In 1888, someone killed five prostitutes in London's Whitechapel district and came to be called "Jack The Ripper" - since then, everyone from Sherlock Holmes to officers on "Star Trek" have weighed in on who the killer might be.  The suspects are a Who's Who of people from the period because, apparently, it could just not have been some crazy, unknown sociopath, it had to be a member of Parliament or a famous writer.

It's always a little irksome to see or hear 'X causes Y% of cancer' because, really, it is the kind of culturally partisan gibberish that has made it possible for disreputable genetics testing companies to make all kinds of ridiculous claims.  

Yes, you are more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke than if you don't, but lots of people get lung cancer who do not smoke and were never asbestos workers.

Writing on Discover, science journalist Ed Yong makes sense of those population attributable fractions (PAFs) - like what percentage of cases of a disease would be avoided if a risk factor was avoided. 

Smug supposedly 'pro-science' people who seem to embrace science primarily to ridicule religious people don't have all that much science understanding.  Instead, they believe science, including evolution.  Most of them know very little about adaptive radiation or any mechanism of evolution.

Fundamentalism does not just happen among religious types. But most people are not fundamentalists for or against anything, we accept science because a world made up of natural laws makes more sense than one made up of arbitrary (and conflicting) supernatural ones.

A surprising number of scientists defy the 'liberal' stereotype and are more libertarian than they are given credit for (including by conservatives and liberals) - no surprise there, liberal and libertarian derive from the same root word for freedom and freedom is essential to quality science.

Writing on PolicyMic.com, Cameron English interviews RealClearScience editor Dr. Alex Berezow, who argues that scientists and Ron Paul have a lot in common.  Not a shock, Paul had a good showing among academics.  

The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Wyoming Outdoor Council, Sierra Club and the Oil and Gas Accountability Project commissioned hydrologist Dr. Tom Myers to review the EPA’s draft statement on well contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming, and are submitting his work to the EPA as technical comments. 

The EPA draft is available for public comment through October 2012 and then the data and conclusions will undergo the peer-review process with a panel of independent scientists.

On June 5th and 6th, you will be able to witness a true once-in-a-lifetime event. Venus will pass across the face of the Sun - for about six hours, it will appear as a small black dot on the Sun's surface. It won't happen again until 2117.

Transits of Venus occur only when Venus and the Earth are in a line with the Sun. At other times Venus passes below or above the Sun because the two orbits are at a slight angle to each other. Transits occur in pairs separated by eight years (the last transit was in 2004) with the gap between pairs of transits alternating between 105.5 and 121.5 years.

France is not exactly known for being pro-science (nor is Europe generally) but when it comes to autism, they are decidedly anti-science.

For decades, France has turned its back on the latest scientific thinking and treats autism as a form of psychosis. Instead of using behavioral therapy (developed in the 1970s and '80s in the US and Canada and now the norm in most of the world) to treat autistic children, stimulating and rewarding them to develop the skills they need to function in society, France puts its faith in psychoanalysis. Freud would be proud but most of the world is shocked.

I've talked tangentially about a new book by Chris Mooney called The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science -- and Reality, but only because of specific studies he used in doing op-eds to promote the book.  

For centuries, women have been reporting engorgement of the upper, anterior part of the vagina during the stage of sexual excitement - but it took an 83-year-old cadaver to prove the existence of a G-spot.

That's right, I said 83-year-old cadaver.  If you expected something sexier by that title, you can stop reading now.