Groups like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration set the gold standard worldwide for science - but they are still soundly criticized. Every time the EPA clears a pesticide it is blasted because the studies it mandates are "industry-funded", which is required by law. As are trials for drugs. For many people, the disclaimers about side effects of drugs at...
read moreProfessor Anne Glover, the first Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission, has been sacked. Well, not technically, the European Commission is simply not extending her position. That is diplomatic speech for 'there are a lot more anti-science Europeans voting than there are researchers and they really do not like you.' read...
read moreWhen Ebola was the latest rage in mainstream media (that would be last month - poor people in Africa are so October of 2014) National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins was quick to capitalize on it - they could have had a vaccine by now, he claimed, if only funding had not been flat since 2004.Science blogging was, naturally, quick to blame Republicans and The Sequester and...
read moreDr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, has a $29 billion per year budget, which dwarfs the National Science Foundation and NASA - combined.You'd think for all that money they could have done a lot to create an Ebola vaccine before the crisis was all over the pages of The New York Times. But it seems they need just a little more. Dr. Collins says they have been working...
read moreIf you want the best education and you are rich or are a non-Asian minority born with your heart outside of your body, go to Princeton. If you are Asian and rich, go to Caltech.If you are none of the above, but still smart enough to get into a top school, U.C. Berkeley is the best place to be for the 17th straight year, according to US News & World Report rankings, which mean...
read moreTalk of a 'secret sauce' in decision-making and charges that government groups like the Environmental Protection Agency are politically motivated are not new. Every president has its opposition party contending that the administration is manipulating science to suit its agenda - in the 1990s, Democrats got it for scuttling the Superconducting Super Collider and gutting the NIH and NASA while a...
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