by Craig Silverman Published May 23, 2012 11:04 am Updated May 23, 2012 11:06 am Two recent New York Times articles included significant numerical errors that elicited howls of protest from readers and critics. In each case, the wrong number was core to the story’s central thesis, leading some to suggest the entire article should have been retracted or completely altered. Both mistakes highlight how mistaken numbers, once revealed, can become the story, rather than the article itself. First error: Wall Street psychopaths On May 12, the Times published an opinion article, “Capitalists and Other Psychopaths,” that stated, “A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are ‘clinical psychopaths’ and that they exhibit an ‘unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, ... Continue reading →

There aren’t any sauropods in the Congo Basin. There’s not a scrap of evidence that long-necked, swamp-wallowing dinosaurs are hiding somewhere in the jungles of Africa, or anywhere else. And I say that as someone who was enthralled when I saw the puppet brontosaurs of 1985′s Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (see the clip above), arguably the best movie dinosaurs before Jurassic Park stomped along. After seeing that movie, I really, really wanted there to be living sauropods, but the evidence simply doesn’t exist. Rumors that there might be an Apatosaurus-like dinosaur in the Congo Basin have circulated for years. Young earth creationists have been especially enamored with the idea, as they wrongly believe that finding a living, non-avian dinosaur will discredit evolutionary theory. ... Continue reading →

Printer friendly version Share News Release STRINGS 2012 - International Conference on String Theory in Munich 22 May 2012 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen (LMU) Hundreds of string theorists meet each year to discuss their research at an international conference. STRINGS 2012 takes place in Munich, and is organized jointly by LMU Munich, the Max-Planck Institute for Physics, the Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics, and the Universe Cluster of Excellence at the Technical University of Munich. Physics textbooks describe the submicroscopic make-up of matter and the structure of the Universe in terms of elementary particles and physical forces. In string theory, matter and fundamental forces arise from the vibrational modes of one-dimensional strings. String theory is one of the most active and exciting research areas in modern ... Continue reading →

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Alan Boyle / msnbc.comSETI astronomer Jill Tarter looks out from the radio dish named after her at the Allen Telescope Array in northern California. The array's 42 linked dishes search for signals from extraterrestrial civilization - and also keep track of Earth-orbiting satellites.By Alan BoyleThe real-life astronomer who inspired the central character in "Contact," the book and movie about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, is retiring from her research post at the age of 68. But that doesn't mean Jill Tarter is giving up on the SETI quest. Instead, she's focusing on the search for funding for the non-profit SETI Institute.For most of the institute's 28-year history, Tarter has been serving as director of the Center for SETI Research as well as holding the Bernard ... Continue reading →