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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 »

Why Finland Does Well On Standardized Tests

Nov 15 2014 | comment(s)

Finns are not more liberal about education because kids don't have to wear shoes, they are really conservative - the last country in Europe to create mandatory education and their spending on it is small. There is no need to pay more money to teachers so they can pay union dues so union employees can pay lobbyists to lobby the Education Department to use more federal taxes to redistribute it to schools.

Education is by rote.

They only go to grade 9. Why not extend it to make kids even smarter? It costs too much.

They don't spend a lot of time on social justice, they spend it on education. Kids who do not want to continue in academics go to "vocational" school.

Greenpeace Wins - Science Is Out Of EU Policy Making Again

Nov 14 2014 | comment(s)

Professor Anne Glover, the first Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission, has been sacked.

Well, not technically, the European Commission is simply not extending her position. That is diplomatic speech for 'there are a lot more anti-science Europeans voting than there are researchers and they really do not like you.'

NIH Can't Afford Ebola, Can Afford A $10 Million Video Game About A Town Full Of Fat People

Nov 14 2014 | comment(s)

When Ebola was the latest rage in mainstream media (that would be last month - poor people in Africa are so October of 2014) National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins was quick to capitalize on it - they could have had a vaccine by now, he claimed, if only funding had not been flat since 2004.

Science blogging was, naturally, quick to blame Republicans and The Sequester and whatever else would get Democrats to the polls in the run-up to elections.

Rosetta’s Philae, The Good And The Bad

Nov 13 2014 | comment(s)

Most of the world that has access to the Internet knows two things about the Rosetta mission - it landed on a comet and a European engineer wore an ugly shirt that offended a lot of American women on Twitter.

The least interesting news is that the ESA now knows that if women can't wear bathing suits to represent them on television, then male project scientists cannot wear bowling shirts and shorts. The important news, however, is that mankind has shown we can go on a 10 year, 4 billion mile journey through the solar system and land on a rock the size of Cork City, Ireland.

Wired World In 2015 - Read My Prediction

Nov 13 2014 | comment(s)

Wired magazine devotes a special issue each November to a "What's Next?" for the upcoming year - and that means it is time to think about what will happen in the world of science in 2015.

Wired asked me to make a solid prediction, kind of like Jeane Dixon, except actually right about the future. Nostradamus, without all of the meaningless mumbo-jumbo.

Homeopathy For Dogs

Nov 12 2014 | comment(s)

Can homeopathy actually work if someone knows it is a placebo? What if, for example, a skeptical Science 2.0 group was told they got a placebo and that nutritionists were getting medicine? Would we feel better anyway?(1)

Of course it's possible, it just wouldn't be due to magic water. It's a mystery of biology why some people just feel better taking something. That is why homeopathy still exists a few hundred years after its invention even though it has never worked.(2)

Does the placebo effect apply to dogs? Do they understand the concept of medicine? If not, they have a placebo effect.