Science Headlines for June 11, 2009

Breastfeeding Associated With A Reduced Risk Of Relapse In Women With Multiple Sclerosis

Women with multiple sclerosis who breastfeed exclusively for at least two months appear less likely to experience a relapse within a year after their baby's birth, according to a new report.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

Bisphenol A (BPA) Found In Many Plastics May Cause Heart Disease In Women, Research Shows

New research shows that bisphenol A, found in many commonly used plastics, may be harmful for the heart, particularly in women.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

Being A Night Owl In High School Is Linked With Lower College GPA

Students who consider themselves to be evening types (that is someone who feels more alert and does their best work later in the day) have poorer sleep hygiene scores than morning and intermediate types.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

Planet-forming Disk Discovered Orbiting Twin Suns

Astronomers have announced new images that clearly reveal the presence of a rotating molecular disk orbiting the young binary star system V4046 Sagittarii. The SMA images provide an unusually vivid snapshot of the process of formation of giant planets, comets, and Pluto-like bodies. The results also confirm that such objects may just as easily form around double stars as around single stars like our Sun.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

New Definition Could Further Limit Habitable Zones Around Distant Suns

New calculations indicate that, in nearby star systems, tidal forces exerted on planets by their parent star's gravity could limit what is regarded as a star's habitable zone and change the criteria for planets where life could potentially take root.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

Beetle Shell Inspires Brilliant White Paper

An obscure species of beetle has shown how brilliant white paper could be produced in a completely new way. Researchers have taken inspiration from the shell of the Cyphochilus beetle to understand how to produce a new kind of white coating for paper.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

New Way That Cells Fix Damage To DNA Discovered

Scientists have discovered a new way by which DNA repairs itself, a process that is critical to the protection of the genome, and integral to prevention of cancer development.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 3:00 pm

Close Social Ties Make Baboons Better Mothers, Study Finds

Baboons whose mothers have strong relationships with other females are much more likely to survive to adulthood than baboons reared by less social mothers, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 3:00 pm

Milk Goes 'Green': Today's Dairy Farms Use Less Land, Feed And Water

Dairy genetics, nutrition, herd management and improved animal welfare over the past 60 years have resulted in a modern milk production system that has a smaller carbon footprint than mid-20th century farming practices, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 3:00 pm

Caffeine Intake Prevents Risk Taking After Extreme Sleep Deprivation

Caffeine use prevents increased risk taking that occurs after several nights of total sleep deprivation, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 3:00 pm

7 Evils that Scar Society

Greed tops a list generated in a survey of 3,500 people.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Jun 2009 | 1:39 pm

Trans-European power grid needed

European countries must invest in new electricity grids to safeguard their power supplies, scientists warn.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Jun 2009 | 1:39 pm

WHO 'set to declare flu pandemic'

The World Health Organization is expected to declare a swine flu pandemic, after holding an emergency meeting.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Jun 2009 | 1:34 pm

New, superheavy element to enter periodic table

BERLIN (Reuters) - A new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112 will soon be officially included in the periodic table, German researchers said.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 1:26 pm

Military Hush-Up: Incoming Space Rocks Now Classified (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth's atmosphere – but no longer.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 1:17 pm

China not sending 3 rare golden monkeys to LA Zoo (AP)

AP - The Los Angeles Zoo will not get a trio of rare golden monkeys from China as promised, after the city spent more than $7 million to build them a new home and hired a feng shui expert to see that it was suitable.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 1:13 pm

Strange Lightning Looks Like Jellyfish

From his balcony, a scientist photographs a storm-related flash of light.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Jun 2009 | 12:52 pm

Ancient Beasts Thrived in Arctic Swamps

Swamp beasts of the prehistoric Canadian high Arctic were at home in the polar darkness.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Jun 2009 | 12:50 pm

UN sketches countries with climate risk profile (AFP)

AFP - Disasters caused by climate change will inflict the highest losses in poor countries with weak governments that have dashed for growth and failed to shield populations which settle in exposed areas, a UN report said on Thursday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 12:45 pm

VIDEO: Secret of the Snake's Slither

How does limbless locomotion work? Research shows it's all about the scales.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Jun 2009 | 12:06 pm

The Nation's Weather (AP)

AP - Severe weather was expected to continue popping up Thursday along a front that remains parked over the Eastern and Central U.S.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 11:16 am

Undiscovered rainforest 'Googled'

The discovery of a patch of rainforest in northern Mozambique is one of the most significant finds in years.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Jun 2009 | 10:51 am

