Science 2.0
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Updated: 1 hour 9 min ago
What Will Become Of Reality?
For convenience, let’s say it started with Photoshop. That program made it obvious not only that we couldn’t believe our eyes any more, but that photographic evidence could no longer be admissible in court. Socioeconomic implications were even wider, as new industries popped up with products purporting to tell unretouched photos from photoshopped ones. (And the trademarked noun gave rise to a verb!)
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Trump Administration Authorizes $100 Million For New Vaccine Research
In its second year, Avian Influenza has wrecked the U.S. poultry industry and caused egg prices to rise sharply. A month into a new presidential term, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has been given $1 billion to get the problem under control.
Hundreds of millions fewer chickens mean expensive eggs, and poor people who suffered through 44% food inflation were counting on lower prices.
Hundreds of millions fewer chickens mean expensive eggs, and poor people who suffered through 44% food inflation were counting on lower prices.
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Female Physicians 50% More Likely To Commit Suicide
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data have revealed an alarming trend: female physicians were 53% more likely to commit suicide than females in the general population. Women are still only 25% of physician suicides, men are 80% of doctors who kill themselves, and the obvious risk factor is mental health issues and a key cause for that is legal issues. The American legal system allows unlimited liability and lawyers have successfully blocked all efforts at tort reform.
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PFAS: Environmental Working Group Is Thrilled Republican Allies Are in Power
With new analyses created by their employees to 'detect' chemicals in water, plus their war on seed oils, Environmental Working Group have joined Natural Resources Defense Council in becoming Republican allies.
Welcome to politicization of science in the 2020s. Just a few years ago, Republicans were the enemy of anti-science activists, but now the Trump administration has an environmental conspiracy theorist in the Cabinet. Science won't matter and that's good for environmental lawyers.
Welcome to politicization of science in the 2020s. Just a few years ago, Republicans were the enemy of anti-science activists, but now the Trump administration has an environmental conspiracy theorist in the Cabinet. Science won't matter and that's good for environmental lawyers.
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Scientization Of Politics: Seed Oils Are The Latest Nocebo Fad
You may suddenly have read a lot about the dangers of seed oils - e.g. sunflower and canola oil - and wonder why this is just being discovered.
The harms weren't recently discovered, they've still never been discovered. They're not harmful so nothing has changed except the demographic criticizing them flipped from endorsing them. They were never healthier for you either, despite claims by people touted as experts, because those claims were also based on mouse studies and food surveys. It is just the pendulum of money-driven nutrition culture that goes where political winds take them.
The harms weren't recently discovered, they've still never been discovered. They're not harmful so nothing has changed except the demographic criticizing them flipped from endorsing them. They were never healthier for you either, despite claims by people touted as experts, because those claims were also based on mouse studies and food surveys. It is just the pendulum of money-driven nutrition culture that goes where political winds take them.
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Anti-Science Epidemiologists Have A New Friend In Government
In September, epidemiologists out to scare people about homeopathic - "detectable" - levels of pesticides published a paper hoping to get journalists promoting fear and doubt about agriculture.
Being the opposition to science in academia is a good place to be. They can get a publication to check off that annual box and nothing much will change. They won't get any blame.
Being the opposition to science in academia is a good place to be. They can get a publication to check off that annual box and nothing much will change. They won't get any blame.
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Prop 65 Is A California Gimmick That Raises Prices For The Poor
Proposition 65 was a voter referendum that stated if a chemical was correlated to cancer, it needed to have a cancer warning label. Lawyers who were behind the public relations effort to get it passed assured consumers it would not be abused. Yet a few years later, epidemiologists inside the once-credible International Agency for Research on Cancer in France set out to gain "expert witness" contracts from lawyers and began to create more and more "correlations" - no science needed, just a possible link in mice - and now over 80,000 products carry these labels.
Not only will you find warning labels on nearly every product inside a Walmart, a warning label is on the outside, to warn you that the brick and glass has been "linked to" cancer.
Not only will you find warning labels on nearly every product inside a Walmart, a warning label is on the outside, to warn you that the brick and glass has been "linked to" cancer.
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KM3NeT: Most Energetic Neutrino In The Universe Detected
The Kilometre Cubic Neutrino Telescope (KM3NeT) collaboration has reported detection of a neutrino with an estimated energy of about 220 PeV (220 million billion electron volts) by its ARCA detector.
The event, KM3-230213A, is the first evidence that neutrinos of such high energies are produced in the Universe and the most energetic neutrino ever observed.
The event, KM3-230213A, is the first evidence that neutrinos of such high energies are produced in the Universe and the most energetic neutrino ever observed.
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My Most Important Column Ever
This column deals with political opposition, resistance, and the future of the nation. It dissects the Trump-Musk financial bromance and the role of VP Vance. Bear with me to its end, then please comment pro, con, or in between.
Shadow action
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Chocolate Is A Treat - It's Not An 'Antioxidant' Or Anything Except Valentine's Day Candy
Ignore epidemiology claims that chocolate is healthy. It is not, claiming it is requires the same suspect correlation that "suggests" weedkillers causes human cancer and acupuncture prevents COVID-19. No science involved. Mars, Incorporated was funding the Chair in Nutrition at UC Davis when a lot of those claims came out and while it's not the case that academics are creating results-for-hire any more than industry scientists are, it is the case that government and companies only fund people whose work they like.
