Science Education & Policy

The Shackled Man Theory says that holding someone back for half of a race and then setting them free later means the shackled racer can never really catch up.  If so, environmentalists have already poisoned the well to such a large extent in Europe that genetically modified food may never catch on, but at least consumers are not faced with a centralized blanket ban based on nothing but hysteria. Now they can have centralized blanket bans that at least a politician of their own can be held accountable for.  The EU wants to let individual countries decide whether or not to allow GMOs…

Selecting graduate students in the fields of science and engineering based on an assessment of "character", whatever that means, is better than relying almost entirely on their scores on a standardized test like the GRE. The goal in that would be to boost participation by women. Underrepresented even more in academia are Republicans and handicapped people, but the authors aren't worried about all minorities, just the correct ones.  The flawed premise is that women need some special track to be in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). It smacks of Larry Summers-…

The quirky, tiny state of Vermont is 600,000 people who are simultaneously hard left and hard right. They voted in Bernie Sanders as a Senator, a guy who won't be a Democrat because that party is not socialist enough for him. They passed a law that put warning labels on GMOs - except for those in alcohol, restaurants, delis and cow feed, and thus basically only impacting poor people. Now they have turned their keen, evidence-based eyes on climate change, claiming that if something isn't done, their skiing will be gone in 25 years, Maple syrup too, and heat stress will mean less milk for cows…

Take a quick guess; what law addressed a problem everyone in America knew we had, was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, it had Republican John Boehner and Democrat Ted Kennedy hugging on the dais, met all of its targets and was still vilified in a political marathon? It was No Child Left Behind. Under the program, minority scores went up across the board and girls achieved math parity with boys for the first time in history - and we were told teachers hated it. Educators union threatened to withhold millions of dollars in political contributions and a whole lot of votes from…

In April, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the most detailed data in its history about $77 billion worth of physician billings to Medicare. In analysis of the data, sites like Science 2.0 and The New York Times showed that only a small percentage of healthcare providers slurp up nearly 25 percent of all federal payments - and unsurprisingly most of them are friends with the politicians who like getting more money from taxpayers and spending it. In 2012, more than $600 million went to just 100 doctors. What conclusions should be drawn from this analysis? Plenty,…

Last month, the National Climate Assessment report did what the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly asked science bodies and journalists not to do, no matter how well they mean and how much they want to defend science: it claimed that that the impact of climate change is already being felt in the form of isolated weather events, such as drought, wildfires and heat waves. And that mistake is being used to make policy. Though American emissions of CO2 have already dropped dramatically due to the switch to natural gas, the Obama administration directed the Environmental…

Banks have long expected that you should spend a third of your income on housing. Now humanities academics say that would help low-income families get optimal brain power for their children also.  But don't overspend to try and get into a better neighborhood, they write, and we saw the disaster that 1960s subsidies brought to neighborhoods. So what to do?  Sandra J. Newman, a Johns Hopkins professor of policy studies, and researcher C. Scott Holupka, say that how much a family spends on housing has no impact on a child's physical or social health, but when it comes to cognitive…

Once the public loses confidence in the ability of journalists to be trusted guides for the public, it is hard to regain it. Scientists don't trust journalists because they get a lot of science wrong. The public doesn't trust journalists because they don't ask the awkward questions of people whose work they admire. And then there is the framing they engage in. During American election season, watching journalists scramble to rationalize and invalidate the anti-vaccine beliefs of Democrats is puzzling. They declare CDC data - and the clear link between the most progressive states and…

The federal government could save taxpayers over $5 billion in the first year by changing the way the government assigns Part D plans for Medicare beneficiaries eligible for low-income subsidies. Medicare Part D provides assistance to beneficiaries below 150 percent of the federal poverty level. In 2013, an estimated 10 million beneficiaries received subsidies, and 75 percent of the total Part D federal spending of $60 billion is for low-income enrollees. Since 2006, the government has randomly assigned low-income enrollees to stand-alone Part D plans, based upon the region in which they live…

Imagine this as a business model: You own a large potato farm. You have workers who grow and process the potatoes, you hire people to pay them, you have a sales force to sell them and then you pay trucks to ship them and have people to collect the money. You have fixed and variable costs and you charge enough money to pay those and make a profit. You have created jobs. The government decides that it wants to encourage everyone to grow potatoes. So they pass a law saying that if people will grow their own potatoes, they will subsidize it using tax dollars generated by other companies and…