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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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What do science media and politics of 2013 share in common with 2006?

Anti-science beliefs among the public? Check.
Scientists willing to call them out? Check.
Scientists and science media noting the common political affiliation of anti-science offenders?  Not check.

The anti-GMO movement has far more representation on the left than the anti-hESC contingent ever had on the right. Ditto for evolution. Only global warming comes even close.


Social and evolutionary psychology studies get a large share of media attention despite being primarily based on surveys of psychology undergraduate students.

It was only a matter of time before others mimicked that process to add their own claims of scientific validity - and so Burger King has taken its war with McDonald's to a new level with a study finding that men who prefer grilled burgers are considered more attractive than men who like 'em fried.
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is distancing itself from the the American Psychiatric Association and its upcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

While they acknowledge that the goal of DSM "is to provide a common language for describing psychopathology" they are no longer convinced that approach has value if we are going to solve 21st century cognitive science problems.  It is, paraphrasing the statement  of Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, more of a dictionary than a manual.  He uses the term "Bible" instead of 'manual' but I would have used 'glossary' rather than 'dictionary'.

The Groningen Protocol, introduced in Holland in 2005, was devised to create a standard for doctors who had families that wanted to end the suffering of sick newborns for humanitarian reasons. It outlined parameters to help identify situations in which euthanasia is warranted and wouldn't land anyone in jail. 

With the popularity of dark matter and dark energy as blanket terms for 'this is weird and we don't understand it but we are studying it, ain't science awesome?' in physics, it was only a matter of time before it caught on elsewhere.

So we have dark lightning and the life sciences made sure they caught the wave, migrating non-coding DNA (factual = booooring) from the colloquially misunderstood blanket term 'junk DNA' to the cooler and edgier 21st century 'Dark Genome'.

In America, only two political parties can win the presidency. For that reason the two parties tend to have a 'big tent' mentality and embrace a lot of fringe members in return for votes. The perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good, the saying goes.

Due to that structure, and that a tiny percentage of 'swing voters' determine a winner, the opposing sides tend to vilify and stereotype each other as much as possible, including in ways that are tailored to the audience. For example, Democrats hate business and are anti-science, while Republicans hate minorities and are anti-science. 

Wait, they're both anti-science? Sure, just about different things.