Science & Society

I am currently spending some time in South America, where I came to join my wife who was performing in Santiago in a contemporary opera (Sun and Sea) featured in the Centro Cultural de la Moneda, in the city center -and in a place that 50 years ago was the theatre of the brutal subversion of democracy by the hands of the fascists led by dictator Augusto Pinochet. Originally our plan was, after spending a week in Santiago, to visit a few places in Chile, and then move to Peru (with stops in Cusco, Machu Picchu, and Lima) and then to fly to Galapagos for a cruise. Unfortunately, the state of…

Government lockdowns may have been terrible for diagnosing disease and the mental health of kids but it reduced terrorism, according to a new paper. If no one can travel, government agents helping fifth columnists do their damage are useless. When the pandemic struck, terrorists vowed to increase their attacks and create a tipping point but that did not happen. Instead, government-imposed curfews and travel bans instituted to protect public health in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt were significantly associated with a reduction in ISIS attacks, especially in urban areas and locations near their bases…

Small micron particulate matter, commonly called PM2.5, needs an electron microscope to be visible to you but once real smog, PM10, declined by the 1990s, air pollution activists began to tout this new killer. Since it is 1/4th the size of real pollution air quality maps could often be red, or at least yellow, and that is good business for trial lawyers. The problem quickly became that no one ever died from it, humans would've been extinct 50,000 years ago if that were even possible, so they pivoted from deaths to hidden effects that can be claimed using statistics.  PM2.5 is everywhere…

Many parents say they are worried about the negative effects of screen time on children. Too much of anything can have negative effects, from books to music to TV, but the solution is to impose diversity so they eventually enjoy different activities. The screen time problem got even worse due to government lockdowns imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than wear masks in a park, it generally led to more screen time and less outdoor time for children.  A new paper says that screen time at age 2 is associated with poorer communication and daily living skills at age 4 unless kids…

Chat GPT is known to respond to prompts and will give back what it is asked for.  So I asked it to define the word woman from a purely scientific perspective.  This should be straight forward right.  To many who are anti trans “science” means only certain sciences that they believe in but excludes those they don’t.  In short, they cherry pick whole fields, then only information within fields like biology, or chemistry, or physics that conform to their dogmas. To an extent both sides of this debate do this because it is not about science but about social mores,…

The Abu Dhabi enirate is a religious dictatorship and may be tired of western countries noting that women may suffer from legalized domestic violence, among other contradictions in a state that says women are equal, because a new analysis says that the western world is sexist too. At least when it comes to how many female editors at science journals there are. Since scientific editors shape the content of academic journals and set standards for their fields, gender disparity can influence opportunities for women to publish in these journals, receive recognition for their research, and advance…

We don't get many new antibiotics in America despite there being a great need. The reason is simple; though 85% of American drug spending is for "generic" - it is off patent, so anyone can make it without doing any work - a lot of people want everything to be generic. And cheap. Big Pharma is hated. There is nothing cheap about science, so companies who don't want to spend $1 billion and 10 years for a new antibiotic only to have some grandstanding populist in Congress declare that medicine should be free. Instead they will tackle more obscure drugs that are less likely to get attention. An…

In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Chaya Raichick also known as LibsOfTikTok on Twitter has stated that LGBT people are evil and want to recruit children to be gay. This is not a matter of opinion, but much science has been done looking into the causation of LGBT identification. It is clear that the LGBT mating strategies found in humans are a matter of biology and neurology not just psychology and sociology. All those sciences, yes all of those are science, play a part. For instance, biologically transgender people are born (largely) one sex or the other. At the same time biologically and…

Hasn’t it been cold lately! Here in the South of England, so far we have only had about a week of days going down to –5°C around sunrise, but our news bulletins have been showing conditions in North America.  Even Tallahassee has been down to —8°C (data: Accuweather) I used to listen to Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America, and I am reminded of  conversation with a New York Taxi Driver, on a cold and windy day, beginning with the driver: “Terrible weather, isn’t it?” *If it weren’t for the weather, I’d live in New York.” “Where do you live?” “New York.” All of which…

The national ignition facility has reported at a press conference that they have gotten more energy out of a controlled thermonuclear reaction than was put in.  We’ve gotten out more energy from thermonuclear fusion before, using bombs.  The issue is getting the energy out in a way that is useful.  This relates to Elon Musk in that he is, like fusion power, one who will over promise but under perform.  The key difference that the researchers would tell you is that the media over promises and hypes up their work.  Meanwhile Elon Musk will overpromise on technology,…