How Should Scientists Address Misconceptions About Science: Stick or Carrot?

Dear Emc c, Who is in control of International Markets? It is the corporations, is it not? Have not many pointed out that what the US has turned into, is an Oligarchy. Some other experts have said, it is a Theocracy. Sam Harris in his book, The End of Faith said that in the US now it would be about impossible for an Atheist to become President. He also said substitute the word "Toaster" every time you read "God", and see if the statement makes sense. Others have strong suspicions that the war in Iraq, had more to do with securing Oil, than it had to do with Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The US is interesting since even the most corrupt, misguided, or foolish American, does seem to somehow shy away from complete lies. "Okay, well, we didn't find any Weapons of Mass Destruction, but hey, really, we thought we would!" -"Oh, and by the way, if we get control of this country, they'll sell us oil."

As far as what the Chinese will do in relation to Kyoto, maybe Cnpower will tell us.

I am not in complete disagreement with you as far as Kyoto is concerned. Still having been around for the events of the past 50 years, noting that Reagan tore off the roof of The White House, the Solar Panels, and cut funding for Pell Grants, I am not wild about how the US has ended up dependent on China, for money, or the Saudis for Oil.

Actually, GW folks, are not trying to stifle debate. Frankly most GW folks, of the scientific community, just really thought that the scientific evidence was so strong, that in the scientific community, the debate was really now about how best to transform the energy infrastructure.

We simply didn't realize that smart guys like you, refused to accept the conclusions of the scientific community, drawn from evidence.

Anonymous Hero told us to look at the GISS report, and we looked at it. It said that there had been a slight diminution in heat from the Sun, offset about 10 times by human activities very likely to have caused Global Warming.

Since Mars doesn't have much of an atmosphere, and no human activity, I'm not surprised it may well have gotten a little cooler.

I myself like to debate, and I like to win, but I have an ethical streak in me that allows me to lose.

It is rare for me to lose in a debate. I remember that I was in a debate or argument and everyone was watching and listening and at some point I conceded that I was wrong, and my opponent was right.

Over the past 10 years I've lost two political battles. I fought for a ubiquitous UNTV Channel, similar to C-Span, as a counter to Fox, CNN, and Al Jezzera. By the time I'd been beat up and lost over that I was about in agreement with John Bolton. My main supporter in that fight was Andre` Lewin who wrote a wonderfully experienced set of recommendations for the Reinvention of the UN.

I recently lost another political fight of a local nature, for I do feel one ought to fight for what you believe right for all locally, and globally.

I fought to keep the only Local Community Airport for the County I live in open.

My thesis was that we are in modern times, we are landlocked, smart rich people like to get where they want to go in airplanes of their own. They have money and pay taxes and start businesses.

Lost that one too. Plus I got fired.

What will happen down the road if smart people like you, win?

Let me ask, say you are wrong about Global Warming, and forestall common sense, practical best possible in time available counters to it, intended to get mankind through what Jared Diamond described as "the bottleneck", what sort of victory is that?

If I am wrong, I'd rather lose quick, than not have a team to play against later, over something else, or in a different stadium. Hey I lost!

P.S. Counter Misconceptions with Facts.

What country do you live in & what are these free markets you speak of [tongue firmly in cheek]

The biggest corporations here in the US are the biggest recipients of welfare.

From cheap oil & mineral leases, to subsidies for highways that directly benefit the automakers... Direct bailouts for irresponsible lenders, investors.

What is wrong with a minor percentage of our tax dollars funding pure science? A undetermined agenda, is a refreshing contrast compared to the incomplete profit is the only yardstick agenda.

A huge percentage is already going towards the military industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about!

Please continue explaining the difference between corporate & government power.

That horse seems to have left the barn....

emc_c,

I think Garthh summed up the main point in my response to you: "Debate is not attack".

When you disagree with someone (or their point of view) then you claim that you are "debating", however when someone disagrees with you (or your point of view) then you claim they are "attacking".

Perhaps we should change the way we operate so that as long as emc_c says something then "that is it; end-of-story; time to move on and act in accordance with their emc_c's dictates." As far as I can tell this sounds very similar to a dictatorship, hence the PRC and the North Korea reference in my previous post.

