Confirmation bias prevents academia from giving Republicans a fair shake (global warming deniers!) but more objective people will scratch their heads wondering how a majority party that supposedly dislikes science drafts spending bills that increase funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Institute of Standards (NIST) and Technology and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

In the 1960s Cold War paranoia led to the discovery of the most violent explosions in the Universe, which once again goes to show you the military accomplishes more good than academics think it does - at least those humanities people, anyway.

At the height of the Cold War the U.S. was concerned about the possibility of covert Soviet nuclear tests so they sent up a series of satellites to look for tell-tale flashes of radiation. These satellites began seeing something strange; flashes, but they were signals of astronomical origin. After decades of debate, it was shown that these were caused by the explosion of the most massive stars. 

I have said too many times to count we should not be subsidizing failed, inefficient technology like solar cells.  As with the ethanol fetish of the 2000s, solar energy has been spearheaded by a government leader who surrounded himself with scientific true believers rather than objective scientists who would look critically at claims. The billions wasted on keeping inefficient technology afloat could instead have been spent on basic research that might actually get us real solar technology.

This isn't limited to psychology but it was written about psychology studies so that goes in the title. It certainly can apply to almost any study dealing with people.

Razib Khan at Discover highlights a Psychological Science paper(1) by Simmons and Simonsohn of Penn and Nelson of Berkeley that outlines ways to institute more rigor in studies.  They write:

There is no evidence that Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel had faked any data for his Ph.D. work, just evidence he had faked a whole lot since.  Still, a panel recommended The University of Amsterdam look into his work and perhaps revoke his doctorate "on the grounds of exceptional academically unworthy conduct."

Only government could come up with this ingenious plan: President Obama’s Agriculture Department has announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of... Christmas trees.

Yes, that's right, if you buy a Christmas tree you are apparently still unconvinced how awesome they are so the government must tax you, waste half just by being government, then spend the other half wastefully marketing Christmas trees to everyone.

California is a jumble of progressive confusion.  People like to pay $15 a dozen for organic, free range chicken eggs and subsidize solar energy, for example, but a clothesline - the most emissions free way to dry clothes ever, invented by ancient man - is illegal in most neighborhoods, and someone making homemade bread and selling it, a practice that got a lot of families through the Great Depression, is in violation of various laws.

Apparently only Big Organic is allowed to sell delicious foods where the chain of custody is well known by the creator and the consumer.

Real combat is scary but for helicopter pilots it just got a little more like a video game. 

The latest version of the Army’s attack helicopter, the AH-64D Longbow Apache Block III, will have the usual enhancements everyone expects to see -  fly faster and higher, etc. - but will also have something really interesting; Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) control, which means the pilot can now control the flight path, weapons systems and sensors on a drone.  That's multiple eyes and attackers from one crew.  Currently Apache crews coordinate with drone operators via radio.

It takes a little bit of madness to work in the Smithsonian's Migratory Bird Center at the National Zoo. Dr. Nico Dauphine has it in spades.

Like often happens with zealots, love began to turn into hate.  And so cats must be dead.  Didn't she ever hear of the circle of life? While she was at the bird center, she was studying how domestic cats affect wildlife but she apparently got into home experimentation as well; she was busted putting rat poison into a bowl of cat food outside an apartment complex last March.