Some days, I think other people must be aliens. Or I must be. For instance, there’s a lot of noise right now about this article analyzing the future of information and media that, if you read the comments, you will discover that people are praising to an astonishing degree. I looked at it and saw this graph:

And my bullshit detector went insane. It’s supposed to be saying something about where people are and will be getting their information, but there’s no information about where this information came from, and it’s meaningless!

Way back in high school, I had this excellent chemistry teacher, Mr Thompson, who taught me the only worthwhile stuff I got out of my science classes in those years. He was really big on thinking — I know, a real radical — and he didn’t have us simply plug-and-chug through basic chemistry problems, he forced us to work out why we were doing what we were doing. For instance, he did simple things like make us put away our slide rules (that’s how long ago this was) and pencils and think through a problem, getting a ballpark estimate in our heads for the magnitude of the answer, and then we’d work through the details of the solution. (Come to think of it, using slide rules was a real advantage for this kind of reasoning.) We were always doing back-of-the-envelope estimates for problems he’d throw at us.

The other thing he did was introduce us to unit analysis. If we thought we had a way to figure out the answer, forget the numbers for a minute, just work through the units and see that it actually makes sense. If you’re trying to figure out grams/liter of a solution you’re making, and when you work out the units and discover it’s coming out liters/mole, you know you’re doing it wrong.

Simple, basic stuff. You ought to have absorbed this into your bones in grade school if you want to be a scientist.

So look at that graph. The X axis is years, which is OK, even if the inconsistency of the intervals is extremely annoying. But what are the units of the Y axis? What’s being measured? I have no idea. I presume it’s a stacked percentage of something, but that’s unclear. Information produced? Absorbed? Thrown at a wall and forgotten? What kind of information? It’s all lumped together and unspecified. Could we have some units, please? And can you really categorize a single unit of information that applies appropriately to what comes from a newspaper and what comes from a social networking site?

The other data we’re missing is a source and methodology. If it’s saying that someone in 2009 is getting 10% of their “information”, nebulous as that means in this context, from blogs, how was that determined, and where are the raw data that was used to compile this chart?

Surprise — there isn’t any. This whole chart was built out of some guy’s impressions. There are no numbers and no sources and no measurements were made. It puts up a colorful pretense of being quantitative, but there’s nothing but vapor and handwaving there. Mr Thompson would have been horrified.

And then this imaginary data is used to extrapolate imaginary trends into an imaginary future and make unbelievable predictions, which everybody seems to believe. I really don’t get it. If a student put this kind of garbage on my desk, I’d at least draw big red X’s across the pages and slap an “F” on it; I’d be tempted to set it on fire, throw it in my trash can, and piss on it. You cannot build plausible predictions from garbage data.

So, I must be an alien, because no one else seems to be expressing visceral disgust at this kind of nonsense, except for Larry Moran, who probably is also an alien. I’ll have to see how many extraterrestrials are lurking in my comments section now.

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The graph has been much improved.

Now she has been awarded the first ever Stephen Jay Gould Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution.

The Stephen Jay Gould Prize is awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognize individuals whose sustained and exemplary efforts have advanced public understanding of evolutionary science and its importance in biology, education, and everyday life in the spirit of Stephen Jay Gould.

The winner of the 2009 Stephen Jay Gould Prize is Eugenie C. Scott. Dr. Scott has devoted her life to advancing public understanding of evolution. As the executive director of the National Center for Science Education she has been in the forefront of battles to ensure that public education clearly distinguishes science from non-science and that the principles of evolution are taught in all biology courses. She has served on the boards of many organizations, such as the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, and as a consultant to organizations from the National Academy of Sciences to WGBH/NOVA to the Mississippi Department of Education. In these efforts, she has been an important leader in the public sphere, molding and focusing the efforts of scientists, educators, lay people, religious groups, skeptics, agnostics, believers, scholars, and ordinary citizens through firm but gentle guidance.

Dr. Scott is a gifted communicator and public intellectual. She is a frequent guest on radio and television shows, and an eloquent spokeswoman for science. Her writings have illuminated the process of science to thousands, and her books have exposed the efforts of many groups in our society to hobble and undermine the teaching of science to our younger generation. The organization she helped create far transcends the considerable reach of her own voice, vastly amplifying her impact on public understanding. For these many reasons, it is extremely appropriate that Dr. Scott be the first recipient of the Gould Prize.

Congratulations!

The California court ruled today on the constitutionality of proposition 8, the measure that prohibited same sex marriage. Unfortunately, the court upheld the ban.

California should be embarrassed. Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Vermont allow or will allow same-sex marriages, and New York and New Hampshire are working on it. The trend is going one way, towards recognizing the civil rights of all individuals. Californians better get to work, you don’t want Mississippi to beat you to the 21st century. (Although I will be quite pleased when Mississippi legalizes gay marriage, whenever that may happen and no matter what order the states accomplish it.)

