My science postings used to be free
of politics -- and this one will be, in a bit. But how can they be detached, when the central political issue of our time
is whether evidence, fact-based argument and truth discovery can survive? I know that on Earth Day (named after my novel, I presume) April 22, I'll join my fellow scientists in the street.
See more information about the March for Science, as well as satellite marches held around the world. Scientists will speak out and hold events to explain their research to the public.
Though let me be clear. I also think that marching and protests are secondary. At a moment in history when all fact-professions are under attack, no less than survival is at stake. Marches and protests are like pushing back in a Sumo match. You might gain inches, but what's needed is judo.
How do people comprehend (and trust) science? It's complicated. A recent study has found that people place
more confidence in the claims of a popular science article than they do in the
claims of an academic article written for experts. They seem to be dissuaded by the academic papers' in-depth discussions of negative results, margins of
error, and alternate explanations -- rather than the concise certainties
of popularized articles.
"This emboldens people to reject the ideas of experts who they see as superfluous to their understanding of an idea (which they have already grasped)," writes Scotty Hendricks in Big Think.
"This emboldens people to reject the ideas of experts who they see as superfluous to their understanding of an idea (which they have already grasped)," writes Scotty Hendricks in Big Think.
== The war is now explicit ==
Through resignations, firings and almost zero replacements, the Trump Administration has all but wiped out the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, sending it down the path of extinction that — in 1995 — swallowed the congressional Office of Technology Assessment, when Newt Gingrich ruled OTA to be irreparably “partisan.” (As - apparently - are 'facts.') Now members of Mr. Trump’s transition team have called for getting rid of OSTP, altogether.
“Trump isn’t interested in science and that scientific matters are a low priority at the White House,” said Vinton G. Cerf, a computer scientist, vice president of Google and one of the chief architects of the internet. Indeed, not one person still working in the science and technology office regularly participates in Mr. Trump’s daily briefings, as they did for President Barack Obama, who more than doubled the OSTP staff, to 130, and moved the office into a building on the White House grounds. (Where I spoke - twice - in 2016 about "big perspectives on threats to civilization.")
Obama turned to the science office during crises like the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa; the 2011 nuclear spill in Fukushima, Japan; and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The staff of the science office developed the White House’s recommendations for regulation of commercial drones and driverless cars at the Transportation Department. Last year, the staff produced an attention-grabbing report that raised concerns about the threat that robots posed to employment and that advocated retraining Americans for higher-skilled jobs. (I participated in an OSTP campaign to get computer programming back into the schools.) The staff also put on the annual White House science fair.
Obama turned to the science office during crises like the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa; the 2011 nuclear spill in Fukushima, Japan; and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The staff of the science office developed the White House’s recommendations for regulation of commercial drones and driverless cars at the Transportation Department. Last year, the staff produced an attention-grabbing report that raised concerns about the threat that robots posed to employment and that advocated retraining Americans for higher-skilled jobs. (I participated in an OSTP campaign to get computer programming back into the schools.) The staff also put on the annual White House science fair.
Only now... let's go back to pointing out just how marvelous it is to be a member of a bold, open-minded and scientific civilization.
== Marvels of research ==
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed the first stable semi-synthetic organism — a bacterium with two new synthetic bases (called X and Y) added to the four natural bases (A, T, C, and G) that every living organism possesses. Adding two more letters to expand the genetic alphabet can be used to make novel proteins.
Moreover, they found a clever way to ensure that these experimental organisms won't escape the lab. Researchers engineered them to react to a genetic sequence that doesn’t have X and Y as a foreign invader (an immune response). So any new cell that dropped X and Y would be marked for destruction. That enabled their semisynthetic organism to keep X and Y in its genome after dividing 60 times, leading the researchers to believe it can hold on to the new base pair indefinitely.
Moreover, they found a clever way to ensure that these experimental organisms won't escape the lab. Researchers engineered them to react to a genetic sequence that doesn’t have X and Y as a foreign invader (an immune response). So any new cell that dropped X and Y would be marked for destruction. That enabled their semisynthetic organism to keep X and Y in its genome after dividing 60 times, leading the researchers to believe it can hold on to the new base pair indefinitely.
Helping to feed the world? Agronomists have developed a new species: a cross between wheat and its wild cousin, wheat grass - Salish Blue - that's like wheat but grows back year after year, allowing farmers to plow much less and reduce erosion. This holy grail now seems within reach.
An exciting and way overdue
international consortium has been formed to develop vaccines much faster. A coalition of governments and
charities has committed $460 million to speed up vaccine development for Mers, Lassa
fever and Nipah virus. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations
(Cepi) aims to have two new experimental vaccines ready for each disease within
five years.
The recent discovery of metallic hydrogen could
revolutionize many things, especially spaceflight.
Theoretically
predicted a few years ago, ‘time crystals’ are a notion – a new state of matter - that have a structure that
repeats in time, not just in space. A time crystal will keep oscillating in its
ground state without expending or needing energy, like current in a
superfluid. And two teams claim to have made them. “While we're waiting
for the papers to be published, we need to be skeptical about the two claims.
But the fact that two separate teams have used the same blueprint to make time
crystals out of vastly different systems is promising.”
== Scientific nature? ==
According to Bruno
Lemaitre, an immunologist at the EPFL research institute in Switzerland,
science is filled with “narcissists.” Having read the article, I must respond that this is stunning
malarkey and part of the right’s intensely bitter War on Science. And indeed,
their war on every single knowledge procession that deals in fact, verification
and proof.
Are there narcissistic scientists? Plenty! They are human and I have known doozies! But scientists are also (in my opinion) the most independent-minded and competitive humans our species ever produced, going at each other with knives of experimentation and scalpels of disproof. All of it moderated by rules of grownup behavior that make us seem all friendly and polite.
Are there narcissistic scientists? Plenty! They are human and I have known doozies! But scientists are also (in my opinion) the most independent-minded and competitive humans our species ever produced, going at each other with knives of experimentation and scalpels of disproof. All of it moderated by rules of grownup behavior that make us seem all friendly and polite.
No, what the Cultists of the far-far-left and today’s entire right — two wings of a
monstrous anti-modernism — share is their desperate need to discredit every
profession that does the unforgivable… shines light upon delusion. Science,
journalism, teaching, economics, civil servants, medicine… and now the
intelligence and military officer corps.
The enemies of
maturity and truth use anecdotes to displace statistics. They concoct stories
to counter facts. They proclaim — as did the priests and kings of old — “there
is no fact! There is only whose voice is loudest!” Or the best subsidized by today's popes and medicis -- the oligarchy.
== Tech Marvels ==
Oh but we do persevere! For example, engineers have developed a prototype 3D bioprinter that can create totally functional human skin.
Other researchers have pioneered how to regrow bone and the interlaced blood system.
Other researchers have pioneered how to regrow bone and the interlaced blood system.
Several international student hyperloop teams came to SpaceX to
compete by hurling their vehicles down the 2nd biggest vacuum
chamber in the world.
Researchers have produced a LED pixel out of nanorods capable of both emitting and detecting light. These nanorods manage to both detect
and emit light. Envision Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) technology. Screens will be able to watch you without a
camera and screens could talk to each other.
And yes, we need to talk about this. Openly. Watch the video.
See these amazing photos of one of Greenland’s towns, in an article about the wrangling over the opening of a rare earth elements mine.
