It’s Time For Racism In College Admissions To Go
The Shackled Man hypothesis rightly notes that if two people are running a race, and one has leg irons on, the shackled person is going to perform poorly. 50 yards into the race, if we remove the leg irons, claiming that everyone now has an equal chance to win is silly.For that reason, affirmative action when it came to college admissions made perfect sense two generations ago. We know there was institutional racism and we knew it would take time to cure (racists had to retire or die off, and each generation would be less bigoted, but that doesn't happen right away) so giving a minority that likely did not have access to the same education, but had no less ability, a temporary boost, was both ethical and unnecessary.
I Don’t Use The Term ‘Miracle’ Very Often, But…
This isn't the Dr. Oz show or some nutrition site selling Vitamin D supplements or whatever the big Superfood/Miracle Vegetable craze is this week, 'miracle' is a bit of a dirty word in science. But when it fits, you have to use it.And Hepatitis C may have gotten its miracle.
It's not well known, Hepatitis C does not have the PR of diseases like AIDS, but 3 million people have it, many of them Baby Boomers. Some got it of their own volition, using skin poppers or needles for drugs, but hygiene was a different beast 50 years ago and it was also possible to get it just by going to the dentist.
New York Bans Fracking, Prepares To Buy More Energy From Fracking
What do wealthy progressives in New York and California share in common? Both groups are happy to exploit poor people as part of their self-identification. In California, that has involved not vaccinating their children, instead letting poor kids get vaccinated to provide herd immunity for their special snowflakes, while in New York it means adopting a veil of environmental sincerity, by going after both nuclear power and natural gas, while quietly buying all the fossil fuel energy they can get to prevent brown-outs. Let poor people in Pennsylvania have health risks, say New Yorkers.Congress Adopts A Common-Sense Approach To The California Drought
As I wrote in California Government Is The Big Water Management Problem, we can't make it rain but we could at least stop letting bizarre environmental lobbying get a super vote for how to mitigate the issue. While farmers and the public face mandatory cutbacks, anti-science beliefs about what is most important means that no matter how bad things get, we will have to force water for millions of people to be flushed into the Pacific Ocean.The Cost Of Vermont GMO Labeling Law – Millions To Consumers
Vermont's somewhat odd GMO warning label law, which made sure to exempt anything that would impact Just Label It yogurt millionaire Gary Hirshberg's supply of dairy and import things like alcohol, restaurants and the Whole Foods deli section, is about to cost consumers millions of dollars.Organic Farmers Protest “Responsibly Grown” Food Labels In Whole Foods
Organic farming has had a pretty good run.Fact Checking Dr. Oz’s Fact Checker
Dr. Oz has done a lot of things right recently. He has promised to stop calling everything a 'miracle cure' and after the cultural blow-up this spring, when a group of prominent doctors and PhDs nationwide asked Columbia to remove him, and then a group at Columbia criticized him in USA Today, he apologized and noted that the "Dr." in the title was meant to be small.NRDC Wants To Ban Food Flavorings – Even Natural Ones
The Natural Resources Defense Council environmental lobbying group has created a coalition and they have drafted a petition demanding that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ban eight food additives they believe are carcinogens, in the interests of public health.The problem is that many of these are natural, which is one reason why they have never been banned. The other reason is they haven't been shown to be harmful, regardless of whether or not we have been trained by environmental lobbying groups to be scared of chemical names.
More Data Won’t Sway Science Deniers
At the Biotech Literacy Project Boot Camp, held a week ago at the U.C. Davis World Food Center, I was on a journalism roundtable with Brooke Borel, Keith Kloor and Razib Khan, moderated by Professor Kevin Folta, and I was asked about the most important thing for scientists to keep in mind regarding increasing science acceptance.It's always difficult to pick just one but given the nature of the assault on food science, 'don't engage in deficit thinking' was my response. Basically, don't assume the other person simply lacks the proper facts or that if things are framed properly it would change their minds. It probably will not, at least for the most vocal critics.
Gender Bias? Science Seen As A Male Profession
In America, the social sciences, like psychology and anthropology, are regarded as female occupations - because they are.But does that mean women are self-selecting women and there is bias against males in those fields? It depends on who you ask.
People rarely admit to bias and in 2015 people are rarely overtly biased, so instead it may be that when you walk into a classroom and no one looks 'like' you, you may be uncomfortable or, worse, you may feel like you are representing your whole gender/ethnicity and under-perform because you worry about how it makes your group look if you fail.