More CCD

[tecumseh]

a snip..
NOPE, especially given that science is a verb, in my view.

my comment...
well my very dated dictionary say it is a noun..... although not wanting to be the grammar hall monitor I have no idea what you point was in saying this.

I still see no real science in either link or any information that is 'actionable'.  however after receiving a couple of personal email from folks that operate around the fellow in the first link I suspect what happened here is anything but obvious but the explanation of the calamity does appear to be self serving.
 

[Ray]

posted a verbiage and deleted it 
need to post something so:
The thought that Science is a Verb (an action word) is amusing, even if incorrect.

[Chip Euliss]

Can be but most scientists would agree that science is best described as a process that provides answers based on questions posed as hypotheses.  Most lay folks consider it a noun, as you do, but more in the context that "science" will solve a problem.  I don't think your snip at the paper is useful.  If you don't like it, it's very simple to not read it.  I believe we're trying to beat a dead horse--I'm done.

[Chip Euliss]

After thinking, I felt that maybe I should explain my view on science as a verb since I tend to go against the norm anyway.  I had my head in this subject for quite a while the past few years when writing a science plan for a science agency.  I think the big problem is that we're taught in school that science is a noun and that, in my view, lets us think we can pull that big "noun" out and solve a problem.  Works in some cases but fails in most.  A while back I ran across the following text that was prepared for teachers that I think sums up my view very well.  It is:

"Is science a noun or a verb? How you answer may determine how you teach science. Science as a noun suggests that science is content to be learned: students in seats, teacher with textbook at the front of the room, the guardian of important facts and discoveries. Science as a verb, by contrast, treats science as an activity, the work of scientists: the ongoing pursuit of questions, hypotheses, and investigations to better understanding the natural world.

Certainly there is scientific knowledge that students need to learn and understand, and often lectures and textbooks may be the best way to convey that knowledge. But thinking of science only as a noun misses the excitement of scientific discovery. Thinking of science as a verb creates opportunities for students and teachers to engage the natural world, grapple with the human impact of scientific discoveries, and build thinking skills that will make them better citizens, consumers, and even (just maybe) professional scientists."

I've been a scientist my entire career so my view is biased but I wouldn't change it for the world!!!!

[tecumseh]

thanks for the explanation.  I can see your point and I suspect a lot of science folks (like my wife and my father in law) would agree with your take.  imho rhetoric is the ultimate tool of a scientist.   if you can not explain what you are trying to do you likely will not thrive in the tribe known as 'scientist'.  if you cannot defend why you are trying to do something then you likely need to prepare yourself better.  no real scientist I have ever known (and believe me I ain't apart of that tribe) feels anything but enpowered to answer any and all questions..... actually the more difficult the more energized they become.

[Chip Euliss]

Yep, that's what drives most scientists, myself included.  I suspect you and your wife have some interesting conversations from time-to-time!

[Perry]

Yep, that's what drives most scientists, myself included.  I suspect you and your wife have some interesting conversations from time-to-time!

Never mind those, you should be around when tec and Iddee get into conversations!

[tecumseh]

amen to that Perry and I personally always look forward to a little jousting at windmills with my bud iddee.  < ps Perry I do like the beard. 

I do have some quite interesting conversation with my father in law concerning the start up of what we now know as 'the silicon valley'.  he was pretty much stage center when the place got started and knew a lot of the early folks who made the place what it is today...... worked in a long list of well know folks labs including Oppenheimer.  < sadly as one of his 'nobel prize winning' friends said.... 'we were so successful that are children cannot afford to live here'.  father in law is quite an interesting person to engage in conversation in regards to the sliding scale of ethics in modern day business organization.  for most of his working life he was head of research for Varian and Associates but has a long list of accomplishments and a patent or two.  he is still very mentally active at 94.

my wife early on worked as a summer intern for one of the fellows that won the nobel with 'the bee dance' fellow.  she is the biological/behavioral (ethologist) science person in the house and yes we do have some good conversation about what actually IS good science and of course what is not.  she is a third generation phd so her understanding of science is almost genetically based.  imho there is a lot of research that should never have been funded.... but then again science and academia imho is even more a matter of cronyism than anything that approaches a meritorious system.  the degree to which this mimics my father in laws own view of the sliding scale of business ethics is pretty frightening.   

my own multiple degrees is centered around economics and finance so my background is somewhat directed by science but more about the $ value of all this mental gymnastics. oddly enough it is also my personal view that basic economic think may prepare you better for understanding a honeybee than all of the hard sciences.   

[iddee]

Good friends can argue all day, even fervently, and still be friends. Even if Tec and Jack do have their political heads screwed on backward, I still like them.

[Perry]

Oh man, I sense a big group hug comin on!

[tecumseh]

and that is a bad thing Perry?

and to my buds Iddees post I will add...  a real friend backs you up when you are right but also tells you straight out when you are wrong.

[lazy shooter]

There seems to be two underlying threads here:  The first being whether science is a verb or a noun and the second being that we can all disagree and still be friends. 

Science being a verb or a noun is too academic for me.  I was taught that verbs are action words, and to this day, I still don't know how "is" shows action.  Long ago I decided it didn't matter to me.  All that mattered to me was recognizing "is" as a verb.  Hmmm I'm thinking; science, science, was scienced. 

