Senator Inhofe, none of those things are true.  One by one, the pillars of evidence supporting the alleged "scandals" have shattered, causing the entire "Climategate" storyline to come crashing down. 
  • a panel established by the University of East Anglia to investigate the integrity of the research of the Climatic Research Unit wrote: "We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it."
  • Responding to allegations that Dr. Michael Mann tampered with scientific evidence, Pennsylvania State University conducted a thorough investigation. It concluded: "The Investigatory Committee, after careful review of all available evidence, determined that there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University.  More specifically, the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities."
  • London's Sunday Times retracted its story, echoed by dozens of outlets, that an IPCC issued an unsubstantiated report claiming 40% of the Amazon rainforest was endangered due to changing rainfall patterns.  The Times wrote: "In fact, the IPCC's Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence. In the case of the WWF report, the figure had, in error, not been referenced, but was based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) which did relate to the impact of climate change."
  • The Times also admitted it misrepresented the views of Dr. Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds, implying he agreed with the article's false premise and believed the IPCC should not utilize reports issued by outside organizations.  In its retraction, the Times was forced to admit: "Dr Lewis does not dispute the scientific basis for both the IPCC and the WWF reports," and, "We accept that Dr Lewis holds no such view... A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this."
  • Weiye Loh on 04 Jul 10
     
    The Real Hoax Was Climategate July 02, 2010 1:44 pm ET by Chris Harris
Weiye Loh

Rationally Speaking: Why do libertarians deny climate change? - 0 views

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...rians-deny-climate-change.html

Climate Science Libertarianism

shared by Weiye Loh on 28 May 10 - Cached
  • the trend is hard to miss. The libertarian think tank CATO Institute has been waging a media war against the very notion for years, and even prominent skeptics with libertarian leanings have pronounced themselves negatively on the matter (most famously Penn & Teller, and initially even Michael Shermer, though both — I count P&T as one — lately have taken a few steps back from their initial positions).
  • whether climate change is real or not. It is, according to the best science available. Yes, even the best science can be wrong, but frankly the only people who can tell with any degree of reasonability are those belonging to the relevant community of experts, in this case climate scientists
  • The question is particularly pertinent to libertarians and the ideologically close allied group of “objectivists,” i.e. followers of Ayn Rand (though there are significant differences between the two groups, as I mentioned before). These people often claim to be friends of science (as opposed to many radical conservatives like Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla), who called global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” (perpetrated by whom? And to what end?)), and in the case of objectivists, whose whole approach to politics is allegedly based on rational considerations of the facts.
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  • one would think that libertarians could make a distinction between evidence-based interpretation of reality (global warming is happening), and whatever policies we might want to enact to avoid catastrophe. Qua Qua libertarians, they would obviously resist any government-led effort at clean up, especially if internationally coordinated, preferring instead a coalition of the willing within the private sector
  • there certainly is plenty of room for reasonable discussions and disagreements about how best to proceed in confronting the problem. On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be much room for reasonable disagreement about the very existence of the problem itself. So, what gives, my dear libertarians?
  • . In the case of major libertarian outlets, like the CATO Institute think tank, the rather unglamorous answer may simply be that they are in the pockets of the oil industry. A large amount of the funding for CATO comes from private corporations with obvious political agendas including, you guessed it, Exxon-Mobil (remember the Valdez?). No wonder CATO people trump the party line on this one.
  • The second reason, however, is more personal and widespread: libertarianism is committed to the high moral value of private enterprise
  • it follows naturally (if irrationally) that libertarians cannot admit to themselves, and even less to the world at large, that the much vaunted private sector may be responsible — out of both greed and downright incompetence — for a major environmental catastrophe of planetary proportions. The industry is the good guy in their movie, how then could they possibly have done something so horrible?
  • hat’s the problem with ideology in general (be it left, right, or libertarian), it provides us with thick blinders that very effectively shield us from reality. Of course, no one is actually free of bias, yours truly included. But a core principle of skepticism and critical thinking is that we do our best to be aware (and minimize) our own biases, and that we ought to open ourselves to honest criticism from different parties, in pursuit of the best approximation to the truth that we can muster.
  • Weiye Loh on 28 May 10
     
