Heather Douglas

Trust issues: public health in a NYC comedy club A night of stand-up, storytelling, and uncomfortable truths about why public health has lost trust.

Good discussion of how to think about trust in science (and pursue it in practice) youcanknowthings.substack.com/p/trust-issu...

Fun fact: Clean energy costs keep getting cheaper as technology improves and more capacity is deployed. Fossil fuels stay roughly the same cost to deploy, while volatile commodity costs spike whenever global markets tighten.

It's that time for recommending Books of the Year. I seemed to spend a heck of a lot of my time reviewing this year, so I have quite a few to choose from. In no particular order...

The Hunger for Meaning - Daily Nous “It is tempting to dismiss Peterson as a stupid person’s idea of a smart person. But perhaps he is just a desperate person’s idea of an intellectual lifeline.” That’s from Becca Rothfeld’s recent Wash...

"Call me impractical or romantic, but for my money, the hunger for meaning is as basic as the craving for food. The fundamental questions aren’t luxuries, and people will always find a way to ask them..."

All of this. So much hypocrisy, and still, it will not help.

What is priced and not priced is so destructively dissonant

Working on research ethics and/or societal impacts of science and technology? Consider responding to this request for info from the NSF. Deadline is Dec. 13! Help shape the future of responsible research. www.nsf.gov/pubs/2024/ns...

I have always found bucket lists unappealing and a bit oppressive. Thanks, Helen, for illuminating why!

Royal Society Publishing Early Career Researcher Advisory Panel | Royal Society Are you interested in shaping the future of scientific communication? Apply to join our new ECR Advisory Panel.

📢Are you an early career researcher, interested in how science is communicated, reported, & the evolution of the scientific ecosystem? Applications are open for the Royal Society Publishing Early Career Researcher Advisory Panel.

Find out more: ow.ly/MaTk50U71W3 #ECRs

Please repost!

Making the most of AI’s potential: cross-disciplinary perspectives on the role of AI in science and society | Royal Society Royal Society Open Science has commissioned a new collection of papers exploring the impact of machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and Big Data within science and society.

Working on AI governance or AI ethics? Royal Society Open has a call for work in this area. (Just found out about it, but the call is still open!) royalsociety.org/blog/2024/09...

Which is why simple endorsements are kind of dumb in general. There should always be reasons. If those are given, others can judge whether those reasons matter for them. Bare knuckle authority of simple endorsement is weak.

Ah! You mean as an expert (more general than as a scientist). That endorsement is inadequate. They would need to say what about the candidate is good given their area of expertise. Experts do this all the time. What is the worry? The public can then decide if the endorsement matters.

Next week I'll be on one of my bundled trips that, in addition to teaching 7 classes, 1 workshop, and 4 other events, also includes 3 public talks - Sun Dec 1 in Shepherdstown WV, Wed Dec 4 at Dickinson College, and Thurs Dec 5 at UPenn.

www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-co...

www.dickinson.edu/Hayhoe

I'm not clear on how one does this scientist qua scientist. As an experiment?

Gazprom plans for end of gas transit via Ukraine after 2024, Reuters reports Kyiv has indicated it will not extend the transit deal, ending over 50 years of gas flows from Siberia to central Europe — a vital revenue stream for Russia since the Soviet era.

⚡️Gazprom plans for end of gas transit via Ukraine after 2024, Reuters reports.

Kyiv has indicated it will not extend the transit deal, ending over 50 years of gas flows from Siberia to central Europe — a vital revenue stream for Russia since the Soviet era.

Because the below skeet went viral here, and people are arguing over it, I'm going to share some more info about it from a thread I did at the other place. I really need to just do an article about it but haven't done that yet. Until then, I hope readers find this thread useful. 🧵

Can they make political arguments, e.g. about what policy actions will do or what is a better course? Yes. Or do you mean something else?

Can't even.

Yes. Science as a social entity should be political. Scientists can decide whether they want to be political or not. Some want to lean into that; others not so much. Scientists should be good citizens, but that may be as political as they want to be.

Cassava Sciences Topline Phase 3 Data Did Not Meet Co-Primary Endpoints Simufilam did not show a significant reduction in cognitive or functional decline versus placebo in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease in...

Breaking:
Cassava Sciences Topline Phase 3 Data Did Not Meet Co-Primary Endpoints

$SAVA CEO: "(T)he loss of cognition in the placebo group was less pronounced than ... in other placebo-controlled studies in AD. We are working to understand this better".

www.globenewswire.com/news-release...

I think they should discuss key science policy issues and talk about where candidates stand on those issues. That seems more important than endorsements.

Vigilant trust in scientific expertise - European Journal for Philosophy of Science This paper investigates the value of trust and the proper attitude lay people ought to have towards scientific experts. Trust in expertise is usually considered to be valuable, while distrust is often...

Good recent work on trust in science suggests that trust should be trust with vigilance: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Minnesota tribe’s solar-powered resilience hub would provide cost savings, backup power to local community | Energy News Network A pair of developers are working to build a microgrid at an elementary school and community center on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota.

A piece of good news for the day-- a win for energy and climate justice and climate mitigation! #energy #climate energynews.us/2024/11/25/m...

YouTube video by Climate TRACE Al Gore and Gavin McCormick unveil unprecedented Climate TRACE emissions data at COP29

Great talk at COP by Al Gore and great new tool for tracking emissions globally. As he said, despite setbacks, we can do this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w2d... #climatesky

Science is political--- and should be! Using public resources to clarify public goods is political. But it should not be politicized-- i.e. treated the same as politics. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

MS Word is Using You to Train AI How to turn off AI-scraping from your Word documents

If you use Microsoft Word to write work that is creative, proprietary, or really, any writing at all, some versions of Microsoft Office will now use your writing to train its gen AI algorithm. You have to opt-out. medium.com/illumination...

From the article: “Everyone involved with banking and finance in early 18th-century Britain in a sense was somehow connected to the history of slavery and the slave trade to Brazil.” So, we shouldn't be surprised.