Free Republic

“The News Feature ‘The gun fighter’ wrongly implied that blogger David Codrea had ‘outed’ gun researcher Garen Wintemute,” a correction issued in the June issue of the science journal Nature admitted. “Wintemute had in fact publicized his own work before Codrea’s 2007 blog post.” Following in the agenda-driven footsteps of political media, Nature, ostensibly a fact-driven and unbiased scientific journal, has jumped on the “gun control” bandwagon, at least that part of it bemoaning a lack of federally-funded “gun violence” studies, with a profile on anti-gun researcher Dr. Garen Wintemute by correspondent Meredith Wadman in its April issue. That article,...

The National Bureau of Economic Research has come up with a great new idea: let’s tax calories to make people thinner! “Raising the price of a calorie for home consumption by 10 percent may lower the percentage of body fat in youths about 8 or 9 percent, according to new research from the National Bureau of Economic Research,” writes Peter Whoriskey for the Washington Post. This is just another example of how liberals, in an effort to make a better society, abhor, and often actively confute, market forces to promote their own social agendas. “The new research, which focused on...

Parents who read their kids stories about happy, human-like animals like Franklin the Turtle or Arthur at bedtime are exposing their kids to racism, materialism, homophobia and patriarchal norms, according to a paper presented at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Most animals portrayed in children’s books, songs and on clothing send a bad message, according to academics Nora Timmerman and Julia Ostertag: That animals only exist for human use, that humans are better than animals, that animals don’t have their own stories to tell, that it’s fine to “demean” them by cooing over their cuteness. Perhaps...

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that our natural DNA can't be patented, in what the influential SCOTUSBlog called "a significant patent ruling for the biotechnology industry." The high court did stike some middle ground by ruling that synthetic DNA can be patented. "A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated, but cDNA [synthetic DNA] is patent eligible because it is not naturally occurring," according to the court ruling written by Justice Clarence Thomas.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded more than $400,000 to a research project involving underwear that can detect when a person smokes cigarettes. The University of Alabama has received two grants totaling $402,721 for the project, which so far has produced a “very early prototype” of the monitoring system, which -- in its current state -- fits like a vest. The goal of the three-year study is to “develop a wearable sensor system comprised of a breathing sensor integrated into conventional underwear.” The Personal Automatic Cigarette Tracker (PACT for short) is intended to accurately measure when and...

FREEPER HELP PLEASE: Asking our FR legal-beagles.... ...attorneys, investigators, claims adjusters... (stand-up comics, kibbitzers, and crackpots also welcome to chime in...) I am researching a person who has demanded an extroardinary insurance settlement-- ...for a very minor collision several years ago. Spidey-sense says possible fraud in the works; perhaps an experienced scammer. SOoo... ... homework required on personal/criminal/prior claims background??!!? What is the BEST background check research engine? (1) Most thorough? (2) Most reliable? (3) Secure inquiry & transaction? (4) Bang for the buck?

Do guns make people safer or more susceptible to violence? Does banning assault-style weapons or expanding background checks save lives, or are such measures merely inconveniences for law-abiding gun owners? These are just some of the questions in the debate over gun control, with advocates and foes lobbing a dizzying number of statistics and studies to make their case. Often, those facts and figures contradict one another. The lack of objective research on gun violence has become evident as Minnesota and the nation grapple with a slew of proposed changes to gun laws after the Newtown, Conn., school shooting that...

For the last few years, Donna Pulkrabek was the manager of UT Southwestern Medical Center’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, a group of scientists and vets and other folks tasked with keeping an eye on how the school treats its animal research subjects, among them dogs, goats, frogs and sheep and mice. It was her job to make sure UTSW complies with Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare guidelines concerning the treatment of animals....

This website summarizes work connected with digitizing Shroud photographs taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931, enhancing the digitized images to improve details, translating the enhanced images “gray scale data into depth data”, generating a sequence of up to 625 images of each of these, and combining these images with a Holoprinter to produce holograms (3D images) of the Shroud. It also summarizes my study of these holograms and discovery of heretofore unseen details, which confirm many previous findings and reveal some suprises.

WASHINGTON -- In the wake of mass shootings this summer, a fusillade of a different sort erupted when gun-rights advocates suggested an audience member with a concealed weapon might have saved the day. After gunman James Holmes opened fire in a crowded Aurora, Colo., theater, killing 12 and wounding 58, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, wondered whether an armed movie patron "could have stopped this guy more quickly." Later, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a staunch gun-control advocate, called Gohmert's view "nonsensical." This exchange shows how far the gun debate has come since the days when it was centered on the...

