Science & Society

I like the idea of "Shark Week" but I confess I am more of a reader than a television viewer. Still, when Discovery Channel whacked me as part of their "Shark Week" promotional campaign a few years…

Two weeks ago, Galveston born and raised George P. Mitchell passed away at age 94. He was well-known as a Texas oil billionaire but less well-known as a keen advocate of science. He not only funded…

If you ask conservationists in developed nations why East Africa's Maasai pastoralists hunt lions you get Anthropology 101: to retaliate against lions that kill livestock or to engage in a…

Ann Finkbeiner, author of 2007's The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite (among other things) and contributor to The Last Word On Nothing, recently had a fascinating exchange with…

If you talk to someone who knows food but not science, it won't be long before some jab at Monsanto issues forth. And if you persist in discussing biology, it really won't be long before you get…

Perceived weight discrimination, or the real kind, may increase risk for obesity, according to survey results published by Dr. Angelina Sutin of the Department of Medical Humanities&Social…

The rate of unnecessary cancer scans for low-risk prostate cancer patients - the kind of defensive medicine that is a large chunk of medical costs in America - plummeted in Sweden in the decade…

My vague libertarian leanings want me to stay out of the marijuana issue, just like I don't interfere in vaginas and just like I think the government should stop micromanaging gold fish and Big Gulps…

After reading another article by Alex Berezow ["The Arrogance of a Well-Fed Society"] insisting that there is absolutely no problem with human population growth, I couldn't help but be struck by the…

If a physics department has no women, does that mean there is hiring discrimination? Only if your job in sociology is to find discrimination. Simple statistics shows that is not true or there would…