Science & Society

Scientific Blogging can help your career! Well, indirectly. A study out of Melbourne University in Australia found that workers who surf the internet for fun at work, within a reasonable limit of less than 20 percent of total office time, are about nine percent more productive than non-surfers. The study of 300 office workers found that 70 percent of people who use the internet at work engage in Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing. "Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like…

Sure, things are tough all over.    Heck, Linda Evangelista recently stated she now would get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day(1).    While many sectors are struggling, the bridal market is booming - especially at the top end, where spoiled trophy brides don't want to hear that you won't spend $18,000 for a dress so you can fuel up your Gulfstream.   Reports from the British Bridal Exhibition in Harrogate, which as far as you know we did not attend, say business is booming. At the recent show in March, expected by some to be an indicator that the market is, in…

Is today's academic and corporate culture stifling science's risk-takers and stopping disruptive, revolutionary science from coming to the fore?  Writing in Physics World, Mark Buchanan looks at those who have shifted scientific paradigms and asks what we can do to make sure that those who have the potential to change our outlook on the world also have the opportunity to do so. When Max Planck accidentally discovered quantum theory, he kick-started the most significant scientific revolution of the 20th century; his colleague, Wilhelm Röntgen's experiments with cathode rays led…

Okay, I am going to do something that will cost me my Republican voter card - I am going to recommend we reopen a government agency, the  Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). I'm not alone.  And I'm certainly not the first.  Darlene Cavalier, everyone's favorite Science Cheerleader, has been on this issue for a while as has PZ Myers.    First, some background.    If you aren't familiar with OTA, at its heyday it had 143 people and an annual budget of $21.9 million - and it was mostly useless.   Like all such bureaucratic sinkholes, it claimed to be '…

It has been revealed that 1 in 3 people in the UK are still struggling to find an NHS dentist, according to new research from Simplyhealth. Simplyhealth's Annual Dental Survey has revealed that alarmingly just over a third of Brits (35%) struggled to find an NHS dentist over the last year, which has increased from 23% at the same time in 2008. Perhaps more shocking is the fact that this figure soars in certain areas of the UK, with over half of the people in Plymouth finding it difficult to get an NHS dentist, closely followed by those in Southampton and Manchester, where 45% and 43% have…

There are four caffeine-induced psychiatric disorders recognized by the DSM-IV, the diagnosis manual of the American Psychiatric Association: caffeine intoxication, caffeine-induced anxiety disorder, caffeine-induced sleep disorder, and caffeine-related disorder not otherwise specified. And, as you know if you have ever had to walk low-Starbucks-density wastelands, withdrawal can result in nausea, lethargy and depression. But what of the classic, washed-up-child-star-style overdose? The Mallinckrodt Baker Material Safety Data Sheet describes the lethal dose of caffeine as 192mg/kg in rats (…

Can a TV show about disease management educate people who don't take their meds? Or does it just help sell expensive gadgets to motivated patients who are already doing better than most? There has been a lot of discussion concerning scientific communication on this site recently, and a related article from Forbes caught my eye. The article poses the questions above regarding a new addition to the health communication toolbox - dLifeTV, a 30 minute show on CNBC (a "disguised informercial," says Forbes) about diabetes. The show is the brainchild of …

“Let’s say tomorrow some crazy guy bombs America or poisons all your river or puts a lot of nuclear radiation out and all your livestock is poisoned.  What you will eat?” “Vegetables!” I answered. “OK. Only vegetables?” Dr. Mironov asked incredulously.  Dr. Mironov is an assistant professor of cell biology at the Medical University of South Carolina, a founding member of New-harvest.org, and the tissue engineer responsible for creating edible in vitro chicken. Thanks to a series of PETA publicity stunts, his name has been inexorably linked to the animal rights movement and the…

If you listen to pubic radio, you can find programs that say mass media is right wing.  Yes, right wing, because it takes a corporation to make mass media for the masses.    So therefore  having 90% of journalists being left wing is just a clever ruse.    Heck, we were once accused of being right wing, even though we had no corporate funding, unlike our accusers who were all owned by media companies, and I spent 5,000 hours of my life doing this for free and having scientists writing for free; the ultimate left wing environment, so it just had to be a tool of the…

Sometimes you open Nature magazine and are surprised by the latest discovery in quantum mechanics or molecular biology. Browsing through the March 5, 2009 issue I was stunned by an article penned by sociologist Harry Collins, entitled “We cannot live by scepticism alone” (The Brits call it “scepticism,” not “skepticism.”). In it, Collins criticized the extreme fringe of a field called “science studies” which has “unfortunately led some ... to conclude that science is just a form of faith or politics. They have become overly cynical of science.” The reason this is surprising is because Collins…