Framing Science

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 29 days ago
Two essays I wrote on Expelled are now in print and I have placed PDFs of the articles online. The first shorter essay appears at Skeptical Inquirer magazine and reviews the impact of the film at the state level, as it has shaped local news coverage and the legislative agenda. I conclude that as a strategic communication campaign, the film's impact has been greatly underestimated. The second longer essay appears at the Kean Review , a new arts and ideas journal sold at Barnes & Noble and other larger bookstores. In this essay I review the impact of the film but also anchor Expelled in the context of the decade-long Framing wars over intelligent design. In both essays, I draw attention to the confusing messages that scientist pundits such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers continue to send to the wider American public. By combining their attacks on religion with their defense of evolution, they blur the lines between Science, religion, and atheism, providing fodder to creationists who claim that evolution is part of a larger atheist agenda. These confusing messages are only likely to be amplified next year during the anniversary celebration of Charles Darwin, as Dawkins goes on a publicity tour for his new book and Myers is reported to also have a book in the works. Read the comments on this post... ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 20 days ago
From the NY Times Caucus Politics Blog : In the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, 63 percent of voters said they were paying a lot of attention to the campaign, up from 51 percent before the parties held their conventions. In September 2004, 52 percent said they were concentrating a lot on Senator John Kerry's campaign to defeat President Bush. The findings are borne out by television ratings: Nielsen estimates nearly two-thirds of the country's households -- more than 120 million people -- watched at least one of the conventions. The 15 percent of homes that tuned in only to the Republican National Convention was comparable to the 16 percent that watched just the Democratic National Convention, while 34 percent tuned in to both. The poll also found that ideology is not driving interest. Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, were just as likely to say they were paying a lot of attention to the campaign. Nor was there a difference in interest between those supporting Senator John McCain and those backing Senator Barack Obama. But there is more interest among older voters than younger ones: only 48 percent of voters under 30 said they were paying a lot of attention. However, this was up from 33 percent last month. And at this point in the campaign four years ago, only a third of young voters said they were very engaged in the election. Read the comments on this post... ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 38 days ago
When I first heard that McCain had chosen Sarah Palin to be his running partner, I expected there to be a revolt from the intellectual wing of the GOP party, the same thinkers who rebelled against Bush's choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. Yet as it turns out people like David Brooks and George Will have both lined up behind the Palin pick. The only voices of dissent from Republican commentators I have been able to turn up are from David Frum and David Gergen. In a column at Canada's The National Post, Frum calls the choice "irresponsible" and concludes: "If anything were to happen to a President McCain, the destiny of the free world would be placed in the hands of a woman who until the day before Friday was a small-town mayor." Gergen on the other hand has his eye on how the Palin choice changes the dynamics of the campaign and the focus of media attention. Here's how Gergen described it over the weekend on CNN's Anderson Cooper: Well, you know, I think we're learning more and more that John McCain's years as a pilot when he sort of flew solo and made his own decision are very much the way he operates in politics. His decision making process is one in which he relies heavily on his own instincts. So here he is he's met this woman once, he called her down in the Sedona for that second conversation, but it was really to offer her the vice presidency. And I think Democrats are going to say, well, look at the decision maki ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 28 days ago
A lot of people are talking and blogging about Matt Damon's comments on the Sarah Palin choice for vice president (above). But here is the problem: It's the right frame and message on Palin but Damon is the wrong messenger . When Hollywood celebrities speak out on the election it energizes some young people and the liberal base, but Damon's comments are immediately undercut as just the latest "Hollywood elitist" savaging middle American values. In short, his comments help feed the narrative that McCain is using against Obama. It's even more of a self-inflicted wound when you get comments like those from Pamela Anderson that Palin can "go suck it." See the clip from Morning Joe on MSNBC on how these celebrity comments are translated in popular perceptions and discourse. Read the comments on this post... ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 28 days ago
From a press release out today, detailing the strong commitment from both parties to biomedical research. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 28 days ago
Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin might dispute the human contribution to climate change, oppose embryonic stem cell research, and promote creationism, but in other ways she has been an advocate for Science. As I wrote last week , while on a few issues bi-partisan support for Science breaks down, on other issues, including financing for scientific research, many Republicans are leading advocates. Palin, for example, as Governor championed several earmarks requests to fund environmental research in her state. From the Politico : Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 28 days ago
From the Associated Press: On Friday, a McCain radio ad attempted to present McCain and Palin as a unified force behind stem cell research. In fact, McCain supports relaxing federal restrictions on financing of embryonic stem cell research, a position opposed by abortion opponents. Palin opposes embryonic stem cell research. The ad, however, does not mention the word embryonic, making it correct on its face. Supporters and critics of using stem cells from embryos do support research using adult stem cells to help conquer some diseases. This type of advertising sleight of hand works because, as I review in this past column , few Americans are aware of the key differences between embryonic and adult stem cell research while the recent breakthroughs in adult stem cell reprogramming likely add further confusion. Read the comments on this post... ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 24 days ago