China says no to greenhouse gas cuts (AFP)

AFP - China will not accept binding cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions, an official said Thursday, after the United States said it made progress with Beijing in talks here on a global climate pact.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 10:19 am

Nanoparticle lung threat blocked

Scientists have identified how a type of tiny nanoparticle can cause lung cancer - and blocked the process.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Jun 2009 | 10:16 am

Japanese probe crashes into Moon

Japan's Kaguya probe has ended its mission at the Moon by crashing into the lunar surface.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Jun 2009 | 9:42 am

Reindeer herds in global decline

Reindeer numbers are falling everywhere as they struggle to survive in a warming, developed world, a new survey reveals.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Jun 2009 | 8:49 am

London stocks drop at open (AFP)

AFP - Stocks in London were in the red at the open on Thursday as rising oil prices cast a shadow on recovery hopes.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 8:40 am

Typhoons trigger slow earthquakes

Typhoons trigger "imperceptible" earthquakes, and potentially reduce the number of more powerful ones, say researchers.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Jun 2009 | 7:44 am

Video: Century-Old Taxidermy Yields Clues to Climate Future

grinnellnotes

BERKELEY, California — A hundred years ago, zoologist Joseph Grinnell was thinking about you. Long before ENIAC or ARPANET, the visionary first director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California-Berkeley was focused on preserving data for future generations.

He and other research biologists fanned out across California trapping and preserving the animals of the state. With famously rigorous attention to detail, Grinnell recorded every possible piece of information about each specimen. He was known to exhort his colleagues to “put it all down.” It’s like he could see the spreadsheets of the future forming in his head.

“After the lapse of many years, possibly a century, the student of the future will have access to the original record of faunal conditions in California,” Grinnell once said.

Those records now form an incredibly valuable dataset that just keeps appreciating. Jim Patton, director emeritus of the Museum, and a new team of research biologists have been hitting the fields of California to replicate Grinnell’s earlier study of the “faunal conditions” of the state. By comparing where thousands of species used to be found to where they live now, we can see how ecological change, most notably global warming, is pushing animals around.

Fifty percent of the animals they’ve surveyed, like the Pixar-cute pinyon mouse, have experienced some kind of range shift. On average, these animals have had to move 1,500 feet farther up mountains to continue living in the temperature conditions for which they evolved. Patton, who bears a striking resemblance to Grinnell, warned that some animals, like the lodgepole chipmunk, will run out of room to shift upwards if — or really, when — global warming continues.

“If it continues to march upward, [the chipmunk] is going to disappear because it’s going to get pushed off the mountain,” Patton said.

In this video, Patton explains how Grinnell’s detailed notes translate to his own research and

See Also:

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and book site for The History of Our Future; Wired Science on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 Jun 2009 | 4:00 am

Japan's first lunar probe ends mission (AP)

AP - Japan's first lunar probe made a controlled crash landing on the moon Thursday, successfully completing a 19-month mission to study the Earth's nearest neighbor, Japan's space agency said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 3:40 am

Hormone experts worried about plastics, chemicals

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hormone experts said on Wednesday they are becoming worried by a chemical called bisphenol A, which some politicians say they want taken out of products and which consumers are increasingly shunning.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Jun 2009 | 3:13 am

Green Jobs Grow: 770,000 Americans Already Have One

Green jobs growth outpaced other-colored job classifications by nearly 250 percent over the last decade, growing 9.1 percent between 1998 and 2007, versus 3.7 percent for the overall job market.

There are now 770,000 green jobs spread out among 68,200 businesses, according to the new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts. While that’s a tiny slice of the overall American jobs pie, it is already approaching the same scale as the traditional energy sector — coal mining, utilities, big oil — which employs 1.27 million people. As a job creator, it stacks up even better against biotechnology, which (despite a longer history and greater investment) employs only 200,000 people.

The report differs from government projections or most industry association estimates in that it counts individual jobs, not entire industries. In other words, only the electricians who actually install solar panels were counted as green electricians.

“Although our numbers are conservative, our report provides the most precise depiction to date of the clean energy economy in the United States,” the Pew researchers wrote.

Green jobs are a major part President Obama’s plan for economic recovery and energy transformation. Manufacturing jobs have declined a few percent a year over the last decade, and in the bullet-point language of Whitehouse.gov, his administration wants to “Drive the development of new, green jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced.” The report shows that environmentally friendly jobs already exist, but most of the “green” jobs aren’t in clean energy at all. A full 65 percent of the jobs fell into the “conservation and pollution mitigation” category, which includes recycling.

