Science Education & Policy

Winners Of SciVal Award Brazil 2012 Announced

Scientific products and services company Elsevier and the Federal Coordination of Improvement of Personnel in Higher Education (Capes / MEC), today announced the winners of the second edition of SciVal Award Brazil 2012, honoring higher education and rese ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 19 2012 - 10:57am

Guest Post: Chris Hill, Who Is Your Savior?

I read the text below in the Facebook page of a colleague and friend, Christopher Hill. The text was meant as a facebook rant- sort of- but it raises important points. I liked what he wrote and I asked him if I could repost it here to the benefit of a lar ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Nov 10 2012 - 10:09am

In The Wake Of L'Aquila, How Should European Scientists Handle Risk Evaluations?

In the wake of Italian scientists being sentenced for not having sufficiently warned the public about the risks of a severe earthquake of L'Aquila 2009, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the French Académie des sciences have publ ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 12 2012 - 1:30pm

Chocolate Makes You Smarter, So You Stop Reading BBC News

UPDATE: BBC radio contacted me to let me know they corrected their mistake. I am very glad to hear that! So you can continue reading BBC after all! Probability inversion is one of the nastiest mistakes one can do handling the results of a statistical anal ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Nov 23 2012 - 9:49am

The Quote of the Week: Cohen on the NIL Hypothesis

"[...] Given the fact that the nil hypothesis is always false, the rate of Type-I errors is 0%, not 5%, and [...] only Type-II errors can be made, which run typically at about 50% [...] [T]ypically, the sample effect size necessary for significance i ...

Blog Post - Tommaso Dorigo - Nov 20 2012 - 4:03am

Physicists And Kung Fu Nuns

What can Kung Fu Nuns teach CERN scientists about cosmic energy?   To start with, they would have to convince CERN scientists that 'cosmic energy' actually exists, and they recently got a chance to do that when the European Organization for Nucl ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Dec 3 2012 - 9:13pm

"Burn Notice" Wants To Give You $10K To Do Science

A few years ago, my wife had a milestone birthday and decided she wanted to run a marathon.  Now, I don't even like to drive 26 miles much less run that far- that Greek guy is famous because he died doing it and there are some experiments I don't ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Nov 28 2012 - 8:55pm

We Can Do Math Problems And Read Phrases Unconsciously

We can read words and phrases and even solve multi-step mathematical problems without conscious awareness, say a team of psychologists at the Hebrew University. They conducted experiments which they say constitutes a challenge to existing ideas of unconsci ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 4 2012 - 5:00am

List Of The Best And Worst International Cities In English Proficiency

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Article - News Staff - Dec 12 2012 - 2:01pm

Private Biotech Hates Sequestration, Too

In a little less than three weeks, a federal budget sequestration, which would have severe consequences for agencies that fund scientific research, will take effect unless a deal can be made between Republicans and Democrats. That’s a pretty discomforting ...

Article - David Sloan - Dec 13 2012 - 2:31pm