Science & Society

Game Of Throats: Is Scotch Still King Of Whisky?

It’s been a disappointing couple of weeks for the Scotch whisky industry. Diageo reported that it is delaying plans on a £1 billion new-build distillery just north of Inverness following a slow-down in the company’s key whisky markets, particularly Latin ...

Article - The Conversation - Oct 30 2019 - 9:29pm

The LA Times On Ghosts, Aliens And Why Paranormal Belief Is Good For Us

I’m used to some American media outlets shamelessly feeding crap to the public. Think Fox so-called News, for instance. But the Los Angeles Times? That’s supposed to be one of the most highly respectable papers in the country, on par with the New York Tim ...

Article - Massimo Pigliucci - Oct 31 2019 - 2:16pm

Our Population Is NOT Headed For Accelerating Collapse In Next 20 Years- Elon Musk And Jack Ma Are Not Population Experts

This is a story running in the news, even on the BBC website, which is scaring a few people. There isn't any prediction of an accelerating population collapse. Indeed our population is increasing and is expected to level off some time between 2050 an ...

Article - Robert Walker - Nov 2 2019 - 4:54pm

CDC: Autism Jumped 30 Percent Since 2012- What It Really Means

America has seen a 30 percent rise in autism since the last estimate in 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control. That's a big jump, an epidemic even. Mainstream media is going to have a field day and everyone will be looking for ways to dem ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Nov 4 2019 - 11:38am

Pre-Registration, Data Sharing, And Registered Reports Are How The Science Community Can Reduce Shoddy Research

Last month, Indonesia’s previous Minister of Research and Technology boasted that in 2019, Indonesia had overtaken Malaysia and Singapore in the number of published academic articles. ...

Article - The Conversation - Nov 7 2019 - 4:00am

Government Is The Sugar Daddy Of Science, Not The Epsteins Of The World

Writers are going to find a way to make their work topical. The most important article I ever wrote (in my estimation), in the Wall Street Journal, came out about five weeks after I wrote it, and with a different lede. The news cycle had kept pushing it ba ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Nov 7 2019 - 11:50am

Grouping Staff And Company Floor Plans: Elite Co-Workers Up Everyone's Game, But Toxic Ones Kill Productivity

Scholars analyzing the performance at a large technology firm examined the productivity in a 25-foot radius around their best performers and found that these workers did inspire better performance in coworkers- by 15 percent. Poor workers impacted their ne ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 11 2019 - 10:15am

Crime Lab Report- New Book Calls For Expert Witnesses To Work Directly For Judges

Forensic science does not prove guilt or innocence. It never has and it never will. The next time you hear about DNA evidence, for example, proving the guilt or innocence of a suspect in a violent crime, rest assured that you are being misinformed. In cour ...

Article - John M. Collins - Nov 18 2019 - 6:39pm

Manufacture Of Consent: Why Democracy Has A Major Mass-Media Problem

Before Chomsky, there was Lippmann: the First World War and ‘manufactured consent.’ While the ‘manufacture of consent’ is an idea now mostly associated with Noam Chomsky, the phrase was actually coined by the US journalist and writer Walter Lippman in his ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 21 2019 - 7:25pm

This Holiday, Give Thanks For Affordable Food- And The Farmers Who Only Get 8 Cents Of Every Dollar For Making It

You know you are in a wealthy country when there are articles about how people are depressed if they can't get a $2,000 Macbook, young people can talk about how bored they are, and poor families live in more square footage than the middle class in Fra ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Nov 22 2019 - 5:01am