Greek students’ images of scientific researchers

Greek students’ images of scientific researchers

Vasilia Christidou

JCOM 9(3), September 2010

Via Enroweb

blogo-links

Yes, there really are people who don’t accept the germ theory of disease, by Orac

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Genome study identifies genetic variant linked to TB susceptibility in Africans, at LabSpaces

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The FDA doesn’t plan to regulate access to raw genetic data; and context for Gutierrez scare-mongering about ovary removal, at Genetic Future, by Daniel MacArthur

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Dr. Dr. Dr. Pigliucci replies, at WEIT. Don’t just read the post, go for the comments. If you were absent from the Net the last few days you may want to start here for MP’s starter post and read JC ‘s response.

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Links ‘n’ Thoughts on emerging science blogging networks, by Bora.

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Germ Theory Denialism

Something to Talk About

iCMs: induced CardioMyocytes

Direct Reprogramming of Fibroblasts into Functional Cardiomyocytes by Defined Factors

Masaki Ieda, Ji-Dong Fu, Paul Delgado-Olguin, Vasanth Vedantham, Yohei Hayashi, Benoit G. Bruneau, Deepak Srivastava

Cell, Volume 142, Issue 3, 375-386, 6 August 2010, doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.07.002

That’s exactly the kind of papers I love to read on Friday, at 19:10, with the last labcoffee of the WE, with the music of the Vibratome slicing a kidney in thin sections. Free access. And there is a PaperClip with it.

Young and hungry

Young and hungry

Originally uploaded by Tambako the Jaguar

and yummy photographer

Robert Lanza: Streisand effect engaged

What Happens When You Die? Evidence Suggests Time Simply Reboots, by Robert Lanza, M.D., Scientist, Theoretician, triggered more reactions than other posts of Robert Lanza, such as “Is There a God or Is There Nothingness? New Scientific Paradigm” or “Why You’re Alive and Can Never Die: The Larger Scientific Picture”. Or Robert Lanza‘s “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe” book, where Robert Lanza lays out his theory of everything.

I wonder why?

Anyway, Lanza is not happy with it and he wrote to demand to take down posts critic to his stance, addressing Seed Media. That’s a stupid thing to do, as much stupid as writing letters to vice chancellors of academic affairs to ask them to interfere with free speech of one of their colleagues.

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This post is part of a Google bomb, illustrating the Streisand effect: When trying to block information backfires.

I wonder if I shouldn’t have a “quantum flapdoodle” category/page to list the various instantiations of… quantum flapdoodle.

Barrett WAM 7 DOFs manipulator

poop poop fatwa!

It wasn’t an apple, it was poop coffee beans! It wasn’t a snake, it was a civet!

Fatwa Boosts Luwak Coffee Sales in Indonesia

Lima, Lampung. There is no such thing as bad publicity — even for a form of coffee bean excreted by a civet cat for human consumption.

Following discussions by Indonesia’s main Muslim organizations that a fatwa be placed against luwak coffee, sales of the world’s most expensive brew have increased 30 percent, according to one supplier.

Via Gibson’s GreatDismal

Dear Target Audience

Dear Target Audience,

I made the step for you to shift from french to english, thus increasing your volume from 6 to 9 (this is a 50% improvement in a single movement, awesome!). Sometimes I wonder why blog for you as we speak at least twice per week via Skype. Each time I ask myself the question the answer is always the same: maybe there are other people as my friends out there and I’ll have the opportunity to meet them via the blog. It often worked by the past and it may work in the future. I’ll keep you posted.

Dear Target Audience,

You are a very select club. I wish it to stay that way. I was reading “Virginia Heffernan Is Our Target Audience” at Uncertain Principles this morning an thinking how different you are from Heffernan. And how glad I’m I don’t have the same target audience as Chad Orzel.

Prof. Orzel think that “Heffernan is not a stupid person“. Because “Total imbeciles don’t usually get regular columns with the New York Times“. I tend to agree with him. That doesn’t mean that Heffernan’s rant isn’t totally stupid. Even the most intelligent and clever and bright people may do stupid things. Totally stupid things. And all the buzz about Heffernan is just about a “totally stupid article”.

You, my dear Target Audience, are valuable people because when you read an argument you are tone deaf. You examine the content and not the form. You have the patience to check more than a few posts to make your mind. You are aware of the social problems the newspapers present you over several months. And you don’t consider GW denialism as a science topic, but as a social problem.

You, my dear Target Audience, have enough humor to make a good laugh out of “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” and enough good sense to make a louder laugh out of the reactions of bigot muslims. You don’t let cartoons upset you. And you don’t either carry superstitions forbidding you to eat this or that. For all I know you, are bacon fans and maybe you may want some with your crocodile steak (I have to try that someday).

You, my dear Target Audience, don’t link to a blog because you think it have a lively voice or judging from the appearances, and the beautiful images (WTF?). You read it, judge the content and eventually link to it. And you have the microformat rel=”nofollow” preprogrammed for those links you want to point to, while disapproving their content.

Be sure that I’ll never include someone in Heffernan’s mood (when she wrote “Unnatural Science“) in the same set as you, all the 9 of you. I don’t want to waste time for somebody who do her homework so badly. I’ll let Prof. Orzel do the dirty job. Me thinks it’s a waste of time and life is short. And probably it would be more productive to speak to my dog if I had one.

Dear Target Audience,

If ever you are at the same intellectual schema we discern behind Ms Herrernen’s presentation of the science blogs, please, take a break, have a nap or a short walk at the nearest garden, think about the damage you are doing to your brain and eventually to the brains of the people who may read you, think about it twice, then ring me so I’ll try to persuade you not to follow this path.