The UK’s Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health Opines on How Not to...
Rebecca Smith and Martin Beckford of the Telegraph (UK) tell us the British experts have concluded that smacking (i.e., spanking) children for misbehavior doesn’t work and is equivalent to physical...
View ArticleRegulating Sugar as a ‘Controlled Substance’Scientist-activists at work
The lede in this Time story says it all: Sugar poses enough health risks that it should be considered a controlled substance just like alcohol and tobacco, contend a team of researchers from the...
View ArticleAdvocacy vs. AnalysisShould scientists disclose policy views in their analyses?
Law professor Paul Horwitz discusses whether advocacy infiltrated legal analysis in the commentary about the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court determined was an...
View ArticleGreenhouse Gas Endangerment FindingPart 5: EPA rules upheld
In a per curium opinion issued on June 26, the Court of appeals for the DC Circuit upheld EPA’s greenhouse gas endangerment finding and other regulations depending on it. The case is Coalition for...
View ArticleAre Baseball Players Overweight?Yes, if you use the government’s obesity...
The government says 70% of adult Americans are overweight and 36% are obese. These conclusions are derived from the government’s body mass index (BMI) classification scheme, which relies on the...
View Article‘EPA Identifies Substitutes for Toxic Flame Retardant Chemical’But...
In a press release dated July 30, EPA says it has identified 33 substitutes to the flame retardant decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE), which will be phased out of production by December 2013. Despite...
View ArticleParasailing: Risks and regulation
Earlier this week, a 28-year old woman died after falling about 150 feet into the ocean when her parasailing harness apparently broke. This has predictably led to calls for more regulation. The...
View ArticleGenetically Modified Corn and Cancer: Contrary to previous research, a new...
France 24 reports that “France has asked its national health body to verify a study released this week linking Monsanto’s NK603 genetically modified corn to cancer in rats, saying the results of the...
View ArticleDoes Soft Drink Consumption Cause Arthritis to Get Worse? The latest in...
According to reporter Nick Tate at Newsmax Health, “If you have bad knees you might want to lay off the soda. New research has found that men with osteoarthritis of the knee who drink sugary soft...
View ArticleAirport Security: Part 5: Opposition to risk-based screening
A well worn complaint about the Transportation Security Administration is its inability or unwillingness to profile potential threats or practice other forms of risk-based screening. This is compounded...
View ArticleAdvocacy ‘Science’Consumer Reports goes after caramel color in soft drinks
A trade magazine says Consumer Reports is trying to force the FDA to strictly regulate an impurity in the manufacture of caramel colors that the agency believes isn’t harmful. Elaine Watson reports in...
View ArticleScientization of Policy: AAAS and the Campaign to End Obesity Action Fund
Federal regulatory policies, whether made by Congress or Executive branch agencies, benefit from the contributions of physical, biological and social scientists. But these contributions are not without...
View ArticleTravel Restrictions to Reduce Ebola Risk in the US:Part 1: Some analytic...
A dispute has flared between those who support travel restrictions and those who do not. While some proponents can be faulted for excessive confidence in their effectiveness, opponents can be faulted...
View ArticleTravel Restrictions to Reduce Ebola Risk in the US:Part 2: First case in New...
Yesterday we explained why travel restrictions were part of a plausibly effective strategy to reduce the risk of Ebola infections in the US, notwithstanding well-publicized opposition from senior...
View ArticleEbola: A Case Study of Federal Risk Communication Failure
Once the first case of Ebola infection was diagnosed in the US, it was inevitable that it would attract great attention. What was not inevitable is the federal government’s epic failure in risk...
View ArticleThe Centers for Disease Control Ebola Guidance
Federal officials and elite public health experts say that the guidelines published by the Centers for Disease Control are “science-based.” A close look at those guidelines suggests that the scientific...
View ArticleDoes Traffic Noise Cause Obesity?
Epidemiologist Andrei Pyko and colleagues say so, and their new study has garnered the usual press attention. But the claim is false. Their study wasn’t even designed to test this hypothesis, so its...
View ArticlePeer Review at Science after LaCour & Green (2014)
Science magazine, the flagship publication of the American Association of Arts and Sciences, has taken a reputational beating after the publication and retraction of the so-called gay canvassing paper...
View ArticleReproducibility and Information Quality:‘Estimating the reproducibility of...
A key principle in the federal Information Quality Act and its accompanying government-wide guidelines is the disclosure of sufficient information that qualified third parties can reproduce the results...
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