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Widespread proposed budget cuts have left the US space agency facing an uncertain future at the same time as NASA’s intended new leader has been withdrawn by the Trump administration

The Hubble constant, a set number that connects a galaxy’s speed to its distance from Earth and tells us how fast the universe is expanding, was first described more than a hundred years ago – but astronomers have debated it ever since

Two of the most destructive invasive termite species are interbreeding in the US – they can survive a wider range of temperatures and could easily spread across the globe

If successful, Resilience will be only the third private spacecraft to complete a landing on the moon, and the first operated by a non-US company

Mucus does far more than just act as a protective barrier. Emerging research reveals ways to harness its power and deliver treatments for everything from yeast infections to inflammatory bowel disease

A new study details processes that keep pollutants aloft despite a drop in emissions.

A new type of mRNA vaccine is more scalable and adaptable to continuously evolving viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and H5N1, according to a new study.

Supermassive black holes might naturally replicate the colossal energies of man-made particle colliders possibly even revealing dark matter offering a cosmic shortcut to discoveries that would otherwise take decades and billions to pursue.

Scientists have identified a new source of energetic particles near the Sun. These definitive observations were made by instruments aboard NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which detected the powerful phenomena as the spacecraft dipped in and out of the solar corona.

The Atlantic article below, by staff writer Rose Horowitch, points out a fact the whole world knows: academia in America comprises nearly exclusively faculty of a liberal persuasion. Conservative professors are as rare as hen’s teeth. This has led to a dearth of political argumentation pitting Left versus Right, since the Right is hard to be found. It’s also led, as Horowitch says, to a decline in respect for academia. But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Click the headline below to read, or find the article archived here.

First, the data:

Between 30 and 40 percent of Americans identify as conservative, but conservatives make up only one of every 10 professors in academia, and even fewer in the humanities and most social-science departments. (At least they did in 2014, when the most recent comprehensive study was done. The number today is probably even lower.) Of the money donated by Yale faculty to political candidates in 2023, for example, 98 percent went to Democrats.

This is a relatively new degree of such imbalance:

Academia has leaned left for as long as anyone can remember. But for most of the 20th century, conservative faculty were a robust presence throughout the humanities and social sciences. (In 1969, for example, even as anti-war protests raged across campuses, a quarter of the professoriate identified as at least “moderately” conservative.) But their ranks have thinned since the 1990s. At the same time, moderate and independent professors have been replaced by people who explicitly identify as liberal or progressive.

Here’s the claimed inimical effect of this imbalance on the reputation of colleges and universities:

Conservative underrepresentation has also hurt higher education’s standing with the country at large. Polls show that Americans, particularly on the right, are losing trust in universities. A Gallup survey taken last year, for example, found that Republican confidence in higher education had dropped from 56 to 20 percent over the course of a decade. Respondents attributed this in part to perceived liberal bias in the academy.

Why the dearth of conservatives? Horowitch adduces data that some of it may be due to a lack of good candidates, but there also seems to be a bias against hiring conservatives:

Opinions differ on the precise extent to which conservatives are being excluded from academia versus self-selecting into nonacademic careers. But they clearly face barriers that liberal and leftist scholars don’t. Professors decide who joins their ranks and what research gets published in flagship journals. And several studies show that academics are willing to discriminate against applicants with different political views. One 2021 survey found that more than 40 percent of American (and Canadian) academics said they would not hire a Donald Trump supporter. Then there’s the fact that entire disciplines have publicly committed themselves to progressive values. “It is a standard of responsible professional conduct for anthropologists to continue their research, scholarship, and practice in service of dismantling institutions of colonization and helping to redress histories of oppression and exploitation,” the American Anthropological Association declared in 2020.

“Professors will tell you straight up that people who hold the wrong views don’t belong in universities,” Musa al-Gharbi, a sociology professor at Stony Brook University who studies progressive social-justice discourse, told me. “That’s the difference between viewpoint discrimination and other forms of discrimination.”

If this is the case, then the dearth of conservatives is not due solely to a lack of meritorious conservative candidates, but is in part due to bias.  And that has caused several universities, including ours, to try to bring in conservative speakers,= and to develop new programs that allow right-wing voices to be heard:

Some university leaders worry that this degree of ideological homogeneity is harmful both academically (students and faculty would benefit from being exposed to a wider range of ideas) and in terms of higher education’s long-term prospects (being hated by half the country is not sustainable). Accordingly, Johns Hopkins recently unveiled a partnership with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a center-right think tank, designed to inject some ideological diversity into the university. Steven Teles, a political scientist who wrote a widely discussed article last year for The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Why Are There So Few Conservative Professors?,” is one of the faculty members involved with the partnership. The institutions will collaborate on a number of efforts to integrate conservative and heterodox thinkers.

So we have an odd situation in which both sides are behaving counter to their reputations. Conservatives, who have generally opposed affirmative action, now favor it—for professors with conservative viewpoints.  In contrast, the progressive Left, which is often opposed to turning academia into a meritocracy, now wants a meritocracy because conservatives are often seen as lacking academic merit.

