Archive for September, 2006

Scientists and Engineers for America — EngagingConflicts.com

Posted September 29, 2006 * Comments(0)

This new organization launched two days ago. From their website:

Today a group of scientists and concerned citizens launch a new organization, Scientists and Engineers for America, dedicated to electing public officials who respect evidence and understand the importance of using scientific and engineering advice in making public policy.

The principal role of the science and technology community is to advance human understanding. But there are times when this is not enough. Scientists and engineers have a right, indeed an obligation, to enter the political debate when the nation’s leaders systematically ignore scientific evidence and analysis, put ideological interests ahead of scientific truths, suppress valid scientific evidence and harass and threaten scientists for speaking honestly about their research.

We ask every American who values scientific integrity in decision-making to join us in endorsing a basic Bill of Rights for Scientists and Engineers. Together we will elect new leadership beginning in 2006, and we will continue to work to elect reasonable leadership in federal, state and local elections for years to come.

America needs your help. Will you join us?

These are the points in their Bill of Rights for Scientists and Engineers:

 
Bill of Rights for Scientists and Engineers

Effective government depends on accurate, honest and timely advice from scientists and engineers. Science demands an open, transparent process of review and access to the best scholars from around the nation and the world. Mistakes dangerous to the nation’s welfare and security have been made when governments prevent scientists from presenting the best evidence and analysis. Americans should demand that all candidates support the following Bill of Rights:

  1. Federal policy shall be made using the best available science and analysis both from within the government and from the rest of society.
  2. The federal government shall never intentionally publish false or misleading scientific information nor post such material on federal websites.
  3. Scientists conducting research or analysis with federal funding shall be free to discuss and publish the results of unclassified research after a reasonable period of review without fear of intimidation or adverse personnel action.
  4. Federal employees reporting what they believe to be manipulation of federal research and analysis for political or ideological reasons should be free to bring this information to the attention of the public and shall be protected from intimidation, retribution or adverse personnel action by effective enforcement of Whistle Blower laws.
  5. No scientists should fear reprisals or intimidation because of the results of their research.
  6. Appointments to federal scientific advisory committees shall be based on the candidate’s scientific qualifications, not political affiliation or ideology.
  7. The federal government shall not support any science education program that includes instruction in concepts that are derived from ideology and not science.
  8. While scientists may elect to withhold methods or studies that might be misused there shall be no federal prohibition on publication of basic research results. Decisions made about blocking the release of information about specific applied research and technologies for reasons of national security shall be the result of a transparent process. Classification decisions shall be made by trained professionals using a clear set of published criteria and there shall be a clear process for challenging decisions and a process for remedying mistakes and abuses of the classification system.

Science literacy: politics can affect “science”.

Kenneth Cloke: Paths to Transcendence, Part One — EngagingConflicts.com

Posted September 28, 2006 * Comments(0)

Kenneth Cloke’s new book, The Crossroads of Conflict: A Journey Into the Heart Of Dispute Resolution, is a book by an experienced mediator about many things, including his conclusions after many years of a rich and varied practice. Ken will be interviewed this fall and early winter in Engaging Conflicts Today, and has given permission to excerpt portions of his book here. In his book, he proposes and explores the transcendent mediation style (see this earlier post on styles of mediation, and this earlier post on his definition of transcendence). Here are the first five of his ten paths to transcendence – the final five will be posted next week:

[Five of the] Ten Paths to Transcendence:

1. Engage in committed, openhearted listening, as though your life depends on what you are about to hear.

2. Use a spotlight of narrow, focused attention and a floodlight of broad, sweeping awareness to clarify what is taking place beneath the surface.

3. Use dangerous empathy to search for the center of the conflict within yourself, then ask questions to discover whether the same might be true for others.

4. Use dangerous honesty to communicate your deepest understanding to others.

5. Use your heart to locate a heart space in the conversations, then open and expand it.

Ken’s book can be purchased directly from his publisher, Janis Publications.

Note: The book is also available at your local libraries and bookstores, and online through my Amazon.com link in the right-hand sidebar.

Cyberweek 2006 Continues With Mediation Excellence Online — EngagingConflicts.com

Posted September 28, 2006 * Comments(0)
Over 400 people have been participating in the ongoing Cyberweek 2006 activities. I’m lucky enough to be helping with producing, promoting and presenting the three Cyberweek teleconferences, under John DeBruyn’s tutelage. John is an attorney and mediator in Denver who is fields ahead of most of us on what internet technology can do for us. Tuesday our panel discussed the intersection of mediation, facilitation, coaching and teaching; yesterday, mediation excellence standards developing nationally, especially in Maryland and Colorado; and today’s panel discussion will include me and fellow bloggers Diane Levin Online Guide to Mediation, and and Robert Ambrogi’s Lawsites on the potential of blogs and blog-supported online activities and resources for professional development and networking. For more information go here: Mediation Excellence in Cyberspace. Participation is free and can be via either phone or Skype.

