Science Education & Policy

There was a time when medicine was considered 'at all costs' but the costs were a lot lower. With malpractice attorneys on call and 'defensive medicine' to include every test so that during fact-finding all of the bases are covered, costs have skyrocketed. But governments that fund health care want to get the most effective treatment for the money. Both the vaguely defined "pre-diabetes" and hypertension drugs for low-risk people are worrying trends. In a new paper, Dr. Stephen Martin and colleagues urge clinicians to be cautious about treating low risk patients with blood pressure lowering…

The Tangshanpeng Wind Farm in China. Credit: Flickr/Land Rover Our Planet, CC BY-SA By John Mathews and Hao Tan, University of Newcastle With the failure of international agreements to fight climate change, the way is open to viewing the role of renewables as more than agents for reducing carbon emissions. Indeed is it possible for countries to build their manufacturing industries, enhance their energy security — and contribute to reducing carbon emissions? In an article published today in Nature, we argue that China shows us just such a way. By boosting markets in water, wind and solar power…

The Obama administration recently began claiming that the unemployment rate had dropped to 6.1 percent, evidence that its economic policies were working. Yet over 90 Americans of working age are unemployed or working at low paying jobs outside their fields. How can they both be correct?  Estimating the unemployment rate has become more difficult than in the past - because the definition of unemployment has changed and so has the design of metrics to track it. Millions of people cannot get unemployment benefits because they have been out of work too long, for example. To the government,…

If you want the best education and you are rich or are a non-Asian minority born with your heart outside of your body, go to Princeton. If you are Asian and rich, go to Caltech. If you are none of the above, but still smart enough to get into a top school, U.C. Berkeley is the best place to be for the 17th straight year, according to US News  &  World Report rankings, which mean quite a lot to schools in the top 20 and little to anyone else. Berkeley again placed 20th overall and, since it is a public university, its tuition and fees are low compared to Caltech and Stanford, at…

After the last wave of 'American children don't perform well on international standardized tests' articles in news media, the Obama administration gutted No Child Left Behind, the program approved with overwhelming bipartisan over a decade earlier, and replaced it with Common Core standards. American teachers, who didn't like the feeling that they were having to 'teach to the test' in order for students to do as well on standardized tests as kids from countries who primarily teach to the test, have now been handed an entirely new and even more restrictive set of demands to teach to the test.…

Nearly 1 in 3 young adults ages 19 to 25 years lacked health insurance in 2009 - in most cases, they didn't want to incur the cost but one of the goals of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was to get all young people or their parents paying for coverage so that the people who could not get it could afford to be subsidized. Thus, an early provision of Obamacare mandated that young people had to pay for health insurance - or insurance companies had to let them stay on their parents' policies until age 26. For a recent paper, Meera Kotagal, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of…

Talk of a 'secret sauce' in decision-making and charges that government groups like the Environmental Protection Agency are politically motivated are not new. Every president has its opposition party contending that the administration is manipulating science to suit its agenda - in the 1990s, Democrats got it for scuttling the Superconducting Super Collider and gutting the NIH and NASA while a decade later Republicans were called anti-science for limiting federal funding for human embryonic stem cells to existing lines. No one voted or did not vote for a candidate because of the SSC or hESCs…

A gene patent means only the patent-holder has the right to undertake research and development involving that gene.Credit: Shutterstock By Rodney Scott, University of Newcastle The Federal Court’s decision that gene patenting is permitted in Australia will have ramifications for all gene patents, even though the case involved only one gene associated with breast cancer. A gene patent means only the patent-holder has the right to undertake research and development involving that gene. These patents generally last for 20 years. The full bench of the Federal Court heard the appeal against a…

Finland is the country to beat. Kimmo Brandt/EPA By Daniel Muijs, University of Southampton There has been a recent explosion of interest in the effectiveness of education systems around the world, largely driven by international studies that compare the performance of large samples of students from a wide range of countries. Such comparisons made in these studies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or other international reading and maths tests, have become a key factor in educational policymaking across…

By Jon Tennant, Imperial College London Access to research is limited worldwide by the high cost of subscription journals, which force readers to pay for their content. The use of scientific research in new studies, educational material and news is often restricted by these publishers, who require authors to sign over their rights and then control what is done with the published work. In response, a movement that would allow free access to information and no restrictions on reuse – termed open access – is growing. Some universities and funding organizations, including those administered by…