I understand that this repsonse will unlikely mend any bridges that may have been damaged between us by my previous post, but if you actually sit back and read your posts then you will see where I am coming from.

Kind Regards

Mr. W.A Snow

Concise with the world at peril .

I always believe - if the scientists are wrong in GW - Plant trees , reduce CO2 - nothing lost (well except a few $s)

If the are right then ?

And we keep on arguing.

It is like a drug to a possibly (not necessarily) terminal patient. Take it and you live , don't take and if my diagnosis is true - you are doomed, if false, then you have taken a drug unnecessarily and wasted your $s (thr drug here won't have any side effects)

What will you chose ? Think over.

Hi sb

GA for that. As usual, sense and thought prevail.

While I can appreciate your reference to pollution per head on the basis that to deny underdeveloped countries the chance to develop is likely to cause considerable hardship, I think we should explicitly recognize that the environment is indifferent to pollution per head (except on a purely local level) and is really affected by the actual total.

We should ignore pollution per head and admit that, in the interests of improving the lot of the poor, we will accept pollution to bring their standard of living up.

This does not mean that they should be allowed willy-nilly inefficient industries, but that we (the developed world) should be helping them to develop their industries with efficient and predominantly sustainable methods.

This would mean that their contribution to overall pollution would not rise as much as everyone fears, but they are also not completely let off the hook.

The wholesale burning of forests and the development of filthy, inefficient industries (as has tended to happen in Indonesia for example) should not be accepted just because it is done by a third world country.

As a side issue, it would be possible to mount an argument that rain forests increase GW. A rain forest in equilibrium is not fixing any net carbon, because there is no net growth. Plants are dying and decaying as fast as they are growing.

However, because of the trash load on the forest floor, a proportion of the decomposition is anaerobic, liberating CH4. This cannot be used directly by the forest so it escapes in to the atmosphere and the forest takes extra CO2 from the atmosphere to compensate.

But CH4 is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, therefore the rain forests are a net contributor to GW, unlike open grassland (which contains livestock who fart CH4 anyway and make an indirect contribution but you don't mention that).

This means we should log rain forest as fast as possible to reduce the CH4 liberated to the atmosphere!

I don't actually believe this argument, but it could be advanced. In fact I can see quite a few holes in it, but will be interested in who takes the bait and picks it to pieces.

Have fun and lets enjoy the debate!

If you want to discuss Global Climate Change Here are some other existing threads:

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/34041

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/34040

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/34037

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/26285

Enjoy!

Rodger's original question here is: should we call Bullshit on The anti-science [& various obstufacators] crowd?

Despite the fact that we are in disagreement on many topics, you are a wise man. And although Mr. Pink may be a smart person, he is most definitely not wise - else he would understand what you have been trying to explain to him throughout this thread.

I took umbrage at your tone with me because I was merely responding to the raw hatred he was spewing, and by comparison, I was a model of decorum.

Had you not marked yourself off-topic, I would have awarded you a GA.

GA anyway.

Or, re-phrased back to the original topic line:

So, all scientific argument must be respected. Any hypothesis, no matter how outlandish or ridiculous.

1. If your answer to the above statement is no, then my question is, how do you aim to weave it into previously known and proven knowledge?

2. I would argue that most of us know a folly when we see one.

3. Of course we are all guilty of misinterpreting valid data at one point. Often the ones who care for us will explain why and how.

If we honor and respect every silly notion put forward, where does that get us? It certainly won't lead to a verifiable knowledge. The only effect it will have, is create a haze of uncertainty about what is valid and what is not.

Thanks Garthh, I had been meaning to collect the multiples, but you have beat me to it. This and the Blog about Water are what caused me to post the CR4 Feedback question about whether or not members would be for merging some threads, when they were so close in content and direction, and pretty much involved all the same participants.

Of course it is effective to do as you have done, and provide links to all the threads, and I recognize CR4 administrators have plenty enough to do, though there is the possibility that merging this set of threads, may well make things easier for them to monitor the discussions.

