Science & Society

America is the most science literate country in the world, we are dominant in Nobel prizes and science output, and we are thankful we are not France, but a new survey by Harris shows that we still have a long way to go. The results of the new survey reveal that 47 percent of people ages 18 to 37, our future leaders, have become convinced by efforts to promote alternatives to medicine and think they can cure cancer with food or supplements or ancient Chinese wisdom - 40 percent overall. How did we get here? Three ways. First is that in 1994 President Clinton took alternatives to medicine away…

Comic books of the 1950s and 1960s made a point of their potential to terrify, with anthologies from Entertaining Comics, such as Haunt of Fear, Vault of Horror, and Tales of the Crypt, boasting covers with straplines such as “Within these pages dwell creatures from the terrifying beyond!” The Haunt of Fear. Entertaining Comics The House of Mystery series from rival DC Comics asks: “Dare you enter the house of mystery?” – and cover art often depicts children or young adults on the cusp of discovering what lies within. This teasing investigation and revelation of…

In California, we have warning labels on trees, because they will give us cancer. And that is not even the strangest of California's warnings about nearly 1,000 chemicals on hundreds of thousands of products. We call it "leadership" to put warning labels on the things activists are not yet allowed to ban. "Leadership" is a dog whistle for the kind of social authoritarian mentality that is the enemy of science and progress.  And we are very much the enemy of science and therefore progress.  In America's most populated state, the actual government does little legislation that isn…

A recent analysis of fake images titled WHO Cures Cancer In Photoshop shows that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) may need more than just a new leader, because they remain stuck with an old problem; credibility. While for its first 20 years they were a much-needed voice of reason that stood up to activists claiming that some new chemical of the month was a carcinogen because it could kill rats, for the last 10 IARC have been the source of ridicule among the science community. And that is because the environmentalists whose hype they once exposed played the…

Whether you believe transgender men are men or transgender women are women you cannot deny the basic fact that we exist.   You may not like that a group of people exist.  You may disagree with how a group of people either choose or are compelled by their specific biology to live.  You may feel disgust or disdain.  You may not and have a right to not like anyone you want but it is an observational fact of life transgender people exist.  It is an observational fact of life that some transgender people take medical steps to change themselves in every technologically…

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation has breathlessly announced that "acclaimed actor, producer and philanthropist Pierce Brosnan" will host the Breakthrough Prize ceremony, which they have self-declared is the “Oscars of Science”, on November 4th. The funders certainly have the money to do positive things; the backers are Sergey Brin and his ex-wife Anne Wojcicki, which means Google cash, plus Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, which means Facebook money, and more. I think $3 million prizes are a great reward for doing solid work so I have applauded them for that. We have even attended…

Does 0.4% chocolate ice cream and 99.6% vanilla not make vanilla? What Senator Warren does not get is that her ancestors did not pay the price of being American Indian in the last 200 + years at least.   That is why it is bogus for her to claim that identity. Elizabeth Warren had her DNA tested by a scientist affiliated with Ancestry.com the analyst who did the actual work placed her unadmixed American Indian ancestor about eight generations back.  That is 1/256th (0.390%) American Indian.  It could be as much as 1/32nd  (3.13%) or as little as 1/1024th (0.098%).…

Gender critical feminism being used as a smoke screen for anti-transgender views is  a direct consequence of the transgender community abandoning the notion of brain sex.  Brain sex was a testable hypothesis that has since been tested out as true.  Yet so much activism has been built on gender identity.  Two ideas which are based on social realities gender roles and markers of identity.  This left a way for hateful people who call themselves feminist to sound reasonable.    The Transsexual Brain Is Real DEAL WITH IT.   Brain Sex the idea so simple and…

Once upon a time, non-fat milk (the cream removed) was only used for fattening pigs. It was clearly a technological process to remove the cream but it is not considered "unnatural" - in 2012, the Obama administration even told schools to start serving it as a healthier alternative to regular milk. Meanwhile, the same administration delayed a salmon because it had a gene from a similar salmon that would allow it to grow all year 'round. The second technology was "unnatural." "Natural" has been a marketer's dream. Because it can mean anything you want, if you just convince people your…

This originated as my answer to a question on the Quora question and answer site: "In what general knowledge domains do alternatives to Wikipedia exist that are significantly superior?". Of course there are examples of much better specialist encyclopedias for various knowledge domains. But you can also do better than Wikipedia using content derived from Wikipedia itself. I think my own new wikis are an example of this, for a simple reason. Because we can fix various errors that can't be fixed there and add new content that can't be added there. Probably many of you have heard of stories…