Author: TheConversation

By Rick Eckstein, Professor of Sociology, Villanova University As part of the “Operation Varsity Blues” case that federal prosecutors announced on March 12, dozens of people – including Hollywood actresses and wealthy businessmen – stand accused of having bought their children’s way into elite colleges and universities. As a researcher who has studied how young athletes get admitted to college, I don’t see a major difference between this admission fraud case and how many wealthy families can buy their children’s way into elite colleges through “back” and “side” doors. In my research, I show how most intercollegiate sports are...

By Matthew Motta Postdoctoral Fellow in the Science of Science Communication at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania News that the Trump administration plans to create a panel devoted to challenging government warnings about climate change has been met with opposition from members of the U.S. military. Citing concerns about the effects of climate change on national security, more than four dozen top-ranking military officials came out in opposition to the Trump administration’s plan. Military concern about the effects of climate change on national security is not new. Months before former Secretary James Mattis left the Defense...

By David S. Meyer, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine A gaggle of young activists recently paid Dianne Feinstein a visit at the senator’s San Francisco office, imploring her to support the Green New Deal framework for confronting climate change. She responded by explaining the complicated legislative process, emphasizing her decades of experience and promising to pursue a considerably more modest approach to confronting climate change with a better shot at passage in the Senate. The lawmaker tried to come across as sympathetic, yet sounded condescending in a short video clip that quickly went viral, eliciting a stream...

By Steve Calandrillo Jeffrey & Susan Brotman Professor of Law, University of Washington In an effort to avoid the biannual clock switch in spring and fall, some well-intended critics of daylight saving time (DST) have made the mistake of suggesting that the abolition of it and a return to permanent standard time would benefit society. In other words, the U.S. would never “spring forward” or “fall back.” They are wrong. DST saves lives and energy and prevents crime. Not surprisingly, then, politicians in Washington, California and Florida are now proposing to move to DST year-round. Congress should seize on...

By Mack Clayton Shelley, II University Professor of Political Science, Statistics, and School of Education, and Chair of the Department of Political Science, Iowa State University Politicians use and abuse statistics and fabricate when it suits their purposes. Contemporary examples of either deliberate or inadvertent misuse of data are easy to find on all sides of the political divide. The notion of politically related lying with numbers has been around a long time, back at least to Mark Twain in a 1906 book in which he attributed the phrase “lies, damn lies and statistics” to British Prime Minister Benjamin...

By Arash Javanbakht, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University Mass shootings seem to have become a sad new normal in the American life. They happen too often, and in very unexpected places. Concerts, movie theaters, places of worship, workplaces, schools, bars and restaurants are no longer secure from gun violence. Often, and especially when a person who is not a minority or Muslim perpetrates a mass shooting, mental health is raised as a real concern – or, critics say, a diversion from the real issue of easy access to firearms. Less is discussed, however, about the stress of...