A report conducted by the LSE and private healthcare firm Bupa questioned more than 12,000 people from 12 countries and found that 81 percent of those with Internet access use it to search for medical advice, but only a quarter of them check where their online advice has come from. Another study done by researchers at the Department of Pediatrics at Nottingham University Hospitals in Britain looked into 500 websites and found only 39 percent provided the correct information to a question about common childhood ailments. While these studies raise concerns about the accuracy of medical information on the Internet and public reliance on it, it is also worthwhile, in our opinion, to ask who determines what the right answers are.

Four in 10 Americans, slightly fewer today than in years past, believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago. Thirty-eight percent believe God guided a process by which humans developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms, while 16%, up slightly from years past, believe humans developed over millions of years, without God’s involvement, Gallup survey reveals.

Historian of science Will Thomas writes a sketch of the history of agricultural research and education in the UK on Ether Wave Propaganda.

Christine Rosen reviews a forthcoming book entitled Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net’s Impact on Our Minds and Future. In the book, 150 authors, including scientists, philosophers and artists, write on the way the Internet affects human thought.

U.S. officials have decided to close down the Tevatron particle accelerator as originally planned, and not to extend extra funding of $35 million to prolong its operation for three more years, in which American physicists hoped it could beat the CERN Large Hadron Collider in the race for finding the Higgs boson, Nature News reports.

New philosophy podcasts on Philosophy Bites. Martha Nussbaum talks about the value and importance of the humanities, and Philip Pettit talks about group agency – how groups can act, believe, and held responsible by others.

New Scientist discusses 2010′s “top ten” technological innovations, and Guide to Online Schools ranks top 50 philosophy podcasts.

Nature casts their predictions for scientific development in 2011. Here are last year’s predictions.

Debates over the current viability and effectiveness of the peer review process are not over, as The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a prominent social psychology journal, is set to publish a paper supporting the existence of ESP. Rebuttals that employ more nuanced Bayesian analyses have already been drafted and submitted to the same journal. Here is a link to a New York Times article covering this issue.

Pope Pope Benedict XVI announces that God was behind the big bang, and the universe was not created by chance. He said scientific theories on the origin and development of the universe and humans, while not in conflict with faith, left many questions unanswered.

A group of British 8 to 10-year-old schoolchildren have published a research paper about bees’ pattern recognition in the peer-reviewed journal Biology Letters, Wired reports.

Sense about Science reviews claims celebrities have made in 2010 about diets, cancer, magnets, radiation and more, that make no scientific sense. We at The Bubble Chamber ask what we are to make of celebrities’ promotion of respectable science, such as climate science? If celebrities don’t make sense about X, shouldn’t we question what they say about Y?

Did low-fat diets cause the obesity epidemic? The New York Times investigates the history of the current low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet recommended by the American medical and public health policy communities and asks whether Dr. Atkins could have been right all along.

Discover blogs has an interesting post plotting GRE scores by discipline, with some interesting commentary on the fact that philosophers appear to be extreme outliers.

In an internal memo, Fox News’ Washington bureau chief, Bill Sammohas, has instructed its journalists to refrain from asserting that the planet is warming, and whenever such claim is raised, to cast doubt over it.

On The New York Times Opinionator Blog, distinguished philosopher Tyler Burge argues that perceptual psychology, rather than neuroscience is the true science of the mind.

A podcast of the recent British Philosophical Association and the Forum for European Philosophy panel discussion on the theme “Valuing the Humanities” with James Ladyman, Martha Nussbaum, Martin Rees and Richard Smith, chaired by Mark Lawson is available for listening.

Jonah Lehrer of The New Yorker argues for the existence of a common phenomenon in science called “the decline effect”, which is that large effects observed in an experiment tend to become smaller and smaller in subsequent replications. While the paper raises some interesting claims, there are still good grounds to remain skeptical about the reality of this effect, and about the author’s explanation of his findings.

On the popular American radio show Radiolab, recorded live at the New York Public Library, Steven Johnson (author of Where Good Ideas Come From) and Kevin Kelly (author of What Technology Wants) discuss the question of technological determinism and the evolution of technology.

On Ether Wave Propaganda, historian of science Will Thomas argues that historians need to worry less about their engagement with the realm of public ideas.

Police at Harvard are investigating vandalism with urine to about 40 books dealing with LGBT matters at the school’s Lamont Library, the student newspaper The Crimson reports.

James Gleick writes about the history of the word “information” and how it has changed in meaning over time.

