Cato on Campus - Natural & Physical Sciences

C.S.Oy

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:24:00 EDT

By Radley Balko and Roger Koppl: "But as forensic evidence becomes more and more important in securing convictions, the need for monitoring and oversight grows exponentially. Every other scientific field properly requires peer review, statistical analysis, and redundancy to ensure quality and accuracy. It's past time we applied the same quality-control measures to criminal forensics, particularly given the fundamental nature of what's at stake."

Keeping Our Cool: What to do About Global Warming

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:56:00 EDT

By Jim Manzi: "The loss of economic and technological development that would be required to eliminate literally all theorized climate change risk would cripple our ability to deal with virtually every other foreseeable and unforeseeable risk, not to mention our ability to lead productive and interesting lives in the meantime."

The Grand Exaggerator

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:47:00 EDT

By Patrick Michaels: "OK, it's pretty much standard rhetoric in Washington to say that if you don't do as I say, there will be massive consequences. But to say, as Gore recently did: 'The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk;' and: 'The future of human civilization is at stake' � that's a bit much, even for the most faded and jaded political junkie."

Kidneys for Sale: Iranian Organ Donation

Tue, 13 May 2008 13:19:00 EDT

By Kerry Howley: "'What can Iran teach us about good governance?' is not a question often posed in Washington. But according to Benjamin Hippen, a transplant nephrologist in North Carolina, the Iranians have managed to do something American policy makers have long thought impossible: They�ve found kidneys for every single citizen in need."

Fuel vs. Food

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:04:00 EDT

By Indur M. Goklany: "In recent years, we've heard that climate change could be catastrophic for nature and humanity. But it's becoming increasingly evident that over the next few decades, climate-change policies could prove even more catastrophic."

The Biofuel Brew Ha-Ha

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:58:00 EDT

By Peter Suderman: Reason contributor Peter Suderman writes that the biofuels craze is boosting the price of beer, because farmers are shifting away from barley to biofuel crops made more lucrative by mandates and subsidies.

Showing That You Care: The Evolution of Health Altruism

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:40:00 EDT

By Robin Hanson: "Human behavior regarding medicine seems strange; assumptions and models that seem workable in other areas seem less so in medicine. Perhaps, we need to rethink the basics. Toward this end, I have collected many puzzling stylized facts about behavior regarding medicine, and have sought a small number of simple assumptions which might together account for as many puzzles as possible."

Is Health Care a Right?

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:49:00 EDT

In this podcast economics Professor Russell Roberts of George Mason University debates a physician who thinks health care is a right and the government should provide it.

Organ Transplants: Kidneys for Sale

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:08:00 EDT

"In his most controversial segment yet, reason.tv host Drew Carey offers a startling solution to the critical shortage in kidneys available for transplant: Pay people to donate their kidneys."

WHO's Fooling Who? The World Health Organization's Problematic Ranking of Health Care Systems

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:25:00 EST

By Glen Whitman: "Those who cite the WHO rankings typically present them as an objective measure of the relative performance of national health care systems. They are not. The WHO rankings depend crucially on a number of underlying assumptions� some of them logically incoherent, some characterized by substantial uncertainty, and some rooted in ideological beliefs and values that not everyone shares."

The Ultimate Scholar

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:37:00 EST

By Donald J. Boudreaux: "Last Friday, Feb. 8, marked the 10th anniversary of the death of the great economist Julian Simon. Although he never received the professional or popular acclaim of economists such as Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson or F.A. Hayek, Simon's insights and work rank with those of history's greatest social scientists."

Flex-Fuel Nonsense

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:51:00 EST

By Jerry Taylor: "Congress can no more guarantee that fuel prices will go down from now until the end of time than it can guarantee a robust sex life for fat, balding, middle-aged men. Fuel prices are subject to supply and demand curves that do not answer to Congress � particularly in global energy markets."

