When the definitive history of the GMO debate is written, Jeffrey Smith is going to figure prominently in the section on pseudoscience. He is the equivalent of an anti-vaccine leader, someone who is quite successful in spreading fear and false information. (As David Gorski at the Science-based Medicine blog has noted, the anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movements…Continue Reading…
There are a couple of ways to interpret the story about a revoked ordinance in San Francisco that, as Reuters reports, would have been the first in the United States to require [cell phone] retailers to warn consumers about potentially dangerous radiation levels. Before it was reversed it was known as–get ready for it–the “right…Continue Reading…
In a Slate piece several months ago, I explored the pro-nuke argument from an environmental perspective. Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan made the case succinctly: If your concern is climate change, and you believe that slowing or preventing it is your fundamental priority, then nuclear power should be high up on the list for energy-production. He was responding to…Continue Reading…
In recent years, people have become increasingly concerned about unwanted substances lurking in their furniture and food. These are industrial chemicals we are exposed to every day and that have been found to accumulate in our bodies, “endangering our health in ways we have yet to understand,” CNN asserted in 2007. In 2010, a New York…Continue Reading…
In recent years, we’ve seen episodic waves of hysteria over reports of brain tumors and other cancers allegedly caused by cell phones and WiFi. If I had to trace this legacy of electromagnetic fear back in time, I would credit a 1979 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology and a series of articles in the New Yorker (under…Continue Reading…
In recent years, there has been an outbreak of media stories on early childhood disease outbreaks. The press has reported a spike in cases of measles, mumps, and whooping cough in communities from Seattle to Vermont. In many of the stories, a cause-and-effect relationship to lower childhood vaccination rates has been explicit. (Some journalists, however,…Continue Reading…
A good way to capture someone’s attention is to start off by saying, “I have a few things to get off my chest…” This is how science writer John Horgan begins his latest post at Scientific American. It works. I was leaning close to my laptop by the end of the first sentence, eager to…Continue Reading…
That’s not really a fair question, because they’re both vital. But if I was the administrator at a university and a foundation offered me funding to establish a program curriculum for one or the other–which would result in a mandatory class for all in-coming freshmen–I would choose news literacy. I’ll explain why in a minute….Continue Reading…
Anyone who believes that science, above all, should inform our debates on medical, health and environmental issues, will find much to agree with in The Geek Manifesto, a recently published book by Mark Henderson, one of Britain’s leading science communicators. As science writer David Dobbs writes in his foreward to the U.S. edition, The Geek Manifesto articulates…Continue Reading…
Journalists today are pretty mindful about the terms they use to describe a group of people, especially when referencing ethnicity or religion. In mainstream media, outright slurs are forbidden (though not everyone abides) and anything that smells pejorative is called out. Euphemisms are another matter, as the tortured debate over torture (I mean “enhanced interrogation”)…Continue Reading…