(Note: The Blogginghead embedding isn’t playing well with WordPress, so you’ll have to go to the site and interview here.)

Last week, I was contacted by Bloggingheads.tv to casually discuss Balloon Boy and its implications, specifically as relates to the state of reality television and celebrity.  I was paired with Susan Murray, a scholar whom I’ve long respected (and a fellow UT RTF alum!) an whose work has proven incredibly influential on my own.  We had a sweet time, even though we each had to wear geeky headsets, and you can find our musings in full here, including our thoughts on Jon and Kate, reality television ‘narrative complexity,’ and the connection, if any, between the desperation now associated with reality television and our current economic milieu.  There’s a lively discussion currently taking place in the comments section.  I strongly suggest checking back often at Bloggingheads — they regularly feature scholars and thinkers talking through issues as diverse as probability, feminism, legislation, international policy, and, of course, pop culture.  (You can read more about their mission/history here.)

I’m bashful about appearing on video, but I’d love to do it again.  At least I didn’t look bald.

For someone who doesn’t care much for experimental studies and data analysis, I often come up with experimental tasks or statistical surveys for other people to do. Here is one: Take a bunch of graduate students of nuclear physics and ask them about the role of falsifiability in science. Then take a bunch of graduate students of macro-economics and ask them the same question. My guess is that the physicists will not know what you are talking about, and at any rate  wouldn’t have come accross this issue during their studies, whereas the economists will know all about Popper, logical positivism, demarcation and other latin words I never heard of.

I thought about this comparison when I watched this diavblog. As usual with bloggingheads I lost interest quickly, but it’s  worth watching for a while, if only to keep track of the fluctuations in the frequency of David Levine’s blinks while the other head is talking. Best Levine’s quote from the part I watched — `You will have to fill me on which these three axioms are’, responding to the assertion that `nothing is more true than that the three axioms of rational choice have all been falsified’. I actually replayed this part to retrieve the quote, and I still managed to forget the three axioms.

Anyway, back to my (testable !) prediction. Suppose it turns out to be correct. Then, since I am the one that made the prediction, Popper tells us that the fact that it was verified renders my explanation for it more credible. And the explanation is that physicists are robins and economists are penguins.

Let me elaborate. Richard Feyman famously said that philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. It’s an awesome observation, and I would like to apply it specifically to the part of philosophy of science that deals with the demarcation problem, or the distinction between science and non-science. And I’ll start with the physicists, because our whole idea of science is essentially `the stuff that physicists do’. Popper was trying to pin down what are the special characteristics of the physics enterprise. Thus, the fact that physics is science is almost a tautology. Every child knows it as every child knows that robin is a bird. That’s why Popper’s (or anybody’s) answer the demarcation problem is useless to physicists.

Things are different with penguins. A layman might not recognize them as birds. In order to prove that they qualify, penguins have to appeal to some standards that describe what are the special properties of birds that distinguish them from humanities mammals. That’s why penguins care about ornithology. And that’s why economists care about falsifiability.

Rosenberg is right it’s a bit ironic that economists adopt falsifiability as a litmus test for science, since philosophers of science have generally rejected it. But the irony I think is on the philosophers, not the economists. How would the ornitologists feel if the birds that actually read their papers would only be interested in what was written eighty years ago ?

Christianity Today gives the story behind this incident, which seems to reveal a selective intolerance toward dissenting ideas.

An online clearinghouse for intellectual debate has discovered the apparent boundary for its controversial conversations: Intelligent Design.

Bloggingheads.tv posted a video interview between journalist John McWhorter and Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe in late August focused on the Lehigh University biochemistry professor’s 2007 book The Edge of Evolution. It was taken down the same day after the website received a barrage of online criticism for not asking tougher questions of Behe and for hosting him at all.

The explanation given for pulling the interview: “John McWhorter feels, with regret, that this interview represents neither himself, Professor Behe, nor Bloggingheads usefully, takes full responsibility for same, and has asked that it be taken down from the site. He apologizes to all who found its airing objectionable.”

