#Cosmos and the commercialism of #NDGT

I blogged earlier this week about how I stacked up Neil deGrasse Tyson's remake of Cosmos on Fox vs. Neil Shubin's documentary version of Your Inner Fish on PBS, both on production quality and, related to a specific issue, how much each show actually challenged creationists and creationism.

Now, I'm jumping head-on into controversy, per the photo at right of a Cosmos-themed telescope with a ripoff price, along with other similar items offered for outrageous overcharges at Space.com.

I said then that, assuming he's getting a cut, this makes it look like Tyson has entered the world of Brian Dunning marketing. And now, I'm going to head into that in more detail.

For professional or semi-professional "scientific skeptics," or "movement skeptics," or whatever handle we and they use, Shubin isn't one of "us/them" (I'm not an "us" myself) in the same way Tyson is. Such tribalism can lead such folks to hype Tyson. And, to crack open their wallets to pay overcharges for stuff like this. And, yes, overcharges indeed.

I mean, somebody affiliated with the new Cosmos is getting a cut of the sales money, right? That's official trademark and branding on all of this swag.

Yours for just $15!

Some movement skeptics, many of them with a bit of upset, or more, reacted negatively when I first blogged about that Brian Dunning marketing as part of saying that it wasn't a sad day to me. So, some of the Tyson tribalists know how I feel about Dunning.

That would include how I feel about Dunning selling that swag, like what's pictured!

At highly inflated prices, like $27.95 for a T-shirt. Sounds like a guru selling to his cultic followers. Or $15 for the aptly titled rubber stamp; more on it below.

The principle of a man with a sharp eye for a sharp product, whether through "raking" with groupies on his own stuff or defrauding other affiliates with eBay, still stands.

I think that's part of why Tyson went Fox rather than PBS. Oh, a year from now, I may be able, with suitable donation, to get the set of Fish DVDs from PBS. However, it won't be an arm and a leg for overpriced stuff. Crap like a telescope with WiFi only increases my already high level of disdain for Space.com, too. Also, I can get another Celestron 90mm telescope on Amazon for almost $200 bucks less, even after Space.com's discount. I can buy 8x25 binoculars for less than half of Space.com's price even after its fire sale discount. (And, those discounts make me wonder if tribalism has not only failed to translate in ratings as well as Fox hoped, but has been a disappointment in swag, contra Space.com — and Tyson? — hopes.) Note: None of this is even close to an endorsement of Amazon.

Anyway, methinks that such branding opportunities would be better with the hope of additional eyeballs watching on a commercial network than on PBS.

Now, I don't think Tyson is Brian Dunning, as in, he's not stuffing cookies on people's computers in an Internet-era version of wire fraud. But, he's certainly eyeballing the main chance on money, isn't he?

For that matter, since production is by the studio of Ann Druyan, the widow of original Cosmos creator Carl Sagan there may be other people with their eyeballs on cash. And, it's moving elsewhere. A humanists/skeptics convention in Omaha is charging $45/per person general admission for people to hear Tyson in September. For just a cool $1,000, you can get into a VIP dinner with him. No, really.

Grantland touches further on the degree of Druyan's involvement, as well as that of both Tyson and co-executive producer Seth MacFarlane. As for who's making how much, teh Google still doesn't have a direct answer for me.

Celebrating Darwin - erroneous poll language

Doing the exact thing I excoriated in my newspaper column this week, Gallup asked Americans if they "believe in" evolution. One no more "believes in" the theory of evolution than in the theory of gravity. One "accepts" (or "rejects") scientific theories.

Anyway, the Gallup results? At least a bit of good news for the use of reason, perhaps. There's a 14-point percentage gap to the good of "believers" vs. "nonbelievers."

Of course, the huge amount of "agnostics" on the issue indicate many Americans DO treat this as a matter of "belief" and not "acceptance."

Don’t blame MSM for global warming ignorance

Instead, blame politicians and policymakers, Matthew Nisbet says. He explains that the Obama Administration has its work cut out for it, if it’s really ready to do that work.

Science illiteracy not confined to US

In a survey done in Great Britain as part of the run-up to the Darwin bicentennial, half of British said they don’t believe in evolution.

First, a side note. The theory of evolution is NOT something you “believe in” any m ore than is the theory of gravity. Most people don’t understand well how the word “theory” is used in science; that said, try presenting the analogy I just mentioned of the two theories to your hard-core creationist or IDer, and you’re sure to get a crash course in obfuscation.

