All posts tagged: fairer

What would make England’s student loan system fairer?

What would make England’s student loan system fairer?

Published by skeptic

Student loans now sit at the centre of how higher education is funded in England, shaping how millions of graduates finance their studies. Many students leave university with debts of £50,000 or more and may spend decades repaying them. The current system rests on the idea that higher education primarily benefits individuals, because going to university means that they will earn more over their lifetime. On this view, graduates should bear a significant share of the cost of their education through loan repayments once they enter the labour market. Yet universities also generate wider social benefits. They educate professionals in sectors such as healthcare, education and engineering. They produce research that contributes to innovation and public policy. They make a significant contribution to cultural and civic life. This raises the question of whether higher education should be treated mainly as a private investment for individuals, or as a public good that benefits society as a whole. Research also shows that higher levels of education are associated with greater civic participation, higher levels of political engagement …

‘I think we feel stuck’: Kate Pickett on how to build a better, fairer, less stressed society | Society

‘I think we feel stuck’: Kate Pickett on how to build a better, fairer, less stressed society | Society

Published by Sam Flores

There was a moment when reading Kate Pickett’s new book that I realised I was underlining something on nearly every page. Occasionally it was an exclamation mark, or a star. Other times, she herself was doing something similar. “I’m sorry to say that is not a typo,” she writes, at one point. And then, in a later chapter, “I’m going to have to put this in bold …” It wasn’t stylistic commentary, although The Good Society is well written. Nearly every scribble was next to a fact. Pickett is a social epidemiologist, and deals in facts: “In the decade from 2011 to just before the pandemic, total spending on preventive services for families declined by 25%”, for instance. Or that half of children born in Liverpool in 2009 and 2010 had been referred to children’s services by the time they were five. Or that in 2023-4, England’s local authorities had only 6% of the childcare places they needed for children with disabilities (that was the bit Pickett wished to point out wasn’t a typo). The …

A simple rule change could make professional tennis matches fairer

A simple rule change could make professional tennis matches fairer

Published by Jenni Sidey

When you watch tennis, the scoring feels straightforward. Points build games. Games build sets. Sets decide the match. Yet a new analysis suggests that this structure can lead to an unexpected result; the set winner can take the trophy while winning fewer games overall. Researchers at New York University, Wilfrid Laurier University, and King’s College London say that the mismatch between performance and outcome is rare but real. Steven Brams at New York University, Marc Kilgour at Wilfrid Laurier University, and Mehmet Mars Seven at King’s College London studied more than 50,000 Grand Slam singles matches from 1968 to 2024. Their paper appears in the Journal of Sports Analytics. They found that game-set discrepancies happen about 3% to 5% of the time across Grand Slam play. In those matches, the official winner takes more sets. The opponent, however, wins more games across the full match. The authors argue that, in those cases, both players can make a legitimate claim to superiority. One player won according to the rules of the game. The other performed better …

Scientists map a road to fairer, more inclusive drug development

Scientists map a road to fairer, more inclusive drug development

Published by Jenni Sidey

A new analysis of drug trials used to approve medicines in the United States shows how far modern medicine still has to go to serve everyone fairly. Only 6% of the clinical trials that backed new drugs between 2017 and 2023 had participants whose racial and ethnic makeup looked like the country’s own. At the same time that precision medicine promises care tailored to your genes, the science behind many new drugs still leans on a narrow slice of humanity. The work, led by researchers at UC Riverside and UC Irvine, lands at a tense moment. Hospitals and scientists talk often about equity and inclusion. Yet the data in this study tell you that many people, especially Black and Hispanic patients, still stand at the edge of the evidence. A Snapshot of Who Gets Studied The team examined 341 “pivotal” trials, the large late stage studies that companies submit to the Food and Drug Administration to win approval for new drugs. They focused on four major groups in the United States: Black, Hispanic, Asian and …

Campaign for Fairer Gambling criticizes Maine governor over online casino approval

Campaign for Fairer Gambling criticizes Maine governor over online casino approval

Published by skeptic

The Campaign For Fairer Gambling (CFG) has issued a statement after Governor Janet Mills of Maine has reversed her intent to veto a bill to legalize online slots and casino games. While online sports betting is legal in Maine, online gambling has largely been illegal in the state. However, Gov Janet Mills has now allowed for the passage of the online casino bill LD1164. iGaming is coming to Maine. That's according to a statement released by Gov. Janet Mills earlier today. Based on the statement's wording, it appears she's letting it become law without her signature. pic.twitter.com/0GKMFjUlTC — Steve Bittenbender (@Stepbitt) January 8, 2026 In its statement, the CFG says: “The proponents of legalization make false representations that it will replace illegal gambling. It does not – it normalizes the activity, growing the total market, the total consumption, the total harm, and the illegal sector. “Besides, the Mills Administration has done little to attempt to combat illegal online gambling.” They continue to suggest that slot games on mobile devices are the most addictive form of …

Chess can be made fairer by rearranging the pieces

Chess can be made fairer by rearranging the pieces

Published by skeptic

Changing the rules of chess can make the game more complex Richard Levine/Alamy Chess can be improved by rearranging the positions of the starting pieces to produce a more difficult or fairer game, a physicist has found. A standard game of chess always starts with the pieces at the back of the board arranged with an element of symmetry. Starting from the outside, for both white and black, are pairs of rooks, knights and bishops, with a king and queen in the middle. But because this arrangement is fixed, top chess players can memorise the best moves to open a game of chess, which can lead to predictable and boring matches. In the 1990s, the late chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer proposed a variant of the game that reduced this reliance on memory. Fischer suggested effectively randomising the starting positions of the pieces at the back of the board – apart from basic rules dictating where the bishops, rooks and kings must be relative to each other – with both white and black pieces taking on …