In 1989, the communist dictatorship oddly named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reached the extent of a third giant hole in the Arctic Circle, Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3, where they'd been drilling for 19 years. It clocked in at nearly 8 miles deep.
Since science is both corporate and political in the modern era (the private sector and government each fund about half of basic research in the U.S.), if you defend science you are implicitly defending corporations and engaging in politics. Whether you think one or the other is superior or more ethical is likely based more on how you vote than anything impartial.
Meleah Geertsma, a senior attorney in the midwestern US for Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) - yes, they have so many attorneys they have titles like "Senior" and for geographical regions - says they are suing the federal government...again. This time over natural gas.Their complaint is that the government rolled back the previous administration's increases, basically some expanded parking space, near national monuments and is allowing development again. And development may mean clean-burning natural gas, which NRDC now claims causes cancer.
The definition of "endangered" is vague but in no dictionary does it mean an animal that does not even live in a state must be placed there, with private landowners footing the bill for $20 million, in order to keep a creature from declining in population.
ABC News recently suspended Brian Ross (four weeks without pay) for fabricating an unsubstantiated story that matched his ideological beliefs about Republicans and President Donald Trump and which caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to plummet. This was not the first time he had turned his wishful thinking into action, he also blamed the Aurora, Colorado shooting on the Tea Party. It was, however, the first time ABC instituted some accountability for his work.
Physics Today says the culture of physics itself is to blame for the gender pay gap.
Starting Science 2.0 in 2006, I was as wide-eyed as anyone new to media could be. My first month I was sure we were about to discover life on other planets, cancer was going to be cured, chocolate was healthy, resveratrol was the one polyphenol to rule them all. Oh, and academic scientists were going to rush to write for the public because I loved science. (1)
It may not seem to make sense but most of the universe - mass - can really only account for about 6 percent of what is going on. The rest of it can be under just about any umbrella at this point. Some call it the God of the Gaps, scientists call the unknown mass Dark Matter.
What is it? No one knows, when it comes to the very large and the very small, physics does not have all the answers, but something has made the universe at least 100 billion light years in size even though it's only 13 billion years old. As you know, a light year is the distance light will travel in that time. Since nothing can go faster than the speed of light, it's long been time to think about what Nothing is.
That's dark matter. And whatever is propelling it can be called Dark Energy.
The activist army in the war on common pesticides like glyphosate (and adjacently GMOs, they don't know enough science to know they are different) is having a Gettysburg moment.(1) They are out of options so they are making a desperate charge but they are in an open field a long way off and opposing them on the other side is every legitimate science and regulatory body in the world.
If scientists and journalists want the politicization of science to stop, they have to be part of the solution, even if a guy they didn't vote for is in power. But now that he is, all the talk about "depoliticizing science" has been exposed as the farce that we always knew it was.
Though every politician and both U.S. parties claim to be pro-science, that isn't reflected in corporate media coverage. The New York Times will publish conspiracy theories drafted by US Right To Know, a corporate front group created by Organic Consumers Association. Washington Post will host a panel on food science and refuse to invite any scientists.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General recently did an audit of the National Organic Program, which is part of its Agricultural Marketing Services group.
Mothers have always been put upon culturally when it comes to how kids turn out. Though the physical costs of gestation are literally borne by mothers while fathers are basically done at conception(1), everyone feels they hav a say in telling expectant moms what to do. - Society once insisted pregnant mothers not only to abstain from participating in sports but even abstain from watching sports. The excitement would be too much for the baby, women were told. - Doctors also told women not to put their arms over their heads or the umbilical cord might get wrapped around the baby's neck.
