Missouri’s House Bill 1472, introduced in the House of Representatives on January 16, 2013, is the third antiscience bill of the year, following Virginia’s HB 207 and Oklahoma’s SB 1765. If enacted, the bill would require “[a]ny school district or charter school which provides instruction relating to the theory of evolution by natural selection” to have “a policy on parental notification and a mechanism where a parent can choose to remove the student from any part of the district’s or school’s instruction on evolution.” Parents and guardians would receive a notification containing “[t]he basic content of the district’s or school’s evolution instruction to be provided to the student” and “[t]he parent’s right to remove the student from any part of the district’s or school’s evolution instruction.”

NCSE’s deputy director Glenn Branch commented, “House Bill 1472 would eviscerate the teaching of biology in Missouri.” Quoting “The OOPSIE Compromise – A Big Mistake,” which Eugenie C. Scott and he wrote for Evolution: Education and Outreach in 2008, he added, “Evolution inextricably pervades the biological sciences; it therefore pervades, or at any rate ought to pervade, biology education at the K-12 level. There simply is no alternative to learning about it; there is no […]

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“Stop wasting your money on multivitamins and supplements. They aren’t doing a damn thing!” is the message researchers of a new study send out to all its readers. How far is this true?

The message is particularly meant for people who already have a “reasonably good” diet and does not come as good news for an industry worth $53 billion in the United States of America. According to statistics, approximately 53 percent of all Americans take at least one supplement each.

The new article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that three studies looking into the benefits of supplements and multivitamins found none. The study involved analyzing the effects of supplements on cardiovascular disease, cancer, mortality, and cognitive decline. They found that there were no significant differences between people who took vitamin supplements and people who didn’t.

Researchers noted that buying supplements is a complete waste of money, especially for those who don’t have any vitamin deficiency and those who include adequate vitamins in their diet.

Herbal Supplements

Herbal supplements account for a $5 billion industry. Many people turn to herbal alternatives instead of prescribed drugs to improve their health. One reason is that they are marketed as “natural” and “organic.” […]

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The world’s most devastating global weather phenomenon – extreme ‘El Niño” weather events – will double in frequency to once a decade if global warming remains unchecked, according to what scientists believe is a major step forward in understanding such events.

The last extreme El Niño in 1998 resulted in the hottest year ever recorded, and the accompanying floods, cyclones, droughts and wildfires killed an estimated 23,000 people and caused $35bn-$45bn (£21.3bn-£27.5bn) in damage, particularly to food production. But until now scientists have been unable to agree how climate change will affect how often extreme El Niños strike.

The new study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, concludes that in stark contrast to earlier work, the current rate of carbon emissions would mean twice as many extreme El Niños over the next 100 years, with profound socioeconomic consequences.

‘This is a highly unexpected consequence of global warming,” said Professor Mat Collins of the University of Exeter, who is on the research team. ‘Previously we had thought that El Niño would be unaffected by climate change. Tropical rainfall conditions such as those experienced in extreme El Niños have a dramatic influence on the world, [so] the impact therefore on mankind is substantial.”

Another team […]

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Almost half of the world’s wealth is owned by just 1% of the world’s population, according to a report published just days before the start of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, where the topic of rapidly increasing income disparities will be a major focus.

In its study titled Working for the Few, the British-founded development charity Oxfam concludes that the $110 trillion wealth of the 1% richest people on the planet is some 65 times the total wealth of those floundering at the “bottom half” of the world’s population.

Further, this poorer “bottom half” now has about the same amount of money as the richest 85 people in the world, and the wealthiest grew their share of bounty in 24 out of 26 countries surveyed between 1980 and 2012, the study says. The research was compiled using data from Credit Suisse’s World Wealth report and the Forbes’ billionaires list.

“In the last 30 thirty years seven out of 10 people have been living in countries where economic inequality has increased,” Nick Galasso, one of the co-authors of the study, told USA TODAY. “This is a trend that has been unfolding globally for the last two or three decades. What we’ve not seen […]

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Among the first bills moving through the (Arizona) Legislature this session is one that would provide significant new religious protections, some say to the point of legalizing discrimination.

Senate Bill 1062, pushed by the conservative advocacy group Center for Arizona Policy and introduced by Sen. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, would allow individuals to use religious beliefs as a defense in a lawsuit filed by another individual.

Specifically, the bill proposes to:

– Expand the state’s definition of the exercise of religion to include both the practice and observance of religion;

– Allow someone to assert a legal claim of free exercise of religion regardless of whether the government is a party to the proceedings;

– Expand those protected under the state’s free exercise of religion law to ‘any individual, association, partnership, corporation, church, religious assembly or institution, estate, trust, foundation or other legal entity.”

Proponents say the bill would, for example, protect a wedding photographer who declined to take photos of a same-sex couple’s commitment ceremony due to the photographer’s religious beliefs.

Opponents say it could also protect a corporation that refused to hire anyone who wasn’t Christian and could block members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community from access to nearly any business or service.

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