    Why do libertarians deny climate change?
Weiye Loh

Lindzen debunked again: New scientific study finds his paper downplaying dang... - 0 views

climateprogress.org/...ative-feedbacks-clouds-tropics

Science Academic Research Academic Journal Climate Science Denial

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Consistently being wrong and consistently producing one-sided analyses that are quickly debunked in the literature should lead scientific journals and the entire scientific community (and possibly the media) to start ignoring your work. But when you are one of the last remaining “serious” professional scientists spreading global warming disinformation who retains a (nano)ounce of credibility because you are associated with a major university — M.I.T. — and your name is Richard Lindzen, apparently you can just keep publishing and repeating the same crap over and over and over again.
  • is this more, or less, support for the calls of some — most notably James Annan — for journals to shift at least some of the peer review cycle to an open format? http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2009/ 11/ 30/ more-on-the-climate-files-and-climate-trends/
  • Also, Gavin seemed to say that — with or without flaws– this paper’s approach was “a useful contribution to the literature”: “Even if it now turns out that the analysis was not robust, it was not that the analysis was not worth trying, and the work being done to re-examine these questions is a useful contributions to the literature –- even if the conclusion is that this approach to the analysis is flawed.” http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2010/ 01/ 08/ a-rebuttal-to-a-cool-climate-paper/ #more-13033
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • . Is the problem less with the paper and publishing process than the tendency of commentators (whether on blogs or elsewhere) to seize on particular findings as the new “truth” — and for public not attuned to the tussles of science to swallow such proclamations?
  • its only because of the blogosphere immediately seizing on every new paper as proof that we think there’s an issue with the peer-review process. For the scientists involved, this was a useful exercise in thinking about this problem, and moved the ball forwards rather than backwards overall. But we had to put up with way too much crap in the blogosphere in between the time when the paper was published and these rebuttals came out.
Weiye Loh

Skepticblog » Reality Check - 0 views

skepticblog.org/...reality-check

Science Deconstruction Postmodernism PHilosophy Social Construction Peer Peer Review

shared by Weiye Loh on 22 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • BECAUSE SCIENCE TELLS US “INCONVENIENT TRUTHS.” If the process of science were all a delusion based on our biases and preconceptions and wishes, it would not give us answers that we don’t like or agree with. Yet scientists often discover things that go against our belief systems, but they must put aside their favorite ideas and face this reality. When Copernicus and Galileo demonstrated that the earth (and us) are not in the center of the universe, the idea wasn’t accepted by the Church or the world in general—but it was true. Everyone except a handful of religious nuts and the uneducated now look at the sun “rising” and “setting” and accept the counterintuitive notion that it is the earth turning instead. When Darwin showed that life had evolved and that we are all closely related to other living things, not specially created, it offended many people (and still does)—but its truth was soon acknowledged by the entire scientific community and nearly all educated Westerners who weren’t religiously biased, even before Darwin died. As the web cartoon puts it: “Science: if you ain’t pissing people off, you ain’t doin’ it right”.
Weiye Loh

The Matthew Effect § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM - 0 views