As British science instructor James Williams notes, you “accept” evolution, you don’t “believe” it.

That said, more than one-fifth of Brits not only don’t accept evolution, they actually believe creationism.

Require new Congressmen to undergo science training

Or, in the case of antiscientific nutbars like Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, let's not limit the training to newbies!

Seriously, though, Susanne Haga of Duke University notes that in Great Britain, such training is suggested of new Members of Parliament

The Conservative Party in Great Britain recently announced that it will include classes on scientific methodology and basic concepts in the orientation activities for all new Conservative members of Parliament after the next elections, specifically to address politicians' lack of scientific expertise.

Shadow Science Minister Adam Afriyie, the architect behind these new courses, says, "By building a base of scientific knowledge among politicians and officials, we aim to strengthen the role of science in policy making."

She then wonders why we possibly can’t or won’t install a similar requirement here.

Well, the obvious answer to the can’t or won’t is because Congress makes its own rules.

More seriously, though, we require initial and remedial training for county judges here in Texas; on the judicial side, other states require that for magistrate judges, JPs, etc., so requiring elected officials to undergo training isn’t even close to preposterous.

And, it would definitely boost President Obama's efforts to have science-based government policies.

Science is alive in Texas!

It may not quite be WELL, yet, but it’s breathing better, now that the State Board of Education has dropped a requirement that the “weaknesses” (right) of evolution be taught. It was actually an amendment to restore this, and it died on a 7-7 tie, with one Democratic member not present.

“We’re not talking about faith. We’re not talking about religion”said board member Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi, who opposed the amendment. “We’re talking about science. We need to stay with our experts and respect what they have requested us to do.”

Meanwhile, at least one GOP board member apparently got her talking points straight from the Discovery Institute

Barbara Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, said there have been “significant challenges” to evolution, claiming a European scientist had challenged Darwin’s “tree of life.”

BUT… she couldn’t even name a name. Sounds like just throwing something to the wall and hoping it sticks.

It’s pretty clear Cargill was talking about Graham Lawton, writing in New Scientist, whose hype is refuted, and whose already-accepted reality, is explained here.

And, yes, she is clueless that a Net of Life, rather than a tree, has been common as an explanatory device for years if not decades.

Other GOP members of the SBOE claimed “academic freedom” was the cause.

BUT … academics involves teaching facts; there’s no “academic freedom” of creationism or intelligent design.

Ken Mercer called “fraud” against evolution by citing Piltdown Man. Buddy, if you don’t live in a glass house …

Pat Hardy and Geraldine Miller were the two GOP board members with brains.

Read the full story for more details.

But, per Pharyngula, several battles were lost.

Bad science language in Smithsonian

John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, who will join the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum this fall, is the offender in talking about NASA’s challenge from Preznit Bush to get back into manned space exploration.

Here’s the offending comments:

“It’s not primarily about science,” Logsdon says. “It’s to test the belief that humans are destined to live in other places except earth.”

From a scientific point of view, that pair of sentences is carrying a boatload of baggage.

First, science doesn’t test beliefs, it tests hypotheses.

Someone who served on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board should know better.

Second, “destined” is teleological language, and science doesn’t do teleology when done right. We’re not “destined” for anything, just like evolution doesn’t cause “progress.”

I hope Logsdon does not have the Air and Space Museum focus its displays and presentations to talk about what we are “destined” to do.

Illiterate science journalism at Morning News confuses nature and nurture

In a health story today at The Dallas Morning News, (don’t forget the initial capital!) freelancer (I’m sorry, “special contributor”) Elsa K. Simcik made a whopper of a mistake on nature vs. nurture. She says:

Reed also didn't realize that being African-American automatically put her at high risk for developing colon cancer. According to the American Cancer Society Web site, “African-Americans have the highest colorectal cancer incidence and mortality rates of all racial groups in the United States.”

Yes, but there is NO definite evidence linking anything genetic in African-Americans to the higher colon cancer rates, therefore, Martha Reed was NOT “automatically” anything.

There are a variety of environmental risk factors, to be sure. Lower screening rates and detection often being in more advanced states of cancer both contribute to the higher fatality rate. Traditional black foods, higher in saturated fats and lower in fiber, are certainly likely contributory to higher rates of occurrence.

BUT … those are all “nature” factors, not “nurture” ones.

As for claims of genetic-driven difference, all of them are weak at this stage, and even if they do pan out with more research, nonetheless, their effects will be seen as much smaller than the environmentally-caused ones.

