JLVernonPhD presents "American SciCo"

My friend, Chris Mooney, has given me an opportunity to reach out to a new audience by doing some guest blogging at his very popular Discover.com post, The Intersection.  I have produced two pieces in which I’ve tried to demonstrate a range of interests.  The first piece entitled, My Failed Mission to Hold Holdren Accountable, summarizes my attempts to get to the root of why the government’s scientific integrity guidelines requested by President Obama more than 2 years ago have not been established.  The ending of that post is not at all consistent with my starting position.

In it, I relay a story that provides a glimpse of the impact President Obama is having on the youth of America in regards to the sciences.  Here’s a quote from that piece:

In October of 2009, President Obama hosted “Astronomy Night at the White House.”  I believe Dr. Holdren said there were more than 30 telescopes on the White House South Lawn.  In attendance were 300 middle school students from the DC-area.  Also, attending the event were “space heroes” Buzz Aldrin and Sally Ride and several other astronomers and space scientists including 5 women scientists.  Two of the students, 14 year old Caroline Moore and Lucas Bolyard, a high school sophomore, had each made significant astronomical discoveries.  Caroline had become the youngest person to discover a supernova and Lucas located a pulsar.  After presenting awards to the students and talking about the importance of science education, President Obama finished is comments with a lasting thought.  First, he asked the children in attendance, “which one of you are going to come back here to claim your prize?”  He went on to ask the students “Are you going to find a new star? Or a cure for a disease? Or invent the next iPhone?…What will your great discovery be?”

Dr. Holdren’s wife was in the audience amongst the students.  She described to Dr. Holdren how the children had responded to these questions from President Obama.  One of the students with tears on their cheek said, “The President was talking to me.”

My second piece has drawn much more attention, probably because it’s more of a “hot topic” article.  It’s entitled, “Deathers” Offer a Unique Case Study of the Formulation of the Denialist Mentality.  The title speaks for itself, but in this piece, I tried to apply some new concepts on “motivational reasoning” to understanding the denialist movement.  I chose to focus on those who deny the death of Osama bin Laden.  This is a unique example of denialism because it has developed during a time when we have the tools to analyze the formulation of the denialist arguments as they are emerge.

Here’s a clip from that piece:

We are currently witnessing the de novo formulation of a new denialism in regards to the death of Osama bin Laden.  As I was listening to C-SPAN radio, just yesterday, two callers a Democrat and a Republican agreed that bin Laden was not dead and the entire hullabaloo was orchestrated for political gain.  Because we are now armed with at least a superficial understanding of the mechanisms behind this type of thinking, we can ask questions and test hypotheses while observing the development of this particular case of motivated thought.

Drop by The Intersection and leave a comment.  It’s pretty exciting over there.

Cheers!