Environmentalists, What Are You Asking From Dedmoroz Lenin For Earth Day This Year?

Tomorrow is Earth Day. It is also Lenin's birthday. That's not coincidence. The leader of...

How Ancel Keys Went From MAHA Hero To MAHA Villain

If a lot of the food and health claims you read and hear today seem like things left over from...

Are Baseball Pitchers Faster Today?

On September 7, 1974, pitching for the California Angels, Nolan Ryan, known for his velocity, became...

Ground-Nesting Bee Populations Don't Get Publicity But They're Everywhere

Honeybees get attention in environmental fundraising campaigns because people don't understand...

Hank Campbell

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

The Wacky Wonderful World Of Alicia Silverstone Science

Apr 29 2014 | comment(s)

I can be lazy. I was famous for it as a child. I didn't bother to walk, I didn't bother to talk. When I got older, if I had to do a chore, I found a way to be a screw-up and break something. I had unlimited time for D&D and art and sports, though, and I did well enough in school to get a scholarship to college. Because those things weren't work.

If only I had Alicia Silverstone as a mom, who knows how much more brain power I could have devoted to higher pursuits? Because Silverstone has figured out how to optimize everything.

Raw Milk Is Not A Libertarian Issue - And Republicans Should Not Make It A GOP One

Apr 24 2014 | comment(s)

In American politics there is a comfortable détente about which science craziness to allow under the big tents - Republicans are okay if their members won't accept evidence of climate science or evolution while Democrats are fine if their voters don't accept the science behind food, energy and medicine.

Kepler - Young Earth Creationist

Apr 24 2014 | comment(s)

In the latest episode of Cosmos we got some history regarding how science has tried to converge on the age of the Earth. With that, we also got another jab at religion. Why use yet another religious contrast from hundreds of years ago to show the awesome power of science now? Is there so little actual imagination in their Ship Of The Imagination?(1)

Just like with the age of the Earth, it's hard to know for sure, we only know there is a range of choices and can narrow it down as we get more data.

Despite Guns, We Are Not More Violent Than Our Ancestors

Apr 23 2014 | comment(s)

If some drug-addled sociopath shoots up a movie theater or an elementary school, there is lots of speculation about the cause. In frustration and helplessness, people search for a magic bullet - things they can ban - to keep it from ever happening again.

In European countries, at least the ones where guns are banned, and in some parts of America, guns are that magic bullet.

Actual statistics don't bear out that guns are the safety issue. Scotland, England and Wales lead the civilized world in violent crime, they just have fewer murders using guns, and people are unable to protect themselves so fewer criminals get shot. Guns are banned in Italy but it would be laughable to say there is no gun violence there.

There Are Two Reasons You Got Unfriended On Facebook

Apr 23 2014 | comment(s)

20 years ago, your parents knew there were two things you did not discuss with dinner guests. Your grandparents knew it, your great-grandparents knew it. 2,000 years ago people knew it.

In 2014, we are so much smarter we no longer know it.

Maybe some surveys will help. And so to help us out, two papers address the most pressing topic in popular culture - how people feel about being un-friended on Facebook. Ironically, they found this out by surveying people on Twitter.

The Supreme Court Undermines Racial Preferences For College Admissions

Apr 22 2014 | comment(s)

In Science Left Behind I wrote a segment about a national discrimination issue that was eroding not only science, but the very notion of fairness in our culture.

No, it wasn't the lack of Republicans in faculty jobs at universities. It was instead that, for decades, schools had been using skin color to routinely impede the chances for the best students to get admitted. They were using racial profiling to skew who got to attend.

This wasn't 1950s Alabama, it was - and is - mainstream academia from the 1970s on.