That leaves a lot of room for growth in clean energy, even if some jobs are lost in traditional energy companies. Right now, there’s a small base. There were only 89,000 “clean energy” jobs in 2007. Current research indicates that for renewable energy sources to really make an impact on greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel dependence, we’re going to need a lot of manpower.

University of California Berkeley researchers found the renewable energy industry was more labor intensive than traditional fossil-fuel businesses (pdf).

“Across a broad range of scenarios, the renewable energy sector generates more jobs than the fossil fuel-based energy sector per unit of energy delivered (i.e., per average megawatt),” wrote a team from the Goldman School of Public Policy.

To deliver megawatts and jobs, the Pew researchers recommended a “comprehensive, economy-wide energy plan” and implicitly endorsed the President’s stated desire to sign a climate and energy bill like the Waxman-Markey bill wending its way through Congress.

“President Obama has expressed his support for a federal market-based system that would substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and national standards that would help America draw more of its energy supply from clean, renewable sources and achieve greater energy efficiency,” the Pew report concluded. “Those federal and state policies, together with continued private-sector support, will position the United States as a leader in the global clean energy economy.”

See Also:

Image: A man who loves his job at the Oregon DOT. flickr/OregonDOT

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and book site for The History of Our Future; Wired Science on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 10 Jun 2009 | 11:30 pm

Hormone progesterone no help in twin pregnancy: study

LONDON (Reuters) - Giving women pregnant with twins the hormone progesterone does not appear to prevent premature birth despite showing promise in doing so with single pregnancies, British researchers said on Thursday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 10 Jun 2009 | 11:13 pm

7 shuttle fliers plus 6 station guys equal record (AP)

AP - Mix seven shuttle astronauts and six space station residents and you set a record for the biggest off-the-planet gathering.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Jun 2009 | 10:41 pm

Crew includes Twittering skipper, singer, ER doc (AP)

AP - The astronauts headed to the international space station include a Twittering skipper, a classically trained musician who named her son after one of Columbia's fallen astronauts, and a former Navy SEAL who went into Afghanistan two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Jun 2009 | 10:35 pm

Consumers feel pinch of high gasoline prices (Reuters)

Reuters - U.S. motorists are again facing summer pain at the pump as rising crude oil prices drive up the cost of gasoline, forcing spending cuts elsewhere and threatening the fragile economic recovery.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Jun 2009 | 9:47 pm

Military Classifies Data on Exploding Space Rocks

"It's baffling to us why this would suddenly change," said one scientist.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Jun 2009 | 9:22 pm

Fat cells in bone marrow impair transplant healing

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Fat cells appear to slow the formation of new blood cells in bone marrow, and trimming them may be a new way to help cancer patients recover faster from bone marrow transplants, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 10 Jun 2009 | 8:56 pm

Baby Stars Discovered in Violent Galactic Core

The baby stars at the center of the galaxy had their first pictures taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists announced at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

How stars could form at the center of the galaxy has been a mystery. Space is generally a pretty harsh environment, but the galaxy’s heart is particularly brutal. Fierce stellar winds, black holes and shock waves all make it a tough place to get your start on stellar life.

“It is amazing to me that we have found these stars,” said Solange Ramirez, head researcher at NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech. “The galactic center is a very interesting place. It has young stars, old stars, black holes, everything. We started mining a catalog of about 1 million sources and managed to find three young stars — stars that will help reveal the secrets at the core of the Milky Way.”

Using the infrared vision of the telescope, the team spotted three stars bearing the distinctive features of youth, namely the presence of acetylene, hydrogen cyanide and carbon dioxide, all generated as the newborn fusion power plants heat up the dust surrounding them.

The Milky Way’s center is densely packed with cosmic dust, so optical telescopes can’t penetrate the intense, mysterious region. It’s small, too. The galaxy is 100,000 light years across, while the center is a mere 600 light years across. Scientists are particularly interested in the area because it’s the only galactic core that we can get a good peak at. N equals 1, but that’s a lot better than nothing.

“The Milky Way galaxy is just one of more than hundreds of billions of galaxies in the visible universe,” said Deokkeun An of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech, and lead author of a paper on the work, which has been submitted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. “However, our galaxy is so special because we can take a closer look at its individual stellar components.

With further study, the scientists hope to figure out more about how stars form in the toughest environments in the universe.

