Harvard Humanities Academic Francesca Gino has filed a defamation lawsuit against her employer, Harvard University, and three bloggers on the site Data Colada.Humanities academics and social scientists love to wrap themselves in the flag of culture and claim it is sexism if, for example, no evidence shows that standing with arms extended for two minutes will cause a woman to “embody power and instantly become more powerful.” The people who debunked the methodology were overwhelmingly men while social psychology itself is overwhelmingly women.
When the SpaceX Starship self-destruct system exploded it over the Gulf of Mexico in April, it's easy to imagine that Center for Biological Diversity and other predatory law groups were giddy - they had a new reason to sue someone and collect a settlement check.That time has finally arrived, they can start counting yacht payments.Because environmental groups have mastered 'sue and settle' agreements with prearranged outcomes, and with the Biden administration in a panic about losing the election in 2024, environmental groups know government agencies won't be allowed to alienate anyone in the tribe.
If your child is allergic to milk, flavored plant juice alternatives like rice and soy, when fortified, can fill in some gaps, but outside necessity, they are not nutritionally equal to dairy, no matter what marketing departments claim.Once upon a time, the US government protected consumers with Standards of Identity, they sued a cheese company for putting how much milk was in a slice of its cheese because of even the inference it had as much calcium as milk. No more. Squeeze any plant and add some vanilla flavor and you can call it milk and Washington, DC does not think that is deceptive.
Predatory lawyers love trials by jury because they are almost certain to win. It won't help their clients much. There are some instances where they do get some money. The so-called "Erin Brockovich case" led to a settlement even though the company could easily show that the water was not harmful. Yet nearly three decades later the people who say their stories won the case lament they didn't receive much.Meanwhile, one of the attorneys from the winning side is in jail for fraud.
The US FDA has approved Opill (norgestrel) for oral contraception as an OTC product, the first daily oral contraceptive approved for use without a prescription. That means as soon as the company can get it in drug stores, convenience stores, grocery stores, and online, they will.According to surveys, half of pregnancies each year are unwanted, but in the modern health care system it can be difficult to get an appointment for a prescription, so this will make contraception readily available without waiting months. Norgestrel is well-established, it has been available for prescription use since 1973, so the company just had to show consumers would use it without as doctor telling them what was on the label.
A new paper suggests that Spotify is creating a de facto slave labor market, e.g. how England had residents of cities like Manchester working for basically nothing in the early 1800s so they could ban actual slavery.
Environmental Working Group's annual organic food public relations piece, its 'Dirty Dozen' list, is out, and blueberries are the new target for their clients.EWG produces the Dirty Dozen list by looking at USDA data on pesticides and suggesting detection of a pesticide will give you cancer.Forget their non-existent command of science, this annual fraud is egregious because they don't list the pesticides used by their clients. Organic pesticides, which can be up to 600 percent higher than conventional, are not included. If they were, the entire Dirty Dozen list would be organic produce.
If are in the humanities and want to win a case of wine in the future, bet against someone in the information theory space. Neither of you can ever really be correct but the one with at least the pretense of the scientific method will have to admit they have fallen prey to someone like a post-modernist, who can never be wrong. On anything. Ever. Because truth is just a cultural reflex and can't be grounded epidemiologically.That is what happened to Christof Koch, PhD, when he was young enough to believe he was in a science field and that the Truth Is Out There. Some 25 years he argued in a debate with David Chalmers that by 2023 the 'mechanism' in neurons that produce consciousness would be found.
In 2012's "Science Left Behind", I noted a claim by a politician opposed to natural gas - after environmentalists had previously lobbied for it (see also: ethanol, hydroelectric) - who stated that extracting it was causing earth to deflate.It wasn't the craziest thing in the book, that more soldiers on Guam would cause the island to flip over or that organic food used no pesticides would also have to be in the running, but people who believe it are going to believe it, just like media outlets touting a claim that we are pumping so much groundwater that we are moving the planet off its axis.
Do you know someone who once got their child an autism diagnosis, mostly so they could do things like skip the line at Disney World? How about a medical exemption so they could go to school without an MMR vaccine?If so, you probably live in a place like California or New York City. Rich people often stay rich by exploiting loopholes so they don't have to spend money. They are even happy to lose weight as long as the rest of us pay higher health insurance premiums - much the way they have gotten poor people to pay for their solar power subsidies.
