Science policy
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Category archives for Science policy
Nothing to fear but the fear of panic
Posted by revere on July 28, 2007 If your country had thousands of cases of a potentially fatal disease, spread by mosquitoes, would you panic? Not if you lived in the US, apparently. Last year there were over 4200 cases of West Nile virus infections with 177 deaths. I don’t remember panic gripping the nation. So I had to laugh when Canadian…
Nature Precedings
Posted by revere on June 25, 2007 It is infuriating how stodgy biomedical sciences are in terms of information sharing. It’s not clear how much of this is bred of inherent conservatism, the pressures of a very competitive field or just plain technobackwardness. But while mathematics and physics have had preprint servers for years, biomedicine has had nothing or virtually nothing (that…
Gag the scientists and shutter the libraries
Posted by revere on December 15, 2006 The Bush Administration hates science. Science is reality-based and some truths are politically inconvenient. But there are things that can be done. Like this:
Hiding science
Posted by revere on October 19, 2006 You may have heard of sequestered juries in the courtroom but probably you haven’t heard of sequestered science. Sequestered science is the name given by the project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP) to scientific knowledge concealed from the public. [Full disclosure; I am personally acquainted with the SKAPPers]. Last year they held a…