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Marijuana For ADHD?

Cannabis and THC, its main psychoactive compound, have been endorsed by people suffering from anxiety...

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...

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 »

Cool Job In Biology: A Day In The Life Of A Beer Taster

Mar 14 2014 | comment(s)

I play guitar but I don't play out for money. Aside from a high level of stage fright about playing guitar in public I think doing it for money would take away a lot of the relaxation.

That doesn't apply to all things. I write every day and always enjoy that. So at first blush I might be inclined to think a job tasting beer would be a bad thing, but perhaps it is just like writing and if you would do it for free anyway, you might as well get paid for it.

4.5 Things Cosmos Gets Wrong

Mar 13 2014 | comment(s)

In The Federalist Today, I have a piece titled Five Things Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos” Gets Wrong.

The Science Of Romantic Comedy Behavior: A Love Ode To Weak Observational Studies

Mar 12 2014 | comment(s)

Robin Thicke may have sung "Blurred Lines" and appeared in a teenage fantasy video with a lot of naked women, but when a photo was revealed of him in a suggestive situation with another woman, he found that the line was actually not all that blurry to his wife.(1)

What changed? She had been fine with his canoodling before. He has no idea and men meeting women across the nation are just as confused about where their blurred lines are.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey - The Review

Mar 07 2014 | comment(s)

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality - Carl Sagan

I missed the big Carl Sagan thing when it happened. I was in high school when Cosmos came out, we lived in the country and if you wanted to watch a different television network, you had to go up into the attic and turn a giant antenna with a pipe wrench. Sports and girls and D&D were more of a priority than television.

Yet even though I didn't watch it when it came out, shortly afterward I could still tell you who said "billions and billions" with that special emphasis. That and riffs on "Who Shot J.R.?" were big that year.

Iron Deficiency Does Not Cause People To Become Vegans

Mar 06 2014 | comment(s)

Statisticians have a rule of thumb for calibrating claims made in humanities and science papers alike. Andrew Gelman, for example, talks about statistical significance filter - "If an estimate is statistically significant, it’s probably an overestimate."

A good thing to remember when you read weak observational studies, psychology surveys and, in modern times, a shocking number of epidemiology papers.

For health, you can use a different rule of thumb: Does Joe Mercola sell it?

If he does, it is probably suspect.

Pro-Vaccination PSAs May Do More Harm Than Good

Mar 05 2014 | comment(s)

When I have done workshops for aspiring science journalists/writers, I have three pieces of advice. The first is: Don't defend science. It doesn't need defending.

But it's easier said then done. If you spend some time in science media culture, you will invariably find a person saying something pithy like "Science: It works, bitches" but then raging about some attack on science and defending it with shrill verbage and name-calling and conspiracy theories.

If science works, you don't need to defend it with claims that Big Oil is funding climate denial or that homeopaths and Big Organic fund vaccine and GMO denial.