A few more details about the Bell Labs brouhaha ...

Nearly identical graphs appear in several of Dr. Schön's scientific papers, even though the graphs represent different data from different experiments. Bell Labs, part of Lucent Technologies, has convened an independent panel to investigate.

A Sudden Host of Questions on Bell Labs Breakthroughs

"Can you imagine having Stephen Jay Gould as a babysitter?"

Gould's Serious Fun

"There were funny things about the data that just shouldn't have occurred. The data was just too perfect, and we knew something was wrong."

Single molecule transistors? Not yet, perhaps. Scientific intrigue at Lucent Bell Labs. As if dismal sales on the business side weren't enough to drive stock prices into the ground.

Similar Graphs Raised Suspicions on Bell Labs Research

... Fukuyama told Salon why he thinks that the right to be cloned and to tinker with our offspring's genes aren't liberties that we should all enjoy, and what should be done to restrain the onrush of biotechnology.

Clone free | Fukuyama interview in Salon

A man with so many opinions is bound, pretty often, to be wrong, but Mr. Gould could be just as entertaining when he was wrong as when he was right.

From today's NYT editorial page.

Death of a Paleontologist

The cause was cancer.

Here's the official NYT obit for Gould. NYT's editorial page also discusses him; I'll log that separately.

Stephen Jay Gould, Evolution Theorist, Dies at 60

Gould died of cancer at his home in New York City.

It is a sad day for science. And given his failing health, I am all the more impressed with his recent publication of a mammoth 1464 page treatise on evolutionary theory.

Famed Harvard Biologist Stephen Jay Gould Dies

Proceedings of a recent National Academy of Sciences colloquium.

The organizers had no difficulty in finding many examples of complexity in subjects ranging from fluid turbulence to social networks. However, an acceptable definition for self-organizing complexity is much more elusive. The governing equations (if they exist) are generally nonlinear ... A few characteristics of self-organized complexity: Frequency-Size Statistics (power law scaling); Networks; Time Series; Slider Blocks; Deterministic Chaos vs. Stochasticity.

This is clearly a field that is rapidly growing. The growth is likely to be particularly strong in the biological and social science applications.

From the table of contents:

Proteins: Paradigms of complexity
Self-organized complexity in economics and finance
Random graph models of social networks
Scaling phenomena in the Internet: Critically examining criticality

Self-organized complexity in the physical, biological, and social sciences

70% of American adults do not understand the scientific process. 60% believe in ESP. 30% believe aliens visit Earth, 43% read astrology charts. 46% don't know that the Earth orbits the sun each year. 55% don't know what a laser does. 66% don't understand or accept the Big Bang. 52% of Americans think dinosaurs and humans lived together. 47% either don't understand or don't accept the theory of evolution.

How can we possibly include people in a national debate about our posthuman future when so many are so clueless? (Maybe I should have filed this article under the Humor topic instead.)

Survey finds few in U.S. understand science

That prospect should be worrying a lot more people, in the view of the political theorist Francis Fukuyama, because history's central question -- that of what kind of society best suits human needs -- has been settled only if human nature remains as it is ...

This article makes for a good backgrounder on Fukuyama, his career, and his books.

A Dim View of a 'Posthuman Future'