Guest Thinkers

The National Science Foundation has released a PDF version of the 2008 edition of Science Indicators. Every two years, Chapter 7 of the report reviews the latest research tracking public […]

In a report on the 2007 activities of the Center for Inquiry, chair Paul Kurtz adds further to how he differentiates a positive and life affirming secular view of the […]

Michael Pollan was interviewed recently on WNYC about his new book “A Defense of Eating.” Well worth listening to…

Media Matters for America, a liberal media watch dog organization, has released an analysis of sourcing patterns of religious leaders in news coverage. From the intro to the report: Religion […]

Scholars have long warned about the increasing sound bite nature of our media and political system, but overlooked is the visual nature of this trend. A new study in the […]

Key exit poll indicators explaining Hillary’s unexpected showing in New Hamsphire: She carried registered Dems 45% to 34% over Obama. Dems made up 54% of those voting in the primary […]

Jon Krosnick, a professor of Communication at Stanford and perhaps the top expert in survey methodology, hypothesizes that the pre-primary polls in New Hampshire might have been wrong because they […]

One other possible explanation for the inaccurate NH poll predictions is the so-called Bradley Effect. Below is part of the discussion at Slate, a hypothesis that Krosnick is then quoted […]

American University students watch the Iowa Caucus returns as they prepare to head to New Hampshire to cover, film and analyze the first presidential primary in 2008. Photo by Glenn […]

At ABC News.com, survey expert and Stanford professor Jon Krosnick has more on the likely primacy ballot effect that I reported on this morning: Until this year, New Hampshire rotated […]

Out of all the suggestions that have been thrown around about who should be the next Presidential science advisor, I think Bora over at A Blog Around the Clock might […]

In a lengthy column at today’s Washington Post, media reporter Howard Kurtz pulls no punches in criticizing the horse race coverage that has defined the primary races: “The series of […]

Perhaps the best quote on the horse race coverage goes to USC professor Marty Kaplan writing at the Huffington Post: I wonder whether this humiliating turnabout, played out in real […]

The Clinton team has added a new message guru, advertising and branding wizard Roy Spence. From ABC News.com: Spence, 60, a longtime friend of the Clintons, is the quirky Austin-based […]

The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted an analysis of post-NH newspaper and television coverage and has a critical review of the “reverse direction” narrative.

WAMU’s Kojo Namdi Show spotlights labor rights for part-time faculty. You can listen to the full show here Labor Rights for Part-time College ProfessorsFor Washington-area universities, the large pool of […]

An editorial by 17 professional societies at the FASEB Journal details the findings of a new survey on public opinion about evolution. The editorial closes by urging new approaches to […]

Over at Monkey Trials, Scott Hatfield suggests that in the next administration the new presidential science advisor should be a famous science popularizer such as EO Wilson or perhaps even […]

Obama’s Iowa momentum has proven too much for Hillary Clinton’s campaign team to fight off. With multiple polls in New Hampshire showing a double digit lead for Obama, it looks […]

The first two months that the new Fox Business Channel was on the air, it averaged a mere 6,900 viewers on any given weekday. The handful of viewers for the […]

Vanity Fair has the clues and the reader is left to connect the dots: Film is set in 1957 (ten years after crash at Roswell), was shot in New Mexico, […]

As I wrote yesterday, the key indicator following Obama’s expected win in New Hampshire tomorrow night will be the distance that he has closed in the subsequent national polls. If […]

Despite his deep faith and frequent use of religious language, Obama is the clear favorite in New Hampshire among the non-religious. According to the exit polls, among the 22% of […]

James Watson outrageously suggested that Africans were genetically inferior.If race is a biological fiction, what are the reasons for persistent belief in this social myth? My colleague Tim Caulfield, Director […]

In the 1984 presidential election pitting the charismatic Ronald Reagan against the plodding Walter Mondale, polls showed that a majority of Americans when asked specifically about their policy preferences favored […]

As I have traveled across the country over the past year giving talks on new directions in science communication, one of my recommendations to science institutions and organizations has been […]

Ten months ago the patterns of attacks among some of the leading personalities at Fox News were already emerging.With Barack Obama’s win tonight in Iowa, expect the character attacks, innuendo, […]

In an editorial at this week’s Science, editor Donald Kennedy raises concerns that religion has come to dominate the presidential race and argues that instead science should have an equal […]

At the History News Network, my American University colleague Lenny Steinhorn teams up with his brother Charles, a professor of Mathematics at Vassar College, to point out the misleading nature […]

Did you know that while an Illinois Senator that Barack Obama successfully passed major bills on crime, ethics, campaign finance reform, and low wage work? And that these accomplishments reveal […]