See Also:

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and book site for The History of Our Future; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 10 Jun 2009 | 8:38 pm

7 Shocking Snake Stories

Surprising discoveries about one of nature's most feared creatures.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Jun 2009 | 8:25 pm

Afghanistan Issues Its 1st Wildlife Hunting Ban

Snow leopards, wolves, and brown bears are among the 20 mammals, seven birds, four plants, and other creatures now on Afghanistan's first-ever list of protected species, banned from being hunted or harvested.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Jun 2009 | 7:58 pm

Lightning Deals Blow to Solar Racing Team

It took out the car's battery protection system and that eventually destroyed a circuit board.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Jun 2009 | 7:17 pm

BLOG: Moon 'Sea of Storms' Image Unveiled

A lunar image snapped by a long-gone probe offers a unique view of the moon.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Jun 2009 | 6:28 pm

U.S. Winds Are Dying Down, Study Suggests

The idea is contrary to what computer models predict, and more research is needed to determine what's cooking.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Jun 2009 | 6:19 pm

Planet Smash-Up Possible (in 3.5 Billion Years)

Earth and Mars or Venus could collide in the future (but the chances are slim).
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Jun 2009 | 6:08 pm

CEOs Remain in Jet Set

A lot of CEOs in America are jetting around plenty ... for safety's sake.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Jun 2009 | 6:01 pm

IM Interview: Surfing Spacetime

Futuristic spacecraft could surf a spacetime wave faster than the speed of light.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Jun 2009 | 5:48 pm

Long Shot: Planet Could Hit Earth in Distant Future

Computer simulations suggest a 1 percent chance of future planetary collisions.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Jun 2009 | 5:27 pm

Countdown starts for Saturday space shuttle launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Countdown clocks at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida began ticking on Wednesday for Saturday's launch of space shuttle Endeavour on a mission to deliver a porch to the International Space Station.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 10 Jun 2009 | 5:14 pm

'Tiny chance' of planet collision

Astronomers calculate there is a tiny chance that Mars or Venus might collide with Earth - though not for at least a billion years.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Jun 2009 | 5:04 pm

Anyone want to name an element? Periodic table's new member

Element 112 will become the latest and heaviest addition to the periodic table, but it doesn't yet have a name.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Jun 2009 | 5:01 pm

The Importance of Science According to Scientist and Celebrity

greene

Though Brian Greene is best known for string theory and Alan Alda for comic acting, they’ve also dedicated themselves to popularizing science among the public. For Greene, scientific literacy is a basic part of modern democracy. For Alda, the restless and self-questioning scientific mode of thought is a virtue.

Both are in New York City this week for the second annual World Science Festival, a five-day gala of talks and performances co-founded by Greene and which last year featured Alda’s performances in QED and Dear Albert, a pair of plays about physicists Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein.

Wired.com talked to Greene and Alda about the importance of science to the public and their own lives.

Wired.com: Why is it important for people to care about science?

Brian Greene: When you look around at the opportunities that we have and the problems that we face, from climate change to stem cells to alternative energies to the possibilities of personalized messenger, all of these are scientific at the core. And if you don’t have a population that’s going to engage with some of the underlying science, then you’re starting to fray away at the edges of democracy. How can a society make decisions about so many science-based issues if the populace doesn’t know science?

And when you talk to kids, and they realize how spectacular science is, how different it is from what they learn in the classroom, you see a whole world, literally a whole universe, open up to them. Those are the moments when I feel that it’s something crucial.

Wired.com: The title of your last book, “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed,” refers to limits we need to accept, lines that shouldn’t be crossed. Is there any such line in science?

Alan Alda: What I meant by the title is to let change happen. Don’t try to stop it in its tracks and put it in your memory book. On the contrary, I’m very comfortable with change and uncertainty. I think that’s part of the fun with science. One of the things I like with science is that it’s based on uncertainty, on never quite knowing, and gaining a little glimmer of understanding every time.

Wired.com: What about Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman — why have they so appealed to you?

Alda: What I’m deeply impressed with Feynman is his honesty, his never wanting to kid himself, his attacking his own ideas. He never had such pride of ownership that something was true just because he thought of it. He was a genuine skeptic, about everything, even his own thoughts. He was human, like all of us, like Einstein; he had human frailties and flaws. But on that point that I just talked about, he comes closer to being some kind of hero for me than anyone else I’ve ever read about.

Wired.com: And Einstein?

