Dec 31 2009
The above NASA photo is of Mars. Specifically, layered hills with sand “sculpted” by wind. Wind on Mars?!
My eyes are drawn to the photo, as if my sight had legs and could explore it. Speaking of which, in a few moments I will be pulling on boots and a coat to venture out into the snow. I will take along my camera and snap my own photos of more transient wind-blown formations. Amidst that “art” I will happily explore.
Dec 31 2009
(Recycled material: I’m in holiday/travel mode. This material first posted on Jan 29, 2009)
To Be More Scientific, Change the Question
This is oversimplifying matters quite a bit, no doubt, but it seems to me that for a people or an individual to become more scientific they must change their “why” questions to “how.”
While “why” implies intention and purpose–and likely excites the “social animal” parts of our brains, “how” seeks to disclose the processes behind phenomena and stimulates the newer parts of the human brain–those involved in tool use.
For example, when in the wake of a tragedy, asking “why” it happened will tend to generate answers that reflect human social needs: was the event intended? Will it influence future behavior?
Asking “how” it happened opens the door to examining the specific, often impersonal, elements involved.
The scientific endeavor has been described as “cold.” And there is truth to this, by necessity. An objective distance is essential to doing bias-free science.
Scientists tend to stay away from “why” questions, not necessarily because those questions are too big to handle, but because they aren’t scientific. Consider this philosophical biggie: Why does the universe exist? When phrased with a “why” the question begs a response relative to the social and emotional self. Yet the truer answer my reside beyond personal concerns.
If one were to instead ask, How is it the universe exists?–that is a more scientific question. It trains the focus on facts and not on social and emotional implications.
Did science dawn when people began to think beyond themselves and their group, when they shed the propensity to see agency and intent in everything they experienced? I don’t know. But the asking of “how” questions was an essential part of the dawn.
One of my all-time favorite New Yorker cartoons had this caption:
There are two types of people in the world. Those who believe there are two types of people in this world, and those that don’t.
Is science all about “how” and religion “why”? Does one appeal to the tool-using parts of the brain and the other to the social/emotional parts? I don’t know. But I do have a hunch that, in the least, my two-option breakdown is overly simplistic.
How do I know that? Good question.
Dec 30 2009
The growth of the oak trees in and around our Florida yard drastically slows during the winter months. For all I know, it may stop. The bulk of the leaves don’t drop until spring, when new growth pushes them off. It seems.
Here in Vermont, where I now sit and type, a blanket wrapped around my slippered feet to keep them warm, the deciduous trees have lost there leaves. Directly in front of me, through a window, is a species of tree related to the birch. (I can tell by the bark, but lack its name.) There is nothing on this tree’s branches but an inch-frosting of snow running along the topsides — where gravity can’t pull it off.
I wonder if people in cold climates age ever-so-slightly slower.
Dec 30 2009
(Recycled material: I’m in holiday/travel mode. This material first posted on Jan 30, 2009)
The Campus Crusade for Christian Assumptions
It is fully reasonable for skeptics to question the existence of the Loch Ness Deity. Or of a god, however clearly or poorly defined. I would argue that for a skeptic to take a hands-off approach to religion would be to fail to be consistent in their thinking and worldview.
Yesterday, after teaching a developmental psychology class, I passed by the door of the host professor (if that’s what you call them) for the Campus Crusade for Christ. Right there on my campus. On the professor’s door hung a display holding a bunch of brand-new pamphlets for students and staff to take. So I took one. What was I supposed to do, put blinders on and walk past it as if it didn’t exist?
As an exercise in critical thinking I’m going to go through the pamphlet, line-by-line. This will be the first post in a series.
Front cover (title):
“Where will you spend eternity?”
How many assumptions are inherent in that question? I find three. Let’s spell them out.
1) That there will be an eternity. It is possible that time began at the birth of our universe. We don’t know one way or the other. Before the big bang there may have been no substance and no time and space as well. To strip eternity of its essential temporal characteristic would be to speak nonsensically.
2) That there will be a “you” to persist for eternity. There is no evidence of a spirit or soul that continues to exist after death.
3) That there are a number of possible destinations for your spirit/soul to go after death. The “where” part of the question would be unnecessary if there was only one location to “spend” eternity at.
Notice that I didn’t say any of the above are untrue, just that they are assumptions: they have been untested and/or lack empirical backing.
Dec 29 2009
My trip to the north country (VT and MA and back to VT) is nearing its end, and I have yet to see a show of the Northern Lights (aurora borealis). Oh well. I have, however, enjoyed vistas nothing like what enters my vision in Florida. Namely, mountains and snow and ice. Different architecture too. To name a few.
Sure, it has been damn cold for this sun loving soul. But when dressed in heavy clothing, heavy gloves, and heavy boots, I feel like an explorer in an alien land. And how great is that!?