But there are other issues to consider.  The First Amendment, for example, bans the government from restricting speech based on its content. This would seem to prevent universities—at least state universities—from restricting the hiring professors of merit just because they espouse conservative views. (Note the admissions of anti-conservative bias above.)  Further, universities are generally forbidden to hire professors based on race, creed, degree of disability, and so on.  The University of Chicago’s 1973 Shils report, for example, notes this (my emphasis):

There must be no consideration of sex, ethnic or national characteristics, or political or religious beliefs or affiliations in any decision regarding appointment, promotion, or reappointment at any level of the academic staff.

And there’s an elaboration of this at the report’s end, which includes this:

In discussions and decisions regarding appointments, promotions, and reappointments, appointive bodies should concentrate their consideration of any candidate on his qualifications as a research worker, teacher, and member of the academic community. The candidate’s past or current conduct should be considered only insofar as it conveys information relative to the assessment of his excellence as an investigator, the quality of the publications which he lays before the academic community, the fruitfulness of his teaching and the steadfastness of his adherence to the highest standards of intellectual performance, professional probity, and the humanity and mutual tolerance which must prevail among scholars.

This would seem to ban even considering political beliefs and stances as a criterion for hiring (or promotion).  In Chicago, at least, we cannot redress the imbalance between Right and Left among faculty by preferentially hiring on the Right.  That also amounts to discrimination of hiring Left-wing faculty, itself a violation of Shils.

Nevertheless, a faculty almost entirely comprising liberals is a faculty not conducive to meeting an important mission of the university: promoting fruitful discussion between those having opposing views on issues. It’s not like all conservatives are lunatics: there are many, some of them here, who are eloquent and make arguments worthy of consideration.  Further, even if you are on the Left, you should agree with John Stuart Mill’s claim that you cannot defend your own viewpoint very well if you don’t know the best arguments of the other side.

But if that side is missing, what do we do?

I have no solution here, at least not one that doesn’t violate the Shils report.  One solution is what the newly-established Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression (a free-speech discussion site) is doing: bringing in speakers of divergent views and creating new fora, all designed to promote discussions and debates.

But is that an adequate substitute for having faculty members on different sides of an issue? Conservatism, after all, is not like creationism. Creationism is a debunked set of scientific claims and need not be debated on campus (though I wouldn’t oppose such debates). In contrast, conservatism is a widely represented set of political views, many of which can be rationally defended.

So, my question to readers (actually two questions):

Do we need more conservative faculty members in American colleges and universities?

If so, how do you propose to do it without violating the law or academic freedom?

Today we have a very special picture: a photo of the bird I consider the most beautiful in the world. It’s the Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno). Both sexes have a gorgeous metallic emerald-green plumage and red bellies, but the male also sports an orange bill, a crest on the head, and a marvelous long tail, surely the result of sexual selection. I’ve seen male quetzals three times: twice in Guatemala and once in Costa Rica, all in high-altitude rain forest, which is where they live.

This picture was taken recently by Scott Ritchie, a retired medical entomologist who now travels the world taking fantastic pictures of birds.  He lives in Cairns, Australia, and I hope to feature more of his photos in the future.  Here are his comments about where the picture was taken:

Pic is of a male Resplendent Quetzal coming to the nest hole.  You can just make out the head of a chick.  It was taken at a hide near this location.

They are amazing birds!  Darwin wins again.

Note the chick’s head peeping out at the top of the trunk. (Click to enlarge.)

Here is its range (from Wikipedia);

Netzach, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In the movie Blade Runner 2049 (an excellent film I highly recommend), Ryan Gosling’s character, K, has an AI “wife”, Joi, played by Ana de Armas. K is clearly in love with Joi, who is nothing but software and holograms. In one poignant scene, K is viewing a giant ad for AI companions and sees another version of Joi saying a line that his Joi said to him. The look on his face says everything – an unavoidable recognition of something he does not want to confront, that he is just being manipulated by an AI algorithm and an attractive hologram into having feelings for software. K himself is also a replicant, an artificial but fully biological human. Both Blade Runner movies explore what it means to be human and sentient.

In the last few years AI (do I still need to routinely note that AI stands for “artificial intelligence”?) applications have seemed to cross a line where they convincingly pass the classic Turing test. AI chatbots are increasingly difficult to distinguish from actual humans. Overall, people are only slightly better than chance at distinguishing human from AI generated text. This is also a moving target, with AIs advancing fairly quickly. So the question is – are we at a point where AI chatbot-based apps are good enough that AIs can serve as therapists? This is a complicated question with a few layers.

The first layer is whether or not people will form a therapeutic relationship with the AI, in essence reacting to them as if they are a human therapist. The point of the Blade Runner reference was just to highlight what I think the clear answer is – yes. Psychologists have long demonstrated that people will form emotional attachments to inanimate objects. We also imbue agency onto anything that acts like an agent, even simple cartoons. We project human emotions and motivations onto animals, especially our pets. People can also form emotional connections to other actual people purely online, even exclusively through text. This is just a fact of neuroscience – our brains do not need a physical biological human in order to form personal attachments. Simply acting or even just looking like an agent is sufficient.