In the case of this set of threads, which is an important subject; imagine if some world leader did actually drop in to see how engineers and scientists were debating this important subject, might be nice if they were grouped together.

Further in this case, I'd about like to see a condensed version of the merged links. Certainly of subjects discussed and debated the role of Science in providing solutions for our shared problems, Global Warming is a big one, that has in the past aroused interest and passions, and we can expect it will continue to do so.

P.S. Through Science Salvation!

Those were just the climate change threads Rodger started, here are some more:

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/22232#comment234737

This one is an oldie but goodie http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/4193#comment23281

Please take John DG's poll

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/4193#comment23281

I'm sure there are more...

Roger Pink,

Please do not misunderstand my post (#43 I believe) to be in anyway backing emc c. I was merly pointing out that he has a different point of view to yourself and he is entitled to express it. Actually I am enjoying reading this thread (all of the posts)

As for people compalining to the CR4 editors: two points here

• What was the basis of the complaint?
• Have people nothing better to do? If they are so sensitive then perhaps they should not use the internet.

The CR4 editors should butt out an not get involved in these type of arguments. We are all adults here and we can have disagreements, I see no problem with that.

Kind Regards

Mr. W.A Snow

Roger Pink,

Your personal attacks on emc_c have no place in a debate. These are false remarks. I know emc_c from the CR4 forums as a person with valuable expertise, generous with his knowledge, reasoned in his comments, and making valid points where debate strays into other issues outside pure science.

I notice that, in his responses, he didn't stoop to your level, but kept to the moral high ground in not responding to personal attacks in kind. This is the emc_c I know and respect.

You have a lot of gall making insinuations that others share your repugnant bias against emc_c, with words like "That's what they think of you". BS, , and an insult to all of us who disagree and are misrepresented.

So Roger, are you capable of acknowledging your error and making an apology?

Agree wholeheartedly, having the Whitehouse edit/sanitize EPA reports is propaganda not science. Now where are, and more importantly, how much money does the scientific lobby have?

None? Well there you go.

An entirely state-based science could also result in what happened to the Church of England. (But some other churches thrive).

There are other problems with individual scientists; sometimes they get so certain of their theories that they fiddle their results because they think it is important their work be exploited quickly; albeit this has perhaps been more prevalent in psychology and medicine than elsewhere. And if they are half-way decent statisticians you only find out if/when you try to repeat the work.

I say: stick with a mixed scientific economy, and peer review by a community on both sides of any divides, and with a bias towards publishing if there is any doubt. Not ideal, but probably the least bad option

BTW, I would argue both the mechanisms and the mix of funding, but this is not the forum for that.

A mixed science economy is the only way to go. How could we bar one sector of society from doing science or funding science? Science is safest when everyone is free to participate, and all are subject to the same rules.

More scrutiny of science is better. More public access to published science will be better for science and for all. Maybe some rules are needed for corporate interests, who are known to suppress findings contrary to their goals (as in pharma) and to get approvals for products on the one or two studies actually supporting their goals. Maybe they should have to publish all their findings. (This issue was raised recently when scientists used Freedom of Information Act to get unpublished pharma studies for a balanced view..)

As for government, there is a role to do science in the public interest, very valuable as shown in the past. But there should be legislation to keep this "hands off", that is, that politicians cannot edit or muzzle the scientists they funded with public money or prevent them from publishing their findings, doing interviews, etc.

"More public access to published science"

In principle I say "Here ye, here ye" to that. But we must understand that many journals rely on subscriptions and pay-per-view to survive, so we need a way around this. My personal view is that papers should become progressively visible on the internet to the general public after (say) a year; but even the IEEE (which I believe to be as good as any and better than most in terms of open access) hasn't seriously considered how this may be achieved - at least, not so far as I''m aware.

Government science in the public interest - agreed; but even if entirely true, that leaves myriad problems. It is in the public interest to be able to defend oneself - but not always to publish defense-critical scientific work.
Then there is regulatory work. In an ideal world pre-release pharma tests would be undertaken by an independent unit (specifically, one that is not funded by the pharma companies). Here, we would need to keep failures confidential - otherwise companies will resort to pre-test duplication, which will both add to costs and delay the appearance of useful medications

A result based approach is most practical.