Sokal’s Hoax – the posterior version. Embryologist John McLachlan has proposed a new form of reflexology – on the buttocks. As a treatment technique, he suggested applying “gentle suction” on parts of the buttocks that are associated with different areas of the body. He sent an abstract of his theory to the Jerusalem International Conference on Integrative Medicine, which was accepted. In a letter to the British Medical Journal he later explained that this had been a hoax intended to expose the absurdity of alternative medicine. In a talkback comment on the Israeli news site Ynet, conference organizer Avraham Fried wrote¹  that the actual problem in this case was McLachlan’s willingness to lie and infringe the scientific norm of trust to make his point, and he resented that the BMJ did not ask for his response.

More on the NASA affair: As we reported last week, NASA scientists published a paper in Science announcing the discovery of a new aresenic-based life form. NASA announced that the discovery “will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”. Media hype soon followed, but scientists are now claiming that the study is flawed and the press release was needlessly sensational and premature. Blogger Martin Robbins of the Guardian analyzes the reasons this affair turned into an inevitable fiasco.

Is is a problem that Republicans are under-represented among American scientists? Daniel Sarewitz, a senior science-policy scholar,  argues that it is. He writes that more Republicans should be scientists (or the other way around) both to enhance public trust in science, and to avoid potential Democrat bias in science, especially in politically contested issues such as climate science.

Australian environmentalists have been promoting the hunting of Kangaroos for meat as a sustainable alternative to farming cattle and sheep. But a report by THINKK, a research group based at the University of Technology, Sydney, has questioned the assumptions on which this policy is based and called for rethinking it, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Podcasts: On Philosophy Talk, philosopher Jennifer Lackey discusses the question of whether rational disagreement between epistemic peers is possible, and philosopher Helen Beebee discusses laws of nature on Philosophy Bites.

The major science story of the week has got to be NASA’s announcement of a new form of life composed of arsenic rather than phosphorous… or that eats arsenic rather than phosphorous… or that can be trained to do so in the lab…. Matt Nisbet at Age of Engagement documents the hype and speculation that led up to the announcement due to the embargo policies of magazines like Science.

Somatosphere tells us that the executive board of the American Anthropological Society has recently removed all mentions of “science” from its mission statement. This has understandably led to some controversy.

Ilana Yurkiewicz at Science Progress argues that the problems with science journalism can’t all be attributed to science journalists, but also to editorial pressure to “keep things simple”.

Should you be taking vitamin D supplements? A post at Feminist Philosophers points us towards a report that apparently claims that they are unnecessary and perhaps harmful for most people, but (surprise!) upon further investigation it turns out things are much less clear.

Will Thomas at Ether Wave Propaganda has posted a survey of historical literature on the relation between agricultural practices and science, which should be interested in anyone wanting to understand why modern food production, and modern science, look the way they do.

Feminist Philosophers has a good post commenting on some recently discovered documents that will likely force a reconception of the role of women in science during the early days of the Royal Society.

Comments on NASA’s recent discovery that the world’s lakes are warming.

An Epilog post that connects the problematic aspects of modern neurocognitive technologies up with the problematic aspects of historical forms of psychosurgery.

Gregory Petsko, a Professor of Biochemistry, speaks out in favour of the humanities, and the unique virtues they can instil in working scientists.

James Ladyman, a philosopher of science working primarily on naturalized metaphysics, has petitioned his fellow academics “to make this website go viral.”  If you are in the UK, and/or you value the humanities, it is especially worth checking out.

A letter in Science (via Age of Engagement, where you can read part of it if you don’t have a subscription) calls for scientists to mobilize to “make concerted efforts to provide people, organizations, and governments with critical information, to address misperceptions, and to counter misinformation and deception”.

Other (?) climate scientists are forming a “rapid response team” with the mission of countering climate disinformation campaigns by aggressively engaging the media.

For those who liked the Atlantic’s article on John Ioannidis, Aaron over at False Vacuum pointed me towards this fantastic article from Science News entitled “Odds Are It’s Wrong“. It covers much of the same ground as the previously-mentioned article, but gives more details on the history of statistics in scientific practice.

Will Thomas at Etherwave Propaganda is embarking on a new research project broadly to do with 20th century agricultural technology in Britain, and about ideas of “pure vs. applied research, scientific vs. local knowledge, and scientific advice vs. state action”. We’re looking forward to hearing more Will!

Democrats often criticized Bush for manipulating reports from scientific agencies, but they are now being faced with similar accusations, as the New York Times reports. It seems a report that was purportedly due to outside experts was edited to recommend a moratorium on deep-sea drilling, while the experts recommended no such thing.

RealClimate has an interesting post about the image of science in the media vs. how it really is. It will probably strike many here as naive, but it’s always valuable to see how scientists see themselves and their discipline, right?

I missed the PSA session on “ClimateGate”, but there’s a great summary of the session at Scientopia!