The Tampa Bay Times recently ran a story that would have been unsurprising to many of you. It found that much of the locally-sourced organic food being served in one restaurant was actually nothing of the kind. There's a simple reason for that: Organic is just a process, or marketing, or both, since there is no real difference in the food.

Environmental groups really dislike the weed killer 2,4-D. So much so, that they routinely play the "let's scare the public by calling it something else" game. What are the rules? Just make sure that whenever 2,4-D is mentioned, also refer to dioxin and Agent Orange so that everyone thinks they're the same. But they aren't. Not even close.

Late last year, ACSH testified at the White House on the impact of the FDA's "deeming regulations," granted to it by the 2009 Tobacco Control Act, to cover all tobacco products. This was after numerous agencies and officials had been asked for guidance on this complex subject. The Council issued its recommendations, and it looks more and more like our advice will win the day, at least based on a recent committee vote.

The Centers for Disease Control found that recent use of cigarettes by teens decreased, while use of e-cigarettes increased. So that's a good thing, right? Well, not according to the agency, which now wants us to be concerned about nicotine addition.

Science rests on data, of that there can be no doubt. But peer through the hot haze of hype surrounding the use of big data in biology, and you will see plenty of cold facts that suggest we need fresh thinking if we are to turn the swelling ocean of “omes” – genomes, proteomes and transcriptomes – into new drugs and treatments.

A recent poll found that in defiance of what marketing claims are about organic food, anti-GMO beliefs are actually a sign of being less educated. This is a big blow to Organic Consumers Association and the attack groups they fund to say just the opposite, such as U.S. Right To Know and SourceWatch.

Though we often tout healthy eating and regular exercise as the cornerstones of good health, even the healthiest of patients are not immune to the leading cause of death in men and women in the U.S. And although rare, it is worth noting that rigorous exercise could elevate the risk of heart attack in people who may be at risk.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, the U.N.'s epidemiological arm, has been in existence since the 1960s. But it only recently got a skeptical look from journalists and the general public, because officials declared that sausage is the same risk as cigarette smoking, plutonium, mustard gas and asbestos. So what's going on there?

Why are saturated fats healthy again? Why do the latest nutritional guidelines still have a very low cap on salt despite all the contradictory data?

Babies begin to learn language sounds before they’re even born. In the womb, a mother’s voice is one of the most prominent sounds that's heard. And, as research scientist Naja Ferjan Ramirez writes, at birth newborns can even distinguish between their mother’s language and another.