Global Warming: Risks and Consequences

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:48:00 EST

"Last fall, at the Reason in DC conference, one of the most strongly attended and memorable panels was titled "Climate Change: Risks and Consequences" and featured Lynne Kiesling, a senior lecturer in economics at Northwestern University, proprietor of the blog Knowledge Problem, and an expert in retail electricity markets; Ronald Bailey, reason's longtime science correspondent and author of, among other books, Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the Biotech Revolution and ECOSCAM: The False Prophets of Environmental Apocalypse; and Fred L. Smith, Jr., the founder and president of Competitive Enterprise Institute."

Unintended Consequences

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:51:00 EST

By Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt: "But with a government that is regularly begged for relief � these days, from mortgage woes, health-care costs and tax burdens � and with every presidential hopeful making daily promises to address these woes, it might be worth encouraging the winning candidate to think twice (or even 8 or 10 times) before rushing off to do good. Because if there is any law more powerful than the ones constructed in a place like Washington, it is the law of unintended consequences."

Congress Strong-Arming Baseball? That's Foul.

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:32:00 EST

By Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch: "First, Major League Baseball, along with other sports leagues and private-sector ventures, simply should not be required to submit their business plans -- much less blood and urine samples -- to Congress or any other government body."

Dismal Science Sees Upbeat Future

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:16:00 EST

By Alexander Tabarrok: "Forget the talk of recession. The world is about to enter a new era in which miracle drugs will conquer cancer and other killer diseases and technological and scientific advances will trigger unprecedented economic growth and global prosperity."

The Failure of U.S. Organ Procurement Policy

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:43:00 EST

By T. Randolph Beard, John D. Jackson, and David L. Kaserman: "In this article, we calculate how many lives will be lost if the United States continues in its current policy course. We do this to motivate policymakers to stop implementing one ineffectual policy action after another and attack the organ shortage with more effective weaponry in the form of financial incentives."

In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:33:00 EST

By John Tierney: "Today�s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels."

Drug Use and the Candidates

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:40:00 EST

By Stanton Peele: "There has been massive drug and underage alcohol use by Americans over the years -- more than 110 million Americans, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, have used illicit drugs. Yet the overwhelming majority of them -- like Messrs. Bush, Clinton and Obama -- have grown up to be productive citizens. Some believe there's no need to know about their youthful misconduct."

Not So Hot

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 15:13:00 EST

By Patrick J. Michaels: "If a scientific paper appeared in a major journal saying that the planet has warmed twice as much as previously thought, that would be front-page news in every major paper around the planet. But what would happen if a paper was published demonstrating that the planet may have warmed up only half as much as previously thought?"

The Great Depression: Is an epidemic of depressive disorder really sweeping America?

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:10:00 EST

By Will Wilkinson: "The alleged epidemic of depression simply doesn�t exist. Horwitz and Wakefield are right: Millions who have been diagnosed with major depression never had it in the first place, even if their lives were nonetheless improved by the drugs they were prescribed."

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:44:00 EST

"The most disturbing part of the movie, and what makes it worth spending the hour-plus to watch it, is the way it portrays the momentum of the global warming crusade. When you have lots and lots of people heavily invested in a point of view, how can they possibly change?" - Arnold Kling

WHO's Watching Over You

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 11:29:00 EST

From Agoraphilia. The WHO rankings, by purporting to measure the efficacy of healthcare systems, implicitly takes all differences in health outcomes not explained by spending or literacy and attributes them entirely to healthcare system performance. Nothing else, from tobacco use to nutrition to sheer luck, is taken into account.

35 Inconvenient Truths

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:21:00 EDT

We now itemize 35 of the scientific errors and exaggerations in Al Gore�s movie. The first nine were listed by the judge in the High Court in London in October 2007 as being �errors.� The remaining 26 errors are just as inaccurate or exaggerated as the nine spelt out by the judge, who made it plain during the proceedings that the Court had not had time to consider more than these few errors. The judge found these errors serious enough to require the UK Government to pay substantial costs to the plaintiff.

Drew Carey Defends Medical Marijuana

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:28:00 EDT

"I think it�s clear by now that the federal government needs to reclassify marijuana. People who need it should be able to get it � safely and easily," says The Price Is Right and Power of 10 host Drew Carey in a new Reason.tv video examining medical marijuana and the war on drugs.