As a long-time political science professor, the thing that worries me most about the modern Republican Party is its growing aversion to objective knowledge. Today, within the GOP there seems to be open hostility towards intellectuals and intellectual pursuits, including education, science, and the use of objective research to create public policy. This skepticism towards intellectualism seems to stem from a mistrust of experts and institutions like universities, the media, an

By the end of its term, no one was very surprised when the Supreme Court issued another poorly reasoned decision to reduce the Environmental Protection Agency's [EPA] important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Like its earlier decisions to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion, vastly expand gun rights and further erode the wall separating church and state, the Court's new conservative supermajority ignored precedent and decades of hist

The Pew Research Organization just completed a survey of Democrats and Republicans about their trust in major US institutions. The one result that stood out was that Republicans and those who lean toward the GOP no longer trust America's colleges and universities. Only about one-third [34%] have a positive view of higher education. On the other hand, 76% of Democrats view America's universities favorably. Pew approached this question a bit differently in two studies during Do

There is a growing body of research that demonstrates the health benefits of getting outside and communing with nature. We highlighted one such study that found that spending time outside each day reduced stress levels in research participants. Illuminate: "Dr. Mary Carol Hunter, an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan and lead author of the research says they found that "for the greatest payoff, in terms of efficiently lowering levels of the stress hormone corti

NBC News just completed polling to determine who has been vaccinated in America and it sheds quite a bit of light on the anti-vax problem in the country. Overall, 69% of Americans have received the shots so far, but that is still far short of the 85% that many scientists now say we will need to dramatically reduce transmissions in the population. Most Americans who have been following the science regarding Covid are dumbfounded by the anti-vax nonsense being peddled on social

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] issued a dire climate change assessment yesterday, detailing how humans have altered the environment at an unprecedented pace and warning that the world risks increasingly catastrophic impacts if we fail to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Washington Post: "The landmark report, compiled by 234 authors relying on more than 14,000 studies from around the globe, bluntly lays out for policymakers and the publi