Often on Sciblogs someone ends up pointing out that another commenter’s ‘evidence’ is anecdotal, and thus doesn’t offer particularly strong support for a particular point of view. I’m kicking myself for not providing the link to this video, the last time it happened 🙂 At least a couple of times I’ve made a comment along […]
Continue readingTag: science & society
“1080 poison gets tick from report”
Thus said a headline in today’s on-line Herald. Presenting the report, Commissioner from the Environment, Jan Wright, commented that "without 1080, our ability to protect many of our native plants and animals would be lost." So I thought this was a good time to re-post something I wrote earlier on the subject of 1080.
Continue readingtwisting the truth on vaccination
This ‘bad science’ letter popped up in the Waikato Times a couple of days ago. It was actually entitled "Democratic right"… [A previous writer] condoned governmental blackmail in his letter in which he accused me of irresponsibility for defending the democratic right to choose whether to immunize or not. Does [he] know the MMR vaccine that […]
Continue readingweird ‘science’ letter of the week
Some of my colleagues over at Sciblogs (NZ) publish the occasional ‘crazy science’ letter. I thought I would join them, having just read the following in one of our local free papers. Fluoride and Viagra – what do they have in common? As it turns out, a lot.
Continue readingvision and change: biology education for all students
That’s the title of the first chapter in the AAAS’s Vision and change report. It should cause tertiary biology educators to pause & think – because not all of the students sitting in our first-year classes are biology majors or, indeed, science majors. In my own Faculty around 1/6 of those students will be taking my papers […]
Continue readingsome thoughts on ‘looking ahead’
I’ve had a most enjoyable, and thought-provoking, discussion with a teacher friend of mine about the ideas & proposals contained in Looking ahead: science education for the 21st century. We both felt that the report is a provocative basis for discussion of what our science education system should look like (& indeed Sir Peter Gluckman described it […]
Continue readinglooking ahead: science education for the 21st century
Last October I wrote about Inspired by Science, a document commissioned by the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor with the aim of "[encouraging’ debate on how better to engage students with science". The paper had a particular focus on science education in primary and secondary schools and also asked "whether there is an increasing mismatch between science education […]
Continue readinginspired by science – the next stage
Last year the NZ Council for Education Research published Inspired by Science (Bull et al. 2010) – a discussion paper intended to promote debate about the future of science education in this country. I found it an interesting paper, although I also thought that it didn’t really address some issues (funding, for example, or the fact that […]
Continue readinga pat a day may help keep the doctor away
Poppa’s been in hospital for the last two weeks. Until he was transferred to a hospital closer to his home we were visiting him regularly, but there was one member of the family that he couldn’t have cuddles with, & he really missed that. And who was he missing? Ben, the little poodle.
Continue readinganother form of donation
A few days ago my fellow Scibloggers & I had a bit of a discussion around blood donations (as part of a wider discussion of issues relating to the disastrous earthquake in CHristchurch on Tuesday 22 February). While at present the Blood Service isn’t calling for extra donors, I thought I’d write another post on donation […]
Continue reading