Science 2.0

Hank Campbell

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. Revolutionizing the way scientists Communicate, Part…
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Gig Economy Workers Suffer During The Pandemic, And California's Ill-Timed Delivery Service Lawsuit Just Made It Worse

Gig Economy Workers Suffer During The Pandemic, And California's Ill-Timed Delivery Service Lawsuit Just Made It Worse

If you had a choice, would you rather set your own hours or work around your schedule around family needs, or would you prefer being forced to go into an office where a corporate manager applies constant pressure to do more in the same amount of time and you have to pay for babysitting?Many people opt for the former, and the "gig economy", where you set your own schedule, has been a boon for them. But fewer employees mean less payroll taxes and California has $500,000,000 in unfunded liabilities, primarily for government pensions and debt, so if a company is not paying payroll taxes to the state, California's recent policy actions have shown they have to go.

Google Lab-Bred Mosquitoes May Stop Diseases Without Pesticides

Google Lab-Bred Mosquitoes May Stop Diseases Without Pesticides

A new series of experiments by an Alphabet (the parent company Google created) group shows lab-bred mosquitoes that cannot successfully reproduce might be able to stop malaria and other mosquito-spread diseases in countries where those are still endemic - two billion people per year.Malaria is not endemic to the U.S. any more and we can thank DDT for that but we still face risk of numerous diseases from mosquitoes.  Other countries where diseases like dengue, chikungunya, Zika, and yellow fever are common barely blink at the coronavirus pandemic that has paralyzed the U.S. after only causing as many deaths as a bad flu year. But infectious diseases can always spread. How would we manage dengue and malaria today?

Remdesivir: Randomized Trial By Chinese Government Claims No Clinical Benefits - But Confounders Are Huge

Remdesivir: Randomized Trial By Chinese Government Claims No Clinical Benefits - But Confounders Are Huge

A new paper claims that treatment with the antiviral drug remdesivir does not speed recovery from COVID-19 versus placebo in hospitalized patients who are critically ill.But this needs to be interpreted with caution. The Lancet rushed to publish these results but they are from just 237 adults from 10 hospitals in Wuhan, and China has fooled the world before. The study was funded by the government's Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Emergency Project of COVID-19, it was not independent.

Did You Get Fat From The Air You Breathe Or The Pizza You Inhale?

Did You Get Fat From The Air You Breathe Or The Pizza You Inhale?

You may have heard of the Freshman 15; the weight gain some college students experience their first year, when they have unlimited dining at the university cafeteria. Coronavirus may leave behind a new pandemic when people emerge from their homes and discover their work clothes are tighter.The developed world was already undergoing an obesity crisis thanks to affordable food. Agricultural science, which used to struggle with environmental doomsday narratives that farmers were too incompetent, now have to defend against New York Times and Guardian editorials claiming farming is too successful. Because for the first time in the history of the world, the poorest people can afford to get fat.

Filtered Coffee Does Not Increase Lifespan Now Any More Than It Did Four Months Ago

Filtered Coffee Does Not Increase Lifespan Now Any More Than It Did Four Months Ago

Filtered coffee has been linked to lower risk of type 2 diabetes by an epidemiology group ... Before you get too excited about this "filtered" coffee preventing diabetes, we need to remember what they are measuring - numbers, not coffee. This is not a science finding, it is an "exploratory" result. Drinking coffee, filtered in paper or Turkish in a pan, is not going to prevent diabetes any more than a juice cleanse prevents whatever that stuff is claiming to prevent.

During COVID-19, The Death Rate After Going On A Ventilator Is The Same As For Other Issues

During COVID-19, The Death Rate After Going On A Ventilator Is The Same As For Other Issues

COVID-19 has brought high levels of attention to coronavirus, which few outside the microbiology community had heard of even after two pandemics in 17 years, SARS and MERS.Terms like ventilators, respirators, and N95 masks were also less commonly thrown about. While it's difficult to trust corporate journalism doomsday narratives one thing is sure; coronavirus has already killed more many people in three months as flu does in its average six-month season. COVID-19 hasn't reached 2018 flu season levels yet but it likely will.(1)

FDA Is Providing 'Relief' From Food Label Bureaucracy During COVID-19, So How Important Is It?

FDA Is Providing 'Relief' From Food Label Bureaucracy During COVID-19, So How Important Is It?

Many people have recently discovered that the U.S. CDC is actually not that useful. For some, it came when CDC refused to send hospitals coronavirus tests until they proved to CDC their patients had coronavirus. Then, when the Trump administration forced them to send tests nationwide the career employees at CDC showed they were so clueless they hadn't even checked to see if the tests only they were allowed to send had the correct reagents (they didn't.) Then the public started to wonder if CDC could do anything more than reformat and reprint statistics they got from states using money they got from states.

Earth Day Should Refuse To Change Its April 22nd Date, Eh Comrade?

Earth Day Should Refuse To Change Its April 22nd Date, Eh Comrade?

Disney and Warner Bros. are losing a small fortune pushing back the dates of "Black Widow" and "Wonder Woman 1984" respectively. Yet they did it.Despite paying interest on $500 million in debt, they believe it will be better to change the date for theater release than sell their films directly. Movies, concerts, theater shows, etc. command a premium because they are communal. Anyone who has watched a filmed version of a Broadway show can tell you it's not the same.

Journalist Chris Cuomo Is Setting Back Science Embracing Homeopathy And 'Oxygenated Herbs' As Coronavirus Treatment

Journalist Chris Cuomo Is Setting Back Science Embracing Homeopathy And 'Oxygenated Herbs' As Coronavirus Treatment

Cristina Cuomo, the wife of journalist Chris Cuomo, who had been setting progressive hearts aflutter with his jovial sort-of interviews with his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, before contracting COVID-19, has also tested positive for coronavirus.Nothing surprising there. What is shocking is that she is founder of The Purist, a "wellness" (read: rich white people) brand which promotes woo like homeopathy, "energy medicine" and "oxygenated herbs" as how you prevent disease. And yet she got the disease anyway.

Trump Did Not Start Fracking On Public Lands, Obama Did

Trump Did Not Start Fracking On Public Lands, Obama Did

When is it right to turn over 5 million acres of public land for exploitation by energy corporations? The Obama administration did just that, with corn ethanol, and environmental groups wrapped him in the flag of renewable biofuels despite science showing it was worse for the environment than gasoline. A generation earlier they had also wrapped natural gas in the flag of environmentalism and continued to do so until it began to replace coal.(1) During the Bush administration, a Republican.Then it was time for lawsuits.