Science fools

It's April 1st. The scientific community has expressed its sense of humour in the following ways:

(Later: a long list of pranks played this year, mostly computer-geek ones.)

[Published: 01-Apr-05 | Permalink | Category: In response | Comments]
Scientific American
…has an editorial (mirrored on this blog) recanting their "hideously one-sided" coverage of scientific topics over creationism and the like:

Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

From now on, they write, the magazine "will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science."
Nature
…has a story entitled Apollo bacteria spur lunar erosion, describing how, over the course of less than a month, much of the moon seems to have disappeared. And all this was spotted by amateur astronomers, while the professionals were caught unawares!

One thing on which experts agree is that the Moon's disintegration would be a disaster, as tides on Earth would effectively stop. "This really would be bad for us," comments Pete Swell of the World Surfers' Association. "Life would sure be a lot less fun. And I guess, like, fish and ecosystems might totally be affected too."

NASA…
… released a photo of water on Mars
RealClimate.org
…described a new book by one Michael Crikey which, under a cloak of pseudoscience, debunks the idea that temperature trends indicate the advent of something called Spring:

This is not merely fiction: Crikey underpins his thesis with numerous scientific diagrams. He presents measurements from over a dozen weather stations in the Northern Hemisphere where temperatures show a cooling trend in March. […]

"This casts a grave shadow of doubt on the theory of the seasons", says Crikey. "Consensus science is not good science." He says we should not trust computer models projecting that June will be much warmer than March in most of the Northern Hemisphere. "These models cannot even predict the weather in two weeks time - why should we believe what they say about temperatures in two months?" He also says that only six months ago, scientists were predicting a cooling.

FYI they are satirizing something they've discussed before (via)

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