Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Regular readers know that I will sometimes fume and gnash about politics and science. I’ve been active about this for some time now, and while I hope that making noise will help, I have longed to do more.

Now I can.

Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum (from The Intersection) have started up what may be an incredibly effective grassroots campaign to get the Presidential candidates to debate science. A real, actual televised debate on real, actual science.

Right now, the effort is mostly getting signatures, but once a critical mass is reached a more proactive stance will be taken (some things apparently are happening sotto voce as well). So far, they’re doing very well: the list of scientists is impressive. They also have a nice list of bloggers supporting them, including one or two Best Science Blog winners you may recognize.

Update: D’oh! Chris just sent me a note reminding me that there is a Facebook group for the Science Debate too. If you’re a member of Facebook, sign up!

I think this would be a fantastic opportunity. I suspect a lot of the candidates would do quite well in such a debate, while others… well, remember when three Republican candidates raised their hands and said they thought evolution was wrong? Wouldn’t you like to see a debate with some, ah, interesting follow-up to that?

Yeah, me too. Support the cause. Get these candidates to publicly state their stance on science. The country — the world — needs this.

If you read just the headline from this Telegraph article, you might think it’s the biggest scientific discovery of all time:

Mars rover finds signs of microbial life

Wow! But if you read the actual article, you might be a tad bit disappointed:

Nasa says its Mars rover Spirit has discovered “the best evidence yet” of a past habitable environment on the planet’s surface.

Spirit has been exploring a plateau called Home Plate, where it discovered silica-rich soil in May.

Researchers are now trying to determine what produced the patch of nearly pure silica - the main ingredient of window glass.

They believe the deposits came from an ancient hot-spring environment or an environment called a fumarole, in which acidic steam rises through cracks.

On Earth, both of these types of settings teem with microbial life, said rover chief scientist Steve Squyres.

Yes, on Earth we find lots of bugs in such places. But fumaroles would exist without life, and if we find them on Mars that doesn’t mean we’ve actually uncovered signs of life. For that, we’d actually have to find some, y’know, signs of life.

Duh.

I thought of this a long time ago, and it’s nice to see that others have replicated the idea:

Oh, those wacky creationists!

When they talk astronomy, you can almost be sure they will trot out long-outdated ideas, ridiculous twists of logic, and outright lies. And now you can find all these and more in a series of videos pointed out by Sadly, No!

I lost track at seven dumbnesses. I love how they say that if science is right, the planets should all be made of the same materials (um, no, things have changed in the 4.55 billion years since the planets formed, and smaller ones have lost their lighter atmospheric elements like hydrogen and helium), planets should all spin the same way (um, no, collisions with large bodies can flip over a planet), there are no explanations for the Moon’s origin (um, no, actually we have a good one — a massive collision — that explains most of the bigger mysteries of the Moon), all the planets’ moons should orbit the same way (um, no, some planets have captured asteroids, and those can orbit retrograde), and that if the Universe were not formed in an explosion, it must have been created (um, no, there are at least two other alternate explanations that dovetail with the Big Bang).

I think my fave is when they say that young stars don’t have enough material orbiting them to make planets. Yeah, that’s because the material has already been used to make planets (or it’s been blown away by the young star’s solar wind)! It’s like eating a meal, looking at your empty plate, and saying "I can’t possibly have eaten anything, since there is nothing on my plate." You have to look at really young stars, and when you do, you see them enshrouded in material, and many of them have a disk of matter that is clearly forming planets.

How many dumbosities can you find? I may have to dig up the complete video. I’m sure it’s good from some schadenfreude.

Yesterday I upgraded to the most current version of the WordPress blogging software, which may cause some minor issues when you try to read the blog or comment. Because that wasn’t enough suffering for me, I also moved the entire site to a new server; a dedicated computer that should speed things up and keep things from getting clogged when I get a lot of hits (like when a post gets on Digg or Slashdot). If you are reading this entry, then your computer has found the new server and all should be happiness and rainbows and unicorns.

Update: some folks have noticed the times on some posts and comments are wonky. The new server’s clock was not set correctly, and when I reset it things got a bit messed up. New posts and comments should be fine now, and the glitch will get buried as time marches on.

Update the 2nd (Dec 12): The server has had a couple of episodes of getting REALLY SLOW, and I had to reboot a few times. Fraser pointed out to me that 404 errors (pages not found) can really bog down a server. I found an icon that did not get moved properly from the old server and was generating dozens of such errors every minute. I fixed it, and not the server is really ticking along. Yay!

I am still keeping an eye on things, but it’s looking like things are improving. As usual, leave a comment if you are having any problems.

My hugest thanks to Fraser Cain from Universe Today for virtually holding my hand through this process.