Group items tagged

There is a growing anti-science streak on the American right that could have tangible societal and political impacts on many fronts — including regulation of environmental and other issues and stem-cell research.

The right-wing populism that is flourishing in the current climate of economic insecurity echoes many traditional conservative themes, such as opposition to taxes, regulation and immigration. But the Tea Party and its cheerleaders, who include Limbaugh, Fox News television host Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who famously decried fruitfly research as a waste of public money), are also tapping an age-old US political impulse — a suspicion of elites and expertise.

Denialism over global warming has become a scientific cause célèbre within the movement. Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”, has called climate-change science “the biggest scam in the history of the world”. The Tea Party's leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research — which Beck has equated with eugenics. The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government. Under the administration of George W. Bush, science in policy had already taken knocks from both neglect and ideology. Yet President Barack Obama's promise to “restore science to its rightful place” seems to have linked science to liberal politics, making it even more of a target of the right.

THINK income inequality growth is primarily an American phenomenon?  Think again:American society is more unequal than those in most other OECD countries, and growth in inequality there has been relatively large. But with very few exceptions, the rich have done better over the past 30 years, even in highly egalitarian places like Scandinavia.

Over the past decades, OECD countries have undergone significant structural changes resulting from their closer integration into a global economy and rapid technological progress. These changes have brought higher rewards for high-skilled workers and thus affected the way earnings from work are distributed. The skills gap in earnings reflects several factors. First, a rapid rise in trade and financial markets integration has generated a relative shift in labour demand in favour of high-skilled workers at the expense of low-skilled labour. Second, technical progress has shifted production technologies in both industries and services in favour of skilled labour...Finally, during the past two decades most OECD countries carried out regulatory reforms to strengthen competition in the markets for goods and services and associated reforms that aimed at making labour markets more adaptable. For instance, anti-competitive product-market regulations were reduced significantly in all countries. Employment protection legislation for workers with temporary contracts also became more lenient in many countries. Minimum wages, relative to average wages, have also declined in a number of countries since the 1980s. Wage-setting mechanisms have also changed; the share of union members among workers has fallen across most countries, although the coverage of collective bargaining has generally remained rather stable over time. In a number of countries, unemployment benefit replacement rates fell, and in an attempt to promote employment among low-skilled workers, taxes on labour for low-income workers were also reduced.

It's tempting to look at this list of regulatory changes and argue that it was these rule changes which facilitated growth in inequality. That may be true to some extent, but the unverisality of the reform experience makes me think it's at least as likely that underlying trends (like globalisation and technological change) made the prevailing rules unsustainable.

debates about the nature, the architecture and the governing principles of the internet are not merely technical or economic discussions.  Above all, these debates have deep political, social, and cultural implications and become a matter of public, national and global interest.

In many ways, net neutrality could be considered the first amendment of the internet; no pun intended here. However, just as with freedom of speech the principle of net neutrality cannot be approached as absolute or as a fetish. Even in a democracy we cannot say everything applies all the time in all contexts. Limiting the core principle of freedom of speech in a democracy is only possible in very specific circumstances, such as harm, racism or in view of the public interest. Along the same lines, compromising on the principle of net neutrality should be for very specific and clearly defined reasons that are transparent and do not serve commercial private interests, but rather public interests or are implemented in view of guaranteeing an excellent quality of service for all.

One of the only really convincing arguments of those challenging net neutrality is that due to the dramatic increases in streaming activity and data-exchange through peer-to-peer networks, the overall quality of service risks being compromised if we stick to data being treated on a first come first serve basis. We are being told that popular content will need to be stored closer to the consumer, which evidently comes at an extra cost.

One part of Matthew Nisbet's recent report that has received very little attention is its comparative analysis of ideological and partisan perspectives of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Nisbet shows that AAAS members are extremely partisan and ideological.  The word "extremely" is mine, and what do I mean by it?  Look at the figure above:  AAAS members are more partisan than MSNBC viewers and even Tea Party members.  AAAS members are more ideological than evangelical churchgoers but less so than Fox News viewers.  In both cases AAAS members are very different than the public as a whole.

Dan Sarewitz has discussed the problems with the ideological and partisan likemindedness of our scientific community, which has been exploited and reenforced in political debates: During the Bush administration, Democrats discovered that they could score political points by accusing Bush of being anti-science. In the process, they seem to have convinced themselves that they are the keepers of the Enlightenment spirit, and that those who disagree with them on issues like climate change are fundamentally irrational. Meanwhile, many Republicans have come to believe that mainstream science is corrupted by ideology and amounts to no more than politics by another name. Attracted to fringe scientists like the small and vocal group of climate skeptics, Republicans appear to be alienated from a mainstream scientific community that by and large doesn't share their political beliefs. The climate debacle is only the most conspicuous example of these debilitating tendencies, which play out in issues as diverse as nuclear waste disposal, protection of endangered species, and regulation of pharmaceuticals. How would a more politically diverse scientific community improve this situation? First, it could foster greater confidence among Republican politicians about the legitimacy of mainstream science. Second, it would cultivate more informed, creative, and challenging debates about the policy implications of scientific knowledge. This could help keep difficult problems like climate change from getting prematurely straitjacketed by ideology. A more politically diverse scientific community would, overall, support a healthier relationship between science and politics.

It should come as no surprise that the increasing politicization of science has come to make science more political rather than politics more scientific.  At the same time, the more partisan and/or and ideological that you are, the more welcome and comfortable that you will find the politicization of science, as it reenforces your preconceptions.

The inquiry will examine the heart of Google's search-advertising business, and the source of most of Google's revenue. Google accounts for around two-thirds of internet searches in the US (and close to 90% in the UK) and according to critics unfairly uses that dominance to favour its own growing network of services.Last November, the European commission opened its own formal investigation into allegations that Google discriminated against competing services in its search results and prevented some websites from using ads by Google competitors.

Legal experts said the investigation could be similar in scale to the massive antitrust probe of Microsoft, which started in 1991 and ended in a settlement a decade later. Professor Joshua Wright of George Mason Law School said: "The investigation will be of a comparable scale to that of Microsoft."But he said the chances of Google being found guilty of antitrust behaviour, as Microsoft was, were far smaller. Wright said for the US to bring a successful case against Google, it would have to prove the company was harming consumers. "As an outsider I would say that obstacle is far higher for them today with Google than it was back then with Microsoft," he said.

He said Google faced a higher risk in the EU case but that in either case the investigations were likely to have a profound impact on the firm."Even if the charges are ultimately bogus, they will occupy many, many hours of managements time and attention," he said.The FTC's investigations are likely to widen to other companies as official requests for information about their dealings with Google.The company has long denied any anticompetitive behaviour, arguing that users can easily click on other choices on the web.