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Unsupervised Tracking
Pattern recognition is an altisonant name to a rather common, if complex, activity we perform countless times in our daily lives. Our brain is capable of interpreting successions of sounds, written symbols, or images almost infallibly - so much so that people like me, who have sometimes trouble to recognize a face that should be familiar, get their own disfunctionality term - in this case, prosopagnosia.
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The Paris Agreement Is Only Symbolic - And Helping Nothing
In 2015, nearly every country signed The Paris agreement and agreed to keep global warming to below 2 degrees higher than before humans began emitting industrial levels of CO2 emissions.
Yet very little has changed, because every country gets to arbitrarily decide for itself how it can meet its goal, or if it should have a goal at all.(1) That's how useless the Paris Agreement is.
Yet very little has changed, because every country gets to arbitrarily decide for itself how it can meet its goal, or if it should have a goal at all.(1) That's how useless the Paris Agreement is.
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When Told Lower Incomes Mean Less School Funding, College Students Become More Liberal
So many people want to move to the United States of America because virtually anyone who arrives legally can start a business with little problem and get rich.
A lot of people born in the US would rather be born in a place where they can never get rich but more things are free for the poor. They're not wrong, normal human psychological variation means most people would rather not compete if given a choice. That is seen all across the animal kingdom.
A lot of people born in the US would rather be born in a place where they can never get rich but more things are free for the poor. They're not wrong, normal human psychological variation means most people would rather not compete if given a choice. That is seen all across the animal kingdom.
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The Earth Beneath Our Feet: How The Zagros Mountains Are Shaping The Middle East
The Zagros Mountains are nestled in Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey, and are the scene of an unfolding geological story deep beneath it.
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Yellowstone Wolves: Good For Urban Environmentalists, Bad For Everyone Else
A new analysis claims that crown volume of stream-side shrubs is a key metric for evaluating trophic cascade strength and they attribute the 1,500% increase in a small number of sites to increased numbers of wolves.
The data they used were collected from 20 streams during the years 2001 to 2020 and they note the aboveground biomass increase is due to a lot fewer elk, which was caused by a lot more wolves. "Balance of nature" wins.
The data they used were collected from 20 streams during the years 2001 to 2020 and they note the aboveground biomass increase is due to a lot fewer elk, which was caused by a lot more wolves. "Balance of nature" wins.
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HIms Telehealth Company Under Fire For Super Bowl Ad
Hims Inc., rebranded as Hims & Hers Health, Inc. after they went public in 2020, began as a telehealth company for erectile dysfunction and hair loss products.
No real issue there, the products are well-established and a phone call or website consultation is more convenient and far faster than visiting a doctor's office in the modern Obamacare milieu. It's entering the compounded glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists (GLP-1) injections market that got them new scrutiny.
No real issue there, the products are well-established and a phone call or website consultation is more convenient and far faster than visiting a doctor's office in the modern Obamacare milieu. It's entering the compounded glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists (GLP-1) injections market that got them new scrutiny.
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Bad News For Big Alcohol: Half Of Valentine's Day Celebrants Will Abstain
A new survey created by marketing insights company Tastewise finds that half are not going to drink alcohol on Valentine's Day - for health reasons.
They're not wrong. During the waning days of the Biden administration, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy did something for science and public health that was grounded in science - he issued a report encouraging people to get off alcohol.
They're not wrong. During the waning days of the Biden administration, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy did something for science and public health that was grounded in science - he issued a report encouraging people to get off alcohol.
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Hey AI, Design A Calorimeter For Me
As artificial intelligence tools continue to evolve and improve their performance on more and more general tasks, scientists struggle to make the best use of them.
The problem is not incompetence - in fact, at least in my field of study (high-energy physics) most of us have grown rather well educated on the use and development of tailored machine learning algorithms. The problem is rather that our problems are enormously complex. Long gone are the years when we started to apply with success deep neural networks to classification and regression problems of data analysis: those were easy tasks. The bar now is set much higher - optimize the design of instruments we use for our scientific research.
The problem is not incompetence - in fact, at least in my field of study (high-energy physics) most of us have grown rather well educated on the use and development of tailored machine learning algorithms. The problem is rather that our problems are enormously complex. Long gone are the years when we started to apply with success deep neural networks to classification and regression problems of data analysis: those were easy tasks. The bar now is set much higher - optimize the design of instruments we use for our scientific research.
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Lessons, Advice, And Reflections On Editing A Scholarly Book
In 2023, I bit the bullet by signing a book contract with Springer to work on a difficult compilation of scientific misconduct and problematic science publishing practice. It was planned as an edited book that required expert contributors of the field to write chapters on the various topics.
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Birth Control Pill: Less Ovulation Linked To Less Ovarian Cancer
A new Artificial Intelligence analysis of data of ovarian cancer patients links birth control pills to a 26% reduced risk for those had ever used it, and 43% for those who had used the it after the age of 45.
That does not mean you should take it as a way to prevent cancer, it is an endocrine disruptor that binds to estrogen with 20,000X the effect of compounds like BPA that environmentalists tried to claim are too risky in food containers, and this study is EXPLORATORY. With enough data, Australians could link voting for the Liberal Party to lower risk of diseases. Epidemiology can link anything to anything.
That does not mean you should take it as a way to prevent cancer, it is an endocrine disruptor that binds to estrogen with 20,000X the effect of compounds like BPA that environmentalists tried to claim are too risky in food containers, and this study is EXPLORATORY. With enough data, Australians could link voting for the Liberal Party to lower risk of diseases. Epidemiology can link anything to anything.
Categories: Science 2.0