To me science is a process.  One where you pose a question, write a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, carefully and diligently collect all data, write a conclusion, and then write a paper that can easily be read by a community of peers.  Then the chips fall where they may.  Anything else is not science.  Whether science is a verb or a noun is a no issue with me.  I can't speak for others.

We entertained friends at our home this past Sunday for a Super Bowl party.  There were some very liberal people in attendance, and I am a Reagan Conservative.  I truly believe in the old saw, "your friends are the people you like in spite of their faults."  The universities were originally places where people of differing opinions could come together and have peaceful, respectful arguments.  Unfortunately, that has changed as most universities now coerce and shut off certain groups.  Science has also fallen into censorship.  On two different occasions one of my scientist friends has come to me with a common problem.  The problem being that they were offered funding which would help their universities to do scientific work to find preordained evidence.  If anything is preordained, it is not science.  It is like someone saying to me: "Lazy I will generously fund you to find that our chemicals are not detrimental to bees."  I think that is the biggest problem facing science today, and I fear, it is especially true at the university level where grants and publishing are riches unto themselves.

[Gypsi]

I agree Lazy Shooter.  Pre-determined "science" is no science at all.

[Chip Euliss]

You got it Lazy on all fronts, in my view.  Just back from fishing in Canada and in the midst of remodeling......again. I am looking forward to seeing my bees come back so I can work on something far more entertaining.  My big issue with science as a noun is that many people today see SCIENCE as something you pull out of a bag to solve a problem.  As a retired scientist, I have to find some humor in that because it doesn't work that way--it works just as you described Lazy!  I tend to be a tad conservative too!!!

My hands hurt from stapling subfloor all day---time for an adult beverage!!

[tecumseh]

a lazy shooter snip...
The universities were originally places where people of differing opinions could come together and have peaceful, respectful arguments.  Unfortunately, that has changed as most universities now coerce and shut off certain groups.  Science has also fallen into censorship.

my comments...
I totally concur with your analysis of a predetermined solution to a question as not being science and of course what you are describing is now increasingly common.  I personally don't see any main stream university as cutting off people or groups and with the advent of the world wide web throttling scientific idea is increasingly difficult if not impossible.  The problems of universities are many..... but now days everything (at least here) is all about the money.  The relationship between getting money (normally in the form of grants), advancement and tenure should not be difficult for everyone to understand.  Cronyism now also plays a large part in determining who does and who does not get grant money.... basically if you have the right friends or the proper co authors on a paper may have more to do with who does or does not get money than the underlying value of their scientific ideas.

admission.... I am a rock tossing progressive agrarian but then again I never liked to hang around draft dodgers, people that jumped ship at the first bump or folks that went awol..... all of course while wrapping themselves in the flag while pretending to be great patriots and heros.  at the end of the day I do like to tell myself that the real difference between liberal and conservative in the US is a disagreement in about 4% of all issues.  But humans being as they are the differences seems to have a stronger light shown upon it than those thing on which folks agree.  Humans are a very curious species but at least to this alien not nearly as interesting as honeybees.

[Bee Commander]

Have either of the two keeps in the article stated why they believe their colonies perished? Were the bees gone as before, cause the article doesn't really say what happened.

Not to my knowledge Perry.  I just ran across this article today and thought it would be of interest to the group.  I've had bees in Lost Hills, or a little north, for years.  Based on the lawsuit, both beekeepers 'believe' they know what happened.  Whether their lawsuit gets any traction remains to be determined.  I do know that bees here used to do very well on sunflower but that doesn't appear to be the case now.  I helped a friend put MAQS in his hives one fall a couple of years ago.  He had about 300 of his hives in sunflowers that year and nearly all of those hives crashed and weren't worth what he paid for the strips.  They were all planted with systemic insecticides on the seeds.  All his other hives spent the summer mostly in native and restored prairie; they looked fine.  He's a top-notch beekeeper.  Far from a scientific study but I do have a colleague who is just finishing up a research project looking at the impact of pesticides used in sunflower seed coats on bee health in ND.  His work hasn't been published yet but he tells me they found a strong negative effect on bees in sunflowers.  Bottom line is that the scientific community still doesn't know "who done it" but I do move my bees when they are within flight range of sunflowers--better safe than sorry.  It's about the only crop here that produces good quantities of nectar here that is highly attractive to bees.  Here, it's mostly corn and soybeans; soybeans are not significant sources of nectar here due to our cooler temps at night plus we tend to have an abundance of alfalfa at about the same time.  There is paper in review right now that demonstrates a strong negative effect on immune system function of bees at the landscape scale (2.5 mile radius of outyards) in landscapes dominated by ag here in ND.   I'm a coauthor on that paper and I set up the study sites for the evaluation.  Similar findings have been published on spadefoot toads by a colleague of mine out of Texas Tech a few years ago.  There are many possible reasons and more work is planned to tease out the influences to make informed decisions.  The world is changing and we don't know near as much as we think...I think

Have you seen the video showing bees dying on sunflowers that had the seed coatings. I wish I was better at links, type in: "video of bees dying on sunflowers" and it will come up. It happened in Italy.

[Bee Commander]

Ok here's the link to a video of bees actually dying on sunflowers that had the seed coatings. Hope it works.

[Chip Euliss]

Thanks for posting BC.  I hadn't seen the video but it doesn't surprise me considering what I'm hearing from the research community.  Never understood the logic of poisoning a food that we eat to control pests.