I have about 5 weeks to reach my fund-raising goal for this year's Bowlarama.Please visit my donation page and make a donation, big or small. All money goes to the care and feeding of cats and dogs rescued from the euthanasia list at the county pound. Phoenix area people know that area shelters are taking in record numbers of animals so far this year. RESCUE helps reduce euthanasia rates at the county pound. All three of our dogs were given a second change by RESCUE. I've attached pictures of a few others that are currently in RESCUE's care, waiting for their forever homes.Did you know that the number one killer of healthy dogs in this country is "euthanasia?" RESCUE is the last voice for dogs and cats awaiting this terrible fate at Animal Control and the Humane Society. RESCUE is a "no kill" organization and animals stay with RESCUE for as long as it takes to find them a home that meets their needs. RESCUE has only one paid staff member and over 275 volunteers. Our veterinary, boarding and food expenses run about $9-12,000 a month. RESCUE has saved and placed over 9,400+ dogs and cats, and for every animal we adopt, we are back to save another.

British former surgeon Andrew Wakefield, whose discredited and abusive research was responsible for the resurgence of measles outbreaks in the UK and the U.S., is not just coming to Phoenix this Saturday, he is being celebrated by the Autism Society of Greater Phoenix at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Wakefield’s 1998 paper in The Lancet reported symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease in twelve children with autism, and speculated that the cause was the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. What it didn’t report was that Wakefield had a financial interest in his own alternative vaccine, that he had been paid by attorneys who were trying to prove that MMR vaccines were harmful, that his test subjects were recruited by those attorneys from among their plaintiffs, or that Wakefield engaged in unnecessary colonoscopies, colon biopsies, and spinal taps on children in his study. Ten of Wakefield’s 12 co-authors published a retraction of his interpretation of the paper, and the original paper was withdrawn by the journal this year. Wakefield’s name has been struck from the register of British medical doctors as a result of his unethical behavior. The publication of his paper was responsible for a significant drop in UK vaccination rates due to fear of a link to autism, which was accompanied by a rise in measles outbreaks (but no drop in autism diagnosis rates). It is a pity that the Autism Society of Greater Phoenix is promoting an unethical, discredited quack. ...

Veteran software tester Abe Heward has started up a blog on software testing, which I’m sure will also include many items of epistemological, economic, and skeptical interest. He’s already got posts on how the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is relevant to software testing, why good testers aren’t robots (and the flaws in one company’s attempt to treat them as if they were), and on opportunity cost and testing automation. Check it out at www.abeheward.com.

Todd Wood of the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College has gotten around to doing what I haven’t done, updating my analysis of the market for creationism that I did in early 2007. He confirms some of the trends I noted, such as that the market for creationism has been growing and is dominated by Answers in Genesis. His update goes further, and includes a comparison to the National Center for Science Education, noting that he market for criticism of creationism has grown along with the market for creationism. He also points out that the groups involved got a boost revenue in 2005 during the Dover trial, that the AiG split from Creation Ministries International doesn’t appear to have hurt AiG, and that “Godquest,” formerly known as Creation Science Evangelism, the Hovind organization, is the #3 creationist organization for revenue behind AiG and the Institute for Creation Research. Wood reports the following numbers for recent years: ...

The prominent skeptic Martin Gardner, mathematician, philosopher, magician, and writer, died today at the age of 95 (b. October 21, 1914, d. May 22, 2010). He was one of the founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), and had been part of the earlier Resources for the Scientific Evaluation of the Paranormal along with CSICOP founding members Ray Hyman, James Randi, and Marcello Truzzi. Long before that, he wrote one of the classic texts debunking pseudoscience, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (the Dover 2nd edition was published in 1957). For many years (1956-1981) he was the author of the Scientific American column, “Mathematical Games” (taken over by Douglas Hofstadter and retitled “Metamagical Themas”), and he wrote a regular “Notes of a Psi-Watcher” column for the Skeptical Inquirer right up to the present. His 70+ books included a semi-autobiographical novel, The Flight of Peter Fromm, a book explaining his philosophical positions including why he wasn’t an atheist, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, and an annotated version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland works, The Annotated Alice. He had been scheduled to appear by video link at the upcoming The Amazing Meeting 8 in Las Vegas, where a number of other skeptical old timers will be appearing on discussion panels. His death is a great loss. I never met Gardner, but was first introduced to his work reading his “Mathematical Games” column in the late 70’s, and then his Fads and Fallacies and Skeptical Inquirer columns. Gardner, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and James Randi were the first major figures I identified as skeptical role models. One of the great honors of my life was receiving the Martin Gardner Award for Best Skeptical Critic from the Skeptics Society in 1996. A Martin Gardner documentary that is part of “The Nature of Things” may be found online, and Scientific American has republished online its December 1995 profile of Gardner. Here’s a transcript of a February 1979 telephone interview between Martin Gardner and five mathematicians (thanks to Anthony Barcellos for transcribing it and bringing it to my attention in the comments below). Various tributes: ...

