What's New Friday March 8, 2008

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 7 Mar 08   Washington, DC

1.  WEATHER: THE 2008 ICCC ENDS.
The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change held in New York, 
ended Tuesday.  No, no, it wasn’t that government thing; this one was 
sponsored by the Heartland Institute.   No, I have no idea what the 
Heartland Institute is, or where it gets its money, but I can guess.  
Don’t feel bad if you missed the meeting; a lot of people did.  One third 
of all the scientists at the meeting thought the chilly temperatures in 
New York this week were evidence of climate cooling; one third thought it 
was just cold weather, and the other one said he had no opinion.

2.  THEORY: FLORIDA IS TEACHING THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
As WN has been reporting, the compromise on science standards approved by 
the Florida Board of Education calls for replacing the word "evolution" 
with the phrase "scientific theory of evolution."  This gives teachers an 
opening to explain to students how science works.  Now, according to an 
editorial in yesterday’s New York Times, school officials have 
inserted "scientific theory of" before every major scientific consensus in 
the standards, such as the "scientific theory of electromagnetism". Thanks 
to a free press doing its job, what began as an attempt by religious 
conservatives to impose their superstitious beliefs on Florida students is 
now a lesson to people around the country on the openness of science.   

3.  LAW: WILL THE FLORIDA LEGISLATURE INTERVENE?
A Republican State Senator filed a bill she calls the "Academic Freedom 
Act."  It would disallow actions against students for taking a position on 
evolution and ban penalties for teaching alternatives to evolution.   
The "scientific theory" rule should take care of that; there is 
no "scientific" alternative to Darwinian evolution.    

4. ANTISCIENCE: NASA NIXES ALFA MAGNETIC SPECTROMETER.
In selling the ISS to Congress NASA always held up the antimatter 
experiment of Nobel physicist Sam Ting as an example of basic science on 
the space station.  Never mind that it never went through peer review. If 
you’re spending a $100B on a space station anyway, why not put AMS on 
board?  It almost sounded free.  So AMS was built at a cost of $1.5B.  
According to Andrew Lawler in today’s Science, NASA now says it can’t 
afford to put AMS on the ISS unless Congress comes up with another $4B or 
so.  NASA is exaggerating the cost, but it does cost four times as much to 
send an astronaut to the ISS as it does to put a rover on Mars.  It’s not 
possible to calculate the ratio of scientific value for a Mars rover over 
an astronaut since it involves a zero in the denominator

5. PEER REVIEW: THE PFIZER CHALLENGE IS A PAIN.
According to yesterday’s Nature, a ruling is expected next week on whether 
the drug maker Pfizer can force the New England Journal of Medicine to 
hand over confidential peer reviews involving two painkillers that 
suppress the COX-2 enzyme.  Peer review does not ensure a paper is 
correct, and is sometimes abused by reviewers, but it is a vital motivator 
of careful work.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
---
Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org
What's New is moving to a different listserver and our
subscription process has changed. To change your subscription
status please visit this link:
http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1