How do we judge whether a person knows what he or she is talking about? How do we gauge someone’s credibility? At least in part, we rely on a set of cues – titles, university degrees, papers published, lectures given – that have long been bound up in the concept of “expertise”. If a person…
Climate researchers pay too little attention to social sciences, the executive director of the Bolivian Mountain Institute told delegates at the International Conference of Mountain Countries on Climate Change in Nepal. “More interaction between the natural and social sciences is necessary,” said Dirk Hoffmann, adding that the lack of effective dialogue between science and social…
Previous attempts to reform our education system in America have only piled more money on the heap of a broken system. We need transformative changes, not additive ones.There are three big culprits in American education policy that are crippling the ability of our schools to respond to today’s challenges: 1. Our policy of “buying reform”…
Retractions of papers published in scientific journals are rising at an alarming rate, according to Dr. Ferric C. Fang a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine and editor in chief of the journal Infection and Immunity, but that is just a manifestation of a much more profound problem — “a symptom of…
A new survey finds that a majority of Americans believe that weather in the United States is getting worse, and they are linking it to global warming.
In a novel study of health disparities in the United States, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have identified 22 socioeconomic and environmental variables that together are better indicators of early death than are race or geography. The findings upend long-held beliefs that where you live and the color of your skin are the best…
Baboons can learn to tell the difference between real four-letter words and nonsense combinations of letters. And once they figure out the patterns, these monkeys can guess with impressive accuracy whether a new word is real or fake. Because baboons can’t actually read, a new study supports the theory that the brains of our primate…
Science can advance quickly, rendering existing textbooks obsolete. Now new digital textbooks are emerging intended to better engage students and keep them up-to-date on the latest research. These e-books will cost (and weigh) less than the average printed tome. In January, Apple announced its iBooks 2 textbook platform for the iPad, and publishers, including McGraw-Hill,…
Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam refused to sign a bill that would permit discussion of creationism in classrooms alongside the traditional evolutionary-based explanation of the origins of life, but allowed it to become law anyway. The legislation, dubbed the “Monkey Bill” by critics, had sailed through the conservative-leaning state’s Republican-dominated legislature. Haslam, a Republican, earlier had…
Bias on the part of high school math teachers is hampering girls who want to study mathematics, an analysis of a U.S. educational study found. Researchers analyzing data collected in a national Educational Longitudinal Study in 2002 said teachers tend to rate white girls’ math abilities lower than those of white male students even when…