In every civilized society around the world, there's a trade-off that must be made. The protection of individual freedoms, on one hand, enable the people living there to pursue their own goals, dreams, and ideals, whatever they may be. But those pursuits must not infringe on the rights ' including the health, safety, and general welfare ' of others. When it comes to issues like the health, safety, and long-term prosperity of our society, there is no greater tool or resource we have to assess accurately them than science. It might seem like, at the start of 2025, we're headed in absolutely the wrong direction. Mass firings and layoffs at the NIH, the NSF, the CDC and more, coupled with the installation of a number of prominent anti-science cabinet members, the first deadly measles outbreak among children in a decade, and the USA's withdrawal (again) from the Paris Climate Agreement all signal a national move away from science. But this is not new. The fact is that Americans have been resistant to heeding the scientific consensus on matters of public policy for many decades, preferring stances that agree with their ideological preferences instead. This was highlighted in 2020 and beyond, as many refused to mask, vaccinate, or isolate at even the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. This disregard for scientific facts extends even to the vilification of the scientists that find them, resulting in policies that recklessly endanger not only the health and safety of Americans today, but provide new generations with long-term challenges that they'll need to either reckon with or face the consequences....
Brian May has many strings to his guitar. The musician, who is still touring with his rock band Queen, is also an astrophysicist, specializing in three-dimensional stereoscopic images of distant bodies. And to the UK public, he's also a passionate campaigner for animal rights. After abandoning his PhD at Imperial College London in 1974 to follow his musical passions, May finally returned to complete his doctorate in 2007. Soon after, the rockstar embroiled himself in a polarizing scientific row over whether the European badger (Meles meles) was causing mass infection of cattle with bovine tuberculosis (TB). Each year, the problem costs the UK government more than '100 million (US$130 million) and leads to the slaughter of more than 20,000 cows. Some scientists initially backed the government's policy of culling badgers ' 230,000 have been killed since 2013 ' although many now doubt the approach's effectiveness. The past government had planned to phase out culling in favour of vaccination, but 20 culling licences were issued this year. The new Labour government has said that it plans to end culling, but these licences will continue....
Ask any start-up founder in recent years what guided them in the early days of their entrepreneurial journey and the Lean Startup method is likely to enter the conversation. The book by serial entrepreneur and software engineer Eric Ries, published in 2011, has become a bible for business neophytes; it has sold more than a million copies and is taught in business schools and accelerators....
