Science Education & Policy

A new revision of clinical guidelines to help doctors manage patients with depression has challenged the rationale behind the UK government’s policy of rolling out of cognitive behavioural therapy (…

I was asked by the Institute for the Future to highlight a dozen "Signals" that may point to new trends in science as part of the X2 Project: Today, science is entering another period of accelerated…

If you use one of America’s top internet service providers, you may share server space with an organization that enables worldwide terrorism, says a new study by Tel Aviv University. The findings…

"No Child Left Behind" is controversial because it pointed out something everyone knows but the people being blamed didn't actually like hearing - education in the US was not all that great at the…

In Phylogenetic Fallacies: Early Branching Must Mean Primitive I focused on the misconception that an "early branching" lineage was necessarily "primitive" (i.e., very similar to a distant ancestor…

There has been greatly increasing attention given to the potential of ‘biochar’, or charcoal made from biological tissues (e.g., wood) to serve as a long term sink of carbon in the soil. This is…

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…

The term "genome" is oft-heard but seldom defined, and indeed has more than one meaning. Little wonder, then, that discussions about genome sequences and comparisons thereof can leave otherwise…

Here we go again, just this morning the Florida House of Representatives passed a bill that directs teachers to engage in “critical analysis” of evolution in public schools. The bill’s chief sponsor…

Jean Piaget, founder of genetic epistemology and key researcher in child development psychology, showed that kids attribute “life status” to all things that move on their own, like bikes or clouds,…