What's New Robert L. Park 01 Dec 2011

WHAT’S NEW  Robert L. Park  Friday, 15 Dec 2011  Washington,DC 

1. HACKS: SHODDY PRESS COVERAGE OF SCIENCE.
The Leveson Inquiry into the standards and ethics of the UK press, headed 
by Lord Justice Brian Leveson, was prompted by the News of the World phone-
hacking scandal (WN 22 Jul 2011). The seamy British tabloid was the top-
selling English-language newspaper in the world when owner Rupert Murdoch 
had to close it five months ago after its news-collection methods were 
exposed. The intense public interest in the sex and drug culture of 
celebrities is certainly troubling, but the same journalistic standards 
applied to science news may be more dangerous.  In 1998, for example, 
Andrew Wakefield, an obscure British gastroenterologist, set off a 
worldwide vaccination panic when he falsely identified the common MMR 
vaccination as a cause of autism.  Widely reported by the press, 
Wakefield's irresponsible assertion led to a precipitous decline in 
vaccination rate and a corresponding 14-year rise in measles cases.  An 
editorial in the current issue of Nature (8 Dec 2011) urges scientists 
to "fight back against agenda-driven reporting of science."  Who could 
disagree? It is, after all, a fight against ignorance. 

2. IGNORANCE: THERE'S PLENTY MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM.
A commitment to intellectual openness provides a mechanism for self-
correction that sets science apart from the unchanging dictates of revealed 
religion, raising the prospect of transforming Earth into something close 
to biblical paradise, at least for Homo sapiens.  Directions to this 
earthly paradise, however, are written in mathematics. In particular, the 
dialect of scientific progress is differential equations. Unfortunately, 
few people speak mathematics or have any interest in learning it. In the 
modern world, the engine of scientific progress is driven by a subset of 
the human race that speaks mathematics as a second language.  This is not