Portside

If a study doesn’t even list how many people took part in it, or makes a bold diet claim that’s “statistically significant” but doesn’t say how big the effect size is, you should wonder why. But for the most part, we don’t. Which is a pity, because journalists are becoming the de facto peer review system. And when we fail, the world is awash in junk science.

Reader Comments: Can Women End Korean War?; Countess vs. Communist-Battle to Become Madrid's Mayor; How the United States Strangled Puerto Rico; Obama's Human and Moral Challenge: Oscar López Rivera; The Press and Bernie Sanders; The Female Mathematician Who Changed the Course of Physics; Appeal by Dr. Kristin Neuhaus, successor to Dr. George Tiller; Cross Borders Concert at the Gaza Strip border; Today in History - Tiananmen Square Massacre; Angela Davis Acquitted

The paper purporting to show that people's attitudes to gay marriage can be overturned in the course of a persuasive converation with an advocate has just been withdrawn. It was the biggest political science study of last year. It was a complete fraud. Could this be the beginning of a real reversal in the problem of fraud and misconduct in science?

Roy Zimmerman -- 'Defenders of Marriage.' Killer T Cell: The Cancer Assassin. Oscar Peterson's Piano Lesson. Ensnaring Kids in 'Advertising Empire.' LA Minimum Wage: $15 by 2020.

Stone tools unearthed at a site in Kenya predate any identified human ancestors -- previously thought to be the first makers of stone tools -- by hundreds of thousands of years. These finds "will force us [to rethink] what makes us humans ... Increasing knowledge of our remote past is casting doubts on previous certainties and is showing that the process of becoming what we are now is far more gradual than what we previously thought."

“Although it’s fascinating scientifically to have a front-row seat to watch the ice shelf becoming unstable and breaking up, it’s bad news for our planet. This ice shelf has existed for at least 10,000 years, and soon it will be gone.”

Science has told us all sorts of fascinating things about the uniquely intimate link between mother and child at the biological level, and reminds us how essential motherhood really is to human experience as a whole.

300 years ago, on the 3rd of May 1715, a rare solar eclipse occurred over England. It was an opportunity too good to miss for those promoting new astronomical theories – and their own careers.

The FBI's practice of falsely testifying to guilt based on pseudo scientific "hair comparisons" has lead to a mass disaster of false convictions – at least hundreds of cases. Now begins the "herculean effort to right the wrongs."