I just did a Huffington Post piece keyed straight to the news of the day–the Apollo 11 anniversary. It’s entitled “The American Science Deficit–And What to Do About It.” Here’s an excerpt:

Today, on the 40 year anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, we will hear a great deal about NASA’s woes, the nation’s declining interest in space exploration, and much else. It is crucial, though, to set such observations in the context of a far broader disengagement with science that has occurred in this country since the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Launched by President Kennedy, the Apollo program was just the most prominent example of America’s dramatic investment of science in the wake of the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik. The first Earth-orbiting satellite, beeping at us from above, inspired stark competitiveness fears in the nation: Were we falling behind in technology? Would the Soviets fire on us from the skies, and if they tried, could we stop them?

In response, the U.S. Congress jacked up the budget of the recently formed National Science Foundation to $ 134 million, an increase of nearly $ 100 million in just one year. And that was just the beginning–NSF’s budget continued to explode in subsequent years, so that by 1962-1963 it had reached $ 12.2 billion. [This statement is mistaken: the 1962-1963 figure represents the total federal government R&D expenditure.]  Meanwhile, Congress created NASA and passed the National Defense Education Act, providing generous funding to encourage American students to pursue careers in science and engineering.

And still, that’s just the beginning of the response to Sputnik. At the same time, President Eisenhower pulled science into the White House by creating the office of the president’s science adviser and the President’s Science Advisory Committee; even as the National Science Foundation drew upon the nation’s elite researchers in an attempt to remake the high school science education curriculum. Science journalism also boomed, as a generation of enthusiasts wrote about each daily step of the thrilling space race.

In sum, the policies and cultural changes unleashed in the wake of Sputnik shaped the course of American science for decades–and made us world leaders. But then, something went very wrong. Science budgets stopped rising and began to fall. Educational investment also declined. Science became ensnared with politics, first the foe of the religious right, and then something to be spiked at will by the Bush administration.

You can read the full piece here….

We now commence, as laid out earlier, our rebuttals to PZ Myers’ review of our book:

1. Getting Personal? Myers claims that our book contains “very direct and personal attacks on me and on Pharyngula, atheists in general, and anyone who fails to offer religion its proper modicum of respect.”

It is hard to know precisely what he means by “very direct and personal attacks,” as he doesn’t back up the charge with any evidence. Certainly we do directly mention Myers. We describe the infamous desecration of the communion wafer, which we criticize. Later, we also talk critically about Myers in the context of discussing the face of science on the Internet.

Even if these constituted “personal attacks”–and we don’t see how–they still wouldn’t be attacks on “atheists in general, and anyone who fails to offer religion its proper modicum of respect.” Chris is an atheist. We’re quite sure he did not attack himself in the book.

As for Myers, he is a very public figure, and never was he more public than in what he refers to as “Crackergate.” Does he not expect to be criticized when he puts a desecrated communion wafer on the Internet? Was everyone who criticized him on that occasion attacking him personally?

(more…)

We’ve thoroughly read, and now plan to respond in detail to PZ Myers’ review of our book.

But first, some throat clearing. It may seem odd for authors to respond so extensively to their critics. In the olden days, such exchanges happened very slowly, if at all, through letters to the editor, and usually they weren’t very long. But this is the Internet age, and there are very different circumstances here:

The People Want It. Hordes of commenters are demanding that we respond to PZ.

PZ Asked For It. Myers did not write a balanced review, an indifferent review, or even a negative review. Rather, he misrepresented our book, got its arguments wrong, assaulted its authors (“their hypocritical and ignorant paean to mealy-mouthedness”), and finally ended by concluding that our labor of over a year is “utterly useless.”

We may not be capable of objectivity judging our own work. But we’re also receiving many supportive emails from people who like the book, are seeing it spark constructive dialogue about solutions on places like Chad Orzel’s blog or RealClimate.org, and are witnessing the careful weighing of its arguments’ strengths and weaknesses at places like Neurotopia. How could a book that is prompting thought and dialogue be “utterly useless”? Myers may disagree with our book in many respects, but debate itself is useful, is it not?

We Wrote a Contempt-Free Book. Myers’ charges come from someone who is directly criticized in the book, and who admits that his opinion “is colored by the palpable contempt [its authors] hold for me.” But there’s no “contempt” here–just entirely fair criticism of Myers based on his freely chosen actions.

But we’ll get to that.

