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Submission + - Both Genders Think Women Are Bad at Basic Math (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Think women can’t do math? You’re wrong—but new research shows you might not change your mind, even if you get evidence to the contrary. A study of how both men and women perceive each other's mathematical ability finds that an unconscious bias against women--by both genders--could be skewing hiring decisions, widening the gender gap in mathematical professions like engineering.

Submission + - The Motivated Rejection of Science (guardian.co.uk)

Layzej writes: New research to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science has found that that those who subscribed to one or more conspiracy theories or who strongly supported a free market economy were more likely to reject the findings from climate science as well as other sciences. The researchers, led by UWA School of Psychology Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, found that free-market ideology was an overwhelmingly strong determinant of the rejection of climate science. It also predicted the rejection of the link between tobacco and lung cancer and between HIV and AIDS. Conspiratorial thinking was a lesser but still significant determinant of the rejection of all scientific propositions examined, from climate to lung cancer. Curiously, public response to the paper has provided a perfect real-life illustration of the very cognitive processes at the center of the research.
Education

Submission + - Science wins over creationism in South Korea (nature.com) 1

ananyo writes: South Korea’s government has urged textbook publishers to ignore calls to remove two examples of evolution from high-school textbooks. The move marks a change of heart for the government, which had earlier forwarded a petition from the 'Society for Textbook Revise' to publishers and told them to make their own minds up about the demands. The petition called for details about the evolution of the horse and of the avian ancestor Archaeopteryx to be removed from the books.
In May, news emerged that publishers were planning to drop the offending sections, sparking outrage among some scientists. The resulting furore prompted the government to set up an 11-member panel, led by the Korean Academy of Science and Technology.
On 5 September, the panel concluded that Archaeopteryx must be included in Korean science textbooks. And, while accepting that the textbooks' explanation of the evolution of the horse was too simplistic, the panel said the entry should be revised rather than removed or replaced with a different example, such as the evolution of whales.

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