Science Education & Policy

As happened in both California and Washington state referendums in recent years, what seemed like an easy path to victory for supporters of a mandatory GMO labeling law in Oregon has turned into a dog fight as the voting nears, while voters in Colorado appear poised to soundly reject the measure. An Oregonian poll earlier this week showed Measure 92 behind by six points, trailing 48-42. A poll released in July by Oregon Public Broadcasting put support for GMO labeling at 77 percent. The sharp drop-off mirrors what happened in California and Washington, where the labeling forces…

Last week, the Obama administration stated that it will fine over 2,600 hospitals because too many Medicare patients treated at those hospitals end up back in the hospital within 30 days of going home.  Over 200,000 doctors have said they will no longer participate in the Affordable Care Act - Obamacare - because of high costs, low payouts, and Byzantine mazes of paperwork, so it seems bad to be driving hospitals away from the programs also - the ones affected primarily treat poor and minority patients. The administration added two new conditions in this round of penalties: elective…

California and Arizona recently began registering ‘benefit corporations.’ A small California non-profit university with which I’m acquainted has commenced the transition to for-profit, b-corp status. At the same time, according to Education Dive , the Arizona for-profit Christian institution Grand Canyon University is considering making the transition to nonprofit. What’s going on here? B-corporations are supposed to ‘create high quality jobs, help build stronger communities, and restore the environment, all while generating solid financial returns.’ The site bcorporation.net suggests no…

During the 1920s, the cartoonist Rube Goldberg became immensely popular churning out cartoons that depicted devices that performed simple tasks in impossibly indirect and convoluted ways. In 1931, the Merriam-Webster dictionary even adopted the word “Rube Goldberg” as an adjective describing making something that should be simple incredibly complicated. Welcome to Vermont’s fumbled efforts at drafting the rules for its mandatory GMO labeling law. In it’s latest decision, the Vermont Attorney General’s office, charged with turning the vaguely measure into law, released a draft rule…

Proponents of the Affordable Care Act are getting exactly the cultural result they wanted. They are able to declare victory because of a decrease in health care costs but don't mention it is because there has been a decrease in people using their insurance because of high out-of-pocket costs. In this election season, it is imperative to remember those who voted for this disaster without having read the bill, those who demonized people who raised valid questions about access to care, costs and rationing, and those who cried racism when valid points were raised about how the quality of care…

In 2012, the Obama administration made the National School Lunch Program, which has provided free or reduced-cost meals in more than 100,000 public and non-profit private schools and other child-care institutions nationwide since 1946, into a political football and used beliefs that lacked any scientific basis to mandate what should be served. Schools and communities went into open revolt. For the children we care most about, those school lunches might be the best meal they got, and those were being replaced by an agenda-based menu that no one wanted to eat. Since it is the week before…

By Val Giddings, Genetic Literacy Project With little fanfare, last summer the U.S. Fish  &  Wildlife Service announced it would formally ban the use of seeds treated with neonicotinoid pesticides, (a newer, safer generation of seed treatments to protect against pests) and the use of crops improved through biotechnology throughout the fish and wildlife refuge system. It is worth quoting at some length the announcement, which came via a memo from the Chief of the National Wildlife Refuge System: The Leadership Team agreed that by January 2016, the System will only use an…

In the United States, Democrats have long insisted that women should vote for Democrats, because abortion was the most important issue. Abortion is not really an issue any more. It was allowed by states prior to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision and has been the law of the land for 40 years. In cases where someone tries to run on abortion, it fails. But marketing scholars say global warming has replaced abortion as the litmus test for why women should be Democrats - if women care about long-term consequences of their actions, that is. Jeff Joireman, associate professor of marketing…

If you take an online practice test, which answer is most likely to stick with you, the ones you got correct or that one you got wrong? A new paper finds that making mistakes while learning can benefit memory and lead to the correct answer, but only if the guesses are close. "Making random guesses does not appear to benefit later memory for the right answer , but near-miss guesses act as stepping stones for retrieval of the correct information – and this benefit is seen in younger and older adults," says Andrée-Ann Cyr, a graduate student with Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute and the…

Source Dr. Tae, the skateboarding physicist, "Can Skateboarding Save Our Schools?" (Did I mention he’s a physicist AND a sk8r?) Sir Ken Robinson’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” A stand-up set on education.