Quickies
Skepchick Quickies 9.24
On September 24, 1906, Devils Tower was proclaimed as the first National Monument by U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt. It’s a pretty fascinating igneous formation, you should read more about it.
- In Plain View: How child molesters get away with it – Cognitive dissonance has a lot to do with it. This is an excellent piece, but it may be triggering so be careful.
- Study says people are inclined to help others – “But the more time people are given to contemplate a generous act, the less likely they are to follow through with it.”
- Evidence Does Not Back-Up Spinal Manipulation for Acute Lower Back Pain, Review Finds – From Vernon B.
- Study shows gender bias in science is real. Here’s why it matters
- 1984 in 2012 – The Assault on Reason – The battle against science in policy in Canada. From Kirsten.
I read the gender bias one and feel physical sick.
also working on a 20 page course work right now for an old white male professor. fun.
The comments are more sickening than the article. Lots of ‘Women are just inferior, it’s science, bitches!’
But with more big words and stupid quote mining.
Men are deeply invested in proving their supremacy over women. It’s not just ignorance, it’s malicious and self-serving.
I notice that the blog writer felt the need to explain her policies of acceptable content. She also mentioned that other science writers thought she should be doing a lot more censoring.
IMHO, if Scientific American wants to retain whatever reputation it has, they’ll need to have a much stricter moderation policy. Like the letters column in the print edition, comments should only be allowed if they make a positive contribution to the discussion at hand. Most of the comments I saw would not meet this criterion.
Mary,
People have been suspecting there was a gender bias against female scientist for a long time, but at least now thanks, to the PNAS study we have some hard data to work with. I wonder what can be done about the problem.
Mary,
That Washington Times Story about people’s innate desire to help others is interesting. I’m glad people are motivated by more than just a desire for self satisfaction.
A minor nit: it was the Los Angeles Times, not the Washington Times.
The Washington Times is a much less respected paper. IIRC, it’s fairly right-wing and is (or was) associated with the Unification Church.
More seriously, just from the newspaper’s description, the study sounded iffy. The conclusion (it was not clear if it came from the LA Times or from the study’s authors) might or might not be true, but I don’t see the study as proving it.
The child molester article pretty much confirmed what I’ve always thought: that nobody is “too good” to do something horrible.
Nobody. Not a spouse, child, family member, friend, or idol. All potentially capable of terrible things. Don’t let how “wonderful” they are taint your perception when you hear that they may be doing something awful. According to the article, that’s actually their M.O.!
Canada’s Prime Minister is destroying any progress Canada has made. He is systematically breaking down our freedoms, jobs and social programs. He’s already once been impeached for being a lying sod, how he got re-elected is a bloody mystery. We need a revolution here to get this twat out of office.
“The Assault on Reason” – what an epic tour de force!
Some of the same stuff is still going down here in Oz despite having a Labor government (deals are done with so called Independents holding the balance of power).
Will forward link to friends and colleagues. Much more food for thought!