In the science blogosphere, medical falsehoods and pseudoscience are routinely called out. The watchdogging is done by a mix of scientists and journalists, who are constantly rebutting a never-ending stream of misinformation about vaccines, autism, and other public health-related subjects. For example, the indefatigable blogger known as Orac (he is a medical doctor and cancer researcher) regularly…Continue Reading…
In Europe, anti-GMO activism has turned increasingly confrontational, which seems to have backfired in one recent case. In the United States, anti-GMO sentiment has taken a different form, which Amy Harmon of the New York Times wrote about last week in this excellent piece: For more than a decade, almost all processed foods in the United…Continue Reading…
It goes like this: 1. You fear something. 2. You find a hypothesis to justify your fear. 3. You block stuff that doesn’t support your case. That’s from Tim Minchin, who concisely describes the process that leads anti-GMO opponents and apparently many greens to support destruction of an agricultural experiment, that as John Timmer notes,…Continue Reading…
That’s the title of a new post I have up at Discover magazine’s website. I’m specifically drilling down into the widespread anti-GMO activism/sentiment within the green movement. As I write at Discover: The big story on this front of late has been the planned act of vandalism on the government-funded Rothamsted research station in the UK. Scientists there are…Continue Reading…
When a questionable story gets rolling and takes on a life of its own, you can usually count on journalists to check it out thoroughly. Not that debunking it necessarily puts an end to the matter, as we discovered with President Obama’s birth certificate and the global warming hoax cooked up by thousands of scientists….Continue Reading…
That’s the title of my latest post at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media. Specifically, I discuss the controversy over genetically modified (GM) crops, and why there is no scientific basis for being opposed to them–especially if you care about the issue of food security in a warming world.
Did you know that a group of scientists whose work has stirred public controversy are under siege? That their findings are vehemently contested? That they are harassed by zealots and that some have endured death threats? No, not climate scientists or animal researchers. I’m talking about plant scientists working on genetically modified crops. The latest attack against them occurred this…Continue Reading…
I’m making a decree: Food columnists should no longer be writing about anything other than recipes and restaurants. When they stray from their area of expertise, what results is too often ugly and harmful to the public interest. For example, I’ve previously pointed out where some food writers go badly off the tracks. The latest…Continue Reading…
Bt cotton now helps to avoid several million cases of pesticide poisoning in India every year, which also entails sizeable health cost savings. This is not the sort of news you’re liable to hear about in anti-GMO quarters, where the concerns of the small farmer are righteously defended.
Never mind that East Africa is reeling from drought and famine, if you’re with Greenpeace and you have an anti-GMO tic, this is what you worry about: Olivia Langhof of Greenpeace Africa, based in Johannesburg, echoes the concerns of other critics in saying that even in the face of a dire need to feed human beings,…Continue Reading…