Science Education & Policy

In 2015 I began to wonder when CDC, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had lost its way. Since I am neither Republican or Democrat, I had to wonder if the Obama administration was the problem, the same way Democrats insist Trump is the problem now. But where does that end? Did the CDC that mishandled H1N1 in 2009 do so because of Obama? Was SARS 2003 botched because of Bush?  Of course not, the issue is bureaucracy creep due to career government employees inside CDC itself, not temporary political appointees like Dr. Robert Redfield, who has become a political…

Packages and labels can be a bit of a mess in the 21st century. What is GMO plastic? Who knows? Yet a company named World Centric is selling ZeroWare 2.0 Reusable Dishware - "alternative" tableware they note is not only free of melamine, which they claim is killing people, but is also made from "Non-GMO plastic." Naturally, I asked their PR rep what Non-GMO plastic was and got no response. Every one of these shady companies claims they are about science and health, but they are about money and will ghost anyone who asks an obvious question, like how they can be an alternative to GMO…

When it comes to the political divide in America, the key difference in science is that academia has mostly Democrats while private sector scientists are mostly Republicans. There are big tents in a two-party system so a liberal New York cop will have nothing in common with a San Francisco progressive but they will both vote Democrat and this big tent philosophy covers science as well. Republicans are considered deniers of climate change and evolution while Democrats deny vaccines and agriculture, and the rest of the tent has to endure them. But those lines blur when you are outside elections…

Though young people are able to obtain alcohol and drink it, their ability to buy alcohol at point of sale is almost nonexistent. That is not the case with recreational cannabis, where early adopter states have a shocking 37 percent rate of youth being able to purchase marijuana. In  recreational only cannabis stores, 71 percent were able to purchase without a valid ID showing they were of legal age.  Colorado and Washington state both legalized recreational marijuana in 2012 so retailers have had plenty of time to learn the law. To test compliance, between September 2016 and April…

FIER Procedural Flow FIER I.D. follows procedural stages. Each phase of FIER is divided into three stages; preparatory, progressive, and concluding stage. Materials Needed (Preparation Stage) Activity ( Progress Stage) Final Outputs ( Concluding Stage) Though the procedural flow of stages is linear, the FIER procedural flow of its phases is cyclical. The flow revolves around the 5-Step, 5-Cycle Teaching Model (for discussion, google search my article, "Teaching styles and instructional flows in chemistry course: A Pattern for 5-Step, 5-Cycle Teaching…

Formulating Learning Styles-based Objectives/Outcomes (LSBO) The contents here are taken from my book “ Developing a Learning Styles-Based Instructional Design.” FIER I.D. follows the “learner-centered” principle. Thus, the students’ learning styles is its major consideration. In order to formulate the learning style-based objectives (LSBO) of the course or specific outcomes (Fig. 16), one should consider first the interactive teaching and learning processes. The figure shows the interrelatedness of the objectives or specific outcomes, teaching styles, learning styles, and assessments. All…

With endorsements from five previous FDA Commissioners and a Republican Senate deciding his fate, Stephen Hahn, M.D., is certain to become the next Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He's qualified, but most FDA heads have been(1). He also understands politics, and that is always part of FDA because a Commissioner has to let career scientists do their jobs while navigating demands from both the White House and Congress, which can often be politically motivated. And he s a lung cancer doctor, so he understands better than most what really causes lung cancer (smoking) and…

When it comes to news literacy, schools often emphasize fact-checking and hoax-spotting. But as I argue in my new book, schools must go deeper with how they teach the subject if they want to help students thrive in a democratic society. As a new poll shows that Americans struggle to know if the information they find online is true, news literacy remains essential in student education. Separating fact from fiction is a vital skill for civic engagement, but students can be good fact-checkers only if they have a broader understanding of how news and information are produced and consumed in the…

When Dr. Scott Gottlieb  was named as head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the pro-science community cheered. Gottlieb had both academic and private sector experience, he had been both doctor and patient, and he had been a Deputy at FDA in the past so he knew where all the bottlenecks remained. He accomplished a great deal before stepping down earlier this year, but several initiatives remained unfinished. The charismatic doctor  had listened to complaints about the rampant abuse of farmers by those paid to promote package labels like "organic" and "Non-GMO" and even…

By Shefali Luthra, Kaiser Health News. Promoting her much-discussed plan to create a single-payer “Medicare for All” health system, Sen. Elizabeth Warren emphasized a striking figure. “If we make no changes over the next 10 years, Americans will reach into their pockets and pay out about $11 trillion on insurance premiums, copays, deductibles and uncovered medical expenses,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in an Instagram video posted Monday. The Democratic health care debate has been full of competing analyses and estimates about what Medicare for All might cost, what it might…