Bump in the road...

I've got a backlog of posts at various stages of almost complete and just in need of some tuning, graphics generation, and final proof-reading before release.  I'm also now officially on the docket to give a presentation at Balticon  in the skeptical thinking track sponsored by the National Capital Area Skeptics (NCAS) and am assembling that presentation.

What a great time to start experiencing computer problems...

My almost six-year old laptop picked this weekend to develop some serious behaviors that come and go.  I had been stalling replacement for at least two years (even having the logic board replaced about two years ago) and I guess I can stall no more.

Since I have a lot of software (see Building a Scientific Toolbox on MacOS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (64-bit build) ) that I now have to build on a significantly newer OS (10.8) along with a number of other configuration issues, that time has to come from somewhere.  I've decided to delay some of the almost-ready posts to complete the configuration and the Balticon presentation.  Hopefully this delay will be no longer than 2-3 weeks.

And incidentally...

I choose my system names from a long list of notable dead physicists and/or astronomers.  For various reasons, I'm leaning towards naming the new machine Birkeland, or perhaps Alfven.  Like all the names I've chosen for previous machines, the researchers have a track record that includes things they got right and things they got wrong.  I wonder how many of these researchers have had their historical standing diminished by the number of crank web sites which try to promote as correct, the things the researcher got wrong, as if the researcher were infallible, like some type of religious leader.

In the meantime, I hope you'll check out Stuart Robbins' latest podcast covering the flawed image analysis techniques so common behind pseudo-scientific claims (Episode 73: Image Analysis for Skeptics: From Faces to Pyramids).  These will become relevant to some of my future posts.

A Creation Science University Class?

A reader pointed me to a recent controversy about an astronomy class being taught at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.  The topic is being discussed at Jerry Coyne's blog, Why Evolution is True: “Science” course at Ball State University sneaks in religion.

Dr. Coyne documents the contents of the course syllabus and reading list which clearly promotes an Old-Earth Creationism/Intelligent Design theology.  Dr. Coyne argues that this is a violation of  church-state separation since Ball State is a publicly-supported university.

However, Lawrence Moran @ sandwalk (Is It Illegal to Teach Intelligent Design Creationism in American Universities?) suggests this may not be a church-state separation issue as:

1. the class is not a required class to graduate, so the analogy with American public schools breaks down, where often such a science class might be required to graduate;
2. allowing the state to dictate content, even when it is nonsense, may be an academic freedom issue.

I found these good arguments, but the key decision point for me was PZ Myers' take at Pharyngula on the topic:  I have to disagree with Jerry Coyne.  Quoting PZ:

No, sorry, not right — academic freedom is the issue here, and professors have to have the right to teach unpopular, controversial issues, even from an ignorant perspective. The first amendment does not apply; this is not a course students are required to take, and it’ss at a university, which students are not required to attend. It’s completely different from a public primary or secondary school. A bad course is an ethical problem, not a legal one. It’s also an issue that the university has to handle internally.

Myers raises the issue that these types of things happen occasionally at universities, where a (sometimes tenured) faculty member might go loopy and the university has to find the balance between preserving its reputation and its contractual obligations.

I've occasionally done some research on the professional history of the cranks I've dealt with or heard about through this blog.  I have frequently found evidence of the things PZ describes at these universities and professional institutions, where a faculty member goes off the deep end and the university can't fire them for contractual reasons.  The university often resorts to assigning the problematic faculty member to responsibilities where their craziness can't do much harm.

It is not an ideal solution, but it is a solution.

And on a different topic: Best Response to Creationism Ever!

This is a couple of years old, but it was recently sent around a skeptics list I'm on, and I don't think I've mentioned it before.  It is probably the simplest illustration of flawed creationist reasoning.

Think Outside The Box (The Cutest Response to Creationism Ever!)  Interesting that it appears on a site promoting christianity.   An earlier site: My [confined] Space: Religious Logic which has a link in the comments to the original image source

Other projects...

