Assignment

Question 1

Everyday people lose, drop, and misplace property. From your reading, do you think that anytime someone loses property that it is automatically abandoned and can be kept by whoever finds it? Why or Why not? What reasonable efforts should be made, if any, of lost property to the rightful owner?

Respond to this...Property that is found by someone is classified in several ways. If a person finds personal property the person can claim ownership if it is abandoned (Lau & Johnson, p. 141). "The owner of the abandoned property must intend to relinquish ownership of it" (Lau & Johnson, p. 141). If the property is lost or mislaid the person who found it must relinquish it once the rightful owner demands it (Lau & Johnson, p. 141). There is treasure trove property which is found property consisting of money or precious metals such as gold and the "finders keepers" concept may be applicable (Lau & Johnson, p. 141).

Lau, T., & Johnson, L. (n.d.).The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business.Flatworld Knowledge.

Question 2

The freshman 15 refers to the urban legend that is the common belief that students gain an average of 15 lb during freshman year. The weights of 100 freshmen at a certain university were observed in August and then in May. The null hypothesis claim that the mean difference is equal to 15 lbs. is tested at a 0.05 significance level. The result is fail to reject the null hypothesis.

• What do the results suggest?
• What factors could have affected the results?
• How can these results be used to make changes on campus?

Respond to this... This report suggests that:

The samples are dependent; meaning they are weighing the same freshman students when they enter college in August and then re-weigh them the following May.

H0: There is no gain in weight of students during freshman year.
H1: The students gain average of 15 pounds weight during freshman year.

Since the results fail to reject the null hypothesis, the result suggests that there is not enough evidence to conclude that freshman college students gain 15 pounds their first year of college.

The factors that can affect these results include freshman students living on campus versus freshman students that do not live on campus. Since college freshmen enrolled at university often times live on campus with a food program, they have a tendency to eat more and gain weight. They tend to have larger meal portions including desert, snack more, eat fast-food on the run, and have decreased activity. Although, not all students live on campus and may live in an apartment, they may be short on money and have a tendency to eat a lot of carbohydrates like mac ‘n cheese, and fast cheap food with more calories than heathy food content. Eating right is not always inexpensive.

If these results are true, the changes that can be used on a college campus may be to have better food choices. It has been a while since I was a freshman in college so I would hope that foods are labeled with calorie count, sugar and carbohydrate percentages. This would be beneficial for students to be aware of what they are eating. Although, we know that calories counting is not always on the mind when stress of homework and tests, and living away from home are concerned.

Question 3

Today there are many complaints over the politicization of science. Many people believe politics should not play a role in science, but once government funds science, the funding decisions become political. In most social institutions, disagreements are settled by debate. Science in contrast, uses experiments to prove or disprove theories. Science is testable, and is self-proving. If a better explanation for a phenomenon is found, it will replace other explanations. This is why careful distinctions must be made between Frontier Science, Consensus Science, and Junk Science

Many difficult controversies surround the environmental problems we face in the world today. Problems include: Air and water pollution, global warming, species and ecosystem biodiversity, energy, hazardous waste, population, and food supply issues. Politics control the financing of scientific research and development to help solve these issues. In politics passion wins over logic Science is not politics and cannot be debated in the same way politics are. Mixing politics with science produces bad science. Government efforts to fund research interfere with the maintenance of high scientific standards. The current Congress consists of 535 members. Of these members, 7 (1.3%), are scientists, and 21 others are healthcare professionals

Use these references along with resources from your own research to help answer the questions that follow

Punjabi, P. P. (2014). The Science of Politics and The Politicization of Science. Perfusion, 29(2), 101.

Sarewitz, D. (2014). Science should keep out of partisan politics. Nature, 516(7529), 9.doi:10.1038/516009a.

Jamieson, D., Oreskes, N., & Oppenheimer, M. (2015). Science and policy: Crossing the boundary. Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists, 71(1), 53-58. doi:10.1177/0096340214563675.

Krauss, L. M. (2015). Scientists as celebrities: Bad for science or good for society?.Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists, 71(1), 26-32. doi:10.1177/0096340214563676.

Do you feel that scientists should be cut out of the policy making process, particularly on environmental issues, when their research is proven and widely accepted and is being ignored and disputed? Politicians ultimately make the decisions, but shouldn't the scientists have a voice?

Do you feel that lobbyists and special interest groups exert too great of an influence and act as an impediment to finding solutions to, and providing the funding for, research for the environmental problems we face?

Respond to this...Scientist should definitely not be cut out of the policy making process, as long as politics has no part in the scientific process either. The cherry picking of scientific information and certain politics of science has become a huge political platform and sometimes politicians look over the facts and let their ego defend an ignorant and outdated stance. Politicians do this for for votes or for a special interest groups protection is why the Greeks defined politics as Activities aimed at improving someones status or increasing power within a organization. (Punjabi,2014). Lobbyists and Special interests groups have been manipulating politics and politicians for to long and it is almost pointless to try to have any reason when it comes to senators and congressman especially those that have been in a power positions for over many decades. Also the politics of science is the manipulation of science for positive or negative yield (Punjabi 2014). "In the author's view scientists should refrain from making recommendations in areas far from their expertise and from making categorical policy declarations, but when their expertise is relevant scientists should not be excluded from the policy process whether by external force or self censorship.(Jamieson 2015).