Social Issues

In 2007, the American Psychological Association commissioned their Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation.  The background is this: early in the history of mental health treatment efforts, homosexuality was considered to be an illness.  Therefore, it was thought to be appropriate for therapists to try to change the sexual orientation of persons who are homosexual.  This attitude never was universal; it is said that even Sigmund Freud was skeptical of it.  Even so, it was not until 1962 that efforts began to remove homosexuality from the title="Diagnostic and…
Just goes to show how lobbying reform hasn't gone anywhere near far enough: href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/guest-post-bank-lobbyists-not-only-trying-to-kill-new-regulations-they-are-trying-to-weaken-existing-regulations.html">Bank Lobbyists Are Not Only Trying to Kill NEW Legislation, They Are Trying to Weaken EXISTING Regulations By George Washington of href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/">Washington's Blog. Everyone knows that the lobbyists for the financial giants are trying to kill any tough new regulations. But they are also trying to weaken existing regulations…
The topic of neural enhancement has created controversy.  This came to wide attention in late 2007, upon the publication of various articles in Nature, as noted by  href="http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/12/cognitive_enhancers_in_academi.php">Shelley Batts, href="http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2007/12/the_ethics_of_performance_enha.php">Janet Stemwedel, href="http://scienceblogs.com/neuronculture/2008/04/steroids_for_the_brain_nature.php">David href="http://scienceblogs.com/neuronculture/2008/12/survey_the_slippery_slope_of_c.php">Dobbs, href="http://…
This is kind of strange: a post about an insurance company, that has nothing to do with health care.   href="http://www.guideone.com/">Guideone Mutual Insurance Company recently settled a lawsuit in which religious discrimination was alleged.  This had to do with a "product" called FaithGuard, which was a kind of homeowners' insurance.  In 2006, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development began an investigation, after the GuideOne href="http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/11860056.html">failed to respond to a complaint: GuideOne routinely asks for religious affiliation when…
href="http://www.researchblogging.org"> alt="ResearchBlogging.org" src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png" style="border: 0pt none ;"> A fair amount has been written about the topic of motivated reasoning.  Jonah Lehrer href="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/09/motivated_reasoning.php">explains the relationship between motivated reasoning and the political process; Orac href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/04/why_projection_isnt_all_its_cracked_up_t.php">addresses the issue with regard to quantum woo. (Plus more at Mixing…
I'm not a regular reader of USA Today, but Maria tweeted this story, and I feel like I need to say something about it or else risk leaving it rattling around in my head like marbles under a hubcap: About 70% of Americans agree, either somewhat or strongly, that it's beneficial for women to take her husband's last name when they marry, while 29% say it's better for women to keep their own names, finds a study being presented today at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in San Francisco. Researchers from Indiana University and the University of Utah asked about 815 people a…
Psychology is turning out to be a rather important field these days.  Nate Hagens has a post on The Oil Drum, href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5519">The Psychological and Evolutionary Roots of Resource Overconsumption Revisited.  He reviews the evolutionary psychology of poor economic decision-making.  Calculated Risk has a post, href="http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/06/scientific-american-bubbles-and-busts.html">Scientific American: Bubbles and Busts. It's based on an article in Scientific American ( href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-science-of-…
It was the second-most-blogged article on the NYT when I got up this morning; now, it is the first-most-blogged.  It is the article that reports on a survey that shows 72% support for a government-run health insurance program.  The program would be similar to Medicare, but would be available to persons under 65 and not on Social Security Disability.  href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/policy/21poll.html">In Poll, Wide Support for Government-Run Health By KEVIN SACK and MARJORIE CONNELLY Published: June 20, 2009 Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the…
When I first heard about the American Medical Association (AMA) opposing Obama's health care reform, I was troubled.  I almost wrote a post about it, but by the time I got home, I found that others had beaten me to it.   href="http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/06/revolutionary_medicine.php">Revere, for example, appears to have written before work, posting at 6:46AM.  That's dedication. But it the interim, I've come up with a different angle.  Part of it comes from an article on Medpage Today (free registration): href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AMA/14691">…
Market Folly writes of a new hedge fund strategy, and asks if there are any more ideas href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/141982-hedge-funds-latest-idea-investing-in-lawsuits">like this: We came across this interesting piece in Dealbook the other day and thought it was very intriguing. Simply put: hedge funds are now investing in lawsuits. The premise is pretty simple: they invest in one side of the lawsuit and get a share of the winnings (if, of course, they win the case)... ...If you think about it, it makes sense. These investors essentially 'bankroll' a litigation team, thus giving…
