Politics, features and articles | Educational Science

Jul 18, 2018

Conservatives More Likely to Know 'the Meaning of Life' Than Liberals, Massive Study Finds

If you want to know the meaning of life, science probably can't help you much better than Kermit the Frog can. (For the record, Kermit says, Always be yourself. Never take yourself too seriously. And beware of advice from experts, pigs and members of parliament.) Meaning is personal to each...

Jul 31, 2018

Hackers Target 3rd Dimension of Cyberspace: Users' Minds

The Russian attacks on the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the country's continuing election-related hacking have happened across all three dimensions of cyberspace — physical, informational and cognitive. The first two are well-known: For years, hackers have exploited hardware and software flaws to gain unauthorized access to computers and networks...

Aug 31, 2018

Google News Searches Aren't Politically Biased, but They Do Like Mainstream Media

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Google News does not deliver different news to users based on their position on the political spectrum, despite accusations from conservative commentators and even President Donald Trump. Rather than...

Sep 2, 2018

Think Politics Today Is Ugly? Politicians in Ancient Rome Were Insulting, Too

Are ugly accusations and verbal abuse in politics business as usual? In recent years, verbal jabs traded between political opponents seem less like discourse between adults, and more like acid-tinged dialogue cut from Mean Girls because it was too nasty. But while such behavior is distasteful and unpleasant, it isn't...

Sep 26, 2018

Profiling a Conspiracy Theorist: Why Some People Believe

Here's a theory: President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Here's another: Climate change is a hoax. Here's one more: The deep state spied on Donald Trump's campaign, and is now trying to destroy his presidency. Who believes this stuff? Conspiracy theories have been cooked up for...

Nov 7, 2018

The House Science Committee Is Back in Democrat's Control: What That Means for Science

Last night, the Democrats regained a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, and with it, leadership of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. What will this change mean for science? The current committee chair, Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who will retire at the end of this term, has...

Feb 11, 2019

With the US-Russian Nuclear Treaty in Tatters, Is 'Doomsday' Ticking Closer?

When President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from a long-standing nuclear weapons treaty with Russia on Feb. 1, his actions set the stage for what many fear could be a new arms race between the global superpowers. Trump's decision was announced less than two weeks after scientists and policy experts...

Aug 16, 2019

Trump Says He Wants to Buy Greenland. Here's Why.

President Donald Trump has expressed an interest in buying Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, according to a report published yesterday (Aug. 15) by The Wall Street Journal. Why does Trump want the United States to buy the world's biggest island? The reason, in large part, is likely that Greenland is...

Sep 20, 2019

Are Conspiracy Beliefs on the Rise?

Have the internet and social media created a climate where Americans believe anything is possible? With headlines citing now as the age of conspiracy, is it really true? In a word, no. While it may be true that the internet has allowed people who believe in conspiracies to communicate more,...

Jun 4, 2020

13 significant protests that changed the course of history

Political protests have a rich past, with varied degrees of success in accomplishing what they originally set out to do. The following historically significant political protests include a decisive event in the Civil Rights movement, two history-changing moments that occurred within one year and the medieval defiance of one man....

Jun 4, 2020

What is antifa?

As long as there has been fascism — a political movement that stokes nationalism and racism, and uses violence to bolster authoritarian rule — there have been antifascists that resist such regimes. This relationship dates to the emergence of fascism in Europe in the 1920s, and then continued in Mussolini's...

Aug 19, 2020

Will the 2020 election be a 'fraudulent mess'? The science says no.

As the 2020 presidential election approaches, and the coronavirus continues to circulate throughout the United States, President Donald Trump has begun to decry mail-in voting, calling it a scam and predicting on Twitter that the election would be a fraudulent mess. Scientific literature on mail-in voting shows it has very...

Oct 30, 2020

Why Americans are so enamored with election polls

The Republican pollster Frank Luntz warned on Twitter and elsewhere the other day that if preelection polls in this year’s presidential race are embarrassingly wrong again, “then the polling industry is done.” It was quite the forecast. While it is possible the polls will misfire, it’s exceedingly unlikely that such...

Nov 1, 2020

7 ways the election will shape the future of science, health and the environment

When all the votes are cast and counted in this year’s momentous November 3 election, the results will have deep and potentially long-lasting impacts on numerous areas of society, including science. President Donald Trump and his challenger, former vice president Joe Biden, have presented vastly different visions for handling crucial...

Nov 2, 2020

Why is red for Republicans and blue for Democrats?

In any 2020 electoral map, the color scheme is clear: Red is for Republicans, blue is for Democrats. But where did this universal agreement on color-coding come from? It's relatively new. Though red and blue have often been used to stand in for opposing sides in U.S. political history, it's...