Progress through Fun! Go with the carrot.

You can beat a guy into submission, make him into a soldier, but he will lose against an inspired and love motivated warrior.

What happened to those small town hobby shops full of things you had to put together and make fly, or roll down the sidewalk?

People do things for emotional reasons. They may well be reasonable and rational, intellectual, but when they actually get around to doing something it comes out of desires and quests.

Why not just go ahead and get into the dirt like a bunch of guys playing rugby wearing nothing to distinguish one team from the other, other than the color of their jerseys?

(For some reason that Football game scene in the Mash movie crossed my mind. Plus I remembered the time a guy and his brother tried to beat my head in with a brick.)

Yeah, you do have to actually duke it out.

Go into the schools with science kits for building rockets, potato cannons, and whirlygigs that entertain and inspire the kids.

Get Richard Petty, or some Basketball or Rap Hero to praise the guy that made his engine, or figured out how to record their whims, and Science, Weird Science will, be more respected.

Gen. Westmoreland said or words to the effect, Only accurate rifles are interesting...

Exactly. Well put.

Nail on head !

Here's an idea....... a "Media Fiction Reporting and Rebuttal Act" of 2011.

We have warning notices on a wide variety of products. Some are there by government requirement or outright legal requirements. Others are there because they are CYA's suggested by some lawyer.

How about we have an FCC department that reviews all videos for media presentation over the airwaves for presentation of any devices, technologies, natural phenomena or events, current or historical that are "make believe". Such videos and any trailers would require presentation of disclaimers in normal speed of both picture and sound prior to each showing and every hour during the course of the presentation.

Large scale media producing websites would also be required to meet the same requirements for any streaming video if they had more than some number of "hits" per week. Movies for transportation in interstate commerce would also have to meet those requirements regardless of the media or method of transportation if more than 10,000 copies are sold.

In addition to the FCC department the Congress would charter an independent non-profit national "Fiction Rebuttal Committee" organization with one time seed money and broad but not complete immunity from lawsuits. This organization would seek volunteers from among the community of scientists, technologists, engineers, historians, journalists, medical professionals and other experts. Ongoing funding for the FRC would depend on donations and funds received from the organization's operations. They would be like the opposing party that gets to give a rebuttal to politicians' broadcast speeches.

Make believe disclosure laws would require all affected media transmittals to include an un-censored amount of screen time not less than 10 percent of the total production including commercials for rebuttals by the FRC to use if they chose at their option. This offer would be made and accompanied by a secure viewable sample copy of the final production not less than 4 weeks prior to the first public release. A suitable non-disclosure agreement would exist between the FRC and anyone releasing an affected product prior to transmittal of the sample copy. Violation of the NDA by the FRC would be one of the limited situations in which the producer could find relief in the courts.

Oh, by the way, properly identified political campaign productions, speeches and such would be exempt from the requirements of the MFRRA. There would likely be other legitimate exemptions that would have to be covered in the legislation.

Ed Weldon (Yeah, I know I'm dreaming; but what the hey, I haven't heard any other innovative plans here)

How strange it seems to me that a scientist or engineer would propose more censorship and would assume that the FCC would be competent to do it. A later post will expand on that thought.

make that FRC.

esbuck --

"Strange"......YES!! Someone finally agrees with what my oldest son has been saying all these years. The non-conformist in me loves that adjective.

Please go back and read what I said a bit closer. There are some bits in there I think may be useful. While I enjoy philosophical discussions they seem to produce little of value other than a gradual improvement in the way we articulate our positions. At some point we need to get into the issue of tangible action toward solution of the problem.

I am a pragmatist. I have no problem using the strictures of government to our own advantage. The power of business interests to present falsehoods dressed as truth for their own profit is huge. As long as the playing field is owned, at least partly, by the people and power over interstate commerce is grounded in the Constitution we should have the opportunity to offer rebuttals in the same place and time rather than out behind the parking lot after the game.