Interviews
I was recently quoted in Congressional Quarterly Researcher (CQ Researcher) as part of their article on Science and Religion.  While it's just one quote about geocentrism, the article interviews a great many of the big names in the science and religion conflict.

Public Talks
I'm tenatively scheduled to speak at Balticon, the Maryland Regional Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention  in Baltimore, Maryland, on Memorial Day weekend.  My talk is scheduled to be part of the Science and Skepticism track, sponsored by NCAS.  More details as the scheduling gets finalized.

Presentation/Talk Review
I wrote a short review of the science comedy routine "Feel The Power of the Dork Side" for the April 2013 NCAS Newsletter, Shadow of a Doubt.
 
Phys.Org: Teach science through argument, professor says
My greatest complaint about this article is that it describes scientific argumentation as if it is a purely rhetorical exercise, which is not the case - it must also adhere to strict standards of evidence, standards even stricter than those of a courtroom.  In the case of the physical sciences, the evidence primarily consists of models from which we can compute values of measurable quantities which can be compared to actual measurements.  Without that standard, you cannot move science into engineering practices.  We would never have successfully sent satellites and astronauts into Earth orbit and beyond without the detailed mathematical understanding of celestial mechanics developed in astronomy from Isaac Newton to the 1950s. 

Without the standard of linking the mathematical to the physical, science becomes indistinguishable from a political belief.

Not surprising, an Electric Universe advocate has jumped into the comment stream, arguing the problems with 'mainstream' models while ignoring the problems with their own (see Challenges for Electric Universe 'Theorists').  Naturally, I added some feedback to the comment stream.

Recent News on Antiscience Antics from Around the Web

Solar Neutrinos
Stuart Robbins did an excellent podcast on the solar neutrino problem.  While his focus was primarily on how creationists have used (and some continue to use) this claim, much of this information applies to Electric Sun claims as well.  Electric Sun supporters have been manufacturing all kinds of bizarre excuses of how the modern experiments on  Earth demonstrating that neutrinos oscillate (and therefore solve the solar neutrino 'shortage') must be wrong.

More Young Blood Joining the Battle…
Zack Kopplin is a 19 year old sophmore at Rice University, Texas.  He has been gaining a lot of attention in a battle for good science.  He runs two websites, one devoted to Repealing the Louisiana Science Education Act.  The original 'science' act makes it easy for teachers to introduce creationism into science classes.  The other, Say No To Creationist Vouchers, is working to stop taxpayer-funded education vouchers being used for religious schools teaching creationism.

• Zack was recently interviewed on Science Friday, April 12, 2013
• and his adventures have been described at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy (Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Member Gets Schooled on Science Funding)

Fake Scientific Journals
I recently received an email through one of my work accounts advertising a new professional journal, claiming to be 'open access'.  Browsing the home site of the journal, I checked the titles and authors of some of the recent papers published in astronomy and physics.  A few of the authors I saw published were familiar from their history of somewhat questionable quality papers.

In the same week, there was a good post on SlashDot summarizing some of the problems of fake journals.  There are some publications, calling themselves scientific journals, where the primary condition for 'passing peer review' is if the author's check clears.  One emphasis in the discussion was this growth was actually an unintended consequence of the 'open access' movement in science publication.  Slashdot: Fake Academic Journals Are a Very Real Problem.

The article mentions the work of Jeffrey Beall, who maintains the site Scholarly Open Access, monitoring some of the activity in this new option for scientific publishing.  He maintains a list of journals with policies and procedures that are questionable at best. 

Nereid and myself collaborated on a number of posts pointing out some rather severe peer-review failures at Bentham Open Astronomy Journal (BOAJ) surrounding a bunch of papers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) promoting Electric Universe claims.   While there had been a comment that the journal had shut down,  their publication frequency has significantly decreased, they still appear to be in operation.