In a post a couple weeks ago, I commented on the ethical dimension of opting out of vaccination against serious contagious diseases: Of course, parents are accountable to the kids they are raising. They have a duty to do what is best for them, as well as they can determine what that is. They probably also have a duty to put some effort into making a sensible determination of what's best for their kids (which may involve seeking out expert advice, and evaluating who has the expertise to be offering trustworthy advice). But parents and kids are also part of a community, and arguably they are…
Yesterday, in my first post about the Silence is the Enemy campaign, I wrote: Addressing rape directly. From the point of view of ethics, you'd think this would be a very short discussion. It is wrong to commit sexual violence. It is wrong to act out your frustration or your sense of entitlement or your need to feel that there is something in your life that is within your control on the body of another human being. It is wrong to treat a woman or a child (or another man) as less than fully human. Anyone who would argue otherwise could only be a moral monster. Or thoroughly steeped in a…
This month, Sheril Kirshenbaum and Dr. Isis are spearheading a blogospheric initiative to call attention to a continuing epidemic of mass rapes in Liberia even six years after the end of its 14 year civil war, and to try to do something about it. Last month, Nicholas Kristof described the situation in the New York Times, touching on the particular case of a 7-year-old rape survivor named Jackie: [S]omehow mass rape survived the end of the war; it has been easier to get men to relinquish their guns than their sense of sexual entitlement. So the security guard at Jackie's school, a man in his…
This is a continuation from href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2009/05/peak_oil_imminent_public_healt.php">last time.  Sort of.  Last time I wrote about some things from a recent program at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  I took the material from one of the many presentations.  since then, I have looked thought the slides from the other presentations.  It turns out that the majority of the material relates more to Peak Oil than to Public Health.  Perhaps that is because most of…
Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy,  has a nice, terse, thought-provoking post on his blog: The Big Picture: href="http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/05/us-vs-europe-who-is-the-welfare-state/">US vs Europe: Who is the Welfare State? By Barry Ritholtz - May 1st, 2009, 10:25AM Today is May Day, and while International Workers' Day (Labour Day in the UK), means little in the USA, its a big holiday in Europe. Banks and markets are closed on the continent, (England celebrates on Monday). Speaking with Mike Panzner…
Dr. Isis has some rollicking good discussions going on at her pad about who might care about blogs, and what role they might play in scientific education, training, and interactions. (Part one, part two.) On the second of these posts, a comment from Pascale lodged itself in my brain: I think a lot of impressionable girls, especially in that middle-school age group, get the idea that they can't be good at science or math if they like clothes, makeup, and boys. Is it the science/math sterotype that is the problem, or is it that girls make other choices to pursue these alternate interests? "I…
Well, maybe not Malthus, but Garrett Hardin and Paul Ehrlich -- the 1960's-era neomalthusian academicians -- have been right on the money.  There are hard limits to growth, and those limits are upon us.  This is the contention of Charles A. S. Hall and John W. Day, Jr., two systems ecologists who have published a paper in American Scientist. The paper is still behind a pay wall at the publication site, but a PDF copy can be obtained href="http://www.esf.edu/efb/hall/2009-05Hall0327.pdf">from Professor Hall's web site. (HT: href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5330#more">EROI Guy…
style="display: inline;">Amy Goodman, the lead journalist for Democracy Now!, has been traveling around the country, giving talks, and promoting her book href="http://www.democracynow.org/store/product/5/BKSUTMHC">Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times. This (standing up to the madness) is inherently difficult.   The photo shows her discussing a video of href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/09/protests_in_minneapolis.php">her arrest in St. Paul, while covering the Republican convention in 2008. Ms. Goodman happens to be one of our more…
A bunch of people (including Bora) have pointed me to Clay Shirky's take on #amazonfail. While I'm not in agreement with Shirky's analysis that Twitter users mobilized an angry mob on the basis of a false theory (and now that mob is having a hard time backing down), there are some interesting ideas in his post that I think merit consideration. So, let's consider them. Shirky starts by considering how sentiments were running on the Twittersphere Sunday evening, when Amazon still hadn't put out a statement about what was going on, and how those sentiments didn't ratchet down much by the time…
Those of you on Twitter yesterday probably noticed the explosion of tweets with the hashtag #amazonfail. For those who were otherwise occupied carving up chocolate bunnies or whatnot, the news spread to the blogs, Facebook, and the traditional media outlets. The short version is that on Easter Sunday, a critical mass of people noticed that many, many books that Amazon sells had their Amazon sales rank stripped, and that these books stopped coming up in searches on Amazon that were not searches on the book titles (or, presumably, authors). What fanned the flames of the frenzy were certain…