I do agree that FCC bureaucrats are all too easily controlled by the political party in power and the very nature of government to be constrained by a set of rigid rules and directives. Who could have missed the way that operated in the last 8 years. The better model to follow is, as I later suggested, the government chartered organization like PBS/NPR that would remain as a non-profit entity and very early shed the element of financial support and the attendant influence from appropriations. (PBS is almost there at 8%; it is taking too long in their case).

Ed Weldon

Shouldn't we take a lesson from the great successes of financial regulation over the past few years, and look towards privately funded bodies (they should have charitable status, but probably won't get it) to do this job?

I think you are confusing regulation with deregulation...

Ha...you are all missing the point.
We should .
..
...
DESIGN A BETTER CARROT

Del

Jeesh Del -- My FRC is a first cut at a better carrot. Sure, finding a place for it to grow wouldn't be easy. The idea is to give some heft and genuine (read money) support for a "voice of truth" that is independent of government and commercial influence. There's no reason why such an organization should restrict it's voice to only critiquing movies. That process just starts the cash flow. Like NPR and PBS the FRC would have to attract contributors with content they like.

Ed Weldon

How do you prevent your powers that be from converting your program into political censorship in the name of National Security? Any "review" or "approval" by political powers will eventually evolve into censorship when the right emergency comes along...

quote cwarner7 11: "How do you prevent your powers that be from converting your program into political censorship in the name of National Security"

I've got news for you. The FCC can and does do that right now. They don't even need to call it National Security. They don't have to call it anything. Just say the wrong common everyday word from the English language on the airwaves and you get slapped with a huge fine. That isn't exactly censorship per the dictionary definition but it might as well be.

The process of "fiction review" wouldn't be censorship. It would be an optional service offered by the government pre-release. One could decline the offer, release the production that didn't meet the standards of disclosure and get fined later.

Don't take me personally too seriously here. This idea is a "straw man". Maybe it might just devolve into a PBS series lampooning nonscientific nonsense in the media. I do think an independent organization of volunteer professionals of high caliber whose mission is to publicly debunk untruths in the media would be a good thing.

Ed Weldon

The funding is in the pipe too eh?

Sceptic-

Any suggestions as to how to sort the grain from the chaff on the Internet? It seems the more often a misconception or representation is repeated, the more valid it appears to the general public. Search Global Warming- how far down the list before you find a link to the UN report, on which all the garbage that is published is supposed to be based? How far down the list before you even get to a legitimate analysis of the real issue? And how do you filter out the garbage without censorship? (If I knew the answer to this, I would be able to really cut down the time I spend looking for information...)

cwarner -- "Any suggestions as to how to sort the grain from the chaff on the Internet? "

It's all in the search algorithm. What we want wouldn't fit Google's business model. Or would it?

Is there another search engine that sorts by the credibility level of the website? Or maybe by the names of people quoted in the content. Maybe that could be a mission for a blue ribbon committee of volunteer professionals to assign numerical ratings to information sources and paper publishers. Perhaps the rating system could be based at least partially on the number of citations a paper writer has in other published and peer reviewed papers for the top recognized professional journals.

Does something like this already exist confined in some obscure little corner of the working scientific world?

More straw men here.

Ed Weldon

I think that the closest thing you can find at the moment is Wikipedia. Of course inaccuracies do appear, and occasionally they persist or reappear. But it's surprisingly good. So much so that I often include "Wikipedia" in my search string. There's a chance that the front page will be garbage - but a look at the discussion and history pages will soon reveal if it has recently been changed in a risky way.

Naturally you should read anything you find there with informed scepticism - it is in theory open to every crank and vested interest in the world. However, as implied above, if what you are after is purely factual the back-up pages will give a good idea of its veracity - and if you are looking at more technical information it's often reasonably straightforward to see if it hangs together.

I agree about wikipedia. I also recommend reading as much from official organizations, laboratories, agencies, etc. They all have news pages and they are all usually quite interesting.

However, once in a while, it really pays to pull up the actual scientific paper. Nothing beats hearing it from the horses mouth.

