Science & Society

Physics Today says the culture of physics itself is to blame for the gender pay gap.   Staff writer Toni Feder cobbled together data from a 2010 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report “Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty” and unpublished information - grey literature - from the magazine publisher (American Institute of Physics) to suggest physicists are suppressing salaries of women. Or they are suppressing themselves. The unpublished data claim that a woman in academic physics identical in…

Today, the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors issued a an urgent public alert regarding the dangers posed by drugs currently circulating America’s streets and neighborhoods as a result of the current opioid crisis.   This alert is intended to help the public recognize and avoid suspicious materials when they are nearby. “The threat is unprecedented,” warns ASCLD President Ray Wickenheiser. “Some of the clandestine substances being sold or made accessible have formulations that are so toxic that it’s better to consider them poison.” The street drugs the public may be exposed…

I've been writing Doomsday Debunking articles for a couple of years now. The amount of fake news about the end of the world on the web is incredible. What makes it worse is that stories that say the world is about to end get widely shared, linked to, read over and over, and rise right to the top of Google and Apple news. If you are intrigued by a news story about the search for "planet X" by astronomers, say, and go to Google News, the top result is usually one or other article from the Daily Express who regularly publish fake news saying that an extra planet is about to hit Earth or fly past…

Short summary: A scrap book of nonsense. Theologically, morally, astronomically and politically abysmal. The author would not be accepted for admission to a course on astronomy at a university, never mind actually pass such a course. And it’s a similar position for theology. Most of the book, 75%, is not even written by him but just copy / pasted from the internet. It is appalling to think that this book reached the #1 position for astronomy books in Kindle on Amazon, and #5 for paperback. I’ve asked them to take it down for breach of copyright. I've been fielding numerous scared PM's as well…

Recently, in the New Statesman, under the headline David Attenborough: Brexiteers “probably don’t understand” facts, we read: Brexiteers like Michael Gove who dismissed expert warnings “probably don’t understand” the evidence and have reacted in a knee-jerk fashion, David Attenborough has said.   In a video interview with Greenpeace’s investigative and news platform, Unearthed, the 91-year-old broadcaster and naturalist compared Brexit to “spitting in each other’s faces” and called the referendum “an abrogation of parliamentary democracy” because of a lack of facts.  To…

This will seem utterly bonkers to most of you. But while reading this please bear in mind that very young children, many as young as 14 and younger, have been driven to the edge of suicide by these prophesies. More on this later but I want to open out by showing to them how bonkers his ideas are. The rest of you may find amusement in it too. But it has a very serious side to it. Remember this chap is making people suicidal with his prophesies, and he is heavily promoted by the Daily Express. What can we do about it? It's a major societal problem. The papers never give all his predictions in…

When corporate media revealed during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election campaign that Donald Trump had expressed anti-vaccine sentiments, Democrats in "blue states breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, journalists could claim anti-vaccine sentiment was bipartisan. Until then, it was solidly embraced by those on the left side of the spectrum, which was awkward to explain. Journalists fumbled rationalizations like that while most anti-vaxxers were on the left, Congressional Democrats were not putting anti-vax sentiments in the party platform so rampant denial by their supporters did not count.…

This is a good example of a story that has morphed and changed as it gets passed from one paper to another. They all cite the same source, from the BBC but the reporters haven’t read the source. I think they just read each other. The science is actually rather interesting. But just about everything they say is the opposite of what the original story says. This is the original story on the BBC: Nasa’s ambitious plan to save Earth from a supervolcano This is what Fox News make of it (notorious for being somewhat unreliable) NASA wants to prevent the Yellowstone super volcano from destroying…

I'm getting numerous pm's from very scared and sometimes suicidal people who think the world will end tomorrow. To those who are scared and suicidal - what do you do if you are scared like this? I've written this article to help you. If you are feeling suicidal right now, of course contact any of us, via pm and post to the group. See also this List of suicide crisis lines - many phone lines staffed by volunteers that specialize in talking to people who are in the middle of a suicide crisis. They won't know about this stuff of course, but you will have a friendly listening ear,and someone who…

In the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, many claims have been made that science denial, particularly as it relates to climate change, is primarily a problem of the political right. But what happens when scientific conclusions challenge liberals’ attitudes on public policy issues, such as gun control, nuclear power or immigration? A new study from social psychologists at the University of Illinois at Chicago and published online in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests people of all political backgrounds can be motivated to participate in science denial. UIC…