Earlier today on Twitter, Adam Bourque (@A_Damn_Bourque) asked if anyone knew the origin of the term “woo” as applied to the paranormal. I know I’ve heard the term used for at least a decade (or two or three?), but after seeing that neither the Skeptics Dictionary entry on “woo woo” nor threads at the JREF Forums had an etymology, I decided to take a look at Google Books. “Woo” wasn’t a good search due to the homonym, and “woo woo” led to lots of matches in stories of children imitating fire engine sirens, but adding “astrology” and “occult” as additional terms led to some useful matches. On my first pass, the oldest reference I found was in Nicholas Evans’ novel The Loop (1999), p. 244: ...

On the last day of my class on Scientific Revolutions and the law, one of the students in the class, Lijing Jiang, gave a presentation titled “To Consider the Heavens: The Incorporation of Jesuit Astronomy in the Seventeenth Century Chinese Court." Her presentation was about how Jesuit missionaries in China brought western astronomy with them, and how it was received. This added a very interesting complement to the course, as much of the early part of the semester was about the Copernican revolution (using Kuhn’s book of the same name). Part of what happened early on in astronomy was a division between cosmology and positional astronomy, with the former being about the actual nature of the heavens, and the latter being about creating mathematical models for prediction, to be used for navigation and calendar-setting that incorporated features not intended to represent reality (like epicycles). These two types of astronomy didn’t really get reconnected (aside from the occasional realist depiction of epicycles in crystalline spheres) until Galileo argued for a realist interpretation of the Copernican model. And that didn’t fully catch on until Newton. In China, calendar reform was very important as they used a combination of a lunar month (based on phases of the moon) and tropical year that had to be synchronized annually, and an unpredicted eclipse was considered to be a bad omen. The Chinese had gone through many calendar reforms as a result of these requirements, and they considered that theories needed to be revised about every 300 years (in other realms as well, not just astronomy). The Jesuits happened to bring Copernican astronomy to China in the late 16th/early 17th century, with a goal of impressing and converting the Emperor. They got their big chance to make a splash in 1610, when the Chinese court astronomers mispredicted a solar eclipse by one day, which the Jesuits predicted correctly in advance. But this turned out in a way to be poorly timed, as the Counter-Reformation decided to start cracking down on Copernican heliocentrism after 1610, making it a formal doctrinal issue in 1616. The Jesuits in China thus switched to the Tychonic system which was geometrically equivalent to the Copernican model but geocentric. Multiple factors persuaded the Chinese to maintain a relativistic, anti-realist understanding of positional astronomy beyond the Scientific Revolution. In addition to Taoist and Buddhist views of life involving constant change and their past experience with calendars suggesting revisions every 300 years, the Jesuits presented another example of apparent arbitrariness in cosmological model selection, and they continued to stick with the Tychonic model as the western world switched to heliocentrism. You can read Lijing Jiang’s blogging at Science in a Mirror, where she may post something about her presentation in the future. ...

The work of ASU emeritus professor of psychology Robert Cialdini, author of the classic book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, has shown that if a sign or card suggesting that somebody do something also indicates that most other people are likely to do that, it increases compliance with the request.  The wording of this sign, put up in ASU bathrooms all over campus by the Health and Counseling Student Action Committee, may well have the opposite of its intended effect.  Somebody should have read their Cialdini before making these signs! Historical Comments Einzige (2010-05-31): Someone should do a study on this particular bathroom's hand-washing stats and see what the deviation from "normal" is--if any. ...

There’s a widespread recognition that public policy should be informed by both scientifically verifiable factual information and by social values. It’s commonly assumed that science should provide the facts for policy-makers, and the policy-makers should then use those facts and social and political values of the citizens they represent to make policy. This division between fact and value is institutionalized in processes such as a division between risk assessment performed by scientists concerned solely with the facts and subsequent risk management that also involves values, performed in the sphere of politics. This neat division, however, doesn’t actually work that well in practice. “Taking European Knowledge Society Seriously,” a 2007 “Report by the Expert Group on Science and Governance to the Science, Economy and Society Directorate, Directorate-General for Research” of the European Commission, spends much of its third chapter criticizing this division and the idea that risk assessment can be performed in a value-free way. Some of the Report’s objections are similar to those made by Heather Douglas in her book Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal, and her analysis of a topography of values is complementary to the Report. The selection of what counts as input into the risk assessment process, for example, is a value-laden decision that is analogous to Douglas’ discussion of problem selection. Health and safety concerns are commonly paramount, but other potential risks–to environment, to economy, to social institutions–may be minimized, dismissed, or ignored. Selection of methods of measurement also can implicitly involve values, as also is observed by Douglas. The Report notes, “health can be measured alternatively as frequency or mode of death or injury, disease morbidity, or quality of life,” and questions arise as to how to aggregate and weight different populations, compare humans to nonhumans, and future generations to present generations. In practice, scientists tend to recognize questions of these sorts, as well as that they are value-laden. This can lead to the process being bogged down by scientists wanting policy-makers to answer value questions before they perform their risk assessment, while policy-makers insist that they just want the scientific facts of the matter before making any value-based decisions. Because science is a powerful justification for policy, it’s in the interest of the policy-maker to push as much as possible to the science side of the equation. We see this occur in Congress, which tends to pass broad-brush statutes which “do something” about a problem but push all the details to regulatory agencies, so that Congress can take credit for action but blame the regulatory agencies if it doesn’t work as expected. We see it in judicial decisions, where the courts tend to be extremely deferential to science. And we see it within regulatory agencies themselves, as when EPA Administrator Carol Browner went from saying first that “The question is not one of science, the question is one of judgment” (Dec. 1996, upon initially proposing ozone standards) to “I think it is not a question of judgment, I think it is a question of science” (March 1997, about those same standards). The former position is subject to challenge in ways that the latter is not. In reality, any thorough system of risk management needs to be iterative and involve both scientific judgments about facts and political decisions that take into account values, taking care not to use values in a way to achieve predetermined conclusions, but to recognize what sets of interests and concerns are of significance. This doesn’t preclude the standardization of methods of quantification and assessment, it just means that they need to be able to evolve in response to feedback, as well as to begin from a state where values are explicitly used in identifying what facts need to be assessed. [A slightly different version of the above was written as a comment for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Tim K. for his comments.] ...

