Science & Society

Mothers are more likely than fathers or childless people to leave jobs that require long hours - unless the occupations are female-dominated, according to sociologists. More than one-third of men and nearly one-fifth of women work more than 50 hours a week. Mothers are far fewer than fathers in those numbers. What explains that? Are male-dominated jobs harder on mothers or do some occupations become female-dominated because they are more conducive to women with kids? Does that explain the difference in income?   Male-dominated engineering pays women in America better than any other…

Businessman Jim McCormick Guilty Fake Bomb Detector Vendor Convicted For Fraud - Assets Seized For some years now, scientists, science writers, bloggers and others have been writing about the bogus bomb detector scam perpetrated by Jim McCormick.  Now, at last, Britain's Crown Prosecution Service has done what it should have done sooner: put on its best hobnail boots and jumped all over the guy. Image source: explosivedetectorfrauds.blogspot.co.uk A jury at the Old Bailey found Jim McCormick, 57, from near Taunton, Somerset, guilty on three counts of fraud over a scam that included the…

At least when it comes to an analysis of malpractice lawsuits, diagnostic errors - not surgical mistakes or medication overdoses - accounted for the largest fraction of claims, the most severe patient harm, and the highest total of penalty payouts. Diagnosis-related payments amounted to $38.8 billion between 1986 and 2010, they found.   The new analysis looked only at a subset of claims, those that rose to the level of a malpractice payout, but they estimate the number of patients suffering misdiagnosis-related, potentially preventable, significant permanent injury or death annually in…

Widening The Net - The Capture of Dzhokhar TsarnaevWhenever there is a high profile criminal act like the Boston Marathon Attack, we usually hear from the media that "the net is closing" on a suspect.  In this age of rapid communication, surely it is more often the widening of the net that leads law enforcement agencies to the suspects.  Thanks to science, a communications net can be established very rapidly and globally.  Thanks to science there can be no hiding place for a high profile fugitive from justice. The Dragnet In the public eye, the net "closing in" on a suspect is…

It becomes increasingly tedious that this question invariably elevates pure speculation to the verge of almost claiming actual science, simply because we can't imagine it otherwise.  Arguments are advanced about large numbers, large numbers of stars, large numbers of galaxies, etc. etc. ad nauseum. None of that matters.   The most important question is first; is life easy or hard? Without an answer to that question, the rest is schoolyard nonsense. I'm equally disturbed at how blithely we regard our own dominance.  It's as if there is no question that the universe was created…

Pharmaceuticals don't have a discovery problem, or a financing one, they have a political one that impedes everything else. Politics have a greater direct effect on the pharmaceutical industry than anything else in the US, and correspondingly drug companies makes considerable investments in election campaigns, just like unions and any other special interest reliant on government. The November elections kept the face of Washington the same as 2010, with President Obama in the White House, Democrats still in control of the Senate and Republicans still controlling  the House of…

"It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds…

In the great debate over genetically modified organisms - GMOs - few institutional nods have been sought so keenly as that of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. A “no” from the influential organization’s food policy committee would strike a blow at Big Gene’s attempt to cow the regulatory system and institutionalize today’s GMO-oriented commodity farming.  A “yes” by the committee would speed Monsanto’s progress and stymie attempts to limit GMO foods. Given the importance of the subject, one might think that the Academy would bend over backwards to ensure the independence of the…

Violent crime is undercounted or overcounted, depending on who you ask. Some statistics count gun violence twice, for example, as a criminal getting shot and a police officer doing the shooting. On the other side, in a paper published in the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Wayne State University Ph.D. student Zavin Nazaretian and David M. Merolla, assistant professor of sociology, say that "capping" — which only allows survey respondents to represent a maximum of three incidents per crime type regardless of how many incidents they report — is undercounting violent crime…

Long ago, obesity and high blood pressure were signs of being a wealthy elite. But the world has progressed and now even the poorest countries can eat enough to be fat. As recently as 1980 those health risks were more prevalent in countries with a higher income but a new analysis in Circulation shows that the average body mass index of the population is now just as high or higher in middle-income countries. For blood pressure, the situation has reversed among women, with a tendency for blood pressure to be higher in poorer countries. Researchers at Imperial College London, Harvard School of…