Is String Theory Unraveling? Does Sprouting New Brain Cells Cure Depression? — EngagingConflicts.com

Posted September 27, 2006 * Comments(0)

Scientific American magazine in a recent Science News column identified six “raging debates” in current scientific theory. The articles remind us that scientific theory is created, developed, and supported (or not) in a process involving people and time, and that its final, accepted form will seldom be the same as its earliest iterations. Here’s the introduction:

Textbooks usually make the triumph of a scientific theory seem inevitable and uncontestable. But at the time that a theory is being forged, the reality is not nearly so tidy. An experimental result is only clear-cut if researchers agree on how to interpret it. Individuals may have conflicting hunches about what nature is up to, however, and a finding that is conclusive to one scientist may be unimpressive to another. In some cases the ideal experiment is not yet possible. In others only one or a few data points exist. Disagreement is productive, though. It forces each side to clarify its views and to find experiments that will distinguish one idea from another. And in the end, researchers generally come to a new consensus. Experiments corroborate each other. Theories make defensible predictions. And new students come along who lack the prejudices of their predecessors. Science marches ahead, in other words, erasing m any records of dissent along the way. Here are six raging debates that textbooks will one day no doubt present as cut-and-dried:

Is String Theory Unraveling?

Is Global Warming Raising a Tempest?

How Does A Planet Grow?

Should Epidemiologists Swear Off Diet Trials?

Does Sprouting New Brain Cells Cure Depression?

Was the Hobbit Just a Sick Modern Human?

For example, the give-and-take process in critically challenging string theory is engaged – two recent books critical of the current state of the theory are being reviewed these days, including this review in Scientific American.

Ken Cloke: Mediation Styles Include Eclectic — EngagingConflicts.com

Posted September 26, 2006 * Comments(0)

Kenneth Cloke’s new book, The Crossroads of Conflict: A Journey Into the Heart Of Dispute Resolution, is a book by an experienced mediator about many things, including his conclusions after many years of a rich and varied practice. Ken will be interviewed this fall and early winter in Engaging Conflicts Today, and has given permission to excerpt portions of his book here. He identifies seven mediation styles. There is not universal agreement about all of them, and there is dispute about some:

1. Conciliative

2. Evaluative or directive

3. Facilitative

4. Transformative

5. Spiritual, heart-based, or transcendent

6. Systems design

7. Eclectic

I’m especially interested in our thinking more about “eclectic,” or “protean” styles (see this earlier post about Peter Adler’s and Robert Benjamin’s “protean” mediation or negotiation style). People are different, circumstances and settings are different, people are different in different circumstances and settings ….

Ken’s book can be purchased directly from his publisher, Janis Publications: http://www.janispublications.com.

Note: The book is also available at your local libraries and bookstores, and online through my Amazon.com link in the right-hand sidebar.

Sex Differences In the Brain — EngagingConflicts.com

Posted September 26, 2006 * Comments(0)

Here’s an online Scientific American article on sex differences in the brain.

Science Literacy and the Female Brain — EngagingConflicts.com

Posted September 25, 2006 * Comments(0)

Many of us are fascinated by male – female differences, or, rather, by investigations into what the differences are, if any, and, further, what the differences mean, if anything. Here, too, science literacy reigns. Or, rather, should.A new book that has generated much buzz is also generating criticism about one of the points used to promote its premise. This from ScienceBlogs, specifically from The Frontal Cortex blog:

Factchecking the Female Brain

Category: Neuroscience
Posted on: September 25, 2006 10:36 AM, by Jonah Lehrer

It’s a shame that exaggerating the extent of brain differences between men and women can be such a boon for book sales. (Call it the Mars and Venus phenomenon.) This publishing truism has been most recently demonstrated by Louann Brizendine, a researcher at UCSF who wroteThe Female Brain. But now the backlash has begun. The Boston Globe ran a nice column dismantling Brizendine’s oft cited claim that women use 20,000 words per day while men only use 7,000.

The author of the Boston Globe column is Mark Liberman, Trustee Professor of Phonetics at the University of Pennsylvania. After reviewing what appears to be Ms. Brizendine’s source for the claim, and the existing research literature, he concludes:

I haven’t been able to find any scientific studies that reliably count the entire daily word usage of a reasonable sample of men and women. But based on the research I’ve read and conducted, I’m willing to make a bet about what such a study would show. Whatever the average female vs. male difference turns out to be, it will be small compared to the variation among women and among men; and there will also be big differences, for any given individual, from one social setting to another.

