Science Education & Policy

In September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration held a public meeting to discuss FDA’s effort to modernize standards of identity as part the agency's Nutrition Innovation Strategy. In 2018, FDA declared its intent to modernize food standards of to achieve three goals: (1) protect consumers against economic adulteration; (2) maintain the basic nature, essential characteristics, and nutritional integrity of food; and (3) promote industry innovation and provide flexibility to encourage manufacturers to produce more healthful foods. Obviously among the biggest polluters of public discourse…

Opposing views on e-cigarettes, witnesses interrupting members of Congress and even a wink. A hearing Tuesday on the epidemic of respiratory injuries linked to vaping was one unusual show. Since the spring, hundreds of reports have surfaced about severe lung injuries associated with vaping and using e-cigarettes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified at least 530 cases, including at least seven deaths, and states have reported two others. In recent weeks, as the news crept wider into the headlines, it galvanized state and federal public health officials to warn people…

And there is no question it worked. When President Bill Clinton and Senator John Kerry sent a kill-shot into nuclear science in America in the early 1990s, Democrats cheered.  Making all nuclear research about weapons was good framing - it was just terrible for science and, as it turns out, for America and the world. Without nuclear energy, we got two generations of increased coal usage and that vaulted the United States into the leadership position in carbon dioxide emissions. Now the descendants of anti-science people against nuclear power want to ban CO2 and they will embrace…

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/10030/title/What-P... Decades on, bacterium’s discovery feted as paragon of basic science MADISON, Wis. – Over time, the esoteric and sometimes downright strange quests of science have proven easy targets for politicians and others looking for perceived examples of waste in government — and a cheap headline. In 1966, microbiologist Tom Brock’s National Science Foundation-supported treks to Yellowstone National Park to study life in the park’s thermal springs might easily have been singled out as yet another feckless science project,…

If something is free, do you use it more? It seems so, in New York City ambulance usage for minor injuries (abrasions, minor burns, muscle sprains) rose by 37 percent after the Affordable Care Act was implemented. An ambulance for a scrape? Yes, nearly 3,000 more each year of them, and that is just in one city. All paid for by everyone whose premiums went up. Yet policymakers who said the new government plan would lower costs insisted it would get people out of expensive emergency rooms, which were forced to accept people without insurance and so couldn't go to doctors. Instead, people with…

The never-enacted Obama Clean Power Plan was scuttled by the Supreme Court in 2016 and its defense later abandoned by the Trump administration. Though it is fashionable to claim that means Republicans hate climate science, the reality is it was an expensive mandate without a problem to solve. By 2017, before the Clean Power Plan was even scheduled to take effect had the Supreme Court not gutted it, the free market had already reduced energy emissions below what the regulation would have required in 2025. That was thanks to natural gas replacing coal, which had spiked in use when the Clinton…

Comments opened on the recent EPA nominations to serve on the Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) established under section 25(d) of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), since three member terms will expire during the next year. The name at number 7 on the list(1) is of particular concern, because he would be serving on an EPA SAP after stating that the EPA SAP once called about a study he got published in PNAS was collaborating with pesticide companies. That, coupled with his reputation as a serial misogynist, would be an unneeded distraction for an advisory body that…

Decades ago, Velveeta had to be labeled “Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product" so that customers could have truth in labeling. It was not "cheese", said the government.  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission even even told Kraft they could not even advertise that their "singles" contained five ounces of milk because of the implication the cheese might have as much calcium as 5 ounces of milk when it only had as much calcium as 3.5 ounces of milk.  Government was all about mandating consumer trust in labels then. Today anything can be called cheese. And companies are calling broccoli "…

A paper from academics says that the final goal of the Affordable Care Act - Medicare For All - won't lead to more hospital stays. This is in defiance of data during ACA, where it led to higher costs for minor injuries because Obamacare made ambulances cheaper than Uber. How will more free medical treatment not lead to more medical treatment? The British NHS is an example. Though it is free, doctors are underpaid, morale is low, and wait times are high. They are not putting you in the hospital unless it is beyond necessary and end-of-life care may be...accelerated.  The paper seeks to…

Economic losses from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and 76 wildfires in nine Western states could total nearly $300 billion in damage and if you believe those fires would not have happened without human-induced climate change, or at least aggravated by it, then there is an economic case to make for climate action. https://www.sciencecodex.com/economic-case-climate-action-united-states-... It's also reasonable to be skeptical. If you go to Starbucks and spend $4 on a coffee, you have a $4 trade deficit with Starbucks while they can claim to provide $120 in virtual money. Neither is…