Science & Society

America has a health care problem. It is excellent, the best in the world, but it is expensive. Rather than solving the problems of defensive medicine costs, designed to prevent lawsuits by conducting unnecessary tests, or tort reform to prevent lawyers from convincing people they are 'suing an insurance company' so the cost won't matter, America has instead created mandates so everyone is forced to buy insurance, and then subsidized people who can't afford it. Mandates and subsidies always lead to higher cost, and a new study affirms that for medicine also. A new paper by scholars…

It's easy to sneer at people for protecting their backyards, but what if there's a compelling reason to do so? Mickey DeRham photos, CC BY-NC By Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. The term NIMBY – “not in my back yard"– has long been used to criticize people who oppose commercial or industrial development in their communities. Invariably pejorative, it casts citizens as selfish individualists who care only for themselves, hypocrites who want the benefits of modernity without paying its costs. Communities and individuals who oppose fracking, nuclear power…

Too much to ask. wavebreakmedia / shutterstock By James Hayton, University of Warwick Facebook and Apple have come under fire since it was revealed that their female employees are offered financial help for egg-freezing fertility treatment. But the offer is part of a slew of medical and other perquisites ("perks") that technology companies use to secure the best talent in the industry. How employees will react to the offer depends entirely on the context of which it forms a part. Of all industries, the technology sector suffers particularly severely from a gender imbalance. Women make up 57…

What makes Americans afraid is the topic of the first comprehensive nationwide study by Chapman University. According to the Chapman poll, the number one fear in America today is not Muslim terrorists or Russian imperialism or Ebola, it's...walking alone at night. The Chapman Survey on American Fears included 1,500 nationally representative participants. The top five things Americans fear the most are: Walking alone at night Becoming the victim of identity theft Safety on the internet Being the victim of a mass/random shooting Public speaking “What initially lead us into this line of…

Sperm donation for fertility issues has been common for some time and ovum donation has become increasingly accepted by women as well. That leads to sociological questions about selection; everyone says they will love their kids no matter what, but given a book to choose from, what traits in a donor do people consider most important, beauty, intelligence or health? It's been assumed that most parents pick someone who looks the most 'like' them but the sample sizes in the past were small. In a recent paper, Homero Flores, MD and coauthors from Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York and…

Last week I did an update on the anti-vaccine situation in America compared to 2012, when my book, Science Left Behind, was published. I noted that things have gotten better, primarily because people on the left have turned on those people on the left who make up the bulk of the anti-vaccine movement; primarily wealthy, progressive elites. Calling them out is to be applauded, and scientists (overwhelmingly liberal) have led the charge in doing just that. But some people have tried to muddy the water by pleading the alternative in ways no one ever did about the greater rate of evolution denial…

The Sciences occur in actual colleges with codes of discipline, more importantly a "college" of people known in each field keeps the peace and diffuses most situations  remotely similar to  #Gamergate.  #Gamergate is the reaction to years of feminist criticism of games and gamer culture as misogynistic.  Here's why things like that generally don't happen in sciences such as physics which are just as male dominated.  These fields have maturity and a perspective that comes from a formalized or at least semi-formalized system of faculty and students of varying ranks.…

When most people think of first responders, they think of paramedics or combat medics or other medically-trained personnel doing CPR and other life-saving procedures in stressful situations. They do not think of acupuncture. A review article in Medical Acupuncture - since it is a review, it is collating other articles about acupuncture, rather than science or medicine - argues that first responders should be trained in integrative medicine approaches such as acupuncture, hypnosis and biofeedback to provide adjunctive treatment to help relieve patients' pain and stress. Maybe they could…

Science Left Behind, a book I co-authored in 2012 with Dr. Alex Berezow, covered the ways that anti-science beliefs had become mainstream among political progressives in the United States.  It addressed dozens of topics but the three biggest ones denied by progressives (along with a few fellow liberals and Democrats) were the findings that anti-vaccine, anti-biology and anti-energy science positions were overwhelmingly left. Political operatives in the business of promoting the idea that science registers as Democrat disputed that, insisting that anti-vaccine beliefs were 'bipartisan',…

The extraordinary synod of bishops on family is meeting for two weeks at the Vatican. Credit: EPA/L'Osservatore Romano By Timothy Jones, La Trobe University A report of debate from the first half of the extraordinary synod of Catholic bishops meeting in Rome has been described as a “pastoral earthquake” and a “seismic shift in Rome” for praising gay relationships. Despite these headlines, no changes to the church’s position on sex, marriage and the family were announced. In contrast, the document actually reveals Pope Francis’ strategy to convert homosexuals, unmarried couples and divorcees…