Science & Society

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently revised its guidance to acknowledge that COVID-19 can be spread through tiny airborne particles, known as aerosols. It had earlier removed a similar guidance from its website, saying it was “posted in error.” Similarly, there have been conflicting messages from the Trump administration regarding the use of masks. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has repeatedly said that masks are a recommendation, not a requirement. But others in the administration, such as White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and Vice President Mike Pence…

Building a green energy infrastructure will take energy.  That means we need to use the energy sources we have, fossil fuels, to build out the infrastructure we want.  Solar, wind, and in any realistic scenario nuclear. Making windmills that means burning fossil fuels until we have a green infrastructure which it self will need to be built out using fossil fuels. Hey don’t take my word for any of this.  I’m just a theoretical astrophysicist.  Truth is none of this hinges on any advanced research grade science.  It takes energy to obtain energy.  IF you need…

If graduation numbers are so important that they will give degrees to dead people,then don’t work there. LGBT scientists in academe now are highly vulnerable to the phenomena of adjunctification. A career that used to have as a common outcome finding a job which was permanent if one was objectively competent has become gig work.  Gig work that requires a Masters or a Doctorate to get.    In this Ylep ified Uber ified academe of the 21st century if an institution interprets “student success” and being “student focused” as having the highest number of people get degrees at all…

Here are a few of the things I have been watching , while living a somewhat less active life due to current conditions. In the south of England, this summer has been quite hot, and fig trees (mostly of the Brown Turkey variety) have been giving large crop. In our area there is a large fig tree hanging over the garden wall, and passers-by have been helping themselves to the fruit. I also try to grow figs, but without getting many. I looked at several videos from the USA, but none of them seemed to correspond to the way figs behave in the British Isles. Then I discovered a video from…

Trump did not know science neither does his opposition.  Mask work, social distancing works, copious rapid testing works but no one or two or all of these things are a ironclad guarantee one will not get sick.  Keeping six feet apart reduces your chance of getting sick by a certain fraction, as does mask wearing, as would testing everyone.  We can reduce that probability of infection to a single digit percentage.  No one, no matter how righteously they believe, will be completely immune.    Science is about probabilities and statistics not absolute statements.…

At a time when sue-and-settle activist groups like Center for Food Safety continue to claim scientists - across the private sector, non-profits, and government agencies - are colluding to poison us by allowing safe pesticide use, their messaging is being ignored by more consumers than in decades. Rather than being afraid of science, fear that CFS, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Pesticide Action Network, and various others had created with some success for the last few years, people are demanding vaccines and they are demanding chemicals that work instead of having some green fig…

What is math and is math real?   Math is the language of physics right down to figuring out what one hand full of fingers plus another hand full of fingers is.  Right down to a duck counting her ducklings even animals know that level of mathematics.  More advanced mathematics like algebra, calculus… or the rules of matrix arithmetic, are all set up so that they will be consistent with the math we see in real everyday numbers.  It is a matter of figuring out who got more fish to eat, or who has more cattle.   How many apples are there? No math is not made up, not…

In April, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary did something unusual. For the previous 20 years, they had issued quarterly updates to announce new words and meanings selected for inclusion. These updates have typically been made available in March, June, September and December. In the late spring, however, and again in July, the dictionary’s editors released special updates, citing a need to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the English language. Although the editors have documented many coronavirus-related linguistic shifts, some of their observations are surprising.…

More than 18 percent of U.S. adults claim they do not have access to adequate food from day to day, according to a new paper, which more than doubled between 1999 and 2016. The result: Higher obesity. People got fat from not enough food? There are obvious confounders, namely recall bias - and it's hard to reconcile an obese person stating on surveys they don't get enough to eat with biological reality. Scientists know that the only diet that really works is fewer calories. In 100 percent of studies people who consume fewer calories than they burn lose weight. They don't gain it eating less…

Numerous criticisms of medical science have been articulated in recent years. Some critics argue that spurious disease categories are being invented, and existing disease categories expanded, for the aim of profit. Others say that the benefits of most new drugs are minimal and typically exaggerated by clinical research, and that the harms of these drugs are extensive and typically underestimated by clinical research. Still others point to problems with the research methods themselves, arguing that those once seen as gold standards in clinical research – randomised trials and meta-analyses –…