An informative Washington Examiner article by T. Becket Adams hits the nail on the head in explaining the major problem plaguing science that ACSH has worked to combat: junk studies, and the sloppy media coverage that ensues. The piece also includes quotes from many experts associated with ACSH.
GMOs
The Green Revolution, pioneered by Dr. Norman Borlaug, a co-founder of ACSH and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is credited with saving perhaps a billion people from starvation. India was a prime beneficiary of increased crop yields in the 1960s. Now a second green revolution is needed there.
Last November, Maui voters through a ballot initiative passed a ban on the cultivation of genetically engineered crops.
While a field trial of genetically-modified wheat failed to reach its goal (of repelling destructive aphids), the progress made in incorporating relevant genetic traits into the wheat genome will yield more information for better outcomes later.
A blog posting on the NYTimes site discusses the Green Revolution in Africa. While gratifying to read about progress being made, some major omissions need to be addressed in this piece, including the lack of Dr. Norman Borlaug s contributions.
scientists are working on a way to make domestic pigs resistant to African swine fever, a highly contagious ailment that requires slaughtering of infected animals.
Pope Francis can claim many firsts; he is the first non-European Pope since 741 AD, the first from the Americas and the first from the Southern Hemisphere. Given his nuanced positions on science issues like climate change and agriculture, some might also consider him the first scientific Pope. That isn't correct, but he may be the most scientific in history.
Francis is not scientific due to credentialism, he does not have any advanced degree in chemistry. Instead, he is scientific by behavior.
ACSH friend and Fox News host John Stossel has penned a commentary bemoaning the current status of scientific discourse in America. We here at ACSH agree, sadly, with the main thrusts of his cri de coeur: fixed beliefs based on ideology are the opposite of science.
We have to give a shout-out to freelance science writer Kavin Senapathy for her interview on dnaindia.com. Senapathy eloquently conveys the facts on genetically modified food for the article: Organic vs GM: finding the grain of truth.
We have to give a shout-out to Levi Gadye over at io9.com for his informative article You Can Thank Genetic Engineering For Your Delicious Cheese. Unbeknown to most, GMOs are used to make about 80 to 90 percent of cheese
We wish we could say that an advanced academic degree leads one to respect scientific truth, but it ain t necessarily so. In a hard-hitting opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune, Ms. Erin Gallagher counters every point made by an anti-GMO professor (St. Xavier University assistant professor Tatiana C. Tatum Parker) in an earlier commentary. The Trib describes Ms. Gallagher as a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown and a work-from-home mom with a small garden business. She is an active member of the Will County Farm Bureau and is on a volunteer advisory committee for the
An op-ed in Forbes.com by James Conca notes the benefits of nuclear power in helping to ameliorate, to some extent, the disastrous drought now gripping California (and to a lesser extent, Oregon and Washington). Specifically, he notes the nuclear reactor at Diablo