Creative Cooperation through Competition

The competition includes a division for fourth through sixth grades and a division for seventh and eighth grades. Our district contains nine elementary schools and one junior high. With such a large district, we have over 400 contestants. The competition takes place in the afternoons of two school days, which releases teachers to help in supervision and allows students to be dismissed at the regular time. This helps ensure large attendance and avoids after-school transportation problems

Seeding Science, Courting Conclusions: Reexamining the Intersection of Science, Corporate Cash, and the Law

Social scientists have expressed strong views on corporate influences over science, but most attention has been devoted to broad, Black/White arguments, rather than to actual mechanisms of influence. This paper summarizes an experience where involvement in a lawsuit led to the discovery of an unexpected mechanism: A large corporation facing a multibillion-dollar court judgment quietly provided generous funding to well-known scientists (including at least one Nobel prize winner) who would submit articles to "open," peer-reviewed journals, so that their "unbiased science" could be cited in an appeal to the Supreme Court. On balance, the corporation's most effective techniques of influence may have been provided not by overt pressure, but by encouraging scientists to continue thinking of themselves as independent and impartial