You'll usually find useful starting references on Wikipedia. Again, in my experience better focussed than you'll get from Google. And those can usually be traced back to the original papers.

[Unfortunately, not being campus-based and being too mean to pay the on-line fees, I usually end up with a huge list when I do go to the library (but at least it's possible to ask in advance for the librarian to get them out of reserve stock, so they can be ready).]

That is why I subscribe to Science, The data and the conculsions make for an understanding that popular sensation magazines miss.

cwarner7_11

Any suggestions as to how to sort the grain from the chaff on the Internet?

I don't have short or medium term solutions.

The only way I know is to plough through and use the analytical thinking developed by your scientific training.

In the long term, if we can we awaken the joy of science in our young people, they will acquire the critical/analytical approach and it will become less effective or attractive for politicians, press, vested interests and over unity scammers to use the net.

When people learn to think this way, they are difficult marks for scammers, PR people etc to try and fool.

Our best defence of a free society is and open and informed one.

Please excuse my dreams.

It is VERY tempting to want to address the broad side issue of religion vs. science. After all, evolution has become the poster theory for "science". That is probably the major reason (in today's culture) for a "bad view" of science -- that and the projects funded by government eligible for (for those older readers) a "golden fleece" award.

But because that is a very deep hole and a discussion that generally doesn't promote harmony, I'll refrain except for one comment. While evolution appeals to deductive reasoning, it is not the sort of "theory" that lends itself easily to testing by what most scientists think of as the scientific method. The assumed timespan precludes a lab experiment where dramatic changes in form can be observed. That is why it is deductive reasoning that "leads" to the theory. I have no problem with the theory. But to say it is proven is a stretch. There are still too many gaps in the fossile record so far.

Leaving that aside, and responding to the original question posed. What hooked me on science was my high school physics teacher. He was so enamoured of the subject and so enthusiastic that it would have been hard not to be affected by it if you were his student. I'm sure not every student of his went on to technical/scientific careers, but the appreciation of "looking for truth" would have been hard to "miss". So I think having the right teacher and an educational environment where the teacher has the freedom to express his enthusiasm as he/she pleases (not according to some strict study plan dictated by state school board requirements) will/would do wonders to maintain an interest in science in coming generations.

There is at least some evidence of a non-deductive kind for evolution - I know of physical experiments, and also of more complex results from computer simulations (synthesis).

The physical work has used yeasts and bacteria, because many of these breed at a sufficient rate to allow the experiments to last for very large numbers of generations (greater than tens-of-thousands). If you enter "bacterial evolutionary experiments" in Google you will find a range of reports.

That leaves a difficulty - that larger organisms with longer lives would need to change significantly over smaller numbers of generations than are required for bacteria.
This has been studied using simplified computer models; the results indicate that, for these longer-lived life-forms, the way each individual characteristic is selected via a choice between two generators can allow these generators to persist in the population even when they are not the best available for a given situation; and that this mechanism provides a basis for evolution to proceed more rapidly in these populations. One way of describing this is that the population never becomes as uniformly optimised for the current environment as would a single-gene species, but that the benefit is that modifications that would allow future adaptation are able to persist. That suggests that life-forms such as plants and animals would have required orders of magnitude longer to evolve had it not been for the two-part arrangement of DNA. Unfortunately, I didn't keep a reference to this work, and I've not managed to find a suitable reference on the web.
On the other hand, you can easily find simple evolutionary software demonstrators (Google "evolution simulation")

Hello Roger Pink,

I don't often reply with long comments though on this subject many seem obtuse and I think a much larger bite need be taken. This discourse may seem untenable to someone without cognizant behavioral reasoning.

You'll need to get your hands dirty and relax much aloofness, be careful:

Shaping Beliefs and Attitudes:

A Handbook of Attitude Change Strategies.

Howard Johnston

University of South Florida

Johnston@tempest.coedu.usf.edu

A poster seen in many classrooms proclaims, "Attitude is Everything." And, in contemporary schools, that is probably very close to the truth. We attribute success and failure to a student's attitude and even forgive poor performance if a student displays a positive attitude toward our class or the school. We talk about the need for some students to change their attitudes, and lament those who change them for the worse. We reward positive attitudes, punish negative ones, and, in general, believe that everything in our school would be better if everyone had a better attitude.