I haven’t read the book yet, and I haven’t reviewed the studies, but I think the Boston Globe article is interesting, and exemplifies some of generalizable themes I hope to explore through this blog’s Science and Science Literacy categories: emphasis on some divides, such as a male-female divide can be, well, divisive and a source of conflict; if we are considering classifications that can be divisive, like gender, race or religion, we may want to be particularly careful about the sources for our information and be confident they are credible; and when we do use them, we will want to be careful to use them in ways that acknowledge their limits, too. Inappropriately or improperly emphasizing a male – female difference may divert us from remembering male-female similarities, and, further, may divert us from recognizing that individual differences within a gender, and particular social settings, may explain more.

OneWebDay, An “Earth Day For the Web”– EngagingConflicts.com

Posted September 21, 2006 * Comments(0)

Cyberweek 2006 is also support OneWebDay. Here’s the OneWebDay press release:

New York, NY–Sept. 18, 2006–OneWebDay (www.onewebday.org), an “Earth Day for the Web,” the first global holiday to celebrate the web and how it has changed our lives, is planned for September 22, 2006 (and every September 22 thereafter). As with Earth Day–an inspiration and model for OneWebDay–it’s up to individuals, organizations and communities to decide how to celebrate.

OneWebDay is planning to create an historic event to mark the launch of OneWebDay by facilitating the largest global online photo collaboration resulting in a visualization of the web made up of photos posted by millions of people around the world. This visualization will show the power of online collaboration. OneWebDay is working with CNET Networks’ Webshots, a global photo-sharing community, to make it easy for web users globally to contribute a digital photo and label it with “onewebday.”

“The internet has become such a ubiquitous force in our lives that it’s easy to forget how it has changed the world. We shouldn’t take the Internet for granted, and we should do everything we can to make it more visible to people around the globe. OneWebDay provides an opportunity to celebrate the web both online and in public events in cities around the world,” said Susan Crawford, associate professor at the Cardozo School of Law, who initiated OneWebDay. “We’re delighted to be working with CNET’s Webshots on this exciting project to have people around the globe post their photos and have these photos become part of a giant collage.”

“When people around the globe can ‘see’ the web, we’ll think about how the web helps humans to work together and how much it means to us. This big picture is a way of seeing the web as the human space that it is,” Crawford added.

Internet pioneers, organizations and companies are planning events around the world.

In New York, Craig Newmark of craigslist fame; Scott Heiferman, co-founder of Meetup and Fotolog; Gale Brewer, NYC City Council member; and Drew Schutte, publisher, Wired magazine, will talk about how the Internet is changing people’s lives every day. The event, sponsored by Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, Union Square Ventures, DFJGotham and Cardozo Law School, will take place on Friday, Sept. 22, Noon to 2 p.m. ET, at The Battery, near Castle Clinton, in the park at the southern tip of Manhattan.

details here.

Events have also been scheduled in Austin, TX ; Boston, MA; Champaign-Urbana, IL; Chicago, IL; London and other places in the UK; Los Angeles; Naples, Italy; Philippines; San Francisco, CA; Sofia, Bulgaria; Tokyo, Japan; Vancouver, BC; Vienna, Austria; Westport, CT.

In addition to the webshots.com giant collage, online activities in conjunction with OneWebDay include:

• Making videos in honor of OneWebDay and posting them on blip.tv — tagged “onewebday”. They will be part of a OneWebDay presentation on Dabble.com.

• A contest for users to talk about the creative ways they’ve used craigslist (submissions go to volunteer AT onewebday DOT org

• Encouraging users to take one web-related action that helps someone else: Teaching someone how to edit a wiki, start a blog, or post a picture online; or adding computers and connectivity at local senior centers; or by creating more wireless hotspots.

Here’s the link: http://www.onewebday.org/.

Ken Cloke: Five Philosophical Propositions on Conflict Resolution, Part Two — EngagingConflicts.com

Posted September 21, 2006 * Comments(0)

Kenneth Cloke’s new book, The Crossroads of Conflict: A Journey Into the Heart Of Dispute Resolution, is a book by an experienced mediator about many things, including his conclusions after many years of a rich and varied practice. Ken will be interviewed this fall and early winter in Engaging Conflicts Today, and has given permission to excerpt portions of his book here. Here’s a partial list of philosophical assumptions he makes about conflict — the earlier propositions were posted earlier in the week:

6. Chronic conflicts are systemic, and all systems, be they personal, familial, relational, organizational, social, economic, or political, defend themselves against change, even when it is essential for their survival.

7. Every conflict is holographic and systemic, so that each part contains and recapitulates the whole.

8. Every conflict reveals an internal crossroads, with each path branching and leading off in radically different directions.

9. Every conflict offers opportunities to evolve to higher levels of skill and awareness in how people respond to their opponents and problems.