In answering Myers, we will proceed in 10 points, spread across 3 posts to control their length. We will first summarize them here, and then elaborate in the next three posts until we’re done:

1. Getting Personal? Myers claims that our book contains “very direct and personal attacks on me and on Pharyngula, atheists in general, and anyone who fails to offer religion its proper modicum of respect.” We do not agree that we have launched any personal attacks.

2.  Pluto. Myers doesn’t appear to understand our argument here, as we will show.

3. What the Book Actually Says. Starting with Chapter 1, Myers gives little if any sense of the book’s real contents and argument.

4. Carl Sagan. This is virtually the only thing Myers seems to agree with us on. But he doesn’t grasp the nature of Sagan’s uniqueness, or why Richard Dawkins is no Carl Sagan.

5.  American Anti-Science. Myers claims the book “entirely neglects the anti-scientific forces.” This is false.

6. Root Causes. Myers claims the book “demands we avoid addressing the structural roots” of the problem of science in society. That’s false.

7. Science in the Entertainment Industry. By taking a single sentence about Richard Dawkins vastly out of context, Myers misrepresents our chapter on this subject.

8. Solutions. Myers claims our book “offers no new solutions.” This is false.

9. Bigotry. Myers flings this baseless, inflammatory charge at us.

10. The Problem with PZ Myers. Curiously, Myers doesn’t even address our criticisms of…him. But they’re serious and fair, and we will end by elaborating upon why, in the wake of the communion wafer desecration, we decided we had to speak out about them.

That’s how we’ll proceed, and we’ll begin with the first post in a few hours. The entirety of what we’ve written will carry over into tomorrow–but never fear, it is already drafted, and you will see it all soon enough.

While we welcome comment here, we ask that you do not pre-judge our rebuttals on the points above until they have actually been posted.

The first post is now up and can be found here.

Herschel–the largest far-infrared telescope launched into space–has captured it’s first image and Phil’s got the details!

Known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51 is practically our neighbor at just 25 million light years away.

I can’t help but wonder if just maybe, someone there may be looking back at us…

Chris has already posted the table of contents and introductory passages from Unscientific America. Here’s a glimpse at what comes next:

strong enough to have “cleared the neighborhood around its orbit” of other significant objects and debris; and so forth.

People were aghast. Not only did they recoil at having to unlearn a childhood science lesson, and perhaps the chief thing they remembered about astronomy. On some fundamental level their sense of fair play had been violated, their love of the underdog provoked. Why suddenly kick Pluto out of the planet fraternity after letting it stay in for nearly a century, ever since its 1930 discovery? “No do-overs,” wrote one cartoonist.

(more…)

As you’ve already surmised from the opening pages of Unscientific America, our sympathies tend in her direction…

As promised, in anticipation of the book release, we’re now going to dribble out part of the first chapter of Unscientific America, entitled “Why Pluto Matters”:

Why Pluto Matters

“Viva Pluto!”

“Stop Planetary Discrimination!”

“Pluto Was Framed!”

Dear Earth: You Suck. Love, Pluto.”

“Pluto is still a planet. Bitches.”

(more…)

Want to be frightened? Read this blog post, then this longer New Scientist feature that it partly draws upon. There, you will learn that a threat we barely even bother to discuss–space weather, and more specifically, solar storms–has the capacity to quite literally shut down modern society, to throw us almost back to the Stone Age. To quote:

It is hard to conceive of the sun wiping out a large amount of our hard-earned progress. Nevertheless, it is possible. The surface of the sun is a roiling mass of plasma – charged high-energy particles – some of which escape the surface and travel through space as the solar wind. From time to time, that wind carries a billion-tonne glob of plasma, a fireball known as a coronal mass ejection (see “When hell comes to Earth”). If one should hit the Earth’s magnetic shield, the result could be truly devastating.

The incursion of the plasma into our atmosphere causes rapid changes in the configuration of Earth’s magnetic field which, in turn, induce currents in the long wires of the power grids. The grids were not built to handle this sort of direct current electricity. The greatest danger is at the step-up and step-down transformers used to convert power from its transport voltage to domestically useful voltage. The increased DC current creates strong magnetic fields that saturate a transformer’s magnetic core. The result is runaway current in the transformer’s copper wiring, which rapidly heats up and melts….

According to the NAS report, a severe space weather event in the US could induce ground currents that would knock out 300 key transformers within about 90 seconds, cutting off the power for more than 130 million people. From that moment, the clock is ticking for America.

One has to wonder: Are President Obama’s science advisers reading this? I sure as hell hope so. (more…)

round the sun today…