I know the Snooze got rid of its fantastic science editor, Tom Siegfried, in what seems like an eon ago. But, that’s not an excuse for not having at least a staff writer with some science writing doing this story.

Science illiteracy nuttery on display

This time, it’s not P.Z. Myers getting kicked out of a movie.

Instead, CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, is being sued over uninformed fears that its Large Hadron Collider could produce a black hole, or “strange matter.”

Leading the charge of the Daft Brigade are Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho.

They’re suing a European organization in U.S. court under U.S. laws, including that CERN failed to file an environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act. I’m sure that CERN actually did the French/Swiss/European Union equivalent for its construction of the LHC.

And, proving there’s no statute of limitations on nuttery, Wagner filed similar suits in 1999 and 2000 to prevent the Brookhaven National Laboratory from operating the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Eight years later, it’s doing fine.

Wagner, who studied undergraduate physics (the story doesn’t say how much) at Berkeley, should know better.

But, because he doesn’t:

The new worries are about black holes, which, according to some variants of string theory, could appear at the collider. That possibility, though a long shot, has been widely ballyhooed in many papers and popular articles in the last few years, but would they be dangerous?

According to a paper by the cosmologist Stephen Hawking in 1974, they would rapidly evaporate in a poof of radiation and elementary particles, and thus pose no threat. No one, though, has seen a black hole evaporate.

NYT science reporter Dennis Overbye knows better, too. Where’s an explanatory note that nobody has seen a black hole that size even form? Or otherwise, a bit more perspective on the issue?

Science’s biggest guns weigh in on need for presidential science debate

The American Academy for the Advancement of Science is calling for just such a debate.

“Science and engineering have driven half the nation’s growth in GDP over the last half-century,” said AAAS CEO Alan Leshner, “and lie at the center of many of the major policy and economic challenges the next president will face. We feel that a presidential debate on science would be helpful to America’s national political dialogue.” Leshner has also joined the group’s steering committee.

Between Mike Huckabee on evolution, incumbent George Bush on global warming, and just-dropped-out Dennis Kucinich on UFOs (hey, anti-scientism can be bipartisan), this is a needed clarion call.

Fortunately, the debate call is also bipartisan.

The effort is being co-chaired by Congressmen Vern Ehlers, R-MI, and Rush Holt, D-NJ, and is also being championed by Congressman Bart Gordon, chair of the House Science & Technology Committee. It includes several former presidential science advisers from both major political parties.

And, the need is definitely there:

There have been several recent reports warning of potential erosion of the American economy and recommending changes in science and technology policies, said Shawn Lawrence Otto, one of the group’s organizers. “A recent Business Roundtable report shows that if current trends continue, in another two years over 90 percent of all scientists and engineers will live in Asia,” Otto said.

The bottom of the webpage linked above has several links itself, including to the Business Roundtable report and one by Congressman Bart Gordon, chair of the House Science & Technology Committee.

Update for Dennis Kucinich defenders who may be reading:To Barbara, in response to her comment to this post, I’m using “UFO” as shorthand, in the generic way, for people like Dennis, who claims to have actually talked with aliens.

So, it does make sense. Just about every “UFO” to “visit” has been scientifically proven something else; those that haven't actually been proven away have strongly been shown to be something explainable.

Yes, I’ve heard of SETI, but I think Drake, in his initial calculations, overestimated the likelihood of life in the universe, or our galaxy, at least as intelligent as us.

Beyond that, there’s two related psychological issues.

The first is psychological/technological/political. Would aliens advanced enough to have interstellar space travel just “bop in” in random individuals for short visits and then fly away? Absolutely not. They would either visit national and world leaders and share information, etc., or else find ways to shield their presence here from everybody, or else attack and invade (and, borrowing some susceptibility to Earth pathogens) easily conquer.

In light of that, here’s the second psychological issue. Many people who claim to have seen a “UFO” give detailed descriptions that indicate they’re not describing a “UFO” at all. For example, about 100 miles west of Dallas, people claim to have seen “UFOs.” However, at least one person described not a “UFO,” but a disc-shaped “flying saucer.”

In short, IMO, most people claiming to see “UFOs” are either lying, for their Warholian 15 minutes of fame, or delusional, the Harvard psych professor John Mack notwithstanding. Of course, from cognitive science, I argue the only difference between lying and delusion is ultimately that, in a delusion, you’re not even aware to yourself that you’re actually lying. (I’m distinguishing cognitive delusions from hallucinations.)