I got home late, and have just tuned in to The Link, the grossly overyhyped History Channel documentary on Darwinius masillae. I haven’t seen much of it so far, but there is good and bad. The good: lots of long closeups of the fossil itself. The bad: it’s kind of slow and talky. Fortunately, I haven’t seen any grand pronouncements that it’s going to change the universe, although the title is a bit annoying.

Those of you who have seen more of it can leave your comments and opinions here.

Oprah asks so sweetly: What Should Jenny Do?

You’ve seen it all over the news…Jenny McCarthy, one of America’s funniest and coolest moms and Harpo is giving her, her own show.

Here is where YOU come in.

What would you like to see featured on Jenny’s show? What would you like for her to talk about? What are you and your friends buzzing about?

Any topics you’d like for her to tackle? Are there any questions that you have — that you would love for her to answer?

If so — we definitely want to hear from you!

Write to us and tell us exactly what you’d like to see Jenny do.

 
Make sure to include your questions and thoughts in detail. And make sure ONLY to write if you’d be willing to talk to us on national television.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Here’s the suggestion I sent to them.

I want Jenny McCarthy to get schooled. I want her to invite educated, intelligent scientists and doctors on her show, who each week dissect her vapid little opinions and dismantle her cherished biases. I want her to be embarrassed in every hour. And I want her to get a little wiser, episode by episode, so that by the end of a year she actually becomes an informed and interesting person.

Help people learn some actual science and medicine by making Jenny McCarthy a public example, and help McCarthy become a better human being — one who doesn’t kill children with her ignorance.

Do you think they’ll go for that?

The National Organization for Marriage, that ridiculous group that came up with the ad that was so ripe for mockery, has a new one. It features little kids acting all confused that someone could have two daddies, or that god might have created Anna and Eve. And of course, it has a new slogan that will have you laughing: “Our kids will be taught a new way of thinking”. Oh noes…we can’t have our children learning anything new!

These guys are so inept, it’s got me wondering whose side they’re really on.

Oh, and for any kids who are actually confused, here’s how to tell who your parents are. They’re the people who love you and take care of you and worry about you all the time. That’s all that is important. Their anatomy? Not so important.

Eugenie Scott has been named to the Scientific American 10, the top 10 people in the past year who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and accomplishment in guaranteeing that future technologies will be applied to the benefit of humanity“. Everyone applaud now!

Daniel Hauser, the 13 year old Minnesota boy with the dual affliction of Hodgkin lymphoma and idiots for parents, has been told that he can’t refuse effective medical treatments.

In a 58-page ruling Friday, Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg found that Daniel Hauser has been “medically neglected” and is in need of child protection services.

Rodenberg said Daniel will stay in the custody of his parents, but Colleen and Anthony Hauser have until May 19 to get an updated chest X-ray for their son and select an oncologist.

The judge wrote that Daniel has only a “rudimentary understanding at best of the risks and benefits of chemotherapy. … he does not believe he is ill currently. The fact is that he is very ill currently.”

I might feel differently about this if the kid had been well informed and was consciously making a decision to die, but he wants to live and has been lied to by the deluded pseudo-Indian religious kooks he has for parents, and by the quacks who have been giving him medical advice.

Speaking of ridiculous parsing of newspaper articles, here’s something Simon Singh wrote:

The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.

The US has some deep problems with an overly credulous culture, but at least we don’t labor under the libel laws of the UK, which are destructive of the basic principles of free speech. Truth ought to be protection against accusations of libel, but a judge didn’t think so in this case — Singh was found guilty of accurately describing chiropractic claims as “bogus”.

Well, maybe I shouldn’t rush to excuse the US from this sort of thing. We do have the recent case of a California judge finding a teacher in violation of the separation of church and state for calling creationism “superstitious nonsense”. Since creationism is religious, it is now going to be protected from criticism because you aren’t allowed to say that any religious belief is wrong in an American classroom.

We are so screwed.

Terry Eagleton and Stanley Fish get another drubbing, this time at the hands of Matt Taibbi. I’d almost feel sorry for them, except that I’m still feeling the trauma of being trapped on a plane with Eagleton’s book, so I say…sic ’em.

This latest salvo is fired by author/professor Stanley Fish, a prominent religion-peddler of the pointy-headed, turtlenecked genus, who made his case in his blog at the New York Times. Fish was mostly riffing on a recent book written by the windily pompous University of Manchester professor Terry Eagleton, a pudgily superior type, physically resembling a giant runny nose, who seems to have been raised by indulgent aunts who gave him sweets every time he corrected the grammar of other children. The esteemed professor’s new book is called Reason, Faith and Revolution, and it’s sort of an answer to the popular atheist literature of people like Richard Dawkins and Chris Hitchens. If you ever want to give yourself a really good, throbbing headache, go online and check out Eagleton’s lectures at Yale, upon which the book was based, in which one may listen to this soft-soaping old toady do his verbose best to stick his tongue as far as he can up the anus of the next generation of the American upper class.