Blog Post
September 7, 2010
A UCLA environmental health sciences researcher whose appointment was not renewed this year has filed a whistle-blower retaliation complaint against the university, saying he's being punished for publishing politically incorrect research findings and for previous whistle-blowing against colleagues.
UCLA officials had planned to end epidemiologist James Enstrom's appointment August 30 but extended it until March 2011 after outside groups intervened, including a group of California Republican legislators and the Pennsylvania-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
University officials said Enstrom's appointment wasn't renewed because his research wasn't properly aligned with the mission of his department and did not meet financial requirements – not for political reasons.
Enstrom wasn't tenured or on a tenure track, but he has worked at UCLA for 34 years. He believes UCLA faculty voted not to reappoint him this year because of two main issues: his role in challenging the makeup of the California Air Resources Board and his controversial research on fine particulate air pollution, which he presented to the board [PDF] in February with other scientists.
Earlier, as the board was planning to adopt strict regulations on diesel truck emissions, Enstrom argued the group had not fairly evaluated California-specific studies (such as his own research) looking at the health impacts of diesel particulate matter, according to Inside EPA.
Blog Post
August 9, 2010
Two Republican senators have lambasted a half-million-dollar grant to San Diego State University researchers who are studying whether placing certain health messages on menus might persuade drinkers to imbibe less.
U.S. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., last week put out their third report highlighting what they consider 100 examples of misdirected spending on "questionable goals" in the federal government's $862 billion stimulus bill.
The report sneers at the fact that San Diego State researchers will conduct some of their field experiments on subjects experiencing "various levels of natural drunkenness" in and around the campus, which is frequently named one of the nation's top party schools.
"Can people at bars be persuaded of the benefits of moderate drinking?" the report asks. "Researchers at San Diego State University think so, as they plan to spend almost half a million dollars to research whether better nutritional and alcohol-content labeling will affect consumption of alcoholic beverages."
Principal investigator James Lange, who is coordinator of alcohol and other drug initiatives for the university, defended the study as a necessary precursor to future efforts at making policy that might require alcohol-content labeling on restaurant menus.
Blog Post
January 20, 2010
A UC Santa Barbara professor made a small but significant finding in the field of evolutionary psychology a few months ago that escalated into an international sensation over the weekend.
It's a story that could have ended with an angry mob of blond women chasing him with pitchforks. “I haven’t had that happen yet,” said the psychologist, Aaron Sell, "but who knows."
Here’s what did happen.
Sell and a team of researchers embarked on a study to learn more about the nature of anger, submitting a lengthy survey to nearly 300 men and women.
Their findings? Women who consider themselves particularly attractive are quicker to anger, as they tend to have a greater sense of entitlement. Men share that trait with women, and men who report that they are physically strong are also more quick to anger.
The findings were published in the September issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences without overwhelming fanfare.
And then a reporter from the Times of London called Sell seeking to test a theory of whether blondes held an even greater sense of entitlement than brunettes.
Willing to help the reporter, Sell went back to his data and found that no such phenomenon exists. He communicated as much via e-mail, Sell said.
Before the professor gave it another thought, the headline appeared in the Times of London: “Blonde Women Born to Be Warrior Princesses.”
