Science & Society

Thanks to social media, advice on how to prevent a cold is everywhere and 51 percent of parents taking the  C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health admit to believing in folklore and homeopathy even though 99 percent of them accept scientific approaches as well.  Welcome to 2019. Colds are caused by viruses and spread most frequently from person to person. The most common transmission is mucus from the nose or mouth that gets passed on by direct contact, coughing, sneezing, doorknobs, etc. Therefore the most effective method for preventing colds is…

Another post to help people scared of perfectly normal harmless events because of the sensationalist press and false prophets. This is just the moon passing through Earth’s shadow as it does usually once or twice a year. It’s done it for billions of years. Usually it passes above or below Earth’s shadow at full moon, and occasionally it passes through it, and that’s the lunar eclipse. Half the world can see a lunar eclipse, the entire night side of Earth at the time of the event. It is far easier to see than a solar eclipse which needs you to live on or travel to a narrow eclipse track where…

As the new Congress begins, it will soon discuss the comprehensive reports to the U.S. Senate on the disinformation campaign of half-truths, outright fabrications and misleading posts made by agents of the Russian government on social media in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. After years of anemic responses to Russian influence efforts, official U.S. government policy now includes taking action to combat disinformation campaigns sponsored by Russia or other countries. In May 2018, the Senate Intelligence Committee endorsed the concept of treating attacks on the nation’s election…

As European science-related institutions, such as the European Research Council, have shown their growing preference for Open Access, e.g., via the Plan S, the primary rationale for this is the positive effect on the discovery of new knowledge that various models of Open Access can be expected to have. Whereas the business models behind Open Access continue to be discussed, the implications of Open Access for specialized research fields can illustrate the reasons for expanding Open Access adoption by scholarly institutions. In the domain of paleontology, the year 2018 has seen 56% of dinosaur…

When I first began writing about the anti-vaccine issue, California was the home of the movement (1). The state had more philosophical exemptions than the rest of the country combined, and they were primarily wealthy white elites living on the coast. You know, like Hollywood. Things have changed in those 12 years. California had to pass a law mandating vaccines for kids, done after I wrote of schools, such as in Marin county, where under 30 percent of children had vaccines, but getting a law passed was a sign that Hollywood had shaken off the Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Mayim Bialik, Rob…

The Environmental Protection Agency has requested comments on proposed ad hoc participants on the Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals, which inside EPA will analyze compounds as needed by the Toxic Substances Control Act. At the bottom is my official statement. Though a few of the submitted names are problematic, one is alarming - IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) Carcinogen Identification and Evaluation Monograph Program leader Kurt Straif, who is also a fellow at the activist group Ramazzini Institute, where Executive Council President Philip J. Landrigan…

With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rightly cracking down on sales of vaping devices to minors and U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams making a recent statement of concern, media are again repeating claims of an epidemic of vaping among children. It's not true. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have noted a drop in vaping by teens since its high of 3 million in 2015, so there is no reason that 21 percent of young people claim to have experimented with even one are sending our government into a panic. The response federal officials have standardized on…

Today is Christmas, and about this time folks in the New World may be thinking about breakfast. So to greet everyone reading this, here is a Russian Christmas card from before 1917, featuring Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) and his granddaughter Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden): On TV at this time of year, we see a lot of reindeer, and we learn that during the winter it is mostly the females that keep their antlers. Why do female reindeer grow antlers? - Discover Wildlife This feature does not seem to be unique to reindeer though. Especially at supermarket checkouts, the operators, mostly…

As the West becomes more and more secular, and the discoveries of evolutionary biology and cosmology shrink the boundaries of faith, the claims that science and religion are compatible grow louder. If you’re a believer who doesn’t want to seem anti-science, what can you do? You must argue that your faith – or any faith – is perfectly compatible with science. And so one sees claim after claim from believers, religious scientists, prestigious science organizations and even atheists asserting not only that science and religion are compatible, but also that they can actually help each other. This…

Two weeks ago, CNN shocked some in the science community by having Vani Hari, who styles herself as "The Food Babe"(1), tell us that the bacterial problem on romaine lettuce was caused by modern medicine.  It was no great surprise to most of us, if there is a hyperbolic claim about science CNN is an always reliable platform to create a story or at least tweet about it. Contrast that to government agencies, who are rarely allowed to engage in common-sense thinking for the public and instead have to be reflexively cautious, like with that same romaine lettuce issue by recommending that…