10. At the center or heart of every conflict lies a pathway to resolution, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Ken’s book can be purchased directly from his publisher, Janis Publications.

Note: The book is also available at your local libraries and bookstores, and online through my Amazon.com link in the right-hand sidebar.

Science, Borderline Science, Pseudoscience, and Why Science Literacy Matter: The Series — EngagingConflicts.com

Posted September 21, 2006 * Comments(0)
There are other sources for definitions, but, for ease, let me start with the categories included in a well-considered and stated post done by the A Blog Around The Clock blog, published by a Ph.D. student named Bora Zivkovic. His blog, as he describes it, “regularly covers many areas of biology including neurobiology of behavior within ecological and evolutionary contexts, science education, higher education and science communication, as well as intersection between science and politics – this not so much about science policy, but rather what science can tell us about the way people acquire their political ideology and why they vote the way they do.” In a post originally published August 5, 2005, but subsequently republished, most recently on August 31, 2006, he wrote:

According to Michael Shermer [author of The Borderlines of Science: Where Science Meets Nonsense; also the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine] there are:

- science
- borderlands science
- pseudoscience, and
- nonsense

Science is a methodology of figuring out, with as great confidence as possible, how the world works. Evolutionary theory is one of the biggest, strongest and best-supported bodies of all of science.

Borderland Science refers to first small steps in acquiring realistic knowledge about a not-well-understood aspect of the world. It aspires to become Science, but is often held back by various factors, e.g., difficulty in studying the phenomenon of interest, biases of the investigators, social biases against investigations of such phenomena, etc.

For instance, very little is known about hypnosis. It is a real phenomenon but very difficult to study. There is not much funding for it as there is a social bias against such research. Thus, it is still doing its first small pioneering steps and has not resulted in data that are good enough to place it in the realm of real Science.

Another example is Evolutionary Psychology – it is done by psychologists (thus real scientists) who understand biology very poorly, yet strive to make their research scientific. Their own biases make them go up wrong alleys and bark up wrong trees (I love adding up mixed metaphors, sorry). Yet, they are asking real questions about real phenomena and it is expected that at some point evolutionary psychology (lowercase) will get its methodology straight and make enough advances to become real Science.

Pseudoscience is an attempt to sell out-of-ass beliefs as scientific by using hifallutin’ terminology, perform meaningless calculations, draw elaborate charts etc. Examples are many (peruse past editions of the Skeptic’s Circle for examples) and include astrology, biorhythms, pyramid force, Feng Shui, crystal balls, alternative medicine, Holocaust denial, Intelligent Design Creationism, and many, many others. The main goal, usually, is making a quick buck, although more sinister motivations are sometimes behind such ideas, i.e., these may serve as methods for making an unrespectable ideology (e.g., Nazism) respectable again, or there is political gain to be had.

Nonsense does not even pretend to be scientific, e.g., Old Earth Creationism.

Knowing the differences between science and pseudoscience is important because, as he states in another recent well-considered post:

People argue bad science, pseudoscience and nonsense for a variety of reasons, some religiously motivated, some politically motivated, some out of ignorance, some out of arrogance, some out emotional needs, some due to psychological problems.

When they encroach onto the scientific turf and argue nonsense within a scientific domain, they use a limited set of rhetorical tools. The exact choice of tools depends on the motivation, as well as the forum where they advocate the nonsense. Some, the generals in the army in War On Science, have big soapboxes, e.g., TV, radio and newspapers. Some teach and preach in schools and churches. Some run blogs, and some – the footsoldiers of The War – troll on other people’s blogs.

So, when the motivation is political, when they are pushing for debunked conservative ideas, from femiphobic stances on anti-abortion and anti-stem-cell-research, through thinly-veiled racism of the War On Terror, to failed economic policies (”trickle-down”) and global-warming denial, they mainly use one set of rhetorical strategies.

When the motivation is religious, as in Creationism, the strategies are similar, but not exactly the same. Loony fringe pseudoscience, from the Left or the Right (and sometimes it is difficult to figure out if they come from the Left or the Right) – appears to employ very similar rhetorical devices as the religiously motivated pseudoscience, suggesting that perhaps both are sharing the same underlying emotional disturbances.

The links for both these posts are: on pseudoscience; on uses of bad science. I don’t agree with everything he says and concludes, but I read and consider them. His premise, which I share, is that there is much threatening political activity related to misuses of science and in conjunction with attacks on science, such that we critically need science literacy.

For me, there’s another, equally important need for science literacy — the fact that we are in a time of immense, even revolutionary developments in science, and will be for perhaps the next decade or two (for now). What are these developments? How will they relate to our practices as conflict specialists and otherwise to our lives in the world?

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