Science Education & Policy

The National Institutes of Health have had a good run - President George W. Bush nearly doubled their funding over his predecessor, and when that happens a status quo for expectation sets in, much like when President Obama gave a lot of money to solar panel companies. But those are extraordinary events, it is unrealistic to expect the government funding curve to go up forever. Government-funded scientists naturally vote for the party they believe is most likely to give them more money so when the budget sequester crisis happened last fall they blamed their political opponents - but there is…

While American adults lead the world in science literacy, and America leads the world in science output and Nobel prizes, American students are only middle of the pack when it comes to international standardized tests. Is science creativity, teaching how to think, disconnected from scores on standardized tests? It would seem so, but every time standardized tests are given, entrenched constituencies in education say education is broken but they can fix it. The public and politicians don't agree so in the last decade we have gotten No Child Left Behind, which had success - scores for minorities…

Discussions about science and, to a less extent medicine, often involve optimizing its representation. Various fields discuss how to increase gender or racial parity, while political and handicapped representation is dismissed as choice or even competence. But choice and competence are prevalent in funding discussions too. Yet funding representation is a much greater problem than gender, race or political representation - it impacts all of health in chronic fashion. New York state received 20 percent of all Medicare’s graduate medical education funding - and that meant 29 other states,…

During the debate over the Affordable Care Act, among the biggest supporters were trial attorneys, and for obvious reasons. A government has unlimited deep pockets. Among those concerned were people in medicine who had seen the rise in 'defensive medicine' - tests and procedures everyone knows are a waste of time and money to check off boxes in case attorney sue In the first large-scale study to directly measure such wasteful spending in Medicare, researchers found that Medicare spent $1.9 billion in 2009 for patients to receive any of 26 tests and procedures that have been shown to offer…

During implementation of the Affordable Care Act, states were pressured into increasing Medicaid coverage to higher incomes. Many did not want to do it, not because they were against health care but did not want a flawed program consuming even more of state budgets. The federal government gives states a 100 percent subsidy - but only temporarily. Due to unwillingness by the government to negotiate a fix for Medicaid, 24 states have decided not to be burdened with the higher costs and worry that Medicaid, designed for the poorest and sickest, will be forcing those patients to compete with…

Vermont is still milking the slavery thing. Yes, yes, you were first to ban it. It's easy to ban something you never had in the first place. That does not mean you are right in everything you ban and, let's face it, comparing GMOs to slavery is a little weird, even for Vermont. Nonetheless, “We’re first again,” gushes organic farmer Will Allen in The Economist, which makes the rest of the country wonder if it is the organic farming or the Vermont air that makes people goofy. Vermont has just over 600,000 people so what they do in their state is basically irrelevant, in its bubble, just like…

I'll tell you up front, I am not a big fan of chemicals. It's not that I have chemophobia, or any science-phobia, I instead have that special sort of elitism that is available to people who have just been lucky enough to not need chemicals. I don't even like to take aspirin and I have that luxury because I haven't needed to take any drugs for a recurring condition, so it's really easy for me to embrace such naturalistic posturing. When it comes to food, if I had my way, nothing my family eats would be grown, processed, killed, cleaned or cooked by any hands but mine. Like most of you, I can…

A new congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council has found that changes EPA has proposed and implemented into its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) process are "substantial improvements"  over its old system. IRIS is used to assess the hazards posed by environmental contaminants but has been rather sporadically followed in the past. A court had to order the EPA to stop blaming fracking for problems without doing a study and the agency has had to defend itself against charges of 'secret' science in determining greenhouse gas policy. While…

You can't open a newspaper without reading about how many people are on welfare in America now. The government is even on a recruitment drive to get more people on benefits, and looking for ways to get them buying organic food too. That shows a whole lot more money is helping better-off families rather than the very poorest. Robert A. Moffitt, Professor of Economics at the Johns Hopkins University, notes that the United States is spending 74 percent more in inflation-adjusted dollars on welfare programs in 2007 than in 1975 but the 2.5 million single parent families with the absolute lowest…

The pioneering health insurance exchange in Massachusetts - the model for President Barack Obama’s health care law - is headed for the scrap heap. The state wants to merge it with the federal HealthCare.gov enrollment site because it is so dysfunctional. With terrible timing, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) scholars say it is working really well and credit it with 2.9% decreased mortality compared to other states. They estimate that the Massachusetts' health reform law has prevented approximately 320 deaths per year—one life saved for each 830 people gaining insurance - and use…