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"In recent years, Mr. Perl said, his father traveled in India and Japan lecturing about creativity and his concern that science education was becoming too rigid. He urged students to keep a journal and write down crazy ideas. But he also urged them and his colleagues not to get too far ahead of the fundamental truth of experiment in science. In a blog post last year he wrote: "The time scale for physics progress is a century not a decade. There are no decade-scale solutions to worries about the rate of progress of fundamental physics knowledge. My advice is (a) study calculus and machine shop in high school and (b) have a long life as advised in the old song by buttoning up your overcoat and eating an apple every day. "On the other hand," he continued, "occasional scanning of the obituaries in The New York Times indicates that financiers live longer than physicists, so perhaps start a hedge fund in high school.""

"Many of the patrons, they say, are ignoring basic research - the kind that investigates the riddles of nature and has produced centuries of breakthroughs, even whole industries - for a jumble of popular, feel-good fields like environmental studies and space exploration." [One might ask analogously what military funding of science has done over the decades since WW2]

"Female professors were just as biased against women students as their male colleagues, and biology professors just as biased as physics professors - even though more than half of biology majors are women, whereas men far outnumber women in physics. "

Masters of Public Health students from the University of Michigan will be posting weekly articles as they learn how to translate complex science into something a broad audience can understand and appreciate.

Sciences Knowledge Domain Links

Intercultural Center for Research in Education (INCRE) is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization dedicated to research, development and technical assistance with the purpose of promoting quality and equity of education in the United States and internationally through projects that integrate humanistic education, science, technology and education for the preservation of life on our planet.

International Panel on Social Progress

"Not only do patents push higher prices onto consumers, they burden the research world with the increased costs of paying for the intellectual property needed to do further research. Research labs have to pay thousands of dollars for the strains and processes needed to build upon current developments, adding more costs to cutting-edge research. "