Science 2.0

Hank Campbell

Hank Campbell

Hank Campbell is an American science writer, author of the bestselling book 'Science Left Behind', and the founder of Science 2.0®, the world's largest independent science communications site. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Wired, Chicago Tribune, CNN, and many more places.

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There's A Gender Pay Gap But It's Smaller In Occupations Dominated By Men

There's A Gender Pay Gap But It's Smaller In Occupations Dominated By Men

The wage gap between genders has always had some cultural traction but there were also always odd pockets where it was worse - including what you wouldn't have expected. Environmental groups had far more women but the wage gap between what they paid men and women was alarming compared to engineering, where there were fewer women as a total percentage but no meaningful pay disparity.

Observations From The Past Can Help Inform Climate Changes

Observations From The Past Can Help Inform Climate Changes

Prior to the 1980s, most thermometers were both inaccurate and not placed using scientific methodology. But tree rings need time and ice cores even longer, which means for recent periods of time have to rely on observational claims and hope to control for their accuracy.

Supply Chain Issues Are Creating A Food America Environmentalists Want - And That's Bad

Supply Chain Issues Are Creating A Food America Environmentalists Want - And That's Bad

In the 1960s and '70s, population apocalypse stories were popular. Movies like "Soylent Green" and books like "The Population Bomb" and "Ecoscience" provided dystopian views of the future, where science would fail and government would be forced to get drastic, with forced sterilization and abortion needed until the number of people got down to a limit farming could sustain.That never happened. Progress did. Companies created new agricultural tools, herbicides were created that avoided resistance. Then we got GMOs. First in insulin, then they saved the papaya in Hawaii, and then we got common products like corn, soybean, and cotton. Food got more plentiful and more affordable.

Abortion: For 59 Percent Of America Nothing Changes. What About The Rest?

Abortion: For 59 Percent Of America Nothing Changes. What About The Rest?

The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision has been overturned, which means that the Supreme Court ruled that the right to an abortion is not federally protected by the US Constitution (in the 1973 case, that it couldn't be illegal under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment), and is instead up to states as per the enumerated powers part of the Constitution. As most of you know, when the Constitution was written, states were concerned about replacing one autocratic centralized government with another, so the Constitution, and then the immediate Bill of Rights, were written to specify that if it was not in the Constitution, it was left to states.

A Species ‘Stock Market’ To Put A Price Tag On Biodiversity

A Species ‘Stock Market’ To Put A Price Tag On Biodiversity

The value of bees in pollination is overstated, outside the on-demand almond grower market the pollination done by bees would be taken up by 400,000 other species if bees disappeared tomorrow, but that doesn't mean they are not an important part of the ecosystem in other ways.

Would Peer-To-Peer Charging Reduce Range Anxiety And Make Electric Cars Mainstream?

Would Peer-To-Peer Charging Reduce Range Anxiety And Make Electric Cars Mainstream?

One of the sillier commercials for a cell phone I have seen in recent memory is some guy shaking his head in sadness that his phone is out of battery and a kindly person places her phone on his to give him a boost. They were able to use the Qi wireless charging capability to share energy with each other.This looked like a solution without a problem. If you are going to be that despondent without your phone, you bring one of those little charging packs, you bring a power cord, you are not shaking your head like you unwittingly got placed into an episode of "Alone" and have been dropped into Alaska with nothing but a neck gaiter and a frying pan. You are prepared.

Polar Bear Genome From 100,000 Years Ago Shows It Was Genetically Modified

Polar Bear Genome From 100,000 Years Ago Shows It Was Genetically Modified

Genetic admixture didn't begin in the 1970s, when insulin became the first government approved genetically modified organism (GMO) and AquAdvantage salmon, where an Atlantic salmon expresses a natural gene from a Chinook salmon to grow faster, certainly was not the first time such genetic engineering showed benefits across the ecosystem.A new study finds that genetic admixture occurred in polar bears 100,000 years, but it did not create Frankenbears, it just created better brown bears. 

People Are Living Longer And Better Than Ever But A Sociologist Says There Are Warning Signs About The Future

People Are Living Longer And Better Than Ever But A Sociologist Says There Are Warning Signs About The Future

A new paper says Generation X adults in the United States are more likely to have a greater number of chronic health conditions than those that preceded them, which will please environmental groups who claim that everything from pesticides to natural gas to cell phones is killing us, but is not science.There are two issues to think about. One is that diagnoses don't mean much. If you get a diagnosis of chronic lyme disease, it does not mean that is suddenly a real disease, and life expectancy is basically meaningless.

For Electric Cars To Be Viable, Charging Station Locations Need To Be Optimized

For Electric Cars To Be Viable, Charging Station Locations Need To Be Optimized

One thing electric car owners who have lost the mystique tell you is that you live your life around them. Some report going to a store like Costco to charge their cars, they need new service panels at their house, and one owner famously blew up his Tesla with dynamite rather than pay $22,000 to replace the batteries when they wore out. An article in the Wall Street Journal was by someone excited to rent an electric car for a trip, only to find they spent more time charging it than sleeping.

Stop Eating Affordable Vegetables, It’s Just Too Dangerous, Claims Organic Industry Funded Paper

Stop Eating Affordable Vegetables, It’s Just Too Dangerous, Claims Organic Industry Funded Paper

There is some produce advice coming from the activist camp yet again, but what they are selling is rotten.

A recent paper senior authored by famed organic industry proponent Dr. Michael N. Antoniou raised an alarm about insecticide
and herbicide residues found in the fecal microbiome of 65 twins in the United
Kingdom. The big problem with it is that it preys on modern science journalists not knowing that dose matters. Any detection of any chemical that can kill a rat at high doses is correlated to pathology in humans, despite that being nothing close to reality.

Canadian Activists Wants To Ban Decabromodiphenyl Ethane - That's Bad News For The Public Worried About Fire Safety

Canadian Activists Wants To Ban Decabromodiphenyl Ethane - That's Bad News For The Public Worried About Fire Safety

The activist group Environment and Climate Change Canada has gotten political allies inside the government's Health Canada division to try and lobby for bans on decabromodiphenyl ethane - without having a replacement for a flame retardant used to keep home appliances, electronics, and electric wires and cables safe.That is an unnecessary increase in risk, not to mention a high price increase for Canadians already in the midst of a supply chain crisis.