Science & Society

A recent analysis of voting trends of physicians has found that political contributions have gone up a lot and more of them have become Democrats; no surprise given Democratic efforts to increase federal presence in medicine. The percentage of physicians making campaign contributions in federal elections increased to 9.4 percent in 2012 from 2.6 percent in 1991, and during that time physician contributors shifted away from Republicans toward Democrats. That trend was greater among lower paying specialties, such as pediatrics, and among women.  Since information on campaign…

If you want to survive your hospital stay, try to avoid being admitted on the weekend.  A systematic review and meta-analysis of various world regions that included 72 studies and 55,053,719 participants found that weekend admission was associated with increased morality of between 15% and 17% depending on the statistical technique used.  It must be due to higher emergency status if it is the weekend, right? Some, but the authors say the quality of care is just poorer also, which is not going to make nurses and doctors who work weekends very happy. Subgroup analysis revealed that…

To advertisers, there is only one knock on the Science 2.0 audience; there are too many women. Before we complain about the sexism of advertisers, we have to take the issue on its merits. When we think of technological innovation, we think of men. Is it because it's always been men due to a legacy culture or are men actually more innovative? Fashion designers don't advertise here because science is not their audience and technology companies don't advertise here because women are not their audience, yet we know women adopt technology.  Before getting into knee-jerk claims about gender…

In 1994, Congress passed 42 U.S.C. Section 14141 as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, granting the U.S. attorney general the power to initiate structural reform litigation against local police departments engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional behavior. It made few headlines but it has been credited as the basis for the Department of Justice to forcefully reform numerous large police departments across the country – including Cincinnati, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Generally, local law enforcement doesn't…

The American Geosciences Institute's newest Status of the Geoscience Workforce Report, released May 2014, has good news: jobs requiring training in the geosciences continue to be lucrative and in-demand. Even with STEM outreach campaigns causing the number of graduates in most fields to overwhelm academic jobs by a ratio of 6:1, geosciences project a shortage of around 135,000 geoscientists needed in the workforce by the end of the decade. Obviously that is not academia, but you won't have to be 40 years old before you make a decent living in the private sector. "Industry has recognized…

Many people, regardless of occupation, have experienced a difficult boss or annoying co-workers. It might even be harassment or bullying. It's still better than being ignored, according to a paper in Organization Science. University of British Columbia scholars contend that while most consider ostracism less harmful than bullying, feeling excluded is significantly more likely to lead job dissatisfaction, quitting and health problems. "We've been taught that ignoring someone is socially preferable--if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all," says Professor Sandra…

Heroin is popular again, though not for reasons you expect. Gone are the days of desperate junkies in poverty settings. Now it is primarily cheap young urban professionals. Few studies on the demographics of present day heroin users have compared them to heroin users 40 to 50 years ago. In the 1960s, heroin junkies were primarily young men from minority groups living in urban areas. Theodore J. Cicero, Ph.D., of Washington University, St. Louis, and colleagues analyzed data on nearly 2,800 patients from an ongoing study that used self-reported surveys from patients with a heroin use/…

The United States contributes almost $10 billion a year from Medicare into funding the Graduate medical education (GME) system but it fails to provide the workforce needed for the 21st century and lacks the necessary transparency and accountability. Instead, it is more like political cronyism. New York, for example, gets 20% of the total while 29 other states, including places with a severe shortage of physicians with far more seniors and poor patients, get less than 1 percent. It's not a new issue. Since it started more than 30 years ago, funding under the graduate medical education (GME)…

Four simple reasons that Ebenezer the dinosaur does not prove young Earth creationism. Young Earth creationist are happy to have their own museum at which to present their case. In brief, a dinosaur fossil found in flood deposits means that it was killed in the biblical great flood.  (Of course, it could not have been killed in any of the other mythical or mytho-historical  floods spoke of in written and oral histories around the world.)   Here are the reasons why young Earth creation science is wrong: In order to conclude with the level of certainty that young Earth…

A new paper from the University of Münster finds that religious communities had a much greater influence on the formation of European welfare states than has previously been known. This not a secret, churches cared for poor people when European monarchies simply claimed a divine right. But the extent of the welfare state's legacy in religion was not well known. Europeans love the welfare state and are less religious than ever, even though religion is what got the welfare state for them.  “Particularly in countries like Germany and the Netherlands, in which the state and the churches as…