Science Education & Policy

Correlation can accomplish anything, it's how the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences consistently finds a way to endorse chemicals in the organic food process while scaring people about chemicals everywhere else.(1)  It's how the price of steel can be linked to violence in the Mid-East. A recent paper argues that reading scores are going down and phones are to blame, and they use correlation to try and show it. Let's put that in context. The last time reading scores in America went up was when No Child Left Behind was in force - math scores went up during that time…

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has announced the end of school “bubbles” in England from July 19, following the news that 375,000 children did not attend school for COVID-19-related reasons in June. Under the current system, if a schoolchild becomes infected with the coronavirus, pupils who have been in close contact with them have to self-isolate for ten days. In some cases, whole year groups may have to self-isolate. Such mass self-isolation is hugely disruptive. Yet despite the clamor to switch to other protective measures, such as rapid testing of pupils who have been in close…

Critical Race Theory is a reasonable curriculum according to a new business item from the representative assembly of the National Education Association. Some are taking this to mean teaching real academic CRT in like kindergarten or 6th grade.  This is not an unreasonable mistake, but it is likely based on a fundamental misunderstanding.  The NEA also represents college professors in addition to K-12 teachers. Furthermore, the things that people are worried about, “teaching White kids to hate themselves”.  That is not what anyone is saying should be done at all. The full text…

Major droughts in California happen every 20 years and smaller ones more frequently, yet northern California has not built major water infrastructure since the 1960s while the population has doubled. Environmental lawyers block any infrastructure improvements so no new water storage can be added and regulations about water flow in rivers were based on an optimistic guess. During the current drought California is sending so much water to the San Francisco Bay, which doesn't need it, that they have to issue warnings for people on the rivers. Nature is out to kill everyone and the major drought…

Universities trying to teach a curriculum full of performative equity and inclusion are failing their students. Something which will cost Black and Brown people in the long run.  The way to teach about the intellectual diversity of humanity and to include all humanity is to just give an honest global accounting of it. That would include real diversity and equity. In Astronomy and Mathematics simply starting history from Mesopotamia and mentioning the names and dates when the formulas were found, or discoveries were made.  We live in a world where most Americans would want Hindu…

Cornell University's accreditation should be called into question for having offered a course called “Black Holes: Race and the Cosmos.  I cannot begin to put into works how vacuous this is.  One would compare it to the region inside the Schwarzschild radius of a Black Hole except that contains a lot of mass and energy.  The only conceivable excuse for this would be if woke students somehow got the idea that astronomy was “colonial” or based on White supremacy. Just for starters, I would point to the high likelihood that it is called a Black hole due to the last name…

The modern research university was designed to produce new knowledge and to pass that knowledge on to students. North American universities over the last 100 years have been exceptionally good at that task. But this is not all that universities can do or should do. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it even easier to reduce teaching to knowledge dissemination and to obscure other, equally important, forms of education that help students be better citizens, thinkers, writers and collaborators. These other forms of education are the cornerstone of human flourishing and democratic participation…

Over 26 percent of the western US  is in exceptional drought while  72 percent is in severe drought. That has not stopped the federal government from dumping so much water into rivers it creates hazardous conditions for people in them. The San Francisco Bay does not actually need water, it is attached to the Pacific Ocean, but sue-and settle agreements with politically sympathetic political agencies didn't just make environmental lawyers rich - your tax dollars pay their "court costs" even when the settlement was pre-arranged in advanced by state or federal politicians - they made…

Advocates for proposed crab gear legislation in California, AB 534, often cite misleading information in support of policies that would destroy California’s iconic and sustainable trap fisheries, while doing nothing to protect whales. The main argument is that existing crab gear is responsible for most whale mortality off the California coast, and that “ropeless” or “pop-up” gear would reduce the risk to whales from fishing gear. But the reality is that commercial fishermen share the goal of minimizing interaction between marine mammals and fishing. What most proponents of popup gear overlook…

When even CNBC is talking about the writing on the wall for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, they know they are in big trouble. I have been predicting this for years, but most people thought it was funny when I would criticize the CDC for needing an outrageous 6 weeks to tell us there was lettuce being sold tainted with E. coli. They assumed it must be real when they fabricated "pre-diabetes" criteria and even wasted tens of millions of our tax dollars putting up billboards trying to convince the public they have a disease (and will burden the health care system getting doctors…