Science Education & Policy

As economic policy, carbon trading doesn't seem to work. Mandating a market and forcing people to participate is in defiance of what a market is. Markets for trading carbon emission credits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are in place in some countries, and even a few US states, so there is at least some idea about what does and does not work.  In a Policy Forum article in Science magazine, Duke University's Richard Newell, William Pizer and Daniel Raimi discuss discuss what it might take for these markets to develop in the coming years and decades. They're fans of the idea, they…

During the 43rd Annual Meeting&Exhibition of the American Association for Dental Research, held in conjunction with the 38th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research,  Stephen H. Abrams of Cliffcrest Dental Office in Toronto chaired a symposium titled "Water Fluoridation: Safety Efficacy and Value in Oral Health Care." Community water fluoridation (CWF) and other fluoride modalities historically have been and remains the cornerstone for the prevention and control of dental caries. There is extensive evidence on the efficacy and cost‐effectiveness of these…

Like most of the developed world, European citizens are suffering from 'green fatigue' - claims that it is too late to do anything about climate change alternating with demands that more action is needed right now. Solar power has been an expensive endeavor and hasn't led to private sector uptake as promised. Even Chinese solar panel companies that relied on Western subsidies are collapsing. In reality, no one is sure what works and what doesn't but the heads of the EU member states are meeting in Brussels to discuss the adoption of a 40 percent greenhouse gas reduction target for 2030.…

States that have hunting industries have the best of both possible worlds; instead of having state union workers expensively managing wildlife, they get the public to do it - and pay for the privilege. That money is then used to pay for state biologists and conservation programs. Scholars writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have realized what farmers and people in the country always knew; if you don't control the deer herd, things go out of control quickly. They only understand boom and bust so car accidents and decimated native plant biodiversity are sure to…

Should mothers feel guilty if they actually feel stress during pregnancy? What if they suffer postpartum depression, do those things hurt baby brains? No, but pop psychology coverage in mainstream media is increasingly making its way into policy decisions. The only thing harmed is mothers who feel even more stress knowing that their stress could be harming their child in the womb or in the developing stages. The influential policy-informing 'evidence' that children's brains are irreversibly 'sculpted' by parental care is questionable evidence and a new paper warns that the success that…

NASA is fine with cute robots on Mars but if there is anything that fiascoes like the Constellation program and the James Webb Space Telescope have taught us, it's that NASA is not all that competent with big plans. Projects that were once mission critical are now instead founded on the concept that there is zero tolerance for risk.  If we are really going to venture into the Final Frontier, the private sector is going to do it. But why would they? Does UPS want a big contract from NASA to do shipping? Are there enough rich tourists to fund vacations? What is the economy of scale on…

Exaggerated health claims are not convincing the public, and "medical" marijuana has become something of a running cultural joke, but there is an upside to more pot - less cocaine use. Meth too, according to advocates at the RAND Drug Policy Research Center.  Or at least a group is correlating the two. Methamphetamine and cocaine consumption increased during the first half of the last decade and then dropped in the latter half. Marijuana use increased significantly during that time, according to a new report. Studying illegal drug use nationally from 2000 to 2010, researchers…

Dr. Anne Glover, the European Union's first chief scientific adviser, said when she got the job that her first priority was to stop letting environmental pressure groups suppress science. Modern Europe fears what is new, is consumed with a naturalistic fallacy, and in addition engages in persecution of scientists (such as when they don't predict an earthquake) not seen in hundreds of years. It's going to be a crippling problem. Plant pests and diseases have always evolved and picking an arbitrary point in time and declaring that science development must stop there will bring devastating…

Decades ago, when the Outcome Based Education movement was trying to take hold, educators who were already overburdened did not want to be saddles with managing social and emotional development of diverse classrooms and the competing goals of parents. Parents agreed that turning over the social development of children to school districts was a bad idea but a new paper says that classroom programs designed to improve elementary school students' social and emotional skills also increase reading and math achievement, even if academic improvement is not a direct goal of the skills building. The…

In the War On Smart Kids Department, tiger mom mentalities may cause ethnic outcasts, say sociologists. Smart Asian kids will be shunned for being too smart? of course not. Instead, the scholars argue, the children who don't achieve might be.  Sociologists Jennifer Lee of UC Irvine Min Zhou of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore detail in Race and Social Problems their weak observational study based on a small sample to make their headline-grabbing conclusion. The data was surveys of 82 adult children of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants, who were randomly selected…