Science fiction has been a popular genre at least since Jules Verne’s 19th century work, and arguably longer still. But can it have practical value as well as be a form of escapist entertainment? Clark Miller and Ira Bennett of ASU suggest that it has potential for use in improving the capacity of the general public “to imagine and reason critically about technological futures” and for being integrated into technology assessment processes (“Thinking longer term about technology: is there value in science fiction-inspired approaches to constructing futures?" Science and Public Policy 35(8), October 2008, pp. 597-606). Miller and Bennett argue that science fiction can provide a way to stimulate people to wake from “technological somnambulism” (Langdon Winner’s term for taking for granted or being oblivious to sociotechnical changes), in order to recognize such changes, realize that there may be alternative possibilities and that particular changes need not be determined, and to engage with deliberative processes and institutions that choose directions of change. Where most political planning is short-term and based on projections that simply extend current trends incrementally into the future, science fiction provides scenarios which exhibit “non-linearity” by involving multiple, major, and complex changes from current reality. While these scenarios “likely provide…little technical accuracy” about how technology and society will actually interact, they may still provide ideas about alternative possibilities, and in particular to provide “clear visions of desirable–and not so desirable–futures.” The article begins with a quote from Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute recommending that “hard science fiction” be used to aid in “long-term” (20+ year) prediction scenarios; she advises, “Don’t think of it as literature,” and focus on the technologies rather than the people. Miller and Bennett, however, argue otherwise–that not only is science fiction useful for thinking about longer-term consequences, but that the parts about the people–how technologies actually fit into society–are just as, if not more important than the ideas about the technologies themselves. It ends with some examples of use of science fiction in workshops for nanotechnology researchers which have been conducted by Bennett and suggested uses in science education and in “society’s practices and institutions for public engagement and technology assessment.” About the former suggested use, the authors write that “The National Science Foundation, which has by and large not been in the business of supporting science fiction, might be encouraged to fund training and/or networking exercises that would foster greater interaction among scientists and fiction writers.” While some steps have been taken to promote interaction between scientists and fiction writers–most notably the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange project headed by executive director Jennifer Ouellette who spoke at last year’s The Amazing Meeting 7–this interaction is mostly one-way. The project is conceived of as a way for science to be accurately communicated to the general public through entertainment, rather than facilitating the generation of ideas for technological innovation and scientific development from the general public or the entertainment stories that are created. The SEE promotes the idea of collaboration between scientists and entertainment producers on the creative works of entertainment, but not necessarily directing creative feedback into science or building new capacities in science and technology, except indirectly by providing the general public with inspiration about science. Similarly, the Skeptrack and Science Track at the annual Dragon*Con science fiction convention in Atlanta provide ways for scientists and skeptics to interact with science fiction fans (and creators of science fiction works), but the communication is primarily in one direction via speakers and panels, with an opportunity for Q&A. (Unlike the notion of a SkeptiCamp, where all participants are potentially on an equal basis, with everyone given the opportunity to be a presenter.) [P.S. The Long Now Foundation is an organization that makes the Foresight Institute’s time horizon look short–their time frame is the next 10,000 years, with a focus on how to make extremely long-term projects work and how to create an institutional framework that can persist for extremely long periods of time. (The obligatory science fiction references are Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz and Neal Stephenson’s Anathem.)] [A slightly different version of the above was written for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Judd A. for his comments–he raised the concern that SkeptiCamp is connected to a rationalist form of skepticism that is concerned to “narrow the range of ‘acceptable’ beliefs” rather than widen it. While this may be true, depending on what the class of “acceptable” beliefs is prior to applying a skeptical filter, it need not be–applying scientific methodology and critical thinking can also open up possibilities for individuals. And if the initial set of beliefs includes all possibilities, converting that set to knowledge must necessarily involve narrowing rather than expanding the range, as there are many more ways to go wrong than to go right. But this criticism points out something that I’ve observed in my comparison of skepticism to Forteanism–skepticism is more concerned about avoiding Type I errors than Type II errors, while Forteans are more concerned about avoiding Type II errors than Type I errors, and these are complementary positions that both need representation in society.] ...