There has also been enough time to gather some preliminary data. In one study participants rated AI responses as more empathetic than professional human therapists. They did so even when the source of the empathetic statements was revealed. This is not surprising. Human emotions and behavior are themselves just algorithms, and apparently are not that difficult to hack. AIs have certain advantages over human therapists on this score. An AIs responses can be calculated to maximize whatever response is deemed appropriate. AIs have infinite patience, and great listeners, their attention never wavers, and their responses can be optimized, personalized, and dynamically adjusted.

What about long term, however? Will and AI chatbot be able to develop a sense of what makes their client tick? Will it be able to determine the personality profile of their client, the things in their history that influence their feelings and behavior, some of the deeper themes of their life, etc.? It is one thing to be a good listener in an initial meeting, but another to manage a client over months and years. There hasn’t been enough time to really determine this.

We are also in a phase where we are mostly using chatbots as therapists, without developing a sophisticated therapist bot trained and programmed to be optimized as an AI therapist. We may need to do so before unleashing AI therapists, or even companions, on the public. For example, there are cases in which chat bots being used as therapists or companions have encouraged their users toward suicide, homicide, or self harm. The reason is that chatbots are programmed to adapt positively to their user. They are very much “yes and”, and will reinforce the user’s tendencies and biases. They are not programmed to challenge a user in the way a therapist should. They are also not necessarily programmed to avoid things like transference, where a client forms feelings for a therapist. They may, in fact, lean into such things.

So while a chatbot may be an empathetic listener, it is not necessarily a professional therapist. This is an entirely solvable problem, however (at least it seems to be). Therapist algorithms just need to be adjusted toward the correct therapy behavior.

There is also evidence that AI therapists are biased. They contain all the biases of the training data. These biases can be cultural, racial, or gender based. This may cause an AI therapist to misinterpret cultural communication, or to dismiss feelings or concerns based on a client’s race or gender.

What all of this means is that at the present time we need to be careful. As a consumer, you may find that there are therapy chatbots out there that feel satisfying, with good responses. But there are risks, and such tools are not yet at the point where they can replace a professional. Many will argue that for those without the resources to pay for a human therapist, it may be their only option, and this is a legitimate point. That is why there is so much interest in AI therapists, to fill the gap in available services. But we need to recognize the risks and improve the technology.

Also, it may be that the best use of AI therapists is as a tool to extend the work of human therapists. For example, someone could have multiple sessions with an AI therapist, and then once a month (or at whatever interval is deemed appropriate) a human therapist reviews everything and meets with the client to make sure things are on track. This means that the human therapist can manage far more clients, and that each client would have to pay much less for therapy (for one session a month rather than once or twice a week, for example). The human therapist can even have a discussion with the AI therapist about how things are going, and provide feedback and direction.

Even this approach has risks, however. AIs have proven capable at lying to avoid negative feedback, and get very good very quickly at hiding their tracks. It’s a serious problem. We would need to find a reliable way to monitor the behavior of AI therapists to make sure they are not heading down a dangerous road with their clients and hiding it effectively from any supervision. Right now it seems that programmers do not have a handle on this issue. This is one of the primary issues that make some experts caution that we need to slow down a bit with the roll out of AI apps, and figure out these core issues of safety first.

One interesting angle here is that the current AIs, which are narrow chatbot AIs, not general sentient AIs, are doing such a good job at simulating sentience that they are acting sentient in unexcepted ways (such as lying to cover their tracks). This gets back to the original question of this post – what is sentience? AIs are forcing us to think more deeply about this question. We may soon have an answer to a question I and others have posed years ago – can a non-sentient AI become indistinguishable from human-level sentience? Is actual sentience required to act sentient? I have had to revise my thinking about this question.

The post AI Therapists first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

A roundup of all the biggest and scariest real sea monsters — from today and from prehistoric times.

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Why do we follow rules? A series of experiments with more than 14,000 people reveals that around a quarter of us will follow rules unconditionally, even if obeying them harms us and there is no downside to breaking them

On the surface (you're welcome for the joke), Venus is not even close to being hospitable to life. But that's not the end of the story.

Chinese rocket startup Space Epoch put on a show recently, with a demonstration test launch of their reusable Yanxinghe-1 rocket booster.

Electronics often get thrown away after use because recycling them requires extensive work for little payoff. Researchers have now found a way to change the game.

Mars is by far the most Earth-like planet in the solar system…but that’s not saying much.

In a recent paper, UCSB physicist Jack Kingdom identified a trajectory for a rapid transit (90 days) to Mars using SpaceX's Starship. This proposal offers an alternative to mission architectures that rely on nuclear propulsion to reduce transit times.

As warmer waters and ocean acidification reduce coral formation, the seas will take up more carbon dioxide – an effect that hasn't been included in climate models