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Physician Burnout Is Common - And Informal Rationing Is One Big Cause

If the government promises every home a great gardener, most people recognize they won't get a...

Cancel Culture Prevents The Best Researchers From Engaging With The Food Industry

After Chris Wild took over the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a UN-funded...

Vermont Should Stop Showing Leadership In Overruling Scientists On Farming

Despite Vermont's Agricultural  Innovation Board (AIB), created to inform regulatory recommendations...

Evolutionary Psychology: Your Parents Income During Pregnancy Made You Gay

Evolutionary psychology, the discipline that claimed we're being manipulated by flowers and evolved...

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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

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 »

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In a modern culture that promotes releasing the Id to do as it pleases (but then over-regulating what it can have access too, so no cigarettes, video games or trans-fats) fasting is out of place.  Yet people still do it, to the frustration of neo-rationalists and atheist zealots, who note with condescension that it has as little impact on behavior as wearing a football jersey has on the outcome of the Super Bowl.

They're right. About the Super Bowl anyway. 
Being in science media for any length of time, you will discover what Martin Robbins, a self-proclaimed liberal, called The Big White Elephant In The Room - partisan framing of science issues through a cultural and political world view.  He referred to it as liberal bias, and he is a liberal, but not a self-loathing kind.  He doesn't recognize it is not liberal bias that is the problem, it is progressives.  Liberals can write articles talking about The Big White Elephant In The Room and worry that the lack of diversity in science media and science academia is harmful to those endeavors.
In the midst of CNN's non-stop coverage of a deceased singer whose biggest career hit was a cover of a Dolly Parton song, there may be a ray of rational sunlight shining down on a person worthy of our time; an accomplished military veteran, test pilot, Mercury astronaut and Senator named John Glenn.  50 years ago the 40-year-old Marine lieutenant sat atop a building-sized rocket stuffed with solid propellant and left the confines of Earth - backwards.
Despite claims by some of the more aggressive groups who attack science academia, women do not face a 'hostile' work environment because in some fields they are less than 50 percent or some other scientists are rude. Instead, they face a tough personal choice.

Getting tenure is hard.  The work load is tremendous.  More women than men tend to think it is not worth the effort and, if they have kids, that feeling becomes more so.  They are not rejecting science but they are opting for a higher quality of life.  Studies show that male scientists often wish they had made the same choice.
Good news for flapjack junkies.  For 15 hours on February 28th,  you can get some free pancakes at IHOP and raise some money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. It's National Pancake Day!
Samsung wants to give away a lot of money for STEM projects in local schools and we all probably agree that is a good thing.  But there is no such thing as a free lunch so they want to give it away to people who can mobilize the most people that care about science and kids.

Sutter Middle School in Folsom is one of those in the running so if you want to get more science and math to young people, let's give them a vote.

It isn't painless, you have to register an email address, but after that you can participate and...it's for the kids.