Science & Society
Hank |
Any time you get a majority of people together, there will always be some sensitivity and compassion and outreach for the minority. In science academia, it is obvious; small blips in representation get concern about fixing the problem of how to get more of demographic X.
It's when you have a super-majority that tolerance and sensitivity disappear. Jokes are common, ridicule is overt, and there is no hesitation because you won't walk by any of those people in the hallway or have an uncomfortable moment in a cafeteria. While we see calls for more representation for women and minorities and…
Hank |
Greenpeace was founded on a pretense of humanitarian action - between 1969 and 1971, they gathered together because they wanted to put an end to hydrogen bomb testing. Later they lost their way and it became about whales and, in the US, being a political action committee for an entire raft of anti-science issues, protesting everything from clean energy to food. Thanks for doing your part to cause global warming, Greenpeace.
Canadian ecologist Patrick Moore, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, has been on the outs with his former compatriots for decades. In 2008, they even released a…
Hank |
Food, medicine and energy are three of the most crucial problems we face today - and they are all protested by a common demographic.
Science tends to think on the supply side - how to feed more people, how to get energy to everyone, how to save lives - while anti-science activists promote mitigation and rationing and retreating into the past. They believe in 13th century energy that hasn't worked, like wind power, unproven herbal medicines and a food system where only the agricultural 1% will be able to eat.
The World Food Prize Foundation has, on occasion, been caught in the grip of that…
Science has come a long way since 1978, when Louise Joy Brown, the world's first successful 'test-tube baby', was born.
Despite claims that these children were somehow going to be less natural, in vitro fertilization (IVF) has instead become mainstream, along with other methods to promote successful pregnancy. An aggregation of ten international reports tracking the use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) has led the International Committee for the Monitoring of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ICMART) to estimate that there have been 5 million babies born with the help of science…
Girls in minority groups and low-income families, who are claimed to be most at risk for cervical cancer, are less likely to get the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.
Scholars from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children's Hospital Colorado interviewed 41 low-income parents of girls ages 12-15 to determine why they didn't get the vaccine or finish the course. The survey interviewed both English and Spanish speakers.
Result: English-speaking parents expressed concerns over the need and safety of the vaccine, while Spanish-speaking parents said health care providers…
Hank |
When you think about science leadership, you don't often think about United Arab Emirates. Dictatorships don't lend themselves to quality basic research but when they put their minds to applied research and development, and a lot of money, good things can happen.
While environmental activists wish we were a little more dictatorship-oriented when it comes to banning cars, like the Chinese did before the Olympics (for everyone but elites, anyway), plenty of scientists might like to have a more dictatorial, mission-based approach to research in the US, like we had with the Manhattan Project and…
How bad is the funding landscape for scientific research in the US? Bad enough that a research project can be good enough to win the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, but not good enough to get funding from the NIH (National Institutes of Health). The dearth of government support for science has been a source of dark gallows humor among young scientists for quite a while, but the fact that there is not enough funding to support even Nobel-worthy research solidly drives home the magnitude of the dilemma.Prize details
Funding stats
Young scientists - "Could revolutionize", "…
The regions of the U.S. that have doctors and hospitals consolidated into large networks are more likely to have accountable care organizations - medical practice structures that seek to improve medical care and reduce costs - according to a new RAND Corporation paper written to bolster support for the federal Affordable Care Act.
Consolidation and accelerating growth of large accountable care organizations are a key cost control strategy for Obamacare.
Accountable care organizations are networks of health care providers - doctors, hospitals, insurance companies - that receive…
James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas Südhof have been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work on how the cell organizes its transport system.
Disturbances in the control system for the transport and delivery of cellular molecules contribute to conditions such as neurological diseases, diabetes, and immunological disorders. The three US researchers received the award for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells.
Rothman is currently Professor and Chairman in the Department of Cell Biology. Schekman is…
Hank |
Speculation is rampant that the discovery of the Higgs boson will get a Nobel prize.
We'll see. The modern Nobel committee is usually pretty astute and they don't seem to give out awards based on popularity polls or being the anti-George Bush, like the Peace Prize does. That wasn't always the case. As I noted in Do You Look Younger Than Your Ancestors? It's Because Time Really Has Slowed Down, the 1912 committee settled the issue of who should get the Nobel for special relativity, Einstein or Lorentz and Einstein together, by instead awarding it to Nils Gustaf Dalen for the "invention of…