seedmagazine.com/...the_matthew_effect

Publication Selection Academic Journal

shared by Weiye Loh on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. —Matthew 25:29
  • Sociologist Robert K. Merton was the first to publish a paper on the similarity between this phrase in the Gospel of Matthew and the realities of how scientific research is rewarded
  • Even if two researchers do similar work, the most eminent of the pair will get more acclaim, Merton observed—more praise within the community, more or better job offers, better opportunities. And it goes without saying that even if a graduate student publishes stellar work in a prestigious journal, their well-known advisor is likely to get more of the credit. 
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  • Merton published his theory, called the “Matthew Effect,” in 1968. At that time, the average age of a biomedical researcher in the US receiving his or her first significant funding was 35 or younger. That meant that researchers who had little in terms of fame (at 35, they would have completed a PhD and a post-doc and would be just starting out on their own) could still get funded if they wrote interesting proposals. So Merton’s observation about getting credit for one’s work, however true in terms of prestige, wasn’t adversely affecting the funding of new ideas.
  • Over the last 40 years, the importance of fame in science has increased. The effect has compounded because famous researchers have gathered the smartest and most ambitious graduate students and post-docs around them, so that each notable paper from a high-wattage group bootstraps their collective power. The famous grow more famous, and the younger researchers in their coterie are able to use that fame to their benefit. The effect of this concentration of power has finally trickled down to the level of funding: The average age on first receipt of the most common “starter” grants at the NIH is now almost 42. This means younger researchers without the strength of a fame-based community are cut out of the funding process, and their ideas, separate from an older researcher’s sphere of influence, don’t get pursued. This causes a founder effect in modern science, where the prestigious few dictate the direction of research. It’s not only unfair—it’s also actively dangerous to science’s progress.
  • How can we fund science in a way that is fair? By judging researchers independently of their fame—in other words, not by how many times their papers have been cited. By judging them instead via new measures, measures that until recently have been too ephemeral to use.
  • Right now, the gold standard worldwide for measuring a scientist’s worth is the number of times his or her papers are cited, along with the importance of the journal where the papers were published. Decisions of funding, faculty positions, and eminence in the field all derive from a scientist’s citation history. But relying on these measures entrenches the Matthew Effect: Even when the lead author is a graduate student, the majority of the credit accrues to the much older principal investigator. And an influential lab can inflate its citations by referring to its own work in papers that themselves go on to be heavy-hitters.
  • what is most profoundly unbalanced about relying on citations is that the paper-based metric distorts the reality of the scientific enterprise. Scientists make data points, narratives, research tools, inventions, pictures, sounds, videos, and more. Journal articles are a compressed and heavily edited version of what happens in the lab.
  • We have the capacity to measure the quality of a scientist across multiple dimensions, not just in terms of papers and citations. Was the scientist’s data online? Was it comprehensible? Can I replicate the results? Run the code? Access the research tools? Use them to write a new paper? What ideas were examined and discarded along the way, so that I might know the reality of the research? What is the impact of the scientist as an individual, rather than the impact of the paper he or she wrote? When we can see the scientist as a whole, we’re less prone to relying on reputation alone to assess merit.
  • Multidimensionality is one of the only counters to the Matthew Effect we have available. In forums where this kind of meritocracy prevails over seniority, like Linux or Wikipedia, the Matthew Effect is much less pronounced. And we have the capacity to measure each of these individual factors of a scientist’s work, using the basic discourse of the Web: the blog, the wiki, the comment, the trackback. We can find out who is talented in a lab, not just who was smart enough to hire that talent. As we develop the ability to measure multiple dimensions of scientific knowledge creation, dissemination, and re-use, we open up a new way to recognize excellence. What we can measure, we can value.
  • Weiye Loh on 25 Feb 10
     
    WHEN IT COMES TO SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING AND FAME, THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET POORER. HOW CAN WE BREAK THIS FEEDBACK LOOP?
Weiye Loh

How drug companies' PR tactics skew the presentation of medical research | Science | gu... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...anies-ghost-writing-journalism

Drugs Medicine Public Relations Academic Journal Academic Research Ethics Plagiarism Ghost Authorship

shared by Weiye Loh on 20 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Drug companies exert this hold on knowledge through publication planning agencies, an obscure subsection of the pharmaceutical industry that has ballooned in size in recent years, and is now a key lever in the commercial machinery that gets drugs sold.The planning companies are paid to implement high-impact publication strategies for specific drugs. They target the most influential academics to act as authors, draft the articles, and ensure that these include clearly-defined branding messages and appear in the most prestigious journals.
  • In selling their services to drug companies, the agencies' explain their work in frank language. Current Medical Directions, a medical communications company based in New York, promises to create "scientific content in support of our clients' messages". A rival firm from Macclesfield, Complete HealthVizion, describes what it does as "a fusion of evidence and inspiration."
  • There are now at least 250 different companies engaged in the business of planning clinical publications for the pharmaceutical industry, according to the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals, which said it has over 1000 individual members.Many firms are based in the UK and the east coast of the United States in traditional "pharma" centres like Pennsylvania and New Jersey.Precise figures are hard to pin down because publication planning is widely dispersed and is only beginning to be recognized as something like a discrete profession.
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  • the standard approach to article preparation is for planners to work hand-in-glove with drug companies to create a first draft. "Key messages" laid out by the drug companies are accommodated to the extent that they can be supported by available data.Planners combine scientific information about a drug with two kinds of message that help create a "drug narrative". "Environmental" messages are intended to forge the sense of a gap in available medicine within a specific clinical field, while "product" messages show how the new drug meets this need.
  • In a flow-chart drawn up by Eric Crown, publications manager at Merck (the company that sold the controversial painkiller Vioxx), the determination of authorship appears as the fourth stage of the article preparation procedure. That is, only after company employees have presented clinical study data, discussed the findings, finalised "tactical plans" and identified where the article should be published.Perhaps surprisingly to the casual observer, under guidelines tightened up in recent years by the International Committee of Journal Editors (ICMJE), Crown's approach, typical among pharmaceutical companies, does not constitute ghostwriting.
  • What publication planners understand by the term is precise but it is also quite distinct from the popular interpretation.
  • "We may have written a paper, but the people we work with have to have some input and approve it."
  • "I feel that we're doing something good for mankind in the long-run," said Kimberly Goldin, head of the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP). "We want to influence healthcare in a very positive, scientifically sound way.""The profession grew out of a marketing umbrella, but has moved under the science umbrella," she said.But without the window of court documents to show how publication planning is being carried out today, the public simply cannot know if reforms the industry says it has made are genuine.
  • Dr Leemon McHenry, a medical ethicist at California State University, says nothing has changed. "They've just found more clever ways of concealing their activities. There's a whole army of hidden scribes. It's an epistemological morass where you can't trust anything."Alastair Matheson is a British medical writer who has worked extensively for medical communication agencies. He dismisses the planners' claims to having reformed as "bullshit"."The new guidelines work very nicely to permit the current system to continue as it has been", he said. "The whole thing is a big lie. They are promoting a product."
Weiye Loh

