Rutgers Study - Forcing DEI Programs On People Increases Hostility

If you have done nothing wrong, do you want to be treated like a criminal? That was always the...

Minnesota Trial Lawyers Want To Ban Neonics - Here Is Why That Is A Mistake

Minnesota is having a challenging year, so challenging they are approaching California as the wackiest...

The Toxic Masculinity Of Disney Movies

Once upon a time, stories were just stories. They were fantasies that took people to a new world...

AI And The Poetry Problem

Artificial Intelligence is artificial, but it is not intelligence. That could change some day but...

Hank Campbell

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 »

Want People To Embrace Science? Invoke The Bible

Jan 17 2011 | comment(s)

Among the more zealous atheists in the science community, religious people are one big jumble of intellectual immaturity, if not outright stupidity, bent on replacing science classes with the New Testament.(1)

Hey, that's nicer than what they say about Republicans.

But, whether you are religious or not, The Bible is likely part of your cultural lexicon. So whereas if kookier science pundits want to send a negative message, they compare all who disagree with them to Holocaust deniers (calling opponents Nazis is too cliché) because they can't bring themselves to use Biblical comparisons, moderate folks use liturgical imagery in more positive ways.

Genetically Modified 'Superchicken' Doesn't Spread Bird Flu

Jan 14 2011 | comment(s)

Avian influenza, bird flu, causes the unnecessary deaths of millions of chickens each year, preventing them from instead being killed for my dinner.

Luckily, science is on the case, though irrational left-wing anti-science types won't like the solution; breeding chickens resistant to it.

Obviously the meat and eggs from these chickens cannot in any conceivable way be different from any other egg but the same mentality that leads people to believe the world will end because of a Mayan calendar can allow people to believe these eggs can be different, so look for the usual protests.

The super chicken was created by researchers from Cambridge and Edinburgh.

The Rise Of Empires As Seen By Trees

Jan 14 2011 | comment(s)

In ancient times, when things went wrong in battle or the economy, people blamed leaders (if they didn't like them) or the Gods (if they liked the leaders) but maybe they should have blamed global warming. Errr, and cooling.

A new study in Science uses the same techniques as dendrochronology to map the rise and fall of empires and cultures as it was recorded in tree rings - and then to weather conditions.

First Pluto, Now Astrology? Ophiuchus Needs To Be The 13th Sign, Says Astronomer

Jan 13 2011 | comment(s)

When I was a younger guy, I read my astrology sign 'predictions' in the newspaper. It was in the comics section, so clearly no one took it too seriously. But astrology had at least a foundation in science. Unfortunately, like homeopathy, it has long outlived its quirky time even though it has been shown to be rubbish.

But people who do have an interest in astrology will want to take notice soon. Astronomer Parke Kunkle told NBC the astrology signs have not been updated in so long they aren't really accurate. In fact, there need to be 13 instead of 12, due to changes in the Earth's alignment.

Facebook Is Obsessed With A Science Cheerleader

Jan 13 2011 | comment(s)

I'm not sure how many of you out there have Facebook - quite a few, I assume, given their huge participation numbers - but on a frequent basis they introduce changes designed to help us.

I can't argue with Mark Zuckerberg's instincts, since the valuation on Facebook is 10,000 times that of Science 2.0, but it doesn't always seem like the changes are good. I used to have a Home feed that gave me a cross section of new things from people on my friend list but now I can't figure out how it works - I get meaningless stuff from people I don't really know so I rarely use it these days.

Sorry sociologists, Arizona shooter Jared Loughner did not watch Fox News

Jan 12 2011 | comment(s)

Sociologists love when people get shot; it gives them a chance to make correlation/causation arrows go in all kinds of crazy directions.

So when people jumped on the gun rage by Jared Loughner as a product of the Tea Party or a climate of hate or whatever they wanted to call it, they easily found someone in sociology to back them up on it.

It must be extremism or something else that he got from listening to Rush Limbaugh or watching Fox News, right? Unless it is just some crazy guy shooting people. Mapping events to a cultural topology or a social agenda is not science - not even social science - it is plain old superstition.