The same occurs among adults in the school as well. Principals and teachers complain about groups of their colleagues with negative attitudes toward kids or the school. Parents are grateful when they find their child's teachers have a pleasant attitude, and the attitudes of administrators and board members are frequent topics of staff lounge conversation.

Just like the weather, there's a lot of talk about attitude, but no one seems to do much about it. Granted, it is often difficult to change attitudes, but, with some effort, it is quite possible to do so. And, as most innovators would agree, unless there is a positive attitude in a school toward new ideas, they are not very likely to succeed. In short, a positive attitude is a prerequisite for meaningful school change. Indeed, attitude is everything.

What Are Attitudes?

An attitude is simply a predisposition to approach or avoid an idea, event, person or object. In other words, it is a tendency to act in one way or another toward an "attitude object." In some cases, these attitude objects can be quite specific, such as a food, color, or individual. They can also be somewhat less specific. For example, someone who has a negative attitude toward "change" would probably extend it to anything representing change -- leaders, technology, meetings...the list is nearly endless.

Continue Reading Shaping Beliefs and Attitudes: A Handbook of Attitude Change Strategies

Editorial note: Chris here - Sorry folks, posting large swaths of text from other sites (even with attribution) is a violation of the Copyright Act. Fair use doctrine allows for approximately 300-400 words or 2-3 paragraphs - hence the revision of this post.

esbuck -- Good story about your teaching experience. It is sadly illustrative of the fundamental nature of government and hierarchal organizational structures.

Your quick glance at my FRC "strawman" saw cardboard. Your response was to spray water to make him sag away. He is made of STRAW, esbuck. Water will not make him collapse. Please do him the courtesy of attacking him with fire. Take time to plan your attack lest your thrust be resisted while he is still wet.

Ed Weldon

I first read this as "I suppose truth is circumcised". Somehow, it still seems appropriate.

But my answer to one of your comments is - if someone finds an effect, he has every right to publish, but should be held to account if either the publication lacks the detail that tells you what it did (that merits a "strong query"), or was falsified. BTW, I have seen troll spray advertised in these pages - in my view the proposed (and sometimes implemented) application is incorrect - the only justifiable application is for someone who repeatedly falsifies evidence.

Agreed!

We need to get on prime time. Hiding the truth in obscure websites like CR-4, which is given to debates more than clear presentation of facts, is not the answer. Esbuck, your examples of what not to do are important. Truth hobbles its credibility when it becomes a laughing stock; however it choose to reach that point.

It's about advertising our message and how effective we can be. If we can do it without having to buy the ink all the better. But to paraphrase your comments and the positions of most of the rest of us there is no such thing as a free lunch. Best we be the builders of the lunch rather than the consumers. For that we need creative productions with substantial entertainment value that people will actually buy. That was one of the other facets of my FRC straw man.

Perhaps the manner in which scientists enter into contracts with media producers need to be reexamined. The public has shown a genuine appetite for "Nature" productions. Perhaps a bit more control over the content of the final "cut" should be part of our ethics as well as practice.

Ed Weldon

I worked on The Guiding Light for awhile back in the mid 90s. I was impressed that whenever some character was in the Hospital, they had a real doctor familiar with whatever disease or injury put the character in the Hospital, there on set to make sure that facts of the matter were portrayed correctly.

Between the History Channel, Discovery Channel, PBS and Nova, well there are some pretty good shows out there.

Science Friday on NPR is a terrific example.

Sometimes the best tact is in fact to simply support your friends.

P.S. I miss Mr. Wizard.

Now if we could just get CSI and most of the forensic shows to do the same. Then again the US justice system has the same issues with real criminal science.

Now if we can get the Sensationalized Science magazines to...

It is no wonder the couch potatoes have a warped out look of science.

Bill Nye, Jack Horkheimer, and Mr. Wizard have done more for the world than most of the politicians combined.