Sheril Kirshenbaum is a marine biologist and author at Duke University. Sometimes she's a classicist, radio jock, or congressional staffer. Never sure what's next, she continues to enjoy the journey. For more information, visit her website.
While we have immensely enjoyed being a part of Scienceblogs, we've decided together that it is time to move on. Our tremendous thanks go out to Seed for hosting The Intersection since 2006 where we've been honored to share the network with such an esteemed community of bloggers--many of whom have become good friends.
While we're excited to join Carl, Phil, and Sean, it is a bittersweet decision as we will miss the Sb 'family' tremendously. Of course, we will never be far--the blogosphere has no boundaries after all--and the discussion grows larger and more interesting every day...
The Intersection at Discover will maintain its archive of posts and comments, growing as we continue to explore the intersections of science, politics, and society. We're also preparing to announce some exciting new projects so stay tuned! Most of all, as we make this transition, the blog will become the central clearinghouse for discussions relating to our new book, Unscientific America, which we're very proud of and which hits this June/July.
Thanks to sciblings, readers, and Scienceblogs for years of support and friendship! Please update your feed, bookmarks, links, and blogrolls with our new address http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection and come visit us as we settle in!
As any reader of this blog knows, I was for a while very critical of the Washington Post editorial page amid the George Will affair. Now, my view has changed.
Today the Post publishes, replete with links to many scientific sources, my op-ed answering three claims Will made in his now infamous "Dark Green Doomsayers" column, and also making a broader point about why we need standards in science-centered journalism and commentary.
I'm extremely heartened that the Post ran the piece, and has at least allowed me to correct Will--or, to "debate" him. Without further ado, the oped begins like this:
A recent controversy over claims about climate science by Post op-ed columnist George F. Will raises a critical question: Can we ever know, on any contentious or politicized topic, how to recognize the real conclusions of science and how to distinguish them from scientific-sounding spin or misinformation?
Congress will soon consider global-warming legislation, and the debate comes as contradictory claims about climate science abound. Partisans of this issue often wield vastly different facts and sometimes seem to even live in different realities.
In this context, finding common ground will be very difficult. Perhaps the only hope involves taking a stand for a breed of journalism and commentary that is not permitted to simply say anything; that is constrained by standards of evidence, rigor and reproducibility that are similar to the canons of modern science itself....
I spent a weekend doing this column, wondering if I was wasting my time. Now I'm very glad I did it.
UPDATE: I didn't realize it until just now, but my column is paired with a letter from the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, Michel Jarraud, further debunking Will. In combination, this is a pretty powerful riposte, to say the least. Read Jarraud's letter here.
UPDATE II: Wow. Over at the Post there are already over 80 comments (as of 9:30 ET)...now there are 200 as of 12:30 ET....
Several readers have emailed me to comment on Michael Steele's ummmm...imaginative explanations of both global 'cooling' and Greenland:
"We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? No very long."
You want me to respond to that gibberish? Seriously? The man got the history of Greenland wrong... need I really wax poetic on the rest? It's not a question of 'what this planet is all about', but rather what planet is the RNC Chairman on?
Today Bora, Abel, and I visited Duke's Sanford Institute on Public Policy for the second year in a row to discuss the coverage of science, health, and policy. We chatted with a group of undergraduates about the evolution of science blogs, the emergence of blogging networks, the role of science blogs vs the MSM, and where open-access fits in. Our beloved scibling Isis even made a guest appearance via gchat!
We had a lot of fun and special thanks to GenomeBoy for inviting us to explore ideas with his terrific class! The other 'Beacons of the Bloggerati' had cameras, so photo to come.
After the morning in such wonderful company, I'm already looking forward to next year!
Nothing else matters today. Nothing except what is going to happen in the very last episode of Battlestar, which has been running since 2004 and now culminates in a two hour extravaganza. We know the Battlestar is about to jump into the Cylon colony to rescue Hera, the human-Cylon hybrid child, and to make a last stand with guns blazing...what the frak is going to happen?
'Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington.'
- Governor Bobby Jindal, February 24, 2009
If this video is any indication, both eruptions have the potential to do a lot of damage and it seems to me they're not mutually exclusive. So let's keep an eye on each.