During the Obama administration, he was concerned about vaccines causing autism and it showed when it came to guidance about swine flu vaccines. His administration banned multi-use vials because of his party's insistence that preservatives caused the disorder.
Some recent poll results show that right wing people in America have widened the gap of evolution acceptance. Generally, only a few points on this issue have separated the parties but if you know your framing of the last decade, you know that meant it's been okay for Democrats to say Republicans are 'more' in denial of science. This latest Pew survey (1,983 adults, +/- 3 percent at a 95% confidence interval, weighted results) shows the acceptance gap has widened in numerous demographics - but if you do a search about these results you will find people are only talking about the stupidity of the political party they happen not to be.
When it was fashionable to do so, Germany claimed they were scuttling their nuclear power plants. Their energy companies, bolstered by billions of Euros in government subsidies, rushed to replace nuclear energy with solar and other alternative energy schemes.But the projected increases in efficiencies never came to pass - companies that rely on subsidies are not in any rush to make technology better. And Germany has seen the US send its CO2 emissions from the energy sector drop back to early 1990s levels, and from dirty coal back to early 1980s levels, using natural gas - so now policymakers have decided they want to be a part of it.
Comic book heroes get into all kinds of crazy situations, everything from alien invaders to losing their powers. Most often, though, might simply makes right - but what happens when the thing you are fighting gets stronger from being hit? How do you defeat something like that?It actually happened in "The Mighty Thor" #140 from 1967.Comics were a lot different in 1967; fantastic, supernatural events were routine plot devices, but even then Marvel was the more 'scientific' of the two large superhero comics companies. Marvel loved genetic mutations and scientists were often heroes or villains but decades ago the resolution of the plot was going to be fast and likely something of a letdown.
There's no greater feel-good fallacy than the belief that organic food is somehow superior to conventionally farmed food. In reality, organic food isn't more environmentally responsible, it is worse, it isn't better for your health, it is worse and, for the most part, it isn't even grown by small farmers, it is giant conglomerates who, like with gluten-free, fat-free or any other food fad, encourage proponents and the mythology of health benefits because they can charge more money.
President Obama called it a 'Sputnik Moment' and, when you weren't wondering why a guy who is against war uses a lot of military terminology and invokes Ronald Reagan(1), you may have still wondered what his summoning of the military-industrial complex of the 1950s that his core constituency hates and ridicules had to do with science education.
http://www.sciencecodex.com/children_allergic_to_eggs_can_benefit_from_… have increased a lot in the last generation and it's unclear why. Some people claim they can taste GMOs and have an allergic reaction to those while some contend there is a special white, American, middle-class gene that has made their children sensitive to wheat.
The biggest surprise I got after starting Science 2.0 and getting to know scientists in a number of fields was that the private sector did no basic research.This was a surprise to [ insert link text here ] me, since at previous companies we did a whole lot of basic research and a little company called Bell Labs was kind of famous for it. Of course, the whole assertion was silly, no matter how many times I heard it. And I did hear it a lot, so much that it became like a mantra, and with it was the implied belief that corporate science was mercenary and 'for sale' while university science was more pure.
If you hear someone outside science disparage the word 'consensus', they are talking about climate science - and the reference is not positive. 'Consensus' means a general agreement, of course, but to outsiders out to slam climate scientists, they think it means 'voting', in the best instance, and, in the worst it might mean that awful United Nations method of 'splitting the difference', which takes moral relativism to new heights and declares no one is right so everyone should be equally unhappy. In science, neither is true. No matter what you might think about the behavior or credibility of an individual scientist, no one has the kind of power to mandate their conclusions.
The 3,000-kilometer-long Transantarctic Mountains are a dominant feature of the Antarctic continent, yet up to now scientists have been unable to adequately explain how they formed. In a new study, geologists report that the mountains appear to be the remnant edge of a gigantic high plateau that began stretching and thinning some 105 million years ago, leaving the peaks curving along the edge of a great plain.
There are examples of positive political campaigns - Ronald Reagan appealed to what America could be, for example - but even that message of hope had an undercurrent of fear, namely that if things did not change, America would stay morassed in 1970s stagflation.
Fear is still used in political campaigns to steer public opinion, but a political scientist claims not everyone is equally predisposed to be influenced by that strategy. Who is most genetically predisposed to be swayed by fear? Well, it is a humanities study done by someone with no science training, so take a guess. Answer farther done if you can't connect the cultural dots.
Global warming has been hopelessly politicized since a Kyoto Treaty was jammed through over objections and then basically ignored by everyone. A science basis for American cars causing global warming but Chinese cars being exempt from pollution numbers did not exist and the dates for the Kyoto targets far too conveniently matched easy dates for two European countries(1) while penalizing everyone else.
