How to Judge Flawed Science

How to Judge Grape Ripeness Before Harvest

Grape ripeness is an elusive concept for many people and sometimes an elusive achievement for vineyards. Much of the difficulty with discussions of grape ripeness is that there is often an implied standard, but in reality, ripeness is an entirely subjective judgment. So, there are really two issues to address: 1) how do we define grape ripeness and 2) how do we measure ripeness parameters to as...

How to Judge Entrepreneurship in a Large Company

WHAT IS ENTREPRENEURSHIP? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of entrepreneur is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.” Each of these words is important. Entrepreneurship occurs in a business context, meaning the objective is to sell a product or service and make a profit. In business, risk is associated with uncertainty, which most commonly arise...

How Political Science Can Contribute to Public Health: A Response to Gagnon and Colleagues

Commentary: flawed science delays smelter cleanup and worsens health.

For 6,000 years, humans have known about smelter hazards. Yet these metals threats continue. Why? This commentary provides one preliminary answer. It (1) summarizes the history of smelter pollution and (2) suggests that at least 3 problems-especially flawed smelter-polluter science-allow continuing health threats. It (3) illustrates this flawed science by using one of the most dangerous of U.S....

Why and How Political Science Can Contribute to Public Health? Proposals for Collaborative Research Avenues

Written by a group of political science researchers, this commentary focuses on the contributions of political science to public health and proposes research avenues to increase those contributions. Despite progress, the links between researchers from these two fields develop only slowly. Divergences between the approach of political science to public policy and the expectations that public hea...