Science Education & Policy

It's a well-known fact that spending on health care has consistently grown faster than the rest of the U.S. economy but what's behind this trend is less certain. Economists cite multiple variables: rising malpractice costs due to jury awards related to health care; 'defensive medicine', where unnecessary tests are run to have a paper trail if a lawsuit happens; a 'teach to the protocol' environment driven by regulations; the prevalence of diseases afflicting the U.S. population, including an increase in the kinds of conditions that are now considered diseases; and the rising costs of…

Why is science academia so heavily slanted toward one political party in the last generation while private sector science is not? Why, in 1999, would the lead authorship of an IPCC report chapter be someone who had just gotten their PhD, something that would have been an outcry if it had been done at the NIH or the NSF? An article in Human Nature says a lack social and political accountability make it easy for people to favor their own and penalize outsiders. They argue that more oversight and government control are the solutions. "If you don't have well-functioning governments then you need…

All games are good for kids whereas television isn't. And many touchscreen games are more like TV than board games, at least when it comes to verbal development. A recent study by pediatricians from the Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York concluded that infants 0-3 years old who used touch-screen devices to play non-educational games using touch-screen devices had lower verbal scores on tests. The results also showed that although the majority of parents cited in the study believed their children received educational benefits by using smart phones, readers and tablets, there was no…

How can FIER (pronounced as “fire”) be of use if the program or the course is already in existence?  This article addresses this question. As we may recall, part 1 introduced FIER to have four (4) phases namely, Formulation, Implementation, Evaluation, and Review (or Revision).  The four phases in sequence are essential in order to start a new educational program or a new course offering. In an application of FIER to an existing program or course offering, the sequence of the phases has to be adjusted. In this case, one starts with the phase on Evaluation.  Hence, the title…

Here's a picture: You work at the EPA. You just finished a four-year long, incredibly detailed analysis of Product X. The work is comprehensive, thorough, world-class - and no one is actually going to read it. But it doesn't matter, the science is there, part of the public record. It's a source of pride. Then, a new administration takes over the White House. The National Resources Defense Council puts out a press release about Product X, the New York Times dutifully rehashes it, and suddenly a brand new bureaucrat walks into the building and declares you are going to look into Product X…

Genetically modified foods are so common that it seems a little strange to put a label on, basically, everything. But some states are trying. Vermont just did. The governor says he is signing it.  And it's a weird law, even from a policy point of view. From a legal point of view, the FDA is not going to be happy about yet another unscientific piecemeal approach to arbitrary food labels. Then there is the business aspect. How long before a lawsuit comes up because so many products are exempt from this new law that is supposedly about food transparency?  Why is the raw material…

Your steak may be costing more than you realize, according to a paper in PNAS which estimates that steaks and hamburgers are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Rising incomes in emerging economies will mean greater demands for meat so it will either become a food solely for rich elites or science improvements will make it less strenuous. Sustainable cattle ranching policies - brought about by subsidies and taxes - in Brazil could put a big dent in the beef and food industry's greenhouse gas impact, according to the new paper. By subsidizing those who follow mandated use of…

Should food that has been genetically optimized have a special label attached to it by law? Advocates say 'yes', it is about awareness, though actual implementations and efforts from California to Vermont are not about awareness, since they have made sure to exempt numerous products - everything from restaurants to alcohol to food at a deli need not have a GMO label. If the cows that make the milk that go into Stonybrook Farms yogurt eat GMO feed, the yogurt is just as organic.  As it should be. To science, organic and genetic modification are simply different processes. Nothing about a…

Mental health diagnoses have become common in children raised in developed nations. Medication is often prescribed to treat the symptoms of these conditions but few population-based studies have examined the use of prescription medication to treat mental health problems among younger as well as older school-aged children (8–10). A new CDC report describes the sociodemographic characteristics of children aged 6–17 years prescribed medication or taking medication during the past 6 months for emotional or behavioral difficulties, and describes parental reports of the perceived benefit of this…

I have seen creeping into recent discussions of the TV show ‘Cosmos’ the idea that we scientists, because of our greater knowledge and understanding of how the natural world works, will somehow be intrinsically better when it comes to dealing with matters of ethics, politics or religion.  I beg to differ. In my own self-study for the History of Maths lectures I was giving, I came across Hermann Weyl (1885 – 1995).  He made one of the most important contributions to introducing group theory into physics, and his book Space, Time, Matter (Dover Books on Physics) – the German…