Government officials often are criticized for “politicizing science” by interfering with scientists’ work in order to advance a political cause. The use and abuse of science has been a recurring theme at Miller-McCune, with examinations of the science policies of both the last Bush and current Obama administrations put under the microscope. And earlier this year, Loyola Law School’s Robert Benson castigated the GOP for what he termed its “anti-science mania.” But David Goldston also warns against “scientization of politics” — portraying all government decisions as ... Read More
Researchers Re-Open Their Minds to Psychedelic Drugs
May 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Mike is hunched over a pile of soggy wood chips at the bottom of a glade in Golden Gate Park. It's a clear winter afternoon and sunlight filters through the eucalyptus trees, landing on grass still damp from a recent storm. Mike sifts through the wood chips, slowly and deliberately examining the soil beneath. Two paper bags fill a pocket of his Patagonia fleece jacket. Mike is a 28-year-old engineer at a prominent software company in San Francisco. He is soft-spoken and self-possessed; on weekends he drives his Subaru Forester to his time-share in Tahoe to ski. He donates to public radio, ... Read More
New Dinosaur Gets a Rather Large Name
April 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
A new dinosaur discovered in Utah has been named Brontomerus mcintoshi. Now, we have no quarrel at all with the species name, mcintoshi, because it was chosen in honor of John "Jack" McIntosh, who is described as "a retired physicist at Wesleyan University, Conn., and lifelong avocational paleontologist." But guess what Brontomerus translates into? You guessed it: "Thunder Thighs." "Brontomerus mcintoshi is a charismatic dinosaur and an exciting discovery for us," said the project's lead author Mike Taylor, a researcher in the department of earth sciences at University College London, in ... Read More
Petroleum Engineering Shows U.S. Students’ Hidden Prowess
April 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
What Americans pay for gasoline gets lots of attention, but the price at the pump is only one oil industry indicator that has been rising lately. The starting salaries of bachelor's degree-holding petroleum engineers are also at historic highs. This other price spike has gotten almost no coverage even though labor market experts believe it seriously undermines the prevailing narrative about America's technical workforce. That narrative asserts that the nation has a shortage of scientists and engineers caused by inadequate school systems that can't produce enough excellent math, engineering ... Read More
Bedbugs Have Evolved to Live With Mankind
March 24, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
"Bedbugs sure is evil, they don't mean me no good. Yeah, bedbug sure is evil, they don't mean me no good. Thinks he's a woodpecker and I'm a chunk of wood.” — Bessie Smith ("Mean Old Bedbug Blues") Bedbugs are small and sneaky. Bedbugs do nasty things. Bedbugs are also becoming more common, a trend likely to expand and worsen this spring. But none of this is new, not really. The story of the bedbugs in our lives begins no less than 4,000 years ago. It is a kind of parable about the difference between what we want and what we make. We wanted a realm inside our houses, where we would ... Read More
Wording Change Softens Global Warming Skeptics
March 2, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Are you convinced climate change is real? What about global warming? Yes, that second question is redundant. But new research finds the two labels, which are widely used interchangeably, evoke remarkably different responses among self-described Republicans. Writing in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly, a research team led by University of Michigan psychologist Jonathon Schuldt reports Republicans are far more skeptical of “global warming” than of “climate change.” In an experiment conducted as part of a large survey, the researchers found 44 percent of Republicans endorsed the ... Read More
Ray Allen Scores in the Nature-Nurture Debate
February 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Michael Jordan is the greatest player in NBA history. You see his image everywhere, eight years after he retired. He even graces the pages of the introductory psychology textbook that I use — but not because of his outlandish skills. Midway through his career, Jordan decided to switch sports and try his hand at major league baseball. Although he clearly had substantial baseball skills, he wasn't ready for the big leagues, so his foray was considered a failure. Then he switched back and resumed his reign as the king of basketball. The lesson of Jordan's career in sports is that talent ... Read More
Science Leaches Out of Science Class
February 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama urged Americans to “win the future” through a new dedication to the science and technology education that could help the United States “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” He conjured an America where today’s fifth-graders could become the globe’s go-to experts in solar engineering, high-speed rail design and supercomputer construction. But in a sign of the distance between that universe and the one Americans really live in, it turns out many public school students aren’t even properly ... Read More
Inventor of Plastic Solar Cells Sees Bright Future
January 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
In 1974, future Nobel laureates Alan Heeger, Alan MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa discovered a new type of plastic — conjugated conducting polymers. "This polymer was a completely new type that acted more like a metal than like other plastics as it was an excellent conductor of electricity," recalled Niyazi Serdar Sariciftci, who started working with the polymers as a doctoral student at the University of Vienna in the mid-1980s. "It became quite the rage and elicited great interest due to its unique behavior." Drawing on that breakthrough, Sariciftci would create the plastic solar ... Read More
