Science Education & Policy

Optimal Monitoring has produced a free eBook about the Department of Energy and Climate Change consultation period, which is open until the end of January.  The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has invited companies to influence the latest Climate Change Bill and UK government energy policy. This consultation period on the UK draft Energy Bill is open until January 31st, 2013 and asks for ideas on how the Government can help businesses reduce their energy usage and therefore their cost. Carbon monitoring software provider Optimal Monitoring has created a free guide which…

Going round the exhibition of the Association for Science Education always leaves me with a few small challenges, such as “how much can I really take in of what an exhibitor is telling me?” and “how much school science do I really understand?”  For example, on the same table as the Toilet Roll Fungus, part of the NBCE exhibit, I came upon two fuel cells.  I’ve had to think quite hard before writing this one up The first of these was the yeast cell.  It’s sitting there in the middle of the picture, a small tank full of dark blue liquid with two wires coming out of it to…

While the developed world gets all of the attention for obesity, the developing world is only different in one sense; they retain more severely undernourished people even while obese and overweight people in those countries are gaining weight. Unless people get obese equally, that growing divide may force governments in the developing world to simultaneously care for starving people while treating health problems associated with obesity, including diabetes and heart disease. The results were drawn from information collected in Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), a project that tracks health…

Despite losing in the state with arguably the most anti-science crackpots in its citizenry - California - GMO activists in arguably the second most anti-science state - Washington - are determined to show the country why they should be number one. Unlike the initiative in California, which was the result of alternative medicine corporations outside the state hiring a prominent litigation lawyer to spearhead it, this one was started by the head of a small advertising agency. He's no dummy. California's Prop 37 was really one-sided in its funding early on, with snake oil peddlers like Mercola.…

Students everywhere, put down those highlighters and pick up some flashcards! Some of the most popular study strategies, like highlighting and even re-reading, don't show much promise for improving student learning, according to a new paper. In the article, psychologist John Dunlosky of Kent State University and colleagues review ten learning techniques commonly used by students. Based on the available evidence, they provide recommendations about the applicability and usefulness of each technique. While the ten learning techniques vary widely in effectiveness, two strategies , practice…

Since 2007, on too many occasions to count, I have noted that by being overwhelmingly partisan scientists in academia are putting themselves at risk. Not financially. If funding mattered, all scientists would vote Republican - when it comes to funding, Republicans have spent more than Democrats on science even in the period when science, and all academia, lurched far to the left. Republicans do not cut funding because scientists vote Democrat. I meant they put themselves at risk when it comes to the legitimacy of their fields in the eyes of the public. 40 years ago, conservatives had the…

"Cash for clunkers", President Obama's 2009 Car Allowance Rebates System (CARS), was hailed as a huge success by the administration and environmentalists - but it was really just another government boondoggle. Not as expensive as $72 billion wasted in pet energy projects but still a high-profile case of an administration engaged in the Scientization of Politics - prettying up a world view by pretending it is reality-based. In Science Left Behind, the actual reality of the program is dismantled (pp.34-35). It was really just another government subsidy for automakers, though the claim was that…

Promised Land is not a movie about “fracking”, you will be sorely disappointed if you go to the theater expecting to see lurid visuals of sinister-looking waste water ponds, plumes of diesel soot and road dust, or bucolic landscapes scarred by roads and pipes. You will find none of that. Promised Land is instead a movie about what happens before the drilling rigs and man camps rumble into town. It is the story of a rural community, proud but poor, struggling to reconcile itself with an enormous economic opportunity that comes at an enormous cost. And, despite what you may have read in the…

The anti-biology community that has created the Big Organic $29 billion corporate juggernaut is not as creepy as the anti-vaccine community who distrust medical science - anti-vaccine people want your kids to be experimented on so theirs can stay safe from the evil 'toxins' in vaccines, after all - but they can still be pretty heavy-handed. Their hippie ancestors distrusted government but the modern kind loves it and wants government to regulate everything, including the world view of people and choices they might want to make. Proposition 37 was one weird effort from 2012 but it wasn't the…

Though you can't put science data to a vote, the policies based on science are for the public to decide. Until a global policy is in place, scientists and organizations can easily circumvent international laws regarding geo-engineering by getting domestic approval, as we saw with LOHAFEX and environmental activist Russ George dumping iron in the ocean to create algal blooms, in defiance of treaties prohibiting it. More geo-engineering, manual manipulation of the environment, to slow global warming's impact is going to happen unless a global governance structure with some teeth is put into…