Latest Articles

Latest Articles

The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.

On TV, Neil deGrasse Tyson uses narrative to dramatize the importance of basic research.Last week in San Diego, I participated on a panel at the BIO 2008 meetings that focused […]
I’m back in DC after a week long tour of southern California. On Monday night, an audience of close to 100 scientists, students, and staff turned out at Cal Tech […]
A Gallup survey out this week reveals a wide partisan gap in perceptions of evolution. Specifically, 60% of Republicans say humans were created in their present form by God 10,000 […]
As I’ve argued before, conservatives often have the advantage in elections and policy battles because of their tendency to enforce greater message discipline and coordination. The latest example is James […]
At Knight Science Journalism Tracker, Charlie Petit has a pretty comprehensive round-up and commentary on news coverage of this week’s (failed) climate change legislation.
So how did Barack Obama beat improbable odds to capture the Democratic nomination? A team of reporters at the Washington Post has the best account I’ve seen on Obama’s ingenious […]
If the author is skeptical of mainstream science, is there a conservative think tank behind them?A new study by a team of political scientists and sociologists at the journal Environmental […]
A recent report for the Gallup survey organization by Oklahoma State sociologist Riley Dunlap backs up what I have been arguing at this blog and in various articles regarding the […]
The National Journal has released its annual survey of Congressional members on their views of climate science. When asked: “Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that […]
As I wrote last week, in John McCain’s recent television ad focusing on global warming, he frames his position as a pragmatic “middle way” approach between the two extremes of […]
When Inconvenient Truth was released in 2006, Gallup polling showed that less than a majority of Americans had a favorable view of Al Gore. Yet just following his Nobel Prize […]
An artist’s take on the “scary wonder” of nanotechnology. The asbestos of tomorrow? As we wrote in our article last year at The Scientist, that’s not the type of frame […]
Released around the time of Expelled’s premiere, this YouTube clip produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science features Francis Collins, CEO Alan Leshner, and others discussing the […]
Note: Trends reflect the number of combined articles appearing annually in the New York Times and the Washington Post containing in the headline or lead paragraph the key words for […]
A round up of recent news coverage where I have provided analysis…1. USA Today ran this profile of actor Ed Begley, focusing on his commitment to environmental issues and a […]
Do voters under the age of 30 always trend more liberal and more likely to vote Democrat? Contrary to conventional wisdom, history and data say “No.”Political preferences are a product […]
This week’s On the MediaspotlightsRushmore Drive, the new search engine marketed to African Americans (audio above). As the program describes, the search engine uses a unique algorithm to find those […]
Evidence for the influence of an effective media strategy, from a just released Pew survey: Following his first visit to the United States as spiritual leader of the world’s Catholics, […]
Bill McKibben’s latest grassroots project is the launch of www.350.org, a Web portal and blog designed to focus world attention on cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to […]
Can a radio talk show host motivate Republicans to turn out in a Democratic primary and vote strategically for a candidate? Past research suggests that political talk radio can have […]