Science & Society

Roundup, and its important ingredient glyphosate, act on a biological pathway only found in plants. In the American legal system, science is basically irrelevant in a jury trial, though, so anyone can sue over anything. Only in an appeal will science in science and health lawsuits be important. Yet sometimes the science is so clear no jury outside California is so opposed to evidence that they will find harm. That is why Monsanto has prevailed for a fifth time against claims that a compound that only acts in plants magically caused someone's cancer. And the only financial victory anti-science…

Every physicist knows how nuclear weapons work. However, where our weapons are deployed, our level of readiness to use them, and what we know about other countries’ weapons and deployments would not be common knowledge. Any person with a completed undergraduate and/or graduate education in physics knows how they work. The details of quantum mechanics, radiation, nuclear fission, fusion, electronics and so forth are in our textbooks. These things are well known to us. Many of us have a good idea of the basic engineering behind nuclear weapons. We know what materials are needed, and what type…

“We got rich fast here,” a man in Beijing told me, “and we’re fast getting richer. Those lazy Taiwanese aren’t getting richer at all.” It is fashionable on the mainland to diss Taiwan, but – as I was too polite to inform my interlocutor – Taiwan residents have created a fine civil society and have learned to get along well with each other, tasks that are much harder than just getting rich. As Kenneth Boulding said, things are the way they are because they got that way. When I first visited Taiwan in 1976, it was much like China is today: unruly pushing and shoving, haphazard cleanliness,…

Without bringing up anything else Matt Walsh has talked about lately anyone around his age would know about the banning of CFC’s and the Ozone hole. The banning of CFC’s changed how we cool our houses, and how we apply deodorant or hair products. They were used as propellants that were not flammable. They were used as coolants etc. Thanks to banning them and phasing them out we were able to stop the ozone depletion that by now would’ve made going outside dangerous due to exposure to too much UV light. There is so much proof of the Ozone hole having been an issue that it is like arguing for a…

The wage gap between genders has always had some cultural traction but there were also always odd pockets where it was worse - including what you wouldn't have expected. Environmental groups had far more women but the wage gap between what they paid men and women was alarming compared to engineering, where there were fewer women as a total percentage but no meaningful pay disparity. A new paper finds it is still the case that the exceptions are the norm, which means they may not be exceptions at all. Occupations dominated by men pay women more, adding weight to the belief that women are not…

Blaire White had an interview with a male to female post op transsexual / transgender who regrets having the operation in part due to complications of having had the operation.  Research has shown the overall satisfaction rate is about 91% with a rate of out and out regret of 2% (Boustos 2021).  The story of Shape Shifter a, detransitoner with regret is not unheard of. This is also true of many other surgeries.  Any surgery which requires general anesthesia will be a big deal and can go very wrong.  Any such surgery should be done with great care and if non surgical…

In the 1960s and '70s, population apocalypse stories were popular. Movies like "Soylent Green" and books like "The Population Bomb" and "Ecoscience" provided dystopian views of the future, where science would fail and government would be forced to get drastic, with forced sterilization and abortion needed until the number of people got down to a limit farming could sustain. That never happened. Progress did. Companies created new agricultural tools, herbicides were created that avoided resistance. Then we got GMOs. First in insulin, then they saved the papaya in Hawaii, and then we got common…

The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision has been overturned, which means that the Supreme Court ruled that the right to an abortion is not federally protected by the US Constitution (in the 1973 case, that it couldn't be illegal under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment), and is instead up to states as per the enumerated powers part of the Constitution. As most of you know, when the Constitution was written, states were concerned about replacing one autocratic centralized government with another, so the Constitution, and then the immediate Bill of Rights, were written to specify that if it was…

Vernians are the true believers who think Jules Verne's books are scientific manuals rather than fantastic stories. To my knowledge, there are few, if any, true Vernians around. Still, there are neo-Vernians today who see Verne's books are scientific manuals illustrating the theories of his day. Furthermore, a Vernian process shows how to evaluate science and project itinto the engineering future. Maybe the most forgotten and valuable part of Verne's science fiction was its use in education. He could be political and moral, too, warning of German aggression via technology—no surprise, the…

The public perception of Black astronauts is best summed up by a line from the TV show "Archer".  That they are so rare they are like unicorns.  The truth is while there have been fewer than our African American share of the population would imply there have been many Black Americans involved in the space program, including astronauts since day one.  Everything big and important done by the United States of America, in peace and war, has been a team effort.  We have never had a diversity problem, but a problem of inclusion.    This documentary…