Oh! Heck! It's up to my neck!
0 comment Wednesday, June 25, 2014 |
Apologies for my blogging silence lately...as the title of this post suggests, I am up to my neck in experiments. Yesterday was the first time I left the lab before dark since we switched to Daylight Savings. I'm trying to get a few things hammered out before my committee meeting and international conference next month. If I can manage, my Potentially Interesting Science will become some Pretty Damn Convincing Science - wish me luck!In the meantime, if you are looking for some more substantive reading, I suggest that you head over to Toaster's blog and check out this post on how scientists can make better investments in public science education. It is an excellent bit of writing and in my never humble opinion, right on the money. An excerpt:Certainly, we can spend our time debating the global warming deniers and proponents of creationism or the vaccine-autism link. A vigorous debate is necessary to discredit the dishonest irrationality of the opponents of scientific knowledge and progress. However, I posit that directing the bulk of our attentions and energy to this task is stupid. Stupid because it is ineffective, like waiting in the wings with a tourniquet and bone saw as we watch clumsy children try to juggle chainsaws. When we spend so much time interfacing with and disproving the few loud idiot voices in the crowd, we are doing a disservice to that crowd by ignoring it. In effect, we are fighting the flawed output instead of striving to better the input*. Doing so would stem the tide of ignorance and intellectual laziness.Enjoy!*emphasis mine

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