Science Education & Policy

You’ve probably heard of the uproar that has recently been caused by a bill introduced by Texas Representative Lamar Smith, the chair of the US House of Representatives’ Science Committee. Lawrence Krauss has commented on it on behalf of the Center for Inquiry, and so has the Chronicle of Higher Education, the American Physical Society, The Scientist magazine, and Science Insider, among others. At issue is draft legislation that would require the director of the National Science Foundation to declare that each grant approved for funding is: i) “... in the interests of the United States to…

How can paying less for energy cost more? When activists advocating their technology start doing math. The EU paid 406 billion Euros for oil and gas imports in 2012 (1.1 billion Euros per day), 3.2% of its GDP, notes the European Wind Energy Association. If Europeans simply paid more to increase domestic wind power, it would increase Europe's competitiveness, they say.  Cheaper fossil fuels undermine Europe by not being cheap enough, the result of increasing fossil fuel import costs. "The massively increasing prices for fossil fuels over the last ten years - crude oil by 14% a year, gas…

I generally didn't have much of an issue with the intent behind the High Quality Research Act. Sure, there was the usual American outrage that is only present when a Republican does something perceived as anti-science (science media criticisms of Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, who wants to put warning labels on food that is not organic, for example, are scant) but we clearly have an administration that needs more oversight, accountability and transparency, not less. A free hand from the media has led to the administration feeling like they can get away with anything - in science, it has…

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders knows that the The Food and Drug Administration will not require any special label on foods just because a competitor seeks to market its product differently. And marketing is the only distinction between organic food and traditional food. It's a process and they don't require regular meat to have a big NON-KOSHER label on it either. Kosher food just puts a 'kosher' label on the package and has to obey truth-in-advertising laws. But Sanders and dozens of other Democrats have been engaged in a multi-front war to get warning labels put on science that their…

A 12-year study (1999 to 2010) analyzed fatality reductions in bicycle-car collisions to determine the effect of mandatory helmet laws. 16 states had bike helmet laws in the beginning or the study. The researchers identified all relevant fatalities, totaling 1612, in states with and without bike helmet laws.    Relevance was determined by adjusting for factors previously associated with rates of motor vehicle fatalities (elderly driver licensure laws, legal blood alcohol limit and household income) and, among those, they found that the adjusted fatality rate was significantly lower…

Next month, the US and Europe would like to make some progress in tearing down trade barriers, an archaic notion left over from the Colonial period in history.(1) Special trade agreements with blocs, like The Hanseatic League of the 12th century, were always common, but restrictions enjoyed a popularity boom after the collapse of the East India Trade Company in 1799 became the poster child for the perils of free trade - 18th century globalization hysteria.  European leaders have asked to reduce trade barriers because they seek a way to speed up economic growth and simply charging more…

If you live in California, you can never get too amazed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. If there is a progressive position that an activist court can take, they usually take it. If you can't go to a national chain store and get your eyes checked and buy glasses, the 9th is why - they ruled that is medical care and health care is not interstate in America. Sure, we can mandate health care and force people to pay for it under the Commerce clause, but for some reason we can't let people buy prescription glasses from an out-of-state company. The Supreme Court is always teeing off on them. In…

The Obama Administration released an updated draft proposal that would establish common sense safety standards for hydraulic fracturing on public and Indian lands. Following the release of an initial draft proposal in 2012, the Department of the Interior received over 177,000 public comments that helped shape today’s updated draft proposal. The new proposal maintainssafety standards, improves integration with existing state and tribal standards and increases flexibility for oil and gas developers. The updated draft proposal will be subject to a new 30-day public comment period. Approximately…

An analysis of 4,000 abstracts of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that recent warming is human-caused. Was there any doubt? The 4,000 abstacts were from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming – 97 percent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing man-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW). You won't find more than 3% of evolutionary biologists denying evolution either, but the paper in Environmental Research Letters…

Between 1994 and 2008, Canada had 66,716 hospital admissions for cycling accidents. 30% of those were head injuries. Cyclists are vulnerable road users and head injuries account for 75% of cycling-related deaths. It's a dangerous way to travel and so the debate has long been whether or not helmet legislation makes any difference in injuries.  During that time, there was a substantial and consistent fall in the rate of hospital admissions for cycling related head injuries - and reductions were greatest in provinces with helmet legislation - but that trend had been…