Back in July, I sat down for an hour long interview with the new TED-like social media site Big Think . The innovative project features "hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with today's leading thinkers" segmented by topic category and spliced into 3 to 4 minute conversations. The general focus of the interview was on the nature of strategic communication with an emphasis on Science and environmental topics. Big Think has organized the conversations into 11 different sections . I link to several of these below with the description from the site. The themes will be familiar to readers of this blog and to others who have followed the Framing Science debate. Public Relations for Science The same concepts that apply to a political campaign also work when communicating Science explains Matthew Nisbet. Wagging the Dog: Media and Public Policy Matthew Nisbet emphasizes the cyclical nature of the relationship between public policy and media. Barack Obama as a Master Communicator Matthew Nisbet explains Obama's appeal. The Pros and Cons of Richard Dawkins Matthew Nisbet walks a fine line in the age-old debate between religion and Science. Explaining the Paradigm Sheep Matthew Nisbet explains an article that documents the history of a paradigm shift in the public relationship to Science. Studying Audience Behavior New campaigns often use the same techniques to communicate, however Matthew Nisbet points out that this involves ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 38 days ago
Palin has put support for creationism among GOP leaders on the media and public agenda. Everywhere in the news, GOP officials are being asked their position on the matter and in their replies they are sending the strongest of signals to a partisan public that support for creationism is part of the GOP DNA. From a Washington Post article on how Palin is energizing the Evangelical base, Cathie Adams, the Texas GOP national committeewoman describes why she thinks Palin is so exciting: Cathie Adams, Texas's incoming national committeewoman, said she is elated to have someone like herself running for one of the nation's highest offices. "It's very exciting to have a person who holds the faith," Adams said after arriving in St. Paul. "I'm sure this is a woman who believes, as I do, let's present evolution and creationism on a level playing field, because when that happens, we know education is happening, not brainwashing, not politics in the classroom." Read the comments on this post... ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 29 days ago
Following up on her testimony before Congress yesterday, MIT President Susan Hockfield writes in the Washington Post today that the U.S. needs a Manhattan Project-scale investment in renewable energy R&D. Drawing on the metaphor of Vannevar Bush's pact between government and Science, Hockfield describes that part of the problem is the absence of serious R&D investment from the major energy companies, despite what they might tell us in TV advertisements : Today, the United States is tangled in a triple knot: a shaky economy, battered by volatile energy prices; world politics weighed down by issues of energy consumption and security; and mounting evidence of global climate change. Building on the wisdom of Vannevar Bush, I believe we can address all three problems at once with dramatic new federal investment in energy research and development. If one advance could transform America's prospects, it would be ready access, at scale, to a range of affordable, renewable, low-carbon energy technologies -- from large-scale solar and wind energy to safe nuclear power. Only one path will lead to such transformative technologies: research. Yet federal funding for energy research has dwindled to irrelevance. In 1980, 10 percent of federal research dollars went to energy. Today, the share is 2 percent. Research investment by U.S. energy companies has mirrored this drop. In 2004, it stood at $1.2 billion in today's dollars. This might suit a cos ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 38 days ago
That's the take in this recent profile at New York magazine. The far left blogosphere first stung Lieberman when his 2004 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination fell flat but then really turned him towards the GOP following his 2006 Senate primary race. In Lieberman's view, powerful bloggers have hijacked his party, especially on foreign policy. From the article: The 2004 debacle was Lieberman's first introduction to a new force, the netroots, a loose collection of leftist blogs including MoveOn.org and DailyKos. The way the senator sees it, those groups have been "taking the party in a direction that's bad for America: take-no-prisoners, partisan attack politics." Their influence, he says, has made the Democrats "litmus-testy" and "reflexively antiwar." But Lieberman hadn't felt the full wrath of the blogs until his 2006 reelection bid. Online activists, including the coalition Trippi had built for Dean, were united behind Ned Lamont, a young businessman with no national-office experience but a vocal antiwar stance. To Lieberman, the blogs' power in online fund-raising and event organizing--and the vitriol used to fuel it all--came as a shock. (The senator's own Website, by contrast, crashed on the eve of the primary; his campaign blamed it on Lamont hackers until an FBI probe concluded that shoddy programming was the culprit.) On August 8, 2006, Lamont won the primary with 52 percent of the vote. "For the sake of our sta ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 18 days ago
AP report on an innovative survey by researchers at Stanford University: Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks -- many calling them "lazy," "violent," responsible for their own troubles. The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 -- about two and one-half percentage points....More than a third of all white Democrats and independents -- voters Obama can't win the White House without -- agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.... ...Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice. But in an election without precedent, it's hard to know if such models take into account all the possible factors at play. Read the comments on this post... ...