Bloggingheads editor-in-chief Robert Wright reposted the interview four days later upon discovering the incident, but Behe says that action didn’t erase what happened . . . (Continue)

What happens when drunks play the ultimatum game?

Like many other fans of Bloggingheads.tv (BHTV), I was saddened last week to learn that Dr. Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer had announced that they had chosen to end their participation in BHTV programs, which in the context of BHTV are called “diavlogs.” Dr. Carroll provides his account here, and Mr. Zimmer here. The matter is further discussed in this BHTV diavlog between BHTV founder Robert Wright and science journalist George Johnson.

The reasons for Dr. Carroll’s and Mr. Zimmer’s departures appear to be:

• (1) that topics considered by peer-reviewed science to belong in the realm of pseudo-science, or persons advocating views considered by peer-reviewed science to be pseudo-scientific, have twice recently been the focus of BHTV diavlogs, with one of these diavlogs having been published in the “Science Saturday” slot usually reserved for discussion of topics recognized as authentic science in peer-reviewed scholarly literature;
• (2) that the BHTV management has declined to establish an editorial policy to prevent pseudo-scientific topics, or advocates of pseudo-science, from being highlighted in future BHTV diavlogs; and
• (3) that Dr. Carroll and Mr. Zimmer considered that their reputations had been compromised by their association with a media venue that highlighted pseudo-scientific topics or advocates of pseudo-science.

I regret Dr. Carroll’s and Mr. Zimmer’s decisions, because I have found their BHTV diavlogs extremely informative, and because I believe that their diavlogs have provided a very high quality of science education to a very large audience. I completely understand their concerns, however, and I respect their decisions to withdraw from BHTV. I also respect and understand the position of BHTV management, that they wish for BHTV to remain a generally open forum for public discussion and debate of a very wide range of topics.

Here is a proposal to change the Bloggingheads.tv editorial process, that hopefully will enable Dr. Carroll and Mr. Zimmer to resume participation in BHTV diavlogs, while ensuring that BHTV will remain open to discussion and debate of a wide range of topics:

• Respecting the BHTV “Science Saturday” forum only, the BHTV management will name a peer review board composed of 3 scientists who regularly appear in BHTV diavlogs and whose work is regularly published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals (the “Science Saturday Peer Review Board,” or “SSPRB”). Each SSPRB member will serve a twelve month term. Any SSPRB member may serve consecutive terms. The inaugural SSPRB and the BHTV management will establish formal, written procedures for selecting future SSPRB members, both to replace existing members at the end of each member’s twelve-month term, and to replace an existing member who must leave before the end of his or her twelve-month term (the “SSPRB Membership Procedures”);
• The BHTV management and the SSPRB will establish formal, written procedures for vetting proposals for future BHTV Science Saturday diavlogs (the “SSPRB Peer Review Procedures”). The SSPRB Peer Review Procedures will take effect once they have been approved by the SSPRB and BHTV management;
• As of the date the SSPRB Peer Review Procedures take effect, no recording of any Science Saturday diavlog may occur without the topic and participants of that diavlog having been approved in advance by the SSPRB consistent with the SSPRB Peer Review Procedures;
• Once every six months following the date the SSPRB Peer Review Procedures take effect, BHTV management will meet with the SSPRB to assess the effectiveness of the SSPRB Peer Review Procedures. Once every twelve months following the date the inaugural SSPRB is convened, the SSPRB will submit a formal, written report to BHTV management describing and evaluating the operations of the SSPRB during the preceding twelve months;
• Nothing in this proposal would affect any aspect of BHTV programming other than Science Saturday programming.

The intent of this proposal is to institute a formal peer review process for BHTV Science Saturday programming, while leaving the rest of BHTV programming open to any topic and any speaker, as is presently the case. Comments are welcome.