Science Education & Policy

Shutterstock By Justin Lewis, Cardiff University David Cameron’s decision to champion the Green Party’s inclusion in the general election debates has, regardless of his motives, considerably raised the stakes. It has also opened up broader questions about the attention we give to environmental issues. UKIP has undoubtedly gained momentum from the high volume of coverage of immigration in recent years – to such an extent that many voters in areas of low immigration regard it as their biggest political concern. To what extent has the Green agenda similarly been foregrounded by coverage of…

The debate over policy implications of climate science can have no clear winners - everyone claims science is on their side and that scientists on the other side are misguided. Though both sides are experts at framing - CO2 is good for us in any quantity, skeptics are all dupes of Big Oil - one was clearly taking it to the next level: In 2000, Professor Paul Crutzen, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland for work on ozone, said humankind's impact was so drastic it has changed the actual geology of Earth and since then environmentalist have been…

In late 2008, the euphoria over electing a man who specifically said he wanted to put science back in its rightful place began to fade. The president-elect, it seemed, preferred the company of UFO believers, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and a guy who thought girls couldn't do math. Then we got his pick for Science Czar, Dr. John Holdren, and all of science media was outraged no one else noticed. Science media is somewhere in the same cultural sphere as Republican National Convention delegates in their willingness to support their candidate no matter how bad things appear(1), so while I…

Some kids and school districts have objected to the Obama administration's efforts to change lunches to be fare they prefer. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act changes have led to worries by advocates for the poor that kids whose best meal of the day was a school lunch are now being penalized, while food waste activists see increasing piles of food in garbage cans as a worrying trend. People who prefer freedom don't like that centralized government is now controlling what local school districts feed kids. If government wants to be a parent, they should know what parents know - if a kid gets…

Over 12 million Americans visit their doctors annually complaining of headaches and the real costs and estimates of lost productivity could be up to $31 billion annually. What might help more people without spending more money? Fewer tests and some counseling about lifestyle changes. An analysis of more than 9,000 physician visits for headaches between 1999 and 2010 found that, rather than talking to patients about the causes and potential sources of relief from headache pain, clinicians ordered advanced imaging and providing specialist referrals, both of which are considered to be of…

Higher alcohol taxes curb binge drinking, according to a new paper by Boston University scholars.  In their analysis of survey results, they found that a one-percent increase in alcohol beverage prices from taxes was associated with a 1.4 percent decrease in the proportion of adults who binge drink. The state with the highest beer combined taxes - Tennessee - had the lowest binge drinking rate (6.6 percent) in 2010, while states with low alcohol taxes, such as Montana, Wisconsin and Delaware, had relatively high binge drinking rates.  Most previous studies have examined the effect…

Academic wizardry. Shutterstock By Nick Butler, Lund University and Sverre Spoelstra, Lund University When McDonald’s came under sustained criticism from campaigners in the 1980s, the company responded by constructing a carefully crafted image of corporate social responsibility. It insisted that it cared about the cows and chickens that are eventually ground up into burgers and nuggets. With the growing commercialization of university research, academic journals are starting to do something similar. A number of recent editorials in management journals have sought to highlight publishers' own…

A new report by the National Research Council offers guidance to schools on necessary steps for putting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) into practice over the next decade. Next Generation Science Standards were drawn from A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas, a 2011 Research Council report. Next Generation Science Standards. The standards are based on the ideas that science and engineering involve both knowing and doing; that developing rich, conceptual understanding is more productive for future learning than simply memorizing…

Despite high wages, there has been a shortage of primary care physicians in America and the Affordable Care Act, coupled with an increased 'teach to the protocol' environment in medical school, is going to make the shortage worse.  With medical school costing so much, and increasing procedural limitations on how patients can be treated, doctors are starting to wonder how much of medicine actually requires a general practitioner. Becoming a general medical doctor may not be worth it, according to recent recommendations from doctors that qualified students pursue careers as nurse…

Groups like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration set the gold standard worldwide for science - but they are still soundly criticized. Every time the EPA clears a pesticide it is blasted because the studies it mandates are "industry-funded", which is required by law. As are trials for drugs. For many people, the disclaimers about side effects of drugs at the end of television drug commercials (along with the omnipresent 'see our ad in Golf magazine' small print) are somewhat laughable - like with Proposition 65 'cancer-causing chemicals' here in…