Sociologists have studied the diffusion of ideas and knowledge for decades. A new study shows that the eminence of the source has a greater impact than the quality of the idea. That makes the rich richer and society poorer.
Other Science News
Have you started your Christmas and/or holiday shopping? If you're like us, you're putting it off to the last minute – because you're too busy with other things. Here at ACSH, we've been busy telling the world about science. Here's where we've appeared recently.
Are Raccoons More Like Dogs or Cats? Trick question! They're more like bears.
Has the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl created mutant animals? Rich Kozlovich from the
Paradigms and Demographics blog site doesn't think so.
The Holiday Season is in full swing, and we here at the American Council on Science and Health continue our fight on behalf of good science! Here's where we appeared in recent days.
Conventional wisdom tells us that 10,000 steps per day is the "magic number" required for health benefits. But is there sound evidence behind this number? Dr. Christopher Labos, from McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, investigates.
A key challenge in building electric aircraft involves how much energy can be stored in a given amount of weight of the onboard energy source. Although the best batteries store about 40 times less energy per unit of weight than jet fuel, a greater share of their energy is available to drive motion. Here's more on why batteries are, relatively speaking, heavy for aviation.
What a medical doctor sees in social media posts can tell an entirely different picture than the one intended to be told. As the saying goes "the devil is in the details."
One would think that in a world where facts can be easily verified, it shouldn't become so polarized. But a new paper in the European Journal for Philosophy of Science argues that polarization is the natural outcome when groups of people disagree. In fact, the authors document a major example of polarization within the scientific community itself.
Researchers, believe it or not, ingested Lego toys to see how quickly they could be, um, excreted. Yes, this actually took place. This "work" was published in a journal.
How can you identify a scientifically ignorant person? Ask him if he's concerned about the health effects of GMOs. If the answer is yes, you've identified somebody who probably couldn't pass an 8th grade science test. Too harsh? Not according to the latest Pew poll.
Plenty of bad papers are accepted as true because the academic who wrote it is famous. On the flip side, many good papers are never written out of the fear that it could cost an academic his job. So, how about we just eliminate real names and publish papers under fake ones instead? That's the fundamental idea behind a new journal, not-so-subtly called The Journal of Controversial Ideas, set to launch next year. This idea is so good, I wish I'd thought of it first.