In 1995 the physicist HvL was employee of an internal software house of a large electronics company. His speciality was the creation of scientific software. Then he got the invitation from a software strategist HdV to join the semiconductor department in order to resolve a quickly emerging problem. The costs of complex embedded software were growing exponentially and this would cause severe problems in the next future.
A new poll by Nature and Scientific American, out in SA's October 2010 issue, notes that scientists have had a tough year - the "leaked 'Climategate' e-mails painted researchers as censorious," the H1N1 outbreak "led to charges that health officials exaggerated the danger to help Big Pharma sell more drugs," and the Harvard investigation that found holes in a professor's data. Nature and SA wanted to know - does the public1 still trust scientists?
The two polled readers using an internet survey on their Web sites, and more than 21,000 people responded.2 Here are the results:
How much do people trust what scientists say?
I have to be honest, if a casual question arose like 'who would you believe on science topics, Michael Shermer or Lady Gaga?' I would side with Shermer.
I know, I know, that is a vicious stereotype and I haven't read every single thing Lady Gaga has said regarding science, some of which might be correct, and then compared it to every speculation someone might have overheard Shermer say somewhere, which might have been incorrect - and because I have not been able to do that sort of comparison, some fringe pseudo-science apostates will claim it is entirely possible that Lady Gaga knows more about cell phones than Michael Shermer and therefore I am big ol' repressive science media if I do not give them equal time. So here I go.
UPDATE: This was written before the 22 February earthquake, and I realise that recent events show my arguments may be a little too simplistic. My heart goes out to all thouse affected.
In hindsight, comparing Christchurch and L'Aquila to other earthquakes like Haiti and Sichuan would have better illustrated my point about building codes saving lives.
