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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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Surprise: Still No Wii Good Enough To Substitute For Actual Sports

Surprise: Still No Wii Good Enough To Substitute For Actual Sports

Dec 21 2007 | comment(s)

Nothing is stranger than telling someone you play guitar and having them respond that you would therefore really enjoy playing "Guitar Hero" on a television.

Wouldn't the time they spent learning an interface and practicing a game have been better spent practicing on an actual guitar?

It would seem. There are some things that are fun to do virtually because obviously we can't do them in real life. In real life a British shoemaker got to put an end to Napoleon's dreams of conquest but I can't go back in time 200 years and learn to make shoes and go to war. Likewise I can't defeat alien Nazis in World War II but ... bowling? I can do that.

I just saw this MIT project called Knight Science Journalism

I just saw this MIT project called Knight Science Journalism

Dec 14 2007 | comment(s)

I just saw this MIT project called Knight Science Journalism Tracker, which looks quite polished. Unfortunately the only science writing they seem to know about is on Grist and then the usual media outlets. I guess actual scientists doing the writing slips under the radar. But it's fun to take a look at regardless of their surface-level insight into the science journalism world. When you have foundation funding, you don't have to dig as hard. And no, we can't get foundation money. The Knight foundation requires that you be government ( because, you know, governments need money ) or a charity.
The RealClimate guys do a pretty good analysis of Past recon

The RealClimate guys do a pretty good analysis of Past recon

Dec 08 2007 | comment(s)

The guys at RealClimate do a pretty good analysis of Past reconstructions: problems, pitfalls and progress in the context of puncturing some recent contrarian data. They leave out that this exact same argument (and there is a lack of zeal in demanding the same honesty from that side of that debate) applies to plenty of data that has been used suspiciously in numerical models. I will say it again, like I have a dozen times. In any science, if you have 50 million data points and choose 500, that's perfectly valid, but how you choose them and which data points you choose makes a huge difference in the results and far too many climate models have failed the honesty test there.
I only learned about Genome Technology Online because they l

I only learned about Genome Technology Online because they l

Dec 06 2007 | comment(s)

I only learned about Genome Technology Online because they linked to one of our articles, but they look pretty slick.
Niche sites spread science on the web.

Niche sites spread science on the web.

Dec 03 2007 | comment(s)

Niche sites spread science on the web. I'm not sure how 'niche' or 'independent' it is if it has university and NSF funding along with PLoS marketing. Clearly they're not in USA Today because they're the only ones who thought of this.
Pitfalls And Perils Of Communicating Science

Pitfalls And Perils Of Communicating Science

Nov 29 2007 | comment(s)

It's hard to say when scientists realized that policy makers were not always going to make the best decisions regarding science funding but a safe bet would be somewhere before 3,000 BC.

In the intervening 5,000 years, not a lot has changed in how well scientists, politicians and the public really understand each other. A week doesn't go by when there isn't an article lamenting that one project or another doesn't get funding or that one government bureau is over-zealous or too conservative.

Scientists learned early that the best way to get the message across to the people who can truly influence policy makers was to consult them directly. In past ages it was advisors to kings.