Source: www.scienceblogs.com --- 37 days ago
George Lakoff weighs in with an assessment of what Sarah Palin can do for the McCain candidacy: The initial response has been to try to keep the focus on external realities, the "issues," and differences on the issues. But the Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind -- the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't win on realities. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism, activate the conservative view of the world, and use the advantages that conservatives have in dominating political discourse.... ...Palin is the mom in the strict father family, upholding conservative values. Palin is tough: she shoots, skins, and eats caribou. She is disciplined: raising five kids with a major career. She lives her values: she has a Downs-syndrome baby that she refused to abort. She has the image of the ideal conservative mom: pretty, perky, feminine, Bible-toting, and fitting into the ideal conservative family. And she fits the stereotype of America as small-town America. It is Reagan's morning-in-America image. Where Obama thought of capturing the West, she is running for Sweetheart of the West. And Palin, a member of Feminism for Life, is at the heart of the conservative feminist movement, which Ronee Schreiber has written about in her recent book, Righting Feminism. It is a po ...

Source: www.topix.com --- 11 days ago
Category: 2008 Election Posted on: September 23, 2008 4:24 PM, by Matthew C. Nisbet In another example of the strategic role that YouTube is playing in this year's election, the Huffington Post has linked to a ... ...

Source: www.topix.com --- 38 days ago
The McCain choice of Sarah Palin has made creationism a topic that various GOP spokespeople are now being asked by the press to weigh in on. ...

Source: blog.coincidencetheories.com --- 29 days ago
Any bets on how long it takes scienceblogs.com to boot Framing Science for not toeing the evolander line in The Onion Pokes Fun at Science Bloggers & Commenters? It is good to see the Framing Science blog being more fair than the typical “Science” blog. Normally, Science blogs are much more concerned about fighting Christianity and [...] ...

Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov --- 8 days ago
Related Articles Understanding overbidding: using the neural circuitry of reward to design economic auctions. Science. 2008 Sep 26;321(5897):1849-52 Authors: Delgado MR, Schotter A, Ozbay EY, Phelps EA We take advantage of our knowledge of the neural circuitry of reward to investigate a puzzling economic phenomenon: Why do people overbid in auctions? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we observed that the social competition inherent in an auction results in a more pronounced blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response to loss in the striatum, with greater overbidding correlated with the magnitude of this response. Leveraging these neuroimaging results, we design a behavioral experiment that demonstrates that Framing an experimental auction to emphasize loss increases overbidding. These results highlight a role for the contemplation of loss in understanding the tendency to bid "too high." Current economic theories suggest overbidding may result from either "joy of winning" or risk aversion. By combining neuroeconomic and behavioral economic techniques, we find that another factor, namely loss contemplation in a social context, may mediate overbidding in auctions. PMID: 18818362 [PubMed - in process] ...