The London Based SciDevNet, which is “committed to putting science at the heart of global development,” has an interesting post up today entitled, “Is science journalism ignoring censorship?” The questions raised by the author, Nick Ishmael Perkins, are first discussed in the context of traditional censorship issues, such as when governments restrict access to information. This is fairly straightforward. What is…Continue Reading…
In my previous post, I reported on legal threats recently made by Mike Adams against Forbes and one of its contributing writers, Jon Entine, who oversees the Genetic Literacy Project. Entine is hardly the first science writer/blogger to shine a spotlight on Adams, whose penchant for raw foods, alternative health treatments and various outlandish conspiracy…Continue Reading…
It is not unusual for public figures to be unhappy with how they are portrayed in the media. Sometimes their complaints are understandable, other times not so much. What is unusual is for a public figure to take legal action against a journalist. That’s because in the United States there is a very high bar…Continue Reading…
I’m not feeling the love:
Unlike some in the science blogosphere, I haven’t found it worthwhile to write much about Mike Adams, whose conspiracy-laden screeds and paeans to raw foods and unproven alternative medicine treatments appear on a website of his called Natural News. (I have briefly discussed Adams on one previous occasion.) Here’s an apt description from David Gorski: His website is a one-stop shop, a repository…Continue Reading…
For GMO opponents, it’s been a good news/bad news week. The good news: Vermont became the first state to mandate the labeling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients. (More about that in a minute.) The bad news: New York Times food writer Mark Bittman, a darling of the food movement, wrote a column that called…Continue Reading…
It wasn’t that long ago that global warming was mostly discussed as (and believed to be) a distant threat– the scope, timing and severity of its impacts considered uncertain. Then in recent years, as climate scientists began studying and asserting linkages between greenhouses gases and severe weather events, the discourse shifted. We are now at…Continue Reading…
From The Economist’s Demography and Development blog, several months ago: FACTS can be stubborn – and irritating. It is satisfying—perhaps even gratifying—to accept the idea that genetically modified crops are causing thousands of Indian farmers to commit suicide (as this article claims). The notion seems plausible: farmers take out higher debts on the promise that GM seeds…Continue Reading…
This is notable: The dangers of nuclear power are real, but the accidents that have occurred, even Chernobyl, do not compare to the damage to the earth being inflicted by the burning of fossil fuels — coal, gas and oil. That’s from an editorial in today’s New York Times, which will make for uncomfortable reading…Continue Reading…
Some media outlets have picked up on a new study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. (More on that coverage in a minute.) Here’s the headline from the Oregon State University press release: Study finds only trace levels of radiation from Fukushima in albacore The scientists seemed to make sure their results were put…Continue Reading…