The public and scientists

The Gap Between the Public and Scientists:
[Via AAAS News - RSS Feed]

Pew/AAAS Study: While Public Praises Scientists, Scientists Fault Public, Media

Most people in the U.S. admire scientists, but regard for the nation’s science achievement is falling and many don’t believe in climate change or evolution, says a study by Pew and AAAS.

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Although it is sad to few people apparently understand that evolution is true, it is nice to see that almost 50% of the people understand the effects of human activity on climate change. Of course, 84% of the scientists know of our role in climate change.

It is probably not too surprising that many more scientists feel that the Bush administration censored researchers while most people had never heard about this. After all, this was something that directly affected their work while it would have little effect on the lives of most people.

Be sure to take the quiz so you can see what you know about these topics. I was 12 for 12, getting more right than 90% of the others who took the quiz.

Technorati Tags: Science

Response to disruptive technology

by kevindooley
Conference blogging: icons for presenters:
[Via Genetic Future]

A while back I pondered the possibility of creating icons for conference presenters to add to their first slide to alert bloggers/tweeters in the audience about whether the presented data was “blog-safe”. This was provoked by a recent episode illustrating general confusion among bloggers (in this case, me) and scientists about the use of social media at conferences.

Fellow Australian-turned-UK-resident-scientist Cameron Neylon has now put together a handy set of slides for presenters to label both “blog-safe” and “no-blogging” presentations. The slides have a ccZero license and so are freely available for download and modification; the original icons can be found on Cameron’s Flickr account and Christopher Ross’ website.

I think these slides are a great start, and I’d encourage anyone interested in the interface between science and social media to consider modifying them for their own presentations. I’d see the slides as being useful in a variety of situations:

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This illustrates some of the disruptive effects of new technologies. In the old days there were journalists and there were researchers at scientific conferences. The journalists knew when they could write about the talks and when the talks were were embargoed.

But with live blogging the line between the groups have disappeared and confusion has risen. Social groups always have a little trouble dealing with such disruptions but adaptive groups figure out ways around.

This looks like a nice approach. Let the presenters publicly declare what can be blogged and what can not. Now we just need to make this an active part of everyone’s presentation.

Technorati Tags: Science, Web 2.0

Not causation

by lrargerich
Forsyth scientists suggest linkages between obesity and oral bacterial infection:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]

A scientific team from The Forsyth Institute has discovered new links between certain oral bacteria and obesity. In a recent study, the researchers demonstrated that the salivary bacterial composition of overweight women differs from non-overweight women. This preliminary work may provide clues to interactions between oral bacteria and the pathology of obesity. This research may help investigators learn new avenues for fighting the obesity epidemic.

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They could tell by looking at the bacterial fauna in a women’s mouth whether she was overweight or not. The presence of a single species, Selenomonas noxia, at high levels was correlated.

This study does not answer if the bacteria somehow cause obesity but that should would be a nice thing if true. Then perhaps finding a way to rid someone of the bacteria could reduce their weight.

But it also means that someone could be described as obese based purely on the bacteria found in their saliva. I expect this to be an important part of CSI or NCIS next season. “There was not enough human DNA in the spit to determine identity but the bacteria tell us that the perp was overweight, with a body mass index between 27 and 32.”

Technorati Tags: Health, Science