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 »

The Odd Maze Of Doing Clean Science Journalism

May 02 2008 | comment(s)

It's not easy understanding all the nuances of particular disciplines in science even if you are in the field - science has gotten pretty precise. I have a good grasp of Maxwell's equations, for example, but I am not going to understand interplane capacitance and noise in the same way that a simulation guy at Intel will. That's why journalism is something of a thankless job. If you're a journalist you have multiple people triangulating on your defects. People with a political bent will find a political motivation (1), scientists in the field will find it either too simple or too exaggerated and people reading are likely to tune it out if it's too complex. We had an interesting example of how difficult a task it is to do clean stories that get the point across today.

Is Race An Issue In Death Penalty Cases?

May 01 2008 | comment(s)

Why would a professor in Denver examine one county in Texas and conclude there is a race issue in death penalty cases? It's hard to say. There is extrapolation and then there is just a question of methodology. Scott Phillips, associate professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver says that the District Attorney (DA) in Harris County, TX pursued the death penalty when the defendant was African American more often than when the victim was African American. Harris County, TX, is the capital of capital punishment, executing more people than every state - except Texas itself.

Revising Research Ethics In Developing Countries

May 01 2008 | comment(s)

Biomedical research in developing countries is the kind of ethical condundrum we all think about.

On one hand, infectious diseases may cause up to half of all deaths in undeveloped nations(1), so no one needs advanced treatments more. On the other hand, these are human clinical trials of experimental drugs and socio-economic status does not make you a lab monkey in any sort of culture we want to call civilized.

So what is the solution? Americans are primarily distrustful of government, the bigger the worse, so a global body dictating clinical trials would be treated with a lot of skepticism but the perfect solution can't be moving ethical targets determined by various nations, funding sources or institutions as is done now.

Science 2.0 week in review April 26 2008

Apr 26 2008 | comment(s)

It's been one of those weeks. As we continue to grow, the list of non-fun things (fun things being reading science articles here) needing doing can be overwhelming but what really makes me crazy is when I miss unintentional humor and someone else catches it and then I wish I had thought of it. Such as ... - Skepchick

Stem cells in menstrual blood?- “While collecting menstrual blood stromal cells (MenSCs) directly from tissue would be invasive, retrieving them during the menstrual cycle would not be.” MenSCs?! You have got to be joking.

Earth Day - Fabulous Fashionistas Save The Oceans Without Breaking A Sweat

Apr 22 2008 | comment(s)

Not that these women sweat anyway. "Horses Sweat, Men Perspire And Ladies Glow," my mother always told me.

But you get the idea. A group of fashion conscious women is making a difference this Earth Day - by looking fabulous!

Okay, as a man in his 40s with more children than I can count, I had a hard time even writing the word 'fabulous' without laughing.

But there is something serious happening. Chantecaille, a cosmetics company, has said it will donate five percent of the proceeds of its new “Protected Paradise” face and eyes compacts to the Pew Institute’s Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation program, which provides a $150,000 award to each of five ocean experts around the world annually to develop solutions to critical ocean challenges.

Chocolate And Cholesterol - At Some Point It's Okay To Call B.S.

Apr 21 2008 | comment(s)

John Erdman, a University of Illinois professor of food science and human nutrition who also chairs the Mars, Inc. Scientific Advisory Council and has received millions in funding from Mars, Inc., recognizes that taking money from a candy bar company (Mars Inc.) to do a study of their (Mars Inc.) candy bar proving it is healthy will have skeptics.

Not here. Hey, if Philip-Morris wants to highlight a study saying cigarettes cure cancer or Exxon-Mobil needs to promote a study saying automobile carbon monoxide improves asthma, we won't ridicule them just because of the funding. We'll ridicule them because of the methodology.

“Eating two CocoaVia dark chocolate bars a day not only lowered cholesterol, it had the unexpected effect of also lowering systolic blood pressure,” said Erdman on the results of a peer-reviewed study in The Journal of Nutrition.

Except the participants were also put on the American Heart Association’s “Eating Plan for Healthy Americans” (the Step 1 diet) two weeks before the study started.