This weekend I have a profile on Robert Kennedy Jr. in the Washington Post magazine. During our numerous conversations over the phone and in person, I found him to be candid, self-deprecating, and unshakably confident in his belief that thimerosal was a dangerous ingredient that should not be in vaccines. (It was phased out of U.S. pediatric…Continue Reading…
Some stories I pursue, others I let unwind a bit to make sure they are for real. The cover story I wrote on Robert Kennedy Jr. for this Sunday’s Washington Post magazine falls into the latter category. You couldn’t find a more unlikely author of this story than me. Last summer, I wrote two critical posts…Continue Reading…
This week the New York Times published a profile of longtime climate skeptic John Christy. I found the piece perplexing because it contained no obvious hook or peg, as we say in journalism. There were no newsy events in Christy’s life that might have prompted a story about him in a prestige media outlet: No…Continue Reading…
In 2013, Jeff Goodell wrote a long piece in Rolling Stone explaining how rising seas would eventually drown the city of Miami, Florida. The money quote: “Miami, as we know it today, is doomed,” says Harold Wanless, the chairman of the department of geological sciences at the University of Miami. “It’s not a question of if….Continue Reading…
Some stories peddled on Twitter are beyond ridiculous. Man’s tumor shrinks when he alters environment, shuns cancer treatments in favor of acts of kindness: http://t.co/79ua1XrLTP — HealthRanger (@HealthRanger) July 11, 2014 This particular one, published at the website run by Mike Adams, the self-described consumer health advocate (who I have written about here and here),…Continue Reading…
Birds lead hazardous lives. They are preyed on by cats. They fly into tall buildings, glass windows, airplanes, cell towers, and wind turbines. All of this happens mostly out of our sight. In New York City, where I live, people go about their business while pigeons flutter all around us, sometimes annoyingly, but largely ignored. One of the…Continue Reading…
In 1997, I was living in Manhattan when the New York Observer—a sardonic weekly—published a front page story entitled, “New York is Germ City!” As the Seattle Times recalls:
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) has vibrated the internet with a whacky speech he recently gave to an audience of climate skeptics. Here’s the bit that many are picking up on: “I don’t know whether or not fluoridating the water helps people’s teeth become better or not,” said Rohrabacher, invoking his childhood memories. “I don’t know…Continue Reading…
From an interview between Columbia University Press and science historian Naomi Oreskes:
Earlier this year I explored how Monsanto, the world’s most successful agricultural biotech company, became the poster child for the anti-GMO movement. (The best book-length history of how this came to be remains “Lords of the Harvest,” by NPR’s Dan Charles.) What fascinates me–and undoubtedly infuriates anyone who works at Monsanto–is how hard it is…Continue Reading…