Alda: He has the same appeal for me as everybody. The piece I wrote for the World Science Festival was just his letters between him and his wives, because they were so human and dramatic and accessible to an audience. As much fun as it is to follow the thinking of a really great mind, it’s important to see them as fellow humans. It doesn’t do us or them any good to think of them as gods in lab coats. There has to be a conversation between science and the public, and part of that is understanding scientists as human beings.

Wired.com: If you could solve any one mystery, what would it be?

Alda: There are so many mysteries. Every time we get a new breakthrough, we get an extra hundred mysteries to go along it. But it would be really fun to know what dark matter is, and dark energy. They may turn out to be a complexity of things, and not one thing; a whole new cocktail up there, in here. If we can arrive at experiments that test out the work of Brian Greene and his colleagues on string theory, that would be really fascinating, too.

Wired.com: How is science different from what kids are taught?

Greene: In the classroom, a lot of kids experience a curriculum that requires them to memorize facts, to learn techniques to solve problems, to try to understand the algorithms to get answers and test problems, without ever being exposed to the big ideas. And science is about the big ideas. It’s not so easy to test the big ideas. It’s easier to test the details. But such a fine focus on the details before you get kids fired up about why they should care is shooting oneself in the foot, and that’s what we do.

When you allow kids to hear about black holes and the Big Bang and the origin of life and the origin of consciousness, it’s just so exciting. And that’s often not what they feel after the science class.

Wired.com: You’ve were saying that understanding science is important to democracy. It’s not enough, then, to be ignorant and benefit from science?

Greene: That’s what many people do, and I think it’s not a healthy state of affairs. The whole reason for the World Science Festival is to start a movement where people are excited not just about the fruit of science, the gadgets and the technology, but the ideas that lead to the things that benefit us.

I’ve spoke to audiences where, when I begin, there’s no real excitement about quantum physics. But then I reveal to them that quantum physics is why they have a cell phone, an iPod, a PC, why they’ve got all manner of gadgetry that’s completely formed their life. It’s been estimated that 40 to 50 percent of the gross national product comes from quantum physics, because anything with an integrated circuit relies upon the manipulation of particles that comes from our understanding of quantum mechanics, then their relationship to quantum physics changes.

If you can do that across the board, with all of the sciences, so that people are not walking around simply with an experience of the results, but some sense of the underlying ideas, then you take everything to the next level.

Wired.com: Do you ever worry about making science too utilitarian, if the only reason we care about it is for what it gives us?

Greene: Totally. But the way I frame it is that you need to create many distinct avenues of entry into science. One avenue is the wonder of it all. Another is the utilitarian aspects. Another aspect is the connection with the arts. There are many people who hear science and run the other way, but if it’s a dance performance or theater piece or musical performance, they’ll check it out. I don’t think there’s any one approach that works for everybody.

Wired.com: Do you think that, in the rush to become excited about science, people will lose their capacity to think about it critically?

Greene: I see it the other way. I’ve found that when people get excited about these ideas, they realize that they’ve got the power to think them through. And when they’ve got the power to think them through, they’ve got the power to criticize, to ask questions, to not simply accept that it’s beyond their purview. It’s not only the ideas and the content, but the mode of thinking, that ultimately comes across when you’re exposed to science in the way we do it in the Festival or my books.

In my books, very rarely do I say, “Here’s how it is.” Most of the time I say, “Here’s the chain of reasoning that took us from here to here,” and allow you to think about the links and whether they fit together. We try never to preach that science comes from on high and should be taken uncritically. Feel free to mull over every morsel, ask questions, and spit it back out if it doesn’t make sense.

Wired.com: What about those places, such as young earth creationism, where some people just will not accept something for which all the evidence points in one direction?

Greene: However well-intentioned your goals, you’re never going to bring everybody into the fold. And that’s okay. There are people in whom there’s no willingness for rational thought and evidence-based thinking to dictate what they believe to be true. And if that’s the case, it’s very difficult to proceed.

Wired.com: Getting back to what you said earlier, and the importance to democracy of understanding science, what’s the danger of letting experts make decisions in their areas of expertise?

Greene: It’s not actually the experts who make decisions, by and large. It’s people who listen to experts and interpret what they said and come to a conclusion. And that step is one that’s potentially fraught with danger, because these ideas are subtle and there are a lot of different agendas people bring to the interpretation of science. We’ve seen that a lot in the last eight years. That’s where having a science-literate public can be a safeguard.

See Also:

Images: Suzie Horgan/World Science Festival

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Twitter.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 10 Jun 2009 | 4:57 pm

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