[photo thanks to NASA]
Dec 29 2009
(Recycled material: I’m in holiday/travel mode. This material first posted on Dec. 24, 2008)
A research finding released four days ago bore this headline: God Or Science? A Belief In One Weakens Positive Feelings For The Other.
As you might guess, I have doubts about the wording of the title and the news release itself, which starts like this:
A person’s unconscious attitudes toward science and God may be fundamentally opposed, researchers report, depending on how religion and science are used to answer “ultimate” questions such as how the universe began or the origin of life.
The problem — and its no quibble — consists of not defining which deity they are referring to, for there are and have been hundreds of them, thereby perpetuating the assumption that there is one deity that all people recognize.
C’mon! Study some history and anthropology and world religions. Inject some objectivity into the piece. Using the word “god” both capitalized and without a preceding article not only perpetuates assumptions but it also compromises science. In this case, what god, precisely, does belief in weaken feelings for science?
A much more scientific wording would make explicit that the “belief in” question was not about the god Zeus or Ra or XYZ, but no doubt a generic, monotheistic version of the Abrahamic tradition.
The first sentence of the final paragraph states,
The most obvious implication of the research is that “to be compatible, science and religion need to stick to their own territories, their own explanatory space,” Preston said.
That’s an odd sort of compatibility. Sort of like saying a husband and wife need to stay in their own rooms to be compatible.
Good science precisely defines its variables and tests its claims about the universe. Popular religion does neither. It is a poster-child for bad science.
If we want to best understand the universe we should stick to science even if it means shredding religious claims and assumptions.
One god? By name alone.
Dec 28 2009
(Recycled material: I’m in holiday/travel mode. This material first posted on Dec. 30, 2008)
Women Are From Not-Quite-Mars?
Gender differences interest me. And so this finding would naturally grab my attention:
Men tend to perform better than women at tasks that require rotating an object mentally, studies have indicated. Now, developmental psychologists at Pitzer College and UCLA have discovered that this type of spatial skill is present in infancy and can be found in boys as young as 5 months old.
Okay, that finding certainly didn’t come from out of left field, so to speak. But detecting it that early in development certainly is news. And I fully agree with the attitude of the researchers.
“We don’t know why men are better than women at this task or why boys are better than girls at this, but we do now know that this difference extends all the way back to 5 months of age,” Johnson said. “We have shown that this gender difference is present in a pre-verbal population, a population too young to have learned it from manual experience with objects or from extensive learning processes, although learning certainly could be involved.”
“We are interested in this question because the visual-spatial skills of male and female adults, on average, are different, and as developmentalists, we are interested in exploring the origins of these differences,” Moore said. “While we believe we have found a phenomenon worthy of additional study, good science entails a circumspect approach to our conclusions; it would not be prudent to draw particularly strong or wide-ranging conclusions from the results of this single study.”
What I do disagree with, however, is the wording of the title: Gender Gap In Spatial Skills Starts In Infancy, Psychologists Report.
Why not “gender difference”? Doesn’t a gap, in terms of human cognitive development, imply a deficit, something to be fixed?
When is a difference a gap? When you want to close it.
Dec 27 2009
(Recycled material: I’m in holiday/travel mode. This material first posted on Dec. 29, 2008)
I think we can all agree that this headline is a joke, if not a double joke:
Head And Neck Injury Risks In Heavy Metal: Head Bangers Stuck Between Rock And A Hard Bass
I don’t get it: stuck between a rock and a fish? Was it a largemouth or a smallmouth bass?
Sometimes going obtuse is the best response to a bad pun. And thus the double joke. The title wording contains a joke of sorts, and the joke is so bad it is a joke.
But is the entire article itself a joke? And if so, in what sense of the word? You decide.
Here’s a paragraph describing the science:
The average head banging song has a tempo of about 146 beats per minute. The authors suggest that at this tempo head banging may cause headaches and dizziness if the range of movement of the head and neck is more than 75º. They report that at higher tempos and greater ranges of motion there is an additional risk of neck injury.
This research “news release” appeared on the ScienceDaily website, along with countless other sites.
Check out the final paragraph:
Luckily, there are a number of possible ways to protect against these injuries, write the authors. These include calling for bands such as AC/DC to play songs such as “Moon River” instead of “Highway to Hell”, public awareness campaigns headed by musicians such as Cliff Richard and the labeling of music packaging with anti-head banging warnings.
In what sense(s) of the word was this article a joke?
Dec 26 2009
(Recycled material: I’m in holiday/travel mode)
One year ago I made a post about yet more bad science writing. The target, this article: Our Unconscious Brain Makes The Best Decisions Possible.
My criticisms included this paragraph:
Does the unconscious brain exist on a higher plane of our spinal column? I wonder — was this piece of poor reporting intentionally penned in a manner to give New Agers a chubby in their over-extending-the-meaning-of-science-findings chakra?
Yikes. Snarky.
To see the entire post, click here.
Because there seems to be an abundance of bad science writing, I’m sure I’ll be making many more posts on the topic in the years to come. Oh joy.
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