Science & Society

Launched in 1959, named after the inventor’s daughter Barbara, and owned by 99% of 3-10 year old girls in the USA, Barbie has been a popular request on young girls’ Christmas wish lists for 55 years. So, should we buy them? What are these toys teaching our young girls? Barbie has been blamed for causing body image issues and even eating disorders. She has even been said to be perpetuating gender stereotypes that lead to domestic violence and the gender pay gap. But are they really all that bad? Just because Barbie has impossible proportions, does that mean playing with her will distort young…

Try to avoid making this face when dealing with a climate change skeptic this holiday. bark/flickr, CC BY By Will J Grant, Australian National University and Rod Lamberts, Australian National University The end of the year is nigh and it’s a time for Christmas and New Year parties and gatherings. In the southern hemisphere that means barbecues and beaches. In the northern hemisphere it’s mulled wine and cozy fireplaces. But for all of us, it probably means we’ll be subjected to at least one ranting, fact-free sermon by a Typical Climate Change Denier (TCCD). You know the drill. Make an…

blood from a young mouse--or even just a factor known as GDF11 from young mouse blood--can rejuvenate the muscles and brains of older mice. The findings have led to a clinical trial in which Alzheimer's patients are receiving plasma from young donors. engineered E. coli that harbors two additional nucleotides--X and Y--in addition to the normal G, T, C, and A that make up the standard building blocks of DNA. Such synthetic bacteria can't reproduce outside the laboratory, but they may be used to create designer proteins with "unnatural" amino acids.

It's no secret that universities are left-wing - conservatives have complained about that since the early 1950s, but back then it was mostly in the humanities so only those conservatives who came from the humanities and invariably ended up in Washington, D.C. - think tanks or whereever - cared. To the public, the concern was...academic. It is only recently that science academia followed suit and has become far out of the American mainstream politically. As that shift to the left happened, and science policies issues became part of mainstream discourse, concerns rose that academic science…

Televisiom programs such as "The Dr. Oz Show" and "The Doctors" have attracted massive followings, primarily due to having charismatic hosts who clearly mean well, coupled with a public desire to know the science basis for how we function. But in the quest to have new content so often each week, the perception among the science community is that they will run with any claims about the latest health miracle or scary chemical. That doesn't help the public, it just promotes suspect alternatives to medicine or an anti-science mentality among the people who would most benefit from an evidence…

Freeze your eggs or your career? Shutterstock By Jenna Healey, Yale University The shift towards late motherhood – commonly defined as motherhood after 35 – is often presented as a story of progress and technological liberation from the biological clock. The narrative goes something like this: Before the widespread availability of the Pill women had no choice but to have children in their teens and early twenties. But the introduction of effective contraception meant that women could trade babies for briefcases. And technologies such as IVF, egg donation and egg freezing allow women to beat…

Freedom of speech is an Enlightenment ideal - unless it is someone we disagree with politically, then it is common to say they are being an ideologue, when it comes to politics, or on the take, when it comes to science, or #partoftheproblem, when it comes to cultural militancy. Advocates have mastered their framing when it comes to science. That is why political groups like Union of Concerned Scientists and National Resources Defense Council can say they accept science when it comes to climate change, but when it comes to food, energy and medicine, they are not anti-science, they are just '…

A decade ago, gas was cheap, the American economy was booming and so was partisan rhetoric about a disconnect on science related to politics. One side was good, one was bad. President George W. Bush, who had boosted NASA funding after declines in the Clinton years, had doubled the budget for the NIH, and funded human embryonic stem cells, was anti-science. And so was the entire Republican party, we were assured. Ever since, it has been a recurring trope, especially every election season and part of the effort to manipulate the discourse was mastering "framing" - framing is a nicer word than '…

Gun ownership in the United States has gone way up yet murders have plummeted. Though high-profile tragedies get mainstream media attention, the gun ban contingent has lost a lot of ground in culture.  There is a reason: With more widespread availability of data it is more difficult for advocacy groups to create false reports using shoddy numbers in the 21st century. Though there is recurring talk about banning vaguely defined 'assault rifles', rifles of any kind are only a few hundred deaths per year. Instead, most deaths are from handguns and most of those are suicide, followed by…

Neapolitans have given fishmongers and celebrities alike a place at the nativity for hundreds of years. acetosa888, CC BY-SA By Jessica Hughes, The Open University There’s a scene in the film "Love Actually" where a little girl announces that she’ll be playing “first lobster” in the school nativity play. “There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?” asks her surprised mum – causing the girl to sigh in exasperation at such profound levels of parental ignorance. Similar exchanges may have taken place in hundreds of homes throughout the UK this year, if a recent poll by the…