What if you’re wrong? Here are three opportunities to change your mind with increasing levels of spiciness.
Improve Science. Is the current scientific process the best way we have to create true and useful knowledge? You’ve heard about the replication crisis or p-hacking, but have you thought much about “importance hacking”? That is when you “get a result that is actually not interesting, not important, and not valuable, but write about it in such a way that reviewers are convinced it is interesting, important, and/or valuable, so that it gets published.” One solution: more replication and rating of scientific papers. The Transparent Replication project is doing both.
Love the Atom. Is radiation so dangerous that we shouldn’t build nuclear power plants? Previously, I thought the media and politics exaggerated the risk of nuclear power. Nuclear looks better on a comparison of the cost in human life and health per unit of power compared to fossil fuels. Now, I’m wondering if the underlying risk is also misunderstood by scientists. The scientific consensus view of radiation’s effect on humans is that the dose response curve is linear with no threshold. To me that sounds suspect as dose response curves are usually sigmoidal which matches my model of biology. Because we’re scared, we require operators to keep spending money on safety well beyond what’s required of other fuels. Which leads to missed opportunities for all the good things that come from having more electricity. Dig in by reading the book Why Nuclear Power Has Been A Flop.
Take Children Seriously. What if “like other groups of human beings, children are people, not pets, prisoners or property. Full people whose lives are their own, not a different kind of person who can be coerced, enslaved or discriminated against. Full, equal humans, not inferior”? And “only in the case of children do people think that needing support, protection, assistance, information and other things implies not having the same freedom, rights, respect and control over their lives as others.” Is this the next stage of the enlightenment project of equality? Read more at Taking Children Seriously.
Until next week,
Miles