Just as we wonder how many shootings it will take for us to change our gun laws, we should be wondering what it will take for us to realize our peer review system is broken.

Peer review supposedly ensures a publication is of sufficient quality to be included in the scientific literature, but time and time again at Retraction Watch and PubPeer we see blatant examples of fraud that have slipped by the academic editors and reviewers.

ONE of the phrases of Albert Einstein, a quotable physicist, that has leaked into the popular consciousness is “spooky action at a distance”. The derisive quotelet arose during the early days of quantum mechanics, a theory that powered a revolution in science that is still playing out.

None of today’s gadgets, for example, could have been made without a deep understanding and exploitation of the theory’s basic tenets. Yet those ground rules come with other predictions so counterintuitive that Einstein came to think that the theory was missing something: what seemed odd was, he argued, just a reflection of a lack of knowledge.

Chronicle Review illustration, iStock

Brian Wansink is nowhere to be found. He’s not in his office. Calls to his cellphone go to voicemail. He was supposed to meet me that morning at Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, which he created and directs, but he canceled the night before. Cornell’s media-relations staff is apologetic and accommodating: What about a meeting with the dean instead? Or a tour of campus? The architecture is amazing — and those gorges!

Image copyright: AP

Hans Rosling, the Swedish professor who made global health statistics compelling viewing, died from cancer in February.

Co-founder of Gapminder.org, which continues his work, he was enthusiastically trying to change old-fashioned notions of the world even as his illness took hold. In his final BBC interview – for the BBC World Service series Economic Tectonics– the statistician highlighted five key ways that demographics are shaping the world around us.

A less strenuous form of exercise known as whole-body vibration (WBV) can mimic the muscle and bone health benefits of regular exercise in mice, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s journal Endocrinology.

New in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology from JunkScience.com friend Stan Young.

The study is accessible here. The abstract below.

As always, everything you’ll want to know about air pollution junk science is in “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA.”

Read more at junkscience.com

You can probably imagine taking a month-long road trip across the U.S. with five other people in a Winnebago. It’d be a little cramped and you’d likely get on each other’s nerves, but at least you’d get to stop for breaks, eat at diners, jump in lakes, and maybe even take pictures at the Grand Canyon.

Now imagine driving in that packed van for six months straight. You can’t stop at all to stretch or pick up roadside snacks. You can’t open the window for fresh air. And every time you ask Waze for new directions, it takes 40 minutes to get a new map.

Game-changing new study reveals official government climate science calculations were botched from outset. Decades of “useless” computer model data exposed as “non-physical and misleading.”

Study author is Aussie climate researcher and engineer, Ross McLeod. He writes: “This analysis mathematically disproves the assertion that you can algebraically sum up different radiation fluxes and calculate the resulting temperatures.”

After years of delays, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) finally agreed to review the first-ever application for a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR).

NRC has begun a formal review of a proposed SMR advanced nuclear reactor two months after NuScale Power, the company behind the project filed a 12,000-page application for it. The first NuScale’s SMR is expected to begin operations in 2026.

Now that we’re in the 21st century, a talented scientist should be able to post their important research online so that people who will benefit from the work will have immediate access to it, and the scientist can move on to their next project without spending 1+ years battling with editors/reviewers.

Johns Hopkins University scientist Kirby Runyon wants to make one thing clear: Regardless of what one prestigious scientific organization says to the contrary, Pluto is a planet. So is Europa, commonly known as a moon of Jupiter, and the Earth’s moon, and more than 100 other celestial bodies in our solar system that are denied this status under a prevailing definition of “planet.”

Image copyright: RICK CARLSON

Scientists have tracked the “family history” of a rock back to some of the earliest times on Earth.

Researchers analysed the concentration and distribution of particular types of atoms in the granite to show it must have been recycled from something that existed 4.2 billion years ago.

This “parent rock” was very probably basalt of the sort produced on the ocean floor, they say.

Have you ever noticed that people have thinner arms and legs as they get older? As we age it becomes harder to keep our muscles healthy. They get smaller, which decreases strength and increases the likelihood of falls and fractures. New research is showing how this happens — and what to do about it.

The Commerce Department is investigating claims by one of its former scientists that an Obama administration climate change study was rushed out using “unverified” data.

Republican lawmakers are waiting for an update on the federal probe, which was initiated a month ago. But a Commerce Department spokesman declined to comment on any of its specifics.

Some people say if you drop something on the floor and pick it up in less than five seconds it’s ok to eat, but is it safe?

Well, food safety expert Professor Anthony Hilton from Aston University says the “five-second rule” for eating things dropped on the floor is usually correct.

Environmental psychologist Arline L. Bronzaft, PhD, is professor emerita of psychology at Lehman College, City University of New York, and an expert witness in court cases and government hearings on the impact of noise on mental and physical well-being. She spoke with us about the detriments of noise on everything from our physiology to children’s learning.