Many companies and organizations are reaching out to assist in the President’s Initiative of Winning the Future, by placing and educational emphasis on STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

image – AP File Photo

The United Nations General Assembly has declared that each person on the planet has a right to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities. World leaders in 2000 called for the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation to be cut in half by 2015 (see the Millennium Development Goals)

This relates to the almost one billion people without access to safe and clean drinking water while more than 2 billion have no sanitary means of disposing human waste. The consequence of this lack of access shows up in the high numbers of children, more than one million, who die each from water and sanitation-related diseases.

Bolivia was the country sponsoring the resolution with 122 countries voting “aye” and 41 countries deciding not to vote, to abstain, such as the United States and many Western nations though Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain and Norway supported it. The United States remains, however, “deeply committed to finding solutions to our water challenges,” but the resolution “describes a right to water and sanitation in a way that is not reflective of existing international law.” READ MORE HERE

The resolution states that “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life.”

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Strange news coming to us each day
Caught in a bubble that seems here to stay
Radio waves, television, cell phones, SMS/Text
Twitter, Facebook, Ning – who knows what’s next
What of blogs, emails, phone calls, faxes,
All because of those screaming high taxes
And the appalling shortage of well thought out views
With more reliance on the web and soundbytes for news
We used to think more therefore we got hired
We evade the truth now and get others fired
Strange news…strange views

The Sherrod Event reminded me of this talk given by Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson at St Petersburg College, Florida, 2009, which I liken to the need to apply scientific rigor in journalism – know of what you speak, know of what is spoken, before you move to action.

In response to a question about UFOs – Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, skilfully and articulately developed a response that in the context of Sherrod, could be seen as a lesson in the “science of journalism” as opposed to science journalism.

The video clip that created the avalanche of events around Ms Sherrod, was like the U – in UFO – unidentified, unchecked with rigor. When we do not know, we engender, what Dr Tyson calls – “Arguments from Ignorance. Humans are uncomfortable steeped in ignorance so they move quickly from an abject statement of ignorance to an abject statement of certainty, which in the Sherrod case led to abject actions from ignorance. He stated that “If you don’t know what IT is, then that’s where the conversation should stop”!

He reminded us that the lowest form of evidence is eyewitness (and ear witness, my addition) testimony. There is a failure in human perception that leads to poor data taking/analysis and evaluation, a classic example of GIGO. When the evidence derives from ignorance, scientific rigor (and journalistic rigor) are negatively impacted, resulting in, as regards journalism, what came crashing through our television sets, computers, cell phones, airwaves, satellites – the “Sherrod Asteroid”.

How can an astrophysicist help us get to the science of journalism, and not only focus on science journalism? Shouldn’t our journalists apply scientific rigor to the news they report? If not, then, what?

I say, turn Dr Tyson loose on all of them!!!