If you have talked with a left-wing person who is against food science, vaccines or energy, or a right-wing person who is against climate science or evolution, you may have thought they learned just enough science to be wrong. They seem to bookmark talking points that affirm their confirmation bias and just rehash them over and over.But in business, the saying goes that the best way to learn about the flaws of your product is to find out what competitors say about it. So skeptical claims have some value, they tell scientists what weaknesses in context are involved in their results discussions.

Recently, it was claimed that all of the big questions in science had been answered and it was now just about filling in the details.It isn't the first time the concept has taken hold; Lord Kelvin said the same thing about physics and then a few years later a young man named Einstein turned the world upside down: General relativity was special, special relativity was general and we found out that gravity doesn't work the way it should for the very large and the very small, and those concepts are the engine of physics today.But what about science overall? 

Sorry sociologists, playing Everquest is not science. And OK Cupid knows everything they need to know about their audience, that is what they do, so you spending NSF money to sift through some data and making weak observational claims isn't really a valid use of research funding.

Every parent has an idea of where there child is on a normal growth chart. It's an easy barometer for knowing if there are developmental problems because so much about normal range of height, weight, and head circumference across age is known for kids.Is a similar tool for cognitive and emotional development or for the development of select brain pathways on the horizon?

Since its discovery in the early 1990s, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast has become the mainstay of human brain imaging. Today, the BOLD fMRI) signal is a widely-accepted marker of brain activity. 

A journal that published papers on something called 'ethical leadership' wouldn't seem to need any strong evidence basis, just a lot of surveys and weak observational claims with pretty words attached, so if it gets so many complaints it retracts five of your papers, you must really be out there.Fred O. Walumbwa of the College of Business at Florida International University seems to be that guy. He is the common denominator in articles on the "impact of spiritual leadership on unit performance", "the mediating role of follower positivity in extreme contexts", "employee citizenship" and more.

Modern environmentalism is more about promoting distrust and fear than it is protecting the environment. Even when it comes to something basic like Golden Rice, activist groups take the demonize and ban approach. They hate science more than they love children.In the apolitical segment of science media - yes, it exists, albeit smaller than its corporate face leads people to believe - the running joke is that the only science environmentalists accept is climate change, and only then because it feeds into their Doomsday narrative and says that humanity stinks.

We have noted in the past that smart kids are often sacrificed first on the altar of politics, funding and social engineering. The claim is that 'they are smart, they will succeed anyway'. Which is like saying Olympic athletes will be fine without training.Regardless, when politicians want to put on a show, they cut firefighters and special needs budgets for schools and blame the public for not wanting a tax increase. But gifted programs are whacked for all kinds of crazy reasons, even when budgets are fine.

During the last few years, if you had a renewable energy idea, Germany embraced it. They already have a lot of protests about science - food, cell phones - and the time was right to say goodbye to nuclear protests as well.So they trotted out "studies" showing a 20 percent return on wind power and solar and said those businesses just needed a boost in the short term. And people bought the hype. Writing in Spiegel, Anne Seith and Gerald Trauffetter outline the fall of Prokon, which had promised investors a 6 percent return (or your money back!) on green energy. $2 billion and a bankruptcy later and 75,000 investors who believed they were investing in the future are out in the cold.

Biofuels. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. What was once a darling of the green energy contingent has now been shown to be another bust by the 'if we mandate it, capitalism will love it and make it better' hope-over-reality segment of activism.