Science & Society
Poverty and under-education dampen contraception use in Nepal but another factor may be more intractable: Deeply held cultural preferences for sons over daughters.
The cross-sectional study was based on data from the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, which found that only one in five married adolescent and young women used modern contraception. Rates were lowest among women who resided in rural areas, lacked education or social status, were married as minors or had no sons.
Researchers found that geography (urban versus rural), age and levels of education, wealth and social status all…
As Roman Catholics cardinals conclave to pick a new Pope, they should be thinking about a problem that is becoming more apparent - in the developed world, all organized religion continues to decline.
Religious affiliation in the US only began to be tracked in the 1930s but newly released survey data shows the curve continuing to go down. Last year, 20 percent of Americans claimed they had no religious preference, more than double the number reported in 1990. It doesn't mean they are atheists, that is 3% of the public, but that they do not subscribe to an organized religion. 'Spiritual' is the…
People with more money may live longer, if not better, than poor people but attempts to link high socioeconomic status to better health and lower mortality have been ineffective because it's unclear whether the association has more to do with access to resources or the glow of high social status relative to others. Scholars call the latter "relative deprivation."
Sociologists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health studied Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, Emmy Award winners, and former Presidents and Vice Presidents, comparing each to nominated losers in the same competition…
Scientists met this week in New York to discuss recent scientific evidence regarding abortion as a form of growing violence against women and girls. Indiscriminate practice of abortion is correlated with coercion, a history of sexual abuse, violence during pregnancy, intimate partner violence and with psychological consequences that may lead to suicide.
The scientific evidence was discussed in the meeting "Public Policies to reduce maternal mortality, a holistic focus on maternal health" by Doctors Monique Chireau, Donna Harrison, Eoghan de Faoite and Elard Koch in parallel to the 57th…
I recently read an opinion piece that suggests that concerns about human population growth are grossly overstated and that nothing of consequence is going to occur.
Consequently, no serious demographer believes that human population growth resembles cancer or the plague. On the contrary, the United Nations projects a global population of 9.3 billion by 2050 and 10.1 billion by 2100. In other words, it will take about 40 years to add 2 billion people, but 50 years to add 1 billion after that. After world population peaks, it is quite possible that it will stop growing altogether and might even…
Hank |
On TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin, yesterday's topic was "The Anti-Science Left" and it starts off with a quote from my book with Dr. Alex Berezow, called "Science Left Behind", about the feel-good fallacies that anti-science progressives (and science media pundits who have to defend their political positions) use in order to claim to be on Team Science...but in reality are engaged in the scientization of politics.
It starts off with super-skeptic (and guest columnist here) Michael Shermer, who does what a skeptic does; he sees anti-science where it is and doesn't buy into claims that…
Hank |
As American culture becomes more polarized, with various constituencies aligning themselves on left-right graphs, religious groups are not going to win with a subset of people, even among rational scientists who should be immune from motivated reasoning. If the Catholic church wants to hold a conference on stem cells but doesn't include the controversial and, to-date, wildly overhyped human embryonic stem cell research among its discussions of adult and induced pluripotent stem cell breakthroughs, it's all yelling about Galileo and bans and general political theater on blogs only read by…
In January of 2012, the United States Department of Agriculture passed a series of regulations designed to make school lunches more nutritious, which included requiring schools to increase whole grain foods and forcing students to select either a fruit or vegetable with their purchased lunch.
This led to athletes and other students to claim they were not getting enough calories and complaints from advocates for poor children that, since it is the best meal some children might get during the day, it should not be focused on social engineering. Trash cans filled with fruit didn't help…
Hank |
Because I signed a petition asking for increased open access of studies, I got an email from White House Science Czar Dr. John Holdren today - don't get excited, after all of the mean things I have said about him he is not suddenly writing me personally, it was a mass email - saying they had 'listened' and were making some changes, a letter we all knew was coming.
It reads, in part:
"To that end, I have issued a memorandum today (.pdf) to Federal agencies that directs those with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results…
Hank |
Meg Urry was on the senior scientific staff at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which runs the Hubble Space Telescope for NASA. That's no surprise to people outside the government-funded research world, women have been doing quality science work forever - heck, Marie Curie got two Nobel prizes and she was living in France at the beginning of the 20th century, you don't get more misogynistic and biased than what she had to endure.
Yet it may be a surprise for you to learn that in 2001 Urry became the first tenured female faculty member ever in Yale's physics department, and…