Culture

Despite claims by each side that they have some special reverence for science and reason, both liberals and conservatives can be biased against science that doesn't align with their political views.

A new study found that people from both the left and right expressed less trust in science when they were presented with facts that challenged specific politicized issues.

For conservatives, climate change and evolution were the issues that led them to lose some trust in science. For liberals, it was hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and nuclear power.

National dietary advice on fat consumption issued to millions of US and UK citizens in 1977 and 1983, to cut coronary heart disease incidence, lacked any solid trial evidence to back it up, and "should not have been introduced," concludes research published in the online journal Open Heart.

Both sets of dietary guidelines recommended reducing overall dietary fat consumption to 30% of total energy intake, and specifically, saturated fat to 10% of total energy intake. Both acknowledged that the evidence was not conclusive.

By Paul Webster, Teaching Associate in History at Cardiff University

Insecure? Craving attention and needing to feel good about yourself? Chances are Facebook is your friend.

A new study suggests that people who are generally insecure in their relationships are more actively engaged on the social media site - frequently posting on walls, commenting, updating their status or "liking" something - in hopes of getting attention.

In two surveys of nearly 600 people ages 18-83, researchers at Union College asked participants about their tendencies in close relationships and their Facebook habits.

By Pallavi Amitava Banerjee, Durham University

A new study suggests college-educated cops are dissatisfied with the job, have negative views of their supervisors and don't necessarily favor community policing, a strategy aimed partly at reducing the number of deadly police-citizen incidents dominating the headlines.

But William Terrill, a Michigan State University criminologist and co-author of the study on police attitudes, said the findings tell only part of the story. In past research on police behavior, Terrill found college-educated officers are less likely to use force on citizens.

Because Americans spend more per capita on health care than residents of any country, debate has rumbled on for years about whether all that investment yields sufficient results. Now a newly published study with a distinctive design, led by an MIT health care scholar, shows that increased spending on emergency care does, in fact, produce better outcomes for patients.

Don't go chomping on a handful of chili peppers just yet, but there may be help for hopeful dieters in those fiery little Native American fruits.

Illinois girls are only half as interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields despite spending efforts to encourage participation.

When something is rare, it's alluring--true whether you're talking about precious gemstones or a pristine edition of the first issue of Action Comics (which introduced Superman). And psychologists have long known that if you can make a consumer good more desirable by making it appear rare.

Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers once had a terrible reputation for quality and foodborne illnesses. The chairman of the BP oil company once whined that he wanted his life back after his company gushed oil across the Gulf of Mexico. Yet both companies are doing fine now.

Though the old staple in business is that 'it takes 5 years of work to win a customer back if you lose them due to quality or service', and that remains true, scandals involving bosses of major firms don't have long-term negative impact on share prices. They can even lead to better performance.

Anti-vaccine beliefs are going bipartisan, what was once the province of kooky progressives in California and Oregon is now also being embraced by American libertarians, and public service announcements are unlikely to help. Washington State University researchers say that people may be influenced more by online comments than by credible PSAs.

SAN FRANCISCO - Feb. 5, 2014 - In one of the largest population-based studies ever conducted on nearsightedness in children, researchers have discovered that lower-income students in China have better vision than their middle-class counterparts. Data show that nearsightedness, also called myopia, is twice as prevalent in the middle-income province of Shaanxi compared to the poorer neighboring province of Gansu. The study was published online today in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

On Dec. 26, 2013, a two-year-old boy living in the Guinean village of Meliandou, Guéckédou Prefecture was stricken with a rare disease, caused by the filament-shaped Ebola virus.

The child is believed to be the first case in what soon became a flood-tide of contagion, ravaging the West African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, infecting, according to the World Health Organization, over 21,000 cases as of Jan. 21, with nearly 9000 confirmed deaths--the actual toll likely much higher.

"Primitive humans were likely forced to bet on whether or not they could find a better mate," said Chris Adami, MSU professor of microbiology and molecular genetics and co-author of the paper.

"They could either choose to mate with the first, potentially inferior, companion and risk inferior offspring, or they could wait for Mr. or Ms. Perfect to come around," he said. "If they chose to wait, they risk never mating."