Rationally Speaking: Should non-experts shut up? The skeptic's catch-22 - 0 views

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...perts-shut-up-skeptics_14.html

Science Communication skepticism

shared by Weiye Loh on 17 Jul 10 - Cached
  • You can read the talk here, but in a nutshell, Massimo was admonishing skeptics who reject the scientific consensus in fields in which they have no technical expertise - the most notable recent example of this being anthropogenic climate change, about which venerable skeptics like James Randi and Michael Shermer have publicly expressed doubts (though Shermer has since changed his mind).
  • I'm totally with Massimo that it seems quite likely that anthropogenic climate change is really happening. But I'm not sure I can get behind Massimo's broader argument that non-experts should defer to the expert consensus in a field.
  • First of all, while there are strong incentives for a researcher to find errors in other work in the field, there are strong disincentives for her to challenge the field's foundational assumptions. It will be extremely difficult for her to get other people to agree with her if she tries, and if she succeeds, she'll still be taking herself down along with the rest of the field.
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  • Second of all, fields naturally select for people who accept their foundational assumptions. People who don't accept those assumptions are likely not to have gone into that field in the first place, or to have left it already.
  • Sometimes those foundational assumptions are simple enough that an outsider can evaluate them - for instance, I may not be an expert in astrology or theology, but I can understand their starting premises (stars affect human fates; we should accept the Bible as the truth) well enough to confidently dismiss them, and the fields that rest on them. But when the foundational assumptions get more complex - like the assumption that we can reliably model future temperatures - it becomes much harder for an outsider to judge their soundness.
  • we almost seem to be stuck in a Catch-22: The only people who are qualified to evaluate the validity of a complex field are the ones who have studied that field in depth - in other words, experts. Yet the experts are also the people who have the strongest incentives not to reject the foundational assumptions of the field, and the ones who have self-selected for believing those assumptions. So the closer you are to a field, the more biased you are, which makes you a poor judge of it; the farther away you are, the less relevant knowledge you have, which makes you a poor judge of it. What to do?
  • luckily, the Catch-22 isn't quite as stark as I made it sound. For example, you can often find people who are experts in the particular methodology used by a field without actually being a member of the field, so they can be much more unbiased judges of whether that field is applying the methodology soundly. So for example, a foundational principle underlying a lot of empirical social science research is that linear regression is a valid tool for modeling most phenomena. I strongly recommend asking a statistics professor about that. 
  • there are some general criteria that outsiders can use to evaluate the validity of a technical field, even without “technical scientific expertise” in that field. For example, can the field make testable predictions, and does it have a good track record of predicting things correctly? This seems like a good criterion by which an outsider can judge the field of climate modeling (and "predictions" here includes using your model to predict past data accurately). I don't need to know how the insanely-complicated models work to know that successful prediction is a good sign.
  • And there are other more field-specific criteria outsiders can often use. For example, I've barely studied postmodernism at all, but I don't have to know much about the field to recognize that the fact that they borrow concepts from complex disciplines which they themselves haven't studied is a red flag.
  • the issue with AGW is less the science and all about the political solutions. Most every solution we hear in the public conversation requires some level of sacrifice and uncertainty in the future.Politicians, neither experts in climatology nor economics, craft legislation to solve the problem through the lens of their own political ideology. At TAM8, this was pretty apparent. My honest opinion is that people who are AGW skeptics are mainly skeptics of the political solutions. If AGW was said to increase the GDP of the country by two to three times, I'm guessing you'd see a lot less climate change skeptics.
  • Weiye Loh on 17 Jul 10
     
    WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 2010 Should non-experts shut up? The skeptic's catch-22
Weiye Loh

What Is Skepticism? Week 3: Skepticism vs. Denial « Skepticism « Critical Thi... - 0 views

www.skepticnorth.com/...sm-week-3-skepticism-vs-denial

Skepticism Denial Climate Science

shared by Weiye Loh on 05 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Everyone is a skeptic nowadays, or so it seems. From climate change to evolution to vaccination, large proportions of the population claim to be skeptical about many of the claims of mainstream science. So why are we, member of the skeptical community, not rejoicing?
  • A skeptic, in popular discourse, is simply someone who denies a particular claim. But true skepticism, as espoused by philosophers and scientists for millenia, is more an intellectual attitude than a position on a specific issue. A skeptic is someone who always demands sufficient evidence or reasons before accepting a claim. This skeptical attitude – its opposite is credulity – leads skeptics to reject as unfounded any claim that cannot withstand the rigours of the scientific method, which includes controlled experimental testing. The more extraordinary the claim, the more rigourously it must be tested before a skeptic will be willing to accept
  • skepticism does not always lead to denial. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but sometimes that extraordinary evidence can be provided. Einstein’s theory of relativity, which holds that matter can change the very shape of space and time, is an extraordinary claim, yet it has stood up to the most demanding of scientific testing.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • let us turn to the climate change “skeptics”. Are they just being more demanding than us in their skepticism? After all, nothing in science is ever certain; some room for doubt always exists. For that doubt to warrant disbelief in the face of all the positive evidence, however, skeptics would require significant contrary evidence, or a plausible alternative theory which fit the data. But climate change deniers have not provided any such evidence or theory (theories involving variations in solar activity simply don’t fit the data). Nor have they shown significant inclination to provide such evidence, generally being content to gesture frantically at any minor mistake, no matter how irrelevant, in the climate change literature. In fact, in denying climate change, these “skeptics” find themselves committed to claims no less extraordinary than the ones they deny, yet with far less evidence.
  • Weiye Loh on 05 Nov 10
     
    Skepticism vs. Denial
Weiye Loh

Rationally Speaking: The sorry state of higher education - 0 views

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...state-of-higher-education.html