Many conservative news people have talked about Obama NOT being vet the last election and it appears that even the authors looking into his history have neglected to thoroughly investigate one area. The Clinton’s, like good magician assistance distracted with the help of lawyer, Phillip Berg…Look over here! Look at his birth certificate! Those who attempted to look into that fact were ridiculed or ignored. In an attempt to ignite research facts and questions follow. “Where did the Dunham family get the money to travel?” asked one blogger who listed many on the family trips to and through Asia. http://wtpotus.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/barack-hussein-obama-ii-child-of-privilege/...

A University of Texas faculty member did not commit scientific misconduct in connection with his study that raised doubts about gay parenting, the university has concluded. As a result, no formal investigation of allegations against Mark Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology, is warranted, UT announced Wednesday.

There is no inherent thing in a person that prevents them from carrying out acts of killing, or mass destruction. The thing that restrains a person is their upbringing. The morality and ethics that they are taught when they are growing up. That fact becomes all the more important when they enter a field of study where they are dealing with the very perception of reality that those morals are based on. There has been a long standing problem in research. That is the tendency for the researcher to go native. A researcher has to study the interaction from an...

It's time once again for a Hopenchange flashback, courtesy of Buzzfeed: President Obama's reelection campaign has taken criticism for the negative tone of 2012 campaign. One of President Obama's deputy campaign managers, Stephanie Cutter, suggested that his Republican rival Mitt Romney might be a felon. And while some of the attacks seem to be a dig into the candidate's personal lives — such as a DNC ad featuring Mrs. Romney's horse — in 2008 then Senator Obama promised to fire anybody on his staff who did such negative attacks. “I have been very clear to my campaign. I do not...

Aurora's mass murderer James Holmes, would appear was working with this program that turns out was linked to a Government contract investigating and mitigating the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder via the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Colorado at Anshutz Medical Center, Aurora, Colorado. Link to the book Nerve Growth Factors: Advances in Research and Application: 2011 Edition that makes direct referrence to the contract.

Abstract: Few events obtain the same instant worldwide news coverage as multiple victim public shootings. These crimes allow us to study the alternative methods used to kill a large number of people (e.g., shootings versus bombings), marginal deterrence and the severity of the crime, substitutability of penalties, private versus public methods of deterrence and incapacitation, and whether attacks produce copycats. Yet, economists have not studied this phenomenon. Our results are surprising and dramatic. While arrest or conviction rates and the death penalty reduce normal murder rates, our results find that the only policy factor to influence multiple victim public shootings...

It could be one of the biggest political intelligence coups of the 2012 battle to control Congress. Media Trackers, a conservative investigative watchdog group, discovered nearly three-dozen Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee opposition research notebooks – extensive secretive manuals outlining anything that could be used against a political opponent. Several news outlets have reported that some of the files have been quietly published on the DCCC’s website to facilitate their use by independent expenditure groups. On Thursday, however, Media Trackers published a dozen opposition research books that Democrats have so far managed to keep secret. The twelve unpublished manuals range in...

Scientists at Uppsala University have found that the widespread belief that women and children are saved first in maritime disasters is a myth, unless the men are threatened with physical violence like on the Titanic. “It is expected that the crew should rescue passengers, but our results show that captains and crew are more likely to survive than passengers,” said Mikael Elinder at the Department of Economics, Uppsala University and at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) in a statement. “We also found that women and children were more inclined to die than men.” This, the scientists think, indicates...

Today the Journal Sentinel is launching an interactive page that will allow you to explore contributions to candidates and political action committees in the gubernatorial recall election on June 5. With it, you can compare campaign contributions to any of the candidates or PACs that have raised money in the recall election through January, which was the last filing deadline. We will update the data as committees submit additional filings. After you choose two committees you would like to compare, interactive maps will show how much money each candidate received from each state. For instance, if you choose the political...

A Federal Bureau of Investigation-led initiative seeking advances in interrogation techniques quietly was unveiled today, according to a contracting document that TRR has obtained. The High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) Intelligence Interviewing and Interrogation Research project, as it is known, spells out what the government hopes to achieve through subsequent federally funded research projects in the private sector.