Science & Society

Using Twitter and Google search trend data in the wake of the very limited U.S. Ebola outbreak of October 2014, a team of researchers from Arizona State University, Purdue University and Oregon State University have found that news media is extraordinarily effective in creating public panic. Because only five people were ultimately infected yet Ebola dominated the U.S. media in the weeks after the first imported case, the researchers set out to determine mass media's impact on people's behavior on social media. "Social media data have been suggested as a way to track the spread of a disease…

Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins have dramatically different roles when it comes to science. One is a science popularizer and extremely anti-religious while one runs the $30 billion National Institute of Health and is a religious believer, but also writes popular science editorials and uses Twitter. Which one would you guess most people can name? A team of sociologists wanted to see which of those two did more to sway the public about the nature of science and religion and which was better known. They found what you might expect, that if they were inclined to say religion must be anti-…

The recent commitments by the leaders of G7 nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to 40-70% below current levels by 2050, and to eliminate the use of fossil fuels altogether by 2100, have raised several questions. Are these objectives feasible? Are they consistent with national commitments? Are they sufficient to stabilize the global climate without dangerous rates of warming? And are they anything new? The first question is the easiest. We already have the technology we need to phase out most of the significant uses of fossil fuels, without a substantial impact on living standards,…

Media are important. Especially the media we trust. One might express the effect of a piece of journalism (J) about, say, a particular drug or food, as a factor of media authority (A), multiplied by the size of audience (D), divided by the availability of credible alternative sources (S). The more of the latter which are accessible to the audience, and thus the greater the challenge to the “truthiness” of (J), the lesser the impact on individual and collective behavior. Where people trust the news source, and the issue is complex, and alternative analyses are not easily sourced, the effect is…

Europe's most homophobic countries may be paving the way for a rise in HIV cases among gay and bisexual men, according to new research published in the journal AIDS. An international team of researchers from Europe and the US looked at HIV-related service use, need and behaviours among 175,000 gay or bisexual men living in 38 European countries with differing levels of national homophobia. They found that men in homophobic countries had fewer sexual partners and were less likely to be diagnosed with HIV. However, they also found those men knew less about HIV, were less likely to use condoms…

Peer review in science, in which independent scientists who are experts on the subject assess papers, but this system frequently receives harsh criticism about its effectiveness and transparency.  It came to light again in a humanities study which had a conclusion that everyone desiring social engineering from academia - that if people just talked to opponents of gay marriage they would change their minds - was found to have no data. It happened last year in a study claiming men did not take hurricane names seriously, it has happened for decades - but it happens in real science also. A…

Organic farming has had a pretty good run. While creating a $100 billion Big Ag juggernaut they were allowed to carve out their own special fiefdom inside the USDA, run by organic food lobbyists who could exempt any synthetic ingredient their financial backers wanted - and when the USDA wanted to bring oversight back, they protested angrily at having the same standards conventional food has. Now they are angry with Whole Foods for implementing a uniform standard for determining how well food is grown in harmony with Gaia - and for not exempting organic food or at least giving them super bonus…

Everyone, it seems, has been talking about “dad bod” – what defines it, who possesses it and whether or not women actually love it. It all began with an innocuous article on a college news website, penned by a Clemson University student named Mackenzie Pearson. “The dad bod is a nice balance between a beer gut and working out,” she wrote. “While we all love a sculpted guy, there is just something about the dad bod that makes boys seem more human, natural, and attractive.” Pearson’s post first made the rounds on social media, before receiving mainstream media attention. Suddenly, Pearson was…

Dr. Oz has done a lot of things right recently. He has promised to stop calling everything a 'miracle cure' and after the cultural blow-up this spring, when a group of prominent doctors and PhDs nationwide asked Columbia to remove him, and then a group at Columbia criticized him in USA Today, he apologized and noted that the Dr. in the title was meant to be small. Infotainment and not actually medicine. Still, it had to be uncomfortable for a really prominent physician - he may be a little rusty today but 10 years ago if I had a choice and needed heart surgery, I'd have felt beyond safe in…

Food wasted means money wasted which can be an expensive problem especially in homes with financial constraints. A new study from the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and the Getulio Vargas Foundation, shows that the top causes of food waste in such homes include buying too much, preparing in abundance, unwillingness to consume leftovers, and improper food storage. "Fortunately," notes lead author Gustavo Porpino, PhD candidate at the Getulio Vargas Foundation and Visiting Scholar at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, "most of the factors that lead to food waste, can be easily remedied by simple…