Education Plagiarism Humanities Political Economy

shared by Weiye Loh on 03 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • two disconcerting articles crossed my computer screen, both highlighting the increasingly sorry state of higher education, though from very different perspectives. The first is “Ed Dante’s” (actually a pseudonym) piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled The Shadow Scholar. The second is Gregory Petsko’s A Faustian Bargain, published of all places in Genome Biology.
  • There is much to be learned by educators in the Shadow Scholar piece, except the moral that “Dante” would like us to take from it. The anonymous author writes:“Pointing the finger at me is too easy. Why does my business thrive? Why do so many students prefer to cheat rather than do their own work? Say what you want about me, but I am not the reason your students cheat.
  • The point is that plagiarism and cheating happen for a variety of reasons, one of which is the existence of people like Mr. Dante and his company, who set up a business that is clearly unethical and should be illegal. So, pointing fingers at him and his ilk is perfectly reasonable. Yes, there obviously is a “market” for cheating in higher education, and there are complex reasons for it, but he is in a position similar to that of the drug dealer who insists that he is simply providing the commodity to satisfy society’s demand. Much too easy of a way out, and one that doesn’t fly in the case of drug dealers, and shouldn’t fly in the case of ghost cheaters.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • As a teacher at the City University of New York, I am constantly aware of the possibility that my students might cheat on their tests. I do take some elementary precautionary steps
  • Still, my job is not that of the policeman. My students are adults who theoretically are there to learn. If they don’t value that learning and prefer to pay someone else to fake it, so be it, ultimately it is they who lose in the most fundamental sense of the term. Just like drug addicts, to return to my earlier metaphor. And just as in that other case, it is enablers like Mr. Dante who simply can’t duck the moral blame.
  • n open letter to the president of SUNY-Albany, penned by molecular biologist Gregory Petsko. The SUNY-Albany president has recently announced the closing — for budgetary reasons — of the departments of French, Italian, Classics, Russian and Theater Arts at his university.
  • Petsko begins by taking on one of the alleged reasons why SUNY-Albany is slashing the humanities: low enrollment. He correctly points out that the problem can be solved overnight at the stroke of a pen: stop abdicating your responsibilities as educators and actually put constraints on what your students have to take in order to graduate. Make courses in English literature, foreign languages, philosophy and critical thinking, the arts and so on, mandatory or one of a small number of options that the students must consider in order to graduate.
  • But, you might say, that’s cheating the market! Students clearly don’t want to take those courses, and a business should cater to its customers. That type of reasoning is among the most pernicious and idiotic I’ve ever heard. Students are not clients (if anything, their parents, who usually pay the tuition, are), they are not shopping for a new bag or pair of shoes. They do not know what is best for them educationally, that’s why they go to college to begin with. If you are not convinced about how absurd the students-as-clients argument is, consider an analogy: does anyone with functioning brain cells argue that since patients in a hospital pay a bill, they should be dictating how the brain surgeon operates? I didn’t think so.
  • Petsko then tackles the second lame excuse given by the president of SUNY-Albany (and common among the upper administration of plenty of public universities): I can’t do otherwise because of the legislature’s draconian cuts. Except that university budgets are simply too complicated for there not to be any other option. I know this first hand, I’m on a special committee at my own college looking at how to creatively deal with budget cuts handed down to us from the very same (admittedly small minded and dysfunctional) New York state legislature that has prompted SUNY-Albany’s action. As Petsko points out, the president there didn’t even think of involving the faculty and staff in a broad discussion of how to deal with the crisis, he simply announced the cuts on a Friday afternoon and then ran for cover. An example of very poor leadership to say the least, and downright hypocrisy considering all the talk that the same administrator has been dishing out about the university “community.”
  • Finally, there is the argument that the humanities don’t pay for their own way, unlike (some of) the sciences (some of the time). That is indubitably true, but irrelevant. Universities are not businesses, they are places of higher learning. Yes, of course they need to deal with budgets, fund raising and all the rest. But the financial and administrative side has one goal and one goal only: to provide the best education to the students who attend that university.
  • That education simply must include the sciences, philosophy, literature, and the arts, as well as more technical or pragmatic offerings such as medicine, business and law. Why? Because that’s the kind of liberal education that makes for an informed and intelligent citizenry, without which our democracy is but empty talk, and our lives nothing but slavery to the marketplace.
  • Maybe this is not how education works in the US. I thought that general (or compulsory) education (ie. up to high school) is designed to make sure that citizens in a democratic country can perform their civil duties. A balanced and well-rounded education, which includes a healthy mixture of science and humanities, is indeed very important for this purpose. However, college-level education is for personal growth and therefore the person must have a large say about what kind of classes he or she chooses to take. I am disturbed by Massimo's hospital analogy. Students are not ill. They don't go to college to be cured, or to be good citizens. They go to college to learn things that *they* want to learn. Patients are passive. Students are not.I agree that students typically do not know what kind of education is good for them. But who does?
  • students do have a saying in their education. They pick their major, and there are electives. But I object to the idea that they can customize their major any way they want. That assumes they know what the best education for them is, they don't. That's the point of education.
  • The students are in your class to get a good grade, any learning that takes place is purely incidental. Those good grades will look good on their transcript and might convince a future employer that they are smart and thus are worth paying more.
  • I don't know what the dollar to GPA exchange rate is these days, but I don't doubt that there is one.
  • Just how many of your students do you think will remember the extensive complex jargon of philosophy more than a couple of months after they leave your classroom?
  • and our lives nothing but slavery to the marketplace.We are there. Welcome. Where have you been all this time? In a capitalistic/plutocratic society money is power (and free speech too according to the supreme court). Money means a larger/better house/car/clothing/vacation than your neighbor and consequently better mating opportunities. You can mostly blame the women for that one I think just like the peacock's tail.
  • If a student of surgery fails to learn they might maim, kill or cripple someone. If an engineer of airplanes fails to learn they might design a faulty aircraft that fails and kills people. If a student of chemistry fails to learn they might design a faulty drug with unintended and unfortunate side effects, but what exactly would be the harm if a student of philosophy fails to learn Aristotle had to say about elements or Plato had to say about perfect forms? These things are so divorced from people's everyday activities as to be rendered all but meaningless.
  • human knowledge grows by leaps and bounds every day, but human brain capacity does not, so the portion of human knowledge you can personally hold gets smaller by the minute. Learn (and remember) as much as you can as fast as you can and you will still lose ground. You certainly have your work cut out for you emphasizing the importance of Thales in the Age of Twitter and whatever follows it next year.
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