Science Education & Policy

I was homeschooled for eight years, from age 11 through to college, before it was a novel way for tiger parents to show off their dynamic commitment to their children’s education. Now, if millions of parents and families are suddenly going to be homeschooling their kids for the coming weeks (and, let’s be honest, quite likely beyond), it’s worth trying to think about how to do this in a manner as smooth, healthy and wise as possible. Learning at home is quite different from learning at school. It requires us to reorient how we think about learning in general, and how we approach the process…

As every other aspect of human life, science communication has suffered a significant setback due to the ongoing Covid-19-induced pandemic. While regular meetings of scientific teams can be effectively held online, through zoom or skype, it is the big conferences that are suffering the biggest blow. And this is not good, for several reasons. In the past I have expressed in this blog my observation that there appeared to be too wide an offer of conferences in my discipline, fundamental physics. The new situation however suggests that the optimal number of conferences is probably much closer to…

What do anti-vaccine believers have in common? A similar distrust in other settled science like GMOs and nuclear power, for one. And they all are more likely to share similar voting patterns, which means that even though only 20 percent of Americans hold negative views of vaccines, they have an outsized impact on policy. Because most of them are on the same political side. California, for example, has rolling brownouts during a heatwave because they have banned both new natural gas and nuclear energy generation in the state. They had claimed that wind and solar were viable and forced the…

What are the best computing devices for online classes?  As an adjunct professor here is my opinion on what makes for a good computer for online courses, and a few suggestions of which computers to buy.  The key factors to consider are compatibility with commonly used software.  Flexibility in terms of input, portability, and price.   Considerations like raw computing power are not necessarily part of this calculation though more power is a plus. Broad Compatibility. Compatibility with the most used software in schools in 2020 means any computer able to run Google…

If you've run out of friends to give your sourdought Friendship bread to, and 'feeding' it every three days has become drudgery, you can mix things up a little during your COVID-19 baking spree by making bread the Romans made 2,000 years ago. How do we know the recipe is real? Because during excavations of Herculaneum in 1930, a loaf of bread was discovered still inside an oven.  Here it is, courtesy of The British Museum and Chef Giorgio Locatelli. You'll need 21 ounces of that sourdough you have taking up space, 4 teaspoons of sugar, 4 teaspoons of salt, a pint of water, 18 ounces of…

Publication is not only about the distribution of information. It is a money-making business. With so many publishers coming out of the market, it is normal to have competition. Big ones may try to eliminate smaller or starting publishers. We don't judge the quality of research on the basis of the name of the journal or publisher or indexer. That is favoring unfairly one business from the others without the chance and benefit of bidding.   Who are the scammers? Are they the ones who ask authors to transfer or assign their copyright ownership to the publishers or journal? Researchers and…

The International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents has already retracted a March 20th paper analyzing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, the disease that can result from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China late last year. The paper received a lot of attention after President Donald J. Trump expressed optimism that the malaria treatment might be an off-label remedy during the COVID-19 pandemic that has much of America in a lockdown. His statement came from experts who saw it in a peer-reviewed journal, the Gold Standard for science. The public is…

As the COVID-19 crisis unfolds, Americans have been hearing a lot about an obscure but vast federal trove of emergency supplies, the Strategic National Stockpile. Much of the discussion concerns its shortcomings. Hospitals and first responders have faced dire shortages of critical equipment such as ventilators and protective masks. It is clear that the national stockpile does not have nearly enough of such supplies to meet the present need. Meanwhile, there are plenty of things in the stockpile that aren’t particularly helpful right now – botulism antitoxin, for instance, and millions of…

In 2015, New York Governor Mario Cuomo and his politically allied state legislature told experts to create a rationing plan for ventilators in case of a pandemic in the state. Though Ebola was wrecking Africa and coronavirus had done the same to the mid-east in 2012, New York politicians took the money that could have been used for the requested 16,000 ventilators and spent it on, among other porkbarrel initiatives, a solar panel plant being built by a political ally. In March of 2020, the mayor of New York City told residents to go to bars right away if they wanted a drink because he was…

California Governor Gavin Newsom has gone just this side of declaring martial law due to a .000008 risk of death from COVID-19. His promotion of panic has led to depletion of essential goods nationwide. With 40,000,000 people and the fifth largest economy in the the world (if it were its own country), California can vacuum up the nation's short-term stores easily. And has. Forget survey results about equality, social justice, and kindness, in reality America's most progressive state is just as greedy and selfish as anyone when it comes to personal behavior. Gov. Newsom was able to pull off…