Science & Society

American Millennials may be even more sexually permissive than the 1970s generation, noted for its bisexuality and drugs and unprotected sex in a consequence-free environment. Teen sex, premarital sex, gay sex, it's all a lot more commonly accepted than was the case 40 years ago, but Millennials haven't embraced '70s-era Swinger parties: Affairs while married are bad, according to analysis of surveys led by psychologist Jean M. Twenge of San Diego State University.  Their conclusions were drawn from data in the nationally representative General Social Survey, conducted in most years…

The existence of wage gaps between genders in some occupations, from environmentalism to the White House to science academia, continues to be a hot-button topic. Medium- and lower-wage positions get the most attention but a new paper in The American Journal of Medicine says directors of internal medicine residency programs are also paid different based on gender. And that is despite the increased percentage of women faculty in U.S. academic medicine, and that is regardless of region, program type, academic rank, general internal medicine specialty, age, or years of experience. The gap has…

Young people are just as likely to try electronic cigarettes - vaping - as cigarette smoking, according to a new report  in Tobacco Use in Canada: Patterns and Trends. The paper finds that approximately 20 percent of youth between the ages of 15 and 19 have experimented with vaping, about the same number who try cigarettes. Obviously most of these youths are trying both and while cigarettes have clearly been shown to harm people, e-cigarettes -  which is a device to create a vapor by heating a chemical solution of propylene glycol, an organic compound common in food processing…

By Sara Rennekamp, Inside Science  -- News broke this week that the company behind the popular Kind line of snack bars received a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration. Their offense? Not labeling the bars according to FDA rules -- primarily due to slapping a "healthy" label on a product that did not meet the FDA standards for healthy. The FDA has strict parameters for how some foods are labeled and marketed to consumers. Any food that uses the word a "healthy" or "healthful" in its marketing -- really any implication that the food you're about to consume will somehow…

Two women recently had their research paper rejected by a science journal based on an incredibly sexist review of their work – an event that has caused outrage on social media. While the journal, PLOS ONE, has apologized and given the authors a second chance, not everyone is as lucky. The case provides an opportunity for journals to adopt an open peer-review system – a process in which scientists evaluate the quality of other scientists' work – so that reviewers cannot hide behind anonymity. But it also shows it is time to get tough on the widespread biases in universities. Peer-reviewed…

Chipotle wins the science ‘foot in mouth’ award for 2015, and we are not even to summer yet. So far there are more than 40 media condemnations and counting. The fast food chain’s “bold” move, announcing a faux ban on GMOs in its food, has blown up big time. Why faux? Because, as Chipotle well knows, its sodas, beef, pork and chicken dishes, and any food with cheese, are made with ingredients that were derived through genetic engineering. In other words, a Chipotle meal was, and remains, the very definition of a GMO meal, which is why its bungled opportunistic attempt to capitalize on anti-…

Proper clinical research exposure in medical school is a somewhat modern invention. Prior to changes implemented by Harvard Medical School in the 19th century, medicine was more application-focused, but gradually medical schools began to expose students to basic and clinical research. By the 20th century it was the norm that doctors would have a foundation in research and physician-scientists were their teachers. More recently, things have begun to revert to a more 18th century culture. Medical schools without a well-oiled political machine know they are not going to get funding for a lot of…

Recently on Real Clear Science, Ross Pomeroy published an article Why Nothing Can Be Truly ‘Unnatural’, in which he denounces attempts to oppose homosexuality on scientific grounds.  However, after reading it, I am left with the feeling that he is not simply reporting science, but perhaps being a little bit like an old-fashioned nanny telling her charges what is or is not proper.  If so, he will be firing a shot in The Western Culture Wars. I say Western, because we have the same sort of stuff over this side of the Atlantic.  So here, for starters, is a picture representing…

To many practitioners of yoga in the United States, its original form would be unrecognizable in everything but the name. What was once about spirituality is now about health and physical fitness.  If you are going to be a guru in the US, one tenet of yoga remains from the past - go with the flow. As the medical claims of yoga became more prevalent and yoga catapulted into a $10-billion-a-year enterprise, practitioners embraced new marketing success or fell by the wayside. Sanskrit names for postures and religious "om"-ing are out, 'feeling the burn' is in.  It's a marketing story…

Periodically I get invited to talk about science and food on the nationwide AgriTalk radio program, hosted by Mike Adams - not the Natural News guy,  this is the one who likes farmers. Joining me today was Roxi Beck of the Center for Food Integrity. You're all used to me so what I say may not be anything new, but Beck made terrific points, namely that even as people are supportive of technology in their phones, they may not want it in their bodies - even with modern medicine adding 30 years to